Authors: H. G. Adler
Among the lost, normal forms of outward appearance have become meaningless, because decay is formless, and the lost have been condemned only to decay, all their hair cut off, scraped from their bodies with blunt instruments, the lost stripped in Birkenau, their shoes and clothes lying about like thick heaps of dung on the cold concrete floor. It’s a huge hall in which the lost stand naked and freezing, two heavily armed conspirators rummage through the clothing, digging into pockets, looking for money, for watches and jewelry. A band of collaborators scurry about, themselves also a part of the lost, yet appearing nearly as powerful as the conspirators, nothing but rats disguised as humans, rummaging through the belongings of the living, and when the rats find what they’re looking for they take it away, they surround the naked and scream at them with incomprehensible sounds, the sounds of greed and thievery, and whenever the rats spot a picture of a wife or mother or children in the hands of the lost they snatch it away and scoff, the lost allowed to keep only a belt that is bound about the naked like a penitent’s cord, some having glasses that they are allowed to keep as well.
The rats swing truncheons with which they wale away at the naked, and the rats bellow out that this is no sanatorium, threatening to punish anyone who has hidden anything, for everything will be found, and punished, anyone who has hidden something in his mouth or in the folds of his body, it will be punished, all of it a crime, it will be punished, every possession is a crime. Then the naked learn that among the lost there is no such thing as equality, because the collaborators are powerful, the other lost ones powerless, the Conqueror’s conspirators distant and with an exalted air about them, though the lost are made aware of it only from time to time, otherwise the collaborators take care of things for the conspirators, making sure to herd together and control the endless waves of the nameless. The lost are scolded as they are driven into the next room, there they are stripped of their hair by four Greek Jews, themselves also among the lost, crouching on stools and shooting unintelligible words back and forth, the rats saying
“
Klepsi
” to them, which means to steal in Greek. The naked must kneel down in front of the Greeks, who scrape off the hair on their heads, the skull naked and bloody, then the naked have to raise the right arm, the left arm, as the Greeks shave the armpits, the naked standing as the Greeks shave the pubic hair and the buttocks. Then the naked are shooed onward, stumbling into the shower room, where they are pressed together in close bunches under the showers, warm water beneficently pouring down upon them, though there is no soap here to wash with, only water, which flows for a while, the naked driven farther on until they arrive at a threshold and they have to wade through the reeking grayish-brown lye, striding past a lost one who holds a sponge in one hand soaked with the same cold solution, running it over the raw privates of each naked one and then over the skull, irritating and burning the skin like liquid fire.
The naked now stand in a cold hall, the bodies still damp from the showers, but there are no towels, the naked having to form rows as, without a care for shape or size, ragged shirts are tossed to them, dirty trousers and jackets often damaged and ripped, trousers and jackets with blue patches and made of gray striped material. In clothes made of the same material, the collaborators run about in “zebra stripes,” though for ages there have been none available to the naked, the Conqueror’s weavers incapable of fulfilling the endless demand, though from the repositories of the death factories the worst rags have been selected from a limitless supply of clothes that once belonged to the hecatombs of nameless murdered people, miserable trash still able to be utilized for the Conqueror’s marvelous deeds and relief work, as now the mottled zebras are fitted out with the plunder of the murdered victims, after which a brush is dipped in rust-red varnish and circles and crosses are smeared on the trousers and jackets. Foot rags cut from soft, warm wool of the prayer shawls of murdered Jews are also thrown to the naked. Then shabby caps made out of zebra cloth are tossed in an arc to the naked. The last element of the wardrobe is the shoes, the soles made of wood, the black uppers of rough material. The naked have to dress quickly as they try to make the stuff fit them, some of it too short and too tight, other parts too big and too long, though that is preferable, while best is to find someone sensible with whom to trade clothes in order to look respectable. The naked barely finish dressing before being driven out of the
hall under the threat of blows, as they stand in the dreary October cold of the year 1944, realizing at last that they are lost, though there is no time to reflect on this as they are bellowed at by angry voices that want to bring order to the misshapen heap, though it is not done with screams but rather with clubs and whips. Finally around a hundred of the lost stand in rows of four, then are led away from this cursed place which is called a sauna, the Finnish word for bath.
An armed conspirator and some collaborators proudly decked out in their snazzy garb accompany the lost along the length of a sandy path, on the edge of which stand some withered pines followed by nothing but crunchy gravel, to the left an open field where some building is under way, to the right concrete pillars that loom and are bound together by electrified wire, in between the covered watchtowers lifting up, behind them a camp for the lost, immense and bleak, every now and then an entrance, a wooden hut standing nearby, the word
OFFICE
legible on it, yellow and black letters on a sign spelling out the odd words
SHH—THE ENEMY IS LISTENING!
The entrances lead to separate parts of the camp, “F” written above the first entrance, which is called the sick bay, on the next the letter “E,” the Gypsy camp, now only a reminder of the former inmates, who in large part exited the camp through a chimney, as a collaborator explains. Here the surge of lost ones remains standing, a collaborator hurries over to the office window, where he stands stiff as a board, then marches them off through the open gate. They move across a courtyard, then they arrive at some larger huts, then move along a road that runs through about thirty huts painted green, stretching back from the camp road almost to the edge of Section E, the huts standing one next to the other, always one to the left and to the right, and behind them wire stretched from pillar to pillar, each part of the camp remaining separate from the rest. The lost are not led to these huts right off, but instead they must stand in the far field, a gathering place where they wait a long time, though in the camp of the lost there is no time, or nothing but time, since it’s all the same, whatever happens, or time is a tight net thrown over the lost, and each strand of the net cuts into life. There Josef gathers his wits and decides that he must hang on, he can’t let himself wither away, and yet he doesn’t yet know what such a proposition entails, what he even means by it. Suddenly he is driven into a hut along with his fellow
marchers, the number 13 labeled on it, first through an entryway, then he sees a small room to the left and right, but immediately he is pressed into a long room that takes up almost the entire hut, someone suggesting that in old Austria, and later in Poland, these were the horse stalls of an army garrison. A waist-high brick wall forms the middle axis of the room, right and left of it there runs a narrow passage in front of triple-decker wooden bunks, upon which a couple of red horse blankets lie, though there are no straw mattresses, paltry light pressing through small, glazed portholes in the roof, such that it is twilight within during the day, perhaps lighter at night when the two lightbulbs are turned on. At the end of the hut there is another entryway with an exit, the floor everywhere consisting of nothing but packed-down earth.
In this hut and for many days to come, existence is reduced to this warehouse for humans. To get away from here, that is Josef’s only wish. Although he has managed to steer his little ship through fateful seas, a feeling still compels him to do everything he can to get away from here, and yet he knows for sure that this place of sickness can only lead to another place of sickness, while in the end Josef is still determined that it shouldn’t happen here in this near-grave which they call quarantine, whose destruction still presses through the chimneys that run day and night, where the flames are not lit to celebrate the sacrificed lives of the murdered but which nonetheless eerily exalt them, despite the will of the murderers, such that Josef senses this destruction much more as an eternal repose that wipes away all urge to fight back, an uneasy prospect of that indolent state in which the thinking being is robbed not of the justification for his existence, but rather of the ability to possess and reflect upon it, even when the inquisitive spirit poses endless questions otherwise unfit for grown-ups, questions of youth, with which one seeks to strip a secret of its secret, because the questioner has no idea that the question itself—though empty of insight—contains the answer, since the deepest questions have no answers other than more questions. This insight is lost upon the inmates of the waiting station, for here there is only a life of relinquishment, where even life itself is relinquished in much the same way that the sum total of all possessions are relinquished, a life of nothing more than inner reserves, in many ways a pure life, though pure rather than virtuous, for it is not a life lived in accordance with human
nature, which does not feed on memories alone, but rather one that lives for discoveries that cannot be replaced simply by hopes and dreams.
The lost in Barracks 13 are not left on their own for very long, for two collaborators appear and yell out a speech to initiate the lost into the secret workings of the place, forcing them to sup from the shrieks that will soon fill their future. They who have been robbed of everything are pressed to turn in any hidden goods, threats demanding gold and jewels, the cowed ones searching around among their rags as if there were something to find within them, though the poor souls have nothing, and therefore can give nothing. With bit-off words the lost are exhorted to embrace cleanliness, hard work, and obedience, then they are dragged out in front of the barracks and told to form two rows that run the length of a wall, one of the collaborators telling them that he used to be a Hungarian officer, but he means well and isn’t holding anything with which to beat anyone. He says that things are hard here, which is why you shouldn’t make them harder, you just have to learn to take care of yourself, but the will to do so must be flexible, for indeed a hardheaded will here only leads to trouble, there being many ways to die, whether it’s hunger, exhaustion, illness, cold, the only other way out of this camp being through the many methods of beatings and degradation, there also being the bullet and the gallows, while the chimney is always at the ready. All of this is a good reason to take care never to attract attention, to learn how to take a hit, to trust in your luck, but never let yourself fall to the ground like a Muslim, for you’ll end up passing through the chimney, the only hope left being to remain strong, though this path to possible rescue is seemingly narrow, but indeed there have been men who for years have clung to it after having decided to last it out, and even if they are the lucky ones that doesn’t mean others are unlucky, for no one can afford to believe that who doesn’t quickly go up the chimney. At this one of the lost calls out to ask what all this is about the chimney, for he keeps hearing about the chimney and doesn’t know what it means, someone else yelling out, “The gas chamber! The gas chamber!” The lost one looks on puzzled, and then the collaborator says to the rows, that’s the marmalade factory, and no one can work there, the people who work there are special commandos and cleared out every three months, while whoever wants to stay on here has to
find a way not to stand out. Then the Hungarian goes silent, perhaps worrying that he has said too much already.
A Polish collaborator arrives, clearly having drunk a good deal of schnapps, swaying and reeking, his face red and swollen, he yelling that it’s not cold, it’s a beautiful day, the sons of bitches are in luck, they should pull themselves together, they are just a lazy bunch of garbage that have never had to work, but now they must stand at attention. Everyone has to stand there without moving and look straight ahead, the Pole yelling that he’ll teach them how to keep in line, and they’ll thank him for it, for he’ll explain what “Hats off!” and “Hats on!” means, for if your hat is on your head, then as soon as you hear the command you yank it off as fast as you can with your right hand, and the moment you hear “Hats off!” the hat should be yanked off and pressed flat against your pant leg, while on the other hand if you hear “Hats on!,” then immediately you put your hat on your head, making sure to keep your hand up there in a salute, though when you hear “Hats off!,” then it has to be pressed against your leg quick as lightning. The Pole explains all this in detail, which only confuses the lost, but he knows how hard it is, which is why he yells, “Attention!” And then “Hats—off!” And then “Hats—on!” He is proud of how well he does this, and now he practices “Hats off!” and “Hats on!” with the lost for an hour or more, anyone who doesn’t do it well getting a slap and then having to do it by himself, sometimes having to step forward as well. The Pole also explains that whenever “Hats on!” is shouted the hat should in no way sit elegantly atop the head but instead should just sit there and not fall to the ground, but how it looks doesn’t matter, and when you’re no longer at attention is the time to fix your hat. As they practice, the Pole talks to them, making little jokes, yelling out “Hats—on!” to the lost, who already have their hats on their heads, and when almost all of them rip them off, he chuckles with satisfaction, though he’s not happy to just laugh it off, for his pleasure soon leads to blows, he being just as amused when he yells out “Hats off!” to the men with their heads exposed and most of them put them on. The longer this goes on the more the lost become confused, getting more tired and longing for rest and feeling hungry, though they know already that they will get nothing to eat today, they’re a bunch of bellyachers who don’t know anything about the
camp yet, for even if they do want to eat they haven’t done any work and have to first learn how to put on and take off their hats right.