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3-Auschwitz Descriptions

Where did the SS live?

No, they lived outside the camp in barracks, they had their own SS barracks there. It was like a military camp away from the concentration camp. What you must realize – or must understand rather I should say – that the SS just weren't dealing in Auschwitz, they also had Auschwitz-Birkenau, they had Buna, they had all these little camps around it. They were then shifted from day to day to different camps where they would have guard duty, except for those people had been assigned – because they were sergeants or better – who had been assigned to a camp and they lived at that camp. They were in charge of the blocks, or the work service, things like that – roll call.

Describe how Auschwitz looked?

The main camp of Auschwitz – when you came to the main gate – it had a sign above it which said Arbeit Macht Frei, which means in English, "Work Will Set You Free." To the left of that, outside the camp, was the guard station, which was like the Officer of the Day as we would call it here in the United States – the Officer of the Day Office. You had the gate and on the right hand side of the gate was the place where the orchestra sat, they played the music when you walked out in the morning and when you walked back into the camp. You walked five in a row so it was easier for the guards to count you when you when you went in or out. When you continued through the gate on the left side there were rehearsal rooms and upstairs was the bordello – you know what a bordello is? Are you going to tell her?

It was for the SS officers?

And also for the prisoners who had tickets. It was the whorehouse. That’s what a bordello means.

What do you mean also for prisoner who had tickets?

Like Blockaelteste or Kapos whose details who had provided good results, he would get a ticket that he would go up there and be for one night or one evening with a girl.

A Jewish girl? A woman prisoner?

Yes. They were. Many prostitutes had been picked up throughout Europe and they knew they were prostitutes and they were given the choice. There were also times when they couldn't find any prostitutes and they would make young women become such by offering them if they would serve as prostitutes for "x" number of months they would be sent home and their record would be wiped out. In other words you work for a few months as a prostitute and you get your freedom. None of that ever happened. They did get the women but they didn't get their freedom.

So then you walk through the camp – at the right was the orchestra and the bordello, then you had the main street, and to the right of the main street was the kitchen facility, which took over about close to 25% of the camp. And in front of the kitchen facility was the gallows. There was always one gallow up. One time we had to look and saw four people being hung simultaneously.

When you came to the gate you continued straight on and there were all the buildings. Auschwitz, the main camp, all had brick buildings, they were all two-story buildings. On the left side was the old so called "swimming pool" which was really a water pond for fire in case there was fire in the camp. Then you had the wires and the wires went around the camp as a big rectangle. There were guard stations also made out of masonry and wood that were at the second floor level and they were x number of feet apart – or meters apart. They would have in place machine guns with the strings of bullets attached and ready to shoot, ready to fire.

The buildings I think were two deep. At the middle of the camp they were spread out and there was kind of like an area of a square which was the so called "assembly area." In the morning when you went out you had to line up in front of the kitchen with your work details and march out of the camp. When you came to the far end of the camp on the right, the same side as the kitchen, there was the clinic, there was the Packetstelle, and another building. Opposite the main street there was the hospital, there was the prison within the prison, there was the execution area, and then there was block number 10, 11, and 12. Block 10 is where all the women’s experiments took place where they were artificially inseminated and then they were aborted. And there were all kinds of things done with them. We were in block – Lex and I were in Block 9 and that’s where we met and that was the main hospital. There was another block to the left of us.

How did you stay healthy and clean?

How do you stay healthy and clean? It was up to every prisoner on his own. You didn't have towels, we didn't have soap, we didn't have wash cloths, we didn’t have underwear. I am talking before I became a prominent one, OK, when I was a regular prisoner. You didn't have underwear. All you had was a pair of pants and jacket and in the winter you got an overcoat. The only thing to keep you "healthy" was at night to get the fleas and the lice and kill as many as you could. There were no toothbrushes, there was no toothpaste. There was only cold water. Maybe once every three to four months late at night you were rushed out and you were run through the showers, at which this time you were got a clean uniform. And that’s when I was saying earlier when you have the needle and the thread if you could save that, you could make "a living" – you know, "can I have a piece of bread?" – because you could sew on the numbers on the jacket and on the trousers. Staying healthy and clean are words in 2003 that mean entirely things that they meant to us then. You were never clean. When you had to go and move your bowels there was no toilet paper so you had to get either scraps of paper that you find on the job site and put them in your pocket, or a piece of cloth that you would use to wipe yourself with. Then you would wash that out in cold water and dry it against your body from your body heat. That’s how you did these things. Healthy? Health was beyond you. You did the best you can getting rid of the fleas and the lice.

Did you do this on yourself or did people help each other out?

No, no no, no, no, you did this all yourself, just like the monkey who sits there. Its not like the monkey who sits there and does it on his kids or on other monkeys, you did this all yourself. There was no help whereby somebody says, "I'll get your lice you get my lice" type thing. No. You did it all yourself. Its just a matter of lice and fleas they do bring disease and they basically nest themselves in the seems of your garments and so you sit there and you go inch by half inch through your garment and kill the lice and the fleas would try to jump away and you get them and that sort of thing. It was an endless job because the next day they were just filthy as the day before. It was a task.

More on Surgery in Auschwitz

Was it common to be operated on?

No. When I had been operated on and when I had become a prominent member and I worked in the Packetstelle and I had filled out and felt good, that question bothered me, "Why was I operated on?" Because until then the normal situation had been, "You get operated on?" No, not as a Jew, you went to the gas chamber. So I went back to the clinic. Of course at a certain hour the clinic has no work anymore because you know everybody is working or they've been there and they're all in the blocks. I went to see the doctor who had taken care of me then. I said, "You know what bothers is why was I operated on?" He said, "I had the same concerns." He said, "I couldn't figure out why you were operated on."

So one day I met this SS officer again, the doctor, and I asked him and said, "Look I have a question that's bothering me and I want to ask you if you don't mind." He says, "Fire away." I said, "Why did you have that Jewish boy operated on? I can't figure it out?" "Ah," he said. "OK, let me explain. When I was a student in Germany to become a doctor, all our textbooks – the pictures – were all white, grey and black. So here was the first time that I could actually see what an acute appendicitis looked like in a body ready to burst. So that’s why I had him operated on. I could actually see in color what that looked like on the inside." And that’s what that doctor told me when I asked him that question. That’s why I am here because the textbooks had been in black and white. I mean it’s absurd but that’s the way it was. Every doctor who has seen those scars looks at them and says, "What butcher worked on you?" And I explained what I just explained to you, I said, "That was no butcher, that was a guardian angel." And in many ways it was.

Was the surgeon a prisoner?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The interesting thing is he had no helpers. You look at the movies that you see on TV now – the ER or the other hospital [shows] and you see all these people around the table. I laid on the table there was a screen in front of me, the lamp was up there on the operating table. There was an orderly standing to my left, a fellow prisoner. I had been given a spinal as an anesthesia, which means you freeze all the way down. There was a doctor on my right side. He cut and he did the whole God damn shmear. Everything, there was no helper. Two people working on me and the SS doctor who came in there and stood there watching. That's it. No nurses. You heal yourself. It's all "Damn it, now that they have done this to me, I am not going to allow them to kill me."