The Dentist Of Auschwitz by Benjamin Jacobs Read Free Book Online Page B

walls of the room were rows of bunks, mere shelves stacked atop each other. On them lay straw pallets with gray blankets and pillows. Most bunks were already occupied. The greeting we received had fueled fear. Chaos prevailed, as most of us were unable to find bunks. Finally Papa and I spotted two empty bunks on the lowest level. Little did we know they were the least desirable. The bunks were so tightly spaced that we had to kneel on the floor and slide in. Our baggage we piled up against the wall by the window. With my box of instruments under my pillow, I felt as if I had arrived not just at a labor camp, but in another world. I knew that here I had to learn life all over again.
    More people came. They milled back and forth between rooms, unable to find a place. Amid the tumult, someone yelled, “Attention!” The SS man who had so succinctly instructed us at the gate entered Room 4, followed by Chaim.
    “Here all of you will work. You must salute when you see people in uniform. When spoken to, you must stand at attention, chest out, head up, shoulders back, hands at your trouser seams. The first of you who sees one of us enter the room must call everyone to attention. All inmates must be in their bunks by eight. The light must be out a half hour later. Wake-up is at 4:00 A.M. You’ll get an hour to be ready for work. Saturday and Sunday are free. Tomorrow your clothes will be deloused, your hair shorn. You’ll get your work assignments on Monday!” He turned to leave. Then he stopped, as if he had forgotten the most important announcement: “Anyone contemplating an escape, better not try!” Then he turned and walked out, followed by the policeman. He left us frightened and pondering the consequences of any disobedience.
    Fifteen minutes later a whistle blared. “Quick! Quick! Everyone out to the yard for a roll call!” Then we learned another lesson. No one walked in Steineck. With Papa at my side, I rushed back through the same corridor toward the exit. An SS man, his dog at his side, awaited us. Using the same maneuver as before, I escaped a lashing. But this time the German shepherd buried his fangs in my thigh and shook his snout from side to side. When I freed myself, my pants were torn, and blood was running down my thigh. My leg hurt as if a dozen nails had been driven into it. I wanted to check my leg further, but I knew the roll call took precedence. I followed everyone else to the yard.
    Early in 1941, long before the Wannsee conference at which the Nazis made killing Jews an official policy, Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Reichminister for occupied Warthegau, proposed labor camps for the Jews living in the region. In a widely reported speech at Poznan University, he said, “The Jews will have to pay with blood for the twenty-five years of suffering they have inflicted on the Germans and Poles here.” Like Rosenberg’s other proposals, this one received unanimous acceptance. In May 1941 the first
Judenarbeitslager
was established in the Sport-Stadium in Poznan. One thousand Jewish men were brought there from the Lodz ghetto. The second labor camp was Steineck.
    The Kommandant from the Stadium camp directed our roll call. He had come here to set up Steineck. After we were ordered into rows of five, we had to count, one after another, until the guards were satisfied that all of us were present. After being released, I finally went to the washroom. Here a thirteen-meter pipe dripped water into a trough beneath it.
    The washroom was a perplexing sight, an affront to dignity. A long, half-cylindrical cement object with pipes above it ran along two walls. Several shut-off valves were visible. The toilet was an unfinished plank of wood over a twenty-meter-long pit. Those using it who had diarrhea wound up with feces on their clothes. I cleaned my wound, washed off the blood around the two rows of teeth marks on my thigh, cleaned my underwear and pants, and left.
    Papa had been waiting for me in the room, his