Primo

It was my good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz

only in 1944

that is, after the German Government decided

owing to the growing scarcity of labor

to lengthen the average lifespan of the prisoners

destined for elimination.

I had been capture by Fascist Militia on the 13th of December 1943

as a member of a small partisan band affiliated with the resistance.

During the interrogation, I preferred to admit

to the status of "Italian citizen of Jewish race."

I believe that any admission of my political activity

would have meant torture and certain death.

I was twenty-four, with little wisdom no experience

and a tendency-encouraged by life of segregation

forced on me by the racial laws

to live in an unrealistic world of my own.

I was at first sent to the detention camp at Fossoi.

Then, on the 21st February 1944

we learned that all the jews, without exception

would be leaving the next day.

Our destination? No one knew.

We should just prepare ourselves for travel.

The following morning, we were taken to the station at Carpi.

Here the tain was waiting for us

with our escort for the journey.

And here we received the first blows.

It was so new and senseless that we felt no pain.

Only amazement.

How can one man hit another without anger?

Here then, before our very eyes

and now under our very feet

was one of those transport trains that we'd often heard about

exactly like this, detail for detail

goods wagons, doors secured locked

holding a cargo of men, women, and children.

Only this time it is us inside.

We had learned of our destination with relief.

Auschwitz, a name without significance for us at that time.

Some thought it was Austerlitz, the town in Bohemia

but at least it implied some place on this earth.

The train traveled slowly with long unnerving halts.

Through the air slit, we saw the tall pale cliffs of the Adige Valley

and the names of the last Italian cities disappear behind us.

At noon, on the second day, we passed the Brenner Mountains

the frontier with Austria.

And everyone stood up, but no one said a word.

During the daytime, our nerves, our fear

somehow made it all tolerable

the hunger, the thirst, the violated modesty

because of the absence of toilets

but the hours of darkness were like never-ending nightmares.

Again and again, sleep was interrupted by

noisy and futile arguments

curses, cries, kicks, and punches delivered blindly.

And then someone would light a candle

and its little flicker would show a strange human mass

spread over the floor, sluggish, aching

rising in sudden convulsions, collapsing again.

Through the slit, the names of Austrian cities

Salzburg, Vienna, then Czech

finally Polish names.

On the evening of the fourth day, the cold became intense.

The train ran through interminable black pine forests

climbing perceptibly.

There was a long halt in the open country.

Then we started up again very slowly.

Then stopped again for the last time

in the dead of night, in the middle of a dark, silent plain.

By the light of our last candle and with the rhythm of the wheels

and every human sound now silenced...

we waited for what would happen.

It's sudden. The door opens with a crash

and the dark echoes with that curt barking noise of Germans in command.

A huge platform appears before us, lit by reflectors.

Beyond it, a row of lorries.

Then everything goes silent again.

Someone whispers a translation...

"Climb down, leave your luggage alongside the train."

In a moment, the platform is swarming with shadows.

A dozen SS men stand around, faces blank.

At a certain moment, they suddenly move among us

and with quiet voices, begin to ask questions in bad Italian.

"How old? Healthy or ill? Job?"

And depending on the reply

they point in two different directions.

"Everything is still very silent"

"silent as an aquarium or certain dreams."

"We expected something more apocalyptic"

"but they are behaving so calmly"

"so reassuringly"

"they're just like people doing everyday jobs."

One of us dares to ask for his luggage.

They reply, "Luggage afterwards."

Someone else doesn't want to leave his wife

they say, "Together again afterwards."

Many mothers don't want to be separated from their children

they say, "Good, good, stay with child."

In less than ten minutes

all the men who are fit or professional specialists

have been grouped together.

What's happening to the others?

We can't work it out.

"We see them for a moment"

"an indistinct mass at the other end of the platform"

"and then the night swallows them up, purely and simply."

We're loaded onto a lorry.

The lorry races off at full speed.

It's pitch black in here. Are we unguarded?

Should we jump out? Too late.

There is a guard with us, a German soldier brisling with weapons.

He switches on a pocket torch.

We're expecting shouts and threats

but instead he starts asking us

very courteously in German and in pidgin

if we have any money or watches to give him

since we won't be needing them anymore.

This isn't an order or a rule...

just the small private initiative of our Charon.

It makes us angry, it makes us laugh

it brings some relief.

The lorry stops.

A gate.

Above it a sign, brightly lit...

"Arbeit Macht Frei."

"Work Makes You Free."

The image still comes in my dreams.

We're herded into an enormous empty room.

Poorly heated.

We have a terrible thirst.

We've had nothing to drink for four days.

We see a tap, a dripping tap.

Above it a card, "Wassertrinken Verboten."

"It is forbidden to drink."

Nonsense. This cards a joke.

They knew we're dying of thirst, so they put us in this room

with this tap, and "Wassertrinken Verboten".

I ignore it and drink.

I spit it out.

It's tepid, sweetish, stinking like a swamp.

Hell must be like this.

A big, empty room

a tap which drips but you can't drink from it...

us tired, standing

waiting for something to happen which will certainly be terrible.

But nothing happens.

Nothing continues to happen.

"Just..."

"time passing."

The door opens and an SS man enters

smoking. Looks at us slowly.

Asks, "Wer kann Deutsch?"

One of us a man named Flesch, steps forward.

He'll be our interpreter.

The SS man makes a long, calm speech.

Flesch translates.

We must form rows of five

with intervals of two yards

between man and man.

We must undress

and make a bundle of our clothes.

We must take great care that our shoes are not stolen.

Stolen by whom? Why should our shoes be stolen?

And what about our documents? Our watches

the things in our pockets?

Flesch translates our questions to the German.

The German smokes and looks through him

as if he's transparent, as if no one had spoken.

I've never seen old men naked.

Mr. Bergmann wears a truss and asks Flesch

if he should take it off.

The German answers in a serious tone, pointing at someone else.

Flesch translates...

You can tell the words are bitter in his mouth.

The officer says, "Yes"

"take off your truss and you'll be given that of Mr. Coen."

The German sense of humor.

Now four men burst in with razors, soap brushes, and clippers.

They wear striped trousers and jackets

with numbers sewn on the front. We ask many questions

but they just catch hold of us like sheep

and in a moment

we're sheared and shaved.

Without hair, our faces are weird, quite comical.

They've cut off all our body hair, too.

We are more than stripped bare now

we are as naked as worms.

"Another door is opened and we're herded into"

"a shower room."

We're locked in.

Here we are now, naked, sheared.

And alone. We slowly start to speak.

Everyone has questions, no one has answers.

If we are going to have a shower

does that mean that they're not going to kill us?

But why do they keep us standing here?

Why give us nothing to drink?

Hunger exhausts, but thirst enrages.

As were walking up and down, talking, talking

the SS man suddenly returns.

Flesch translates, biting back his words again.