Authors: H. G. Adler
So the first day creeps by, the lost moving around in groups, the wind blowing, a collaborator showing up now and then to shout a command for the lost to come out of their huts and stand in the yard, all of them showing up. The new ones don’t know what it’s all about, nothing really happening, maybe one group having to take a step forward or backward now and then, then all having to turn around and head back in, later all of them having to stand there forever, some of them kneeling. Then suddenly before the group there appears a band of musicians, lost ones with instruments, well-fed boys who look like a military band in an operetta, with their black-and-white striped pants and their dull, heavy boots, over which they wear padded dark-blue jackets, on the backs of which a small white felt strip is sewn, Polish officer caps sitting on their heads. A conspirator arrives and asks the band to play, demanding waltzes and marches, a schmaltzy, merry mix of sounds as you might hear at a fair, though the conspirator can’t stand listening to all that noise and demands, “Play something good, something really good!” He stands so close to the horn players that they have to blow straight into his ear, he almost pressing his head into the horns and trombones. As the lost ones freeze in the chilly wind and yet must not move a step, the musicians break into a sweat as they are relentlessly commanded to play a march until the conspirator yells, “Enough!” and this afternoon’s concert in the Gypsy camp is brought to an end.
The lost ones march back to their huts, which the new ones are happy to do, first because it feels good to finally move, and second because they hope they’ll be allowed to get some rest in their huts, but then they have to line up against the wall where they had earlier learned the art of what to do with their hats, someone saying that it was time for roll call, and if it comes out right, then they will be allowed to go to their huts. Thus they have to stand there some more, though they are allowed to move a bit where they stand, yet no one is allowed to step out of line, while leaving is out of the question, there being nothing to eat or drink, except for what one might have stashed in his pockets. Then throughout the Gypsy camp, as well as within each section, steadily stronger and yet monotone voices yell, “Every-one-out-roll-call!” Everywhere the lost ones gather before their
huts, the collaborators coming out of their offices, both elders and clerks, the entire staff, all of them strong young men, some of them splendidly decked out, most of the collaborators here being Polish or German, most having been stuck here for years and feeling right at home, hardly having anything to do with the lost ones anymore, though their world has become familiar, they know of no other any longer, this being the way things are. One must understand that within this world they remain in command by spreading terror in order to live a life on the margins of life, the dangers here having evolved such that they are hardly more than the dangers that surround and threaten any existence anywhere. The lost ones have it even better, for the dangers are no longer unknown or hidden but instead openly here, moving among the huts, living atop the watchtowers, bullets being cheap, circulating through the electrified wire, just one step and it flows through you, one hanging in the barbed wire who is left there undisturbed, as cutting off the current will do nothing to help drag down the cramped body.
And here all around the camp are the death factories, choking down bodies and burning on unimpeded, because the Conqueror needs the sacrifice of degraded lives, telling them, go on, you lost ones, go on, let yourselves be selected by the tall handsome man who is a doctor, wait for him, strip the rags from your body, look, he’s coming, he’s a hardworking man, he comes after you in your barracks, he has good eyes, he’s a good judge of the flesh, he assesses your worth and decides your fate in the name of the Conqueror and all of his conspirators, never doubting the everyday order of things, the Conqueror having released it from mere contingency, by which death or life is dispensed through the blind will of nature, whereas the Conqueror handed over the natural order of things to the control of his conspirators, he whom they call the Great Benefactor giving commands, while their loyalty is their glory, the handsome doctor before you here also being one of his loyal followers as he chooses you, selects you, and judges whether you are ready for the harvest of death. Eternal justice is embodied within him, made manifest in the immediate surround from out of the ungraspable beyond, you now being tested, not questioned, not heard, not touched, only silence and acceptance available to one, as all are told, nothing is going to happen to you, you are free, as you have never been before, for you stand
before the judgment of the Conqueror in the stillness, you don’t need to think of anything, though you indeed are afraid, but there’s no reason to be afraid, you can give in, you can hope, you want to hold your head high, you still want to serve the Conqueror in your drudgery, you don’t feel ready for your death and don’t want to be separated from life, but patience, the handsome doctor is loyal, he will visit you again, and by then you will be tired, you won’t want to live any longer or save yourself, you will stand naked, your flesh melting and hanging slackly upon you, your gaze cloudy, you no longer able to stand erect. Today, however, you have not yet let yourself go, you are still too proud, arrogantly you believe in your own worth, you think defiantly only of yourself, you don’t think about the Conqueror’s transport, to which you’ve been assigned, and which will be dispatched at his discretion when he makes known his resolution through his conspirators. You pull yourself together, you put on a peaceful face and stand up, you brace yourself, the eyes of the handsome doctor rest knowingly on your feeble appearance, he saying nothing, not even waving once, you already past him, it having taken hardly three seconds, the handsome doctor doesn’t have time to busy his eyes with yours, he has to care for millions, and he knows how worthless you are, he has a pretty good idea, you alone still considering your existence worth something, but this means nothing to him, it being beneath him to encourage you in your vanity. It is prudently arranged that the doctor cannot spare any time for you, and, besides, he really wants to serve the Conqueror slavishly and selflessly, because the doctor is weak and can be human, but the wisdom of the Conqueror has already decided to do away with the love of one’s neighbor and of humanity in general, which is why he gives his conspirators hardly any time to do their work but instead only that needed to get the work done. That’s the way it is, and not a word about it!
But the handsome doctor has not bothered about you, never once having shifted his gaze, and you have been passed by, you once more are wearing your rags and wander back to the huts, where you stand among the lost ones, everyone quiet and appearing not to breathe, pressed to the cracks between the boards until everyone has passed by the doctor. Nothing else appears to have happened, he turning away and heading off to other huts in order to ordain the living as dead, who are then separated out and wait until enough are gathered together, no one wanting to waste the precious poisonous
gas, the Conqueror’s conspirators economizing in order to better serve his glory, though even up until the day of sacrifice the doomed are given very little earthly nourishment, for hail to the Conqueror, the loyal followers don’t want to do him harm by wasting precious goods! Stripped and hardly sheltered from the elements, the doomed are loaded into trucks, their tired feet not having to walk much farther, the conspirators striking the doomed from the rolls, order always maintained, the doomed trucked once more through the camp toward one of the temples of murder made of concrete, the doomed unloaded between the flower beds of the front garden, then pushed or dragged down some steps into the dressing room with the reassuring sign announcing
THIS WAY TO THE SHOWERS
. See, here you will wash up, your soul has grown dirty, you need a good scrubbing, but now you will be clean, you will sanctify yourself in order to meet your salvation, while you can thank fate that you don’t have to disrobe, because you have been brought here naked, just like from your mother, you not having to wait in the dressing room like those from the arriving trains, who are dressed for the city and are led in unwittingly, men and women, old folks and children, healthy and sick ones, none having a clue about their sacrifice and thus unable to ready themselves. You, however, can gather together, you have grown strong from the duress of the camp, even if you’ve only been here a few days, as you stand before the steel doors, look, how this is a shrine into which you are being led, you are precious, we want to keep you secure, you shouldn’t run away, just go on in, go with the others, just as thousands and thousands have gone before you and will follow you, go, it’s so easy, just go. You see indeed how easy it is, there is not a trace left here of those who have already entered, so go and wait until the shrine is full so that one can seal it for good. Then the lights will go out, then your mortal being will be consumed, it won’t take long, soon salvation will follow, the shrine is opened, then a special command of lost ones who serve as the lowest peons of the Conqueror haul the mortals from the shrine who cover his earth with their bloody eyes and noses and mouths, filthy and piled up in clumps so thick that the bodies often cannot be separated, the special command having a hard job to do for the Conqueror, since carrying out the murdered isn’t easy. They are then schlepped over to the roar of the furnaces, but first the gold is pried from their mouths, for the Conqueror needs the gold with which
the sacrificed haughtily decorated their teeth, and when it’s time the hair of the women is cut off, for the Conqueror needs the locks that bedecked the bodies of his victims, after which each body is quickly burned, though only that which the Conqueror no longer needs is burned, ashes, horrible ashes, these the Conqueror can use to bless the accursed earth of his thousand-year realm with the victims of his sins and the power of their salvation.
What has not been turned into ashes climbs the powerful flames rising from the chimneys, the flames flaring up strong and lambent, billowing up and wrapped in smoke, the camp filled with its stench as they burn without cease through the night, and since flame entangles with flame, and ashes are mixed with ashes, you are one with the others, you no longer feel the painful separation that all creation feels, you are released, the Conqueror has finished with you. Yet you still resist him, still you are crippled by fear, there being nothing but fear for the lost one who calls the Conqueror a fiend, condemning him, refusing to recognize him as humanity’s greatest benefactor, as he has declared himself to be. No, he cannot be that, every living being must condemn him, but condemnation is useless as long as he exists and goes about his work, even if you turn your own land into a wasteland of burning and explosions, for that does not drive away chaos but only increases it. Yet all such thoughts are fruitless, they simply drift off when the lost ones stand amid the dung or dust while awaiting the roll call, they always having to be gathered, none allowed to escape from the conspirators, which is why one speaks of prisoners and not of the lost when Josef and some of the others express sympathy for them, though it’s not appreciated. For they are minors, children of the world without a clue to what is happening to them, which is why they are brought together so that the section leader can count them, they themselves needing to do nothing and not needing to know that they are being counted, though they always have something to complain about and remain stuck there amid their unnameable fear, everything being unnameable to them, because they hunger for names. In the quarantine of the Gypsy camp no one has a number, there is no sign by which they are known, all they have to do here is wait until they are sent to the slave camp, which is where the Conqueror wants them, so that their powerless hands can hand him his power. In the slave camp the lost ones are granted numbers by which they are known, which they then
sew into their shirts and pants, the numbers also written down in books, in which the prisoners’ scribe writes down their names and other details that each lost one tells him, the scribe taking it down completely on trust, no one able to check what is there. In the Gypsy camp, however, the lost ones are no more than a part of a larger number, and whoever ends up remaining is tattooed with a blue number on the inside of his arm, though in the Gypsy camp the stay is usually brief, often just a matter of days or hours, and seldom longer than four to six weeks.
Thus the new arrivals can remain in Birkenau for only a short time, for soon some men will come to visit who do not wear black-and-white stripes, not the rags of the lost ones, or the dandified rags of the collaborators or the uniforms of the conspirators, no, most of these men wear a suit and hat and a raincoat. The lost ones line up, wanting to look strong and healthy in order to keep out of the chimney’s clutches, while the one with the raincoat stands there somewhat awkwardly and controls his feeling of horror or has already grown hardened to it, whether it be because he has stood before other lost ones or because he has learned from the Conqueror what he thinks of Jews and criminals, the times being serious as they are, the dear fatherland threatened and grappling with an unrelenting battle for its very existence, while every prisoner here would fight against the fatherland or agitate if the Conqueror had not locked them up, they indeed remaining a danger, for shh, the enemy is listening and no one should speak with him. Only the most loyal of the conspirators are called to the task on behalf of the Conqueror to watch over the danger imprisoned in the camp, each weapon not sounding the whisper of the destroyer but instead a weapon is just and protects the loyal ones from straying, and the conspirators from betrayal, and so the weapon is the power of good in its avenging of evil, which the Conqueror has surrounded with electrified wire, thus securing himself against the internal enemy, who is tamed and made useful, for now he must work for the Conqueror,
Arbeit macht frei
, and honor his superiors, who transform his reluctance into readiness. This is why the man in the raincoat stands there, he oversees the unwilling in order to tease out their defiance and transform it into compliance with the Conqueror, who needs new weapons, because the Reich is surrounded by an external enemy, which is why the slaves must conquer the inner enemy.