One Day In the Life of Abraham of Auschwitz

By N. A. Huebsch Jr.

After fleeing to France in the wake of the Night of the Broken Glass, Abraham Mahler joins the mass of humanity seeking to escape the lightning advances of the Wehrmacht. In Marseilles he is arrested and transported to the concentration camp Birkenau, often referred to as Auschwitz – Birkenau, where he rises to the rank of kapo and rules over zone B2d’s kitchen, a fragile, insular world dedicated to feeding the zone’s Jews. Driven by his conviction that the keys to survival are obedience, hard work and manipulation of the system, he drives his staff onward. But on one frigid January day in 1944 his world is threatened by a Ukrainian criminal. Armed with an iron pipe and an insatiable urge to kill, he seeks blood and victims.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Nov 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781483458380

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Copyright © 2016, 2017 N. A. Huebsch Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted

by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written

permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in

critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is

illegal and is punishable by law.

This book is a work of fiction. With the exception of historical figures, characters and

incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events

or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Cover concept and design by N. A. Huebsch Jr.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5839-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-5838-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016915508

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Huebsch rev. date: 5/23/2018

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my sincere appreciation to colleagues and friends, most notably Carol Lansdale, Debbie Kiewiet, and Jim Patrick, who supported me in the preparation and completion of this work. Their criticisms and encouragement enabled me to persevere.

Carol Lansdale, a retired teacher of English and school librarian, played a major role in the early stages of this project. She has been a sounding board, patiently answering my questions, What do you think about this? and How does this sound to you?

I have benefited immensely from the insights of Debbie Kiewiet and Jim Patrick to whom I could turn for support. Debbie Kiewiet’s journalistic career began in Iowa where she contributed articles to newspapers and periodicals; she served as an editor of a weekly in Madison County. Relocating to Southwest Florida in 2004, she continued to contribute articles. Since joining the Writing Center on the State College of Florida’s Venice campus in 2007, she has shared her love of writing with her students.

Jim Patrick, a retired drama instructor, is the author of two books, Scallop Season: A Nantucket Chronicle, a first-hand look at one of America’s last wild bay scalloping fleets and Nantucket Love Stories, dramatizing Nantucket’s history through its famous romances. He is also a playwright and founder of the Nantucket Short Play Festival which discovers and presents original theatre.

To Sharon and Reese, my wife

and son, for their support and enduring patience.

A GUIDE FOR THE READER

Auschwitz – Birkenau

Auschwitz and Birkenau are two concentration camps, approximately three to four kilometers apart, located in the southern reaches of the General Government of Poland. Auschwitz is sometimes referred to as Auschwitz I; Birkenau is identified as Auschwitz II or Auschwitz-Birkenau.

SS (Schutzstaffel) and equivalent U.S. Army ranks

Hauptsturmführer – Captain

Obersturmführer – First Lieutenant

Untersturmführer – Second Lieutenant

Oberscharführer – Technical Sergeant

Scharführer – Staff Sergeant

Unterscharführer - Sergeant

Rottenführer – Corporal

Birkenau – Inmate Ranks

Kapo – a senior position with supervisory responsibilities

Block Senior – a senior resident supervisor of a block (barrack).

Block Clerk – a junior administrative assistant of a block (barrack)

Birkenau – General Definitions

Kanada – a secure storage area within Birkenau

Mexico – a planned extension of Birkenau that was never finished

Organizing – inmate activities that involved smuggling for survival

Sonderkommando – a Special Squad of inmates that served the crematoria and gas chambers under direct SS supervision

SS Block Leader – an SS officer or senior enlisted supervisor of a block (barrack)

INTRODUCTION

One Day in the Life of Abraham of Auschwitz is a fictional work. With the exception of several flashbacks in time, the focus is upon one frigid day in January 1944. While I refer to historical figures within the broad sweep of the National Socialist period and the Holocaust, the men and women who occupy the following pages are not real. Any identification with individuals or family names is purely coincidental, and no harm has ever been intended.

In the wake of the Night of the Broken Glass, Abraham Mahler fled his native Germany to the safety of Strasbourg, smugly believing in the permanence of that world. When Germany invaded France, he joined the mass of humanity seeking to escape the lightning advances of the Wehrmacht, eventually reaching Marseilles where he strove to avoid France’s systematic roundup of its own Jews. After his arrest, he was transported to Birkenau, a concentration camp in the Auschwitz complex, where he rose to the rank of kapo, a senior leadership position in the camp structure, to rule over zone B2d’s kitchen, a fragile, insular world dedicated to feeding the zone’s Jews.

Believing the keys to survival are obedience, hard work, and manipulation of the system, Kapo Abraham drives his staff onward. Henri Frankel, a French Jew and the kitchen’s sub-kapo, a decorated war veteran in a long-forgotten war, resents his treatment at the hands of a German Jew. Yosef Kaplan, a university student, and Felix Korczak, a corporate clerk, are next in the kitchen’s pecking order. Escaping from the Warsaw Ghetto, they were captured by German Army units and transported to Birkenau. Stefan Pototcki, a devout Catholic and political prisoner from the region, occupies the lowest rung on the ladder.

Beyond the kitchen, Abraham struggles to meet the challenges that intrude upon his world. Szlajfer, a runner trusted by Schutzstaffel (SS) clerks to carry messages from zone to zone, is an indispensable source of information. Directing B2d’s sham infirmary, Zelig Gurewicz works to dispense precious medicines to the zone’s Jews. Kapo Marcus Bruder, who directs the sorting and cataloguing of the personal belongings of the condemned, conspires with Abraham to exploit SS corruption. Wladyslow Rapinski, a Catholic priest sentenced to Birkenau for hiding Jews, roams Birkenau with his cart in search of corpses. SS-Hauptsturmführer Gottfried Dold, master of B2d, seeks the treasures only Abraham can provide. But on this day, it is Feodor Makhno, a Ukrainian criminal, who poses the greatest threat. Armed with an iron pipe and an insatiable urge to kill, he seeks blood and victims.

N. A. Huebsch Jr., Ph.D.

Pelican Lake, Wisconsin

ONE DAY

IN THE LIFE OF

ABRAHAM OF AUSCHWITZ

January 1944

General Government of Poland

Auschwitz region

Birkenau: 2:00 a.m.

The Vistula flowed sluggishly onward, oblivious to the miles of ice and patches of snow embracing its barren banks. Only the relentless January wind seemed ready to defy the river, to challenge its ponderous mood and course. Raging from the north through the General Government of Poland, it lashed savagely at the murky surface, tearing great ice chunks from the banks and driving them into the current. Up and down the banks, brush and branches rustled and clacked in feeble protest. Here and there, the few parched leaves of autumn surrendered their tenuous hold on stalks and branches and joined the ice chunks in the water. One defiant leaf skipped across the flotsam, soared upward through the night, and raced with the wind to the opposite bank, eventually falling and disappearing amid the forest’s debris. Satisfied with its destruction, the wind howled onward in search of masters and slaves to remind them of the futility of life.

Abraham Mahler turned up his greatcoat’s fur collar. He had been standing outside for over an hour in the dark, his back against the kitchen-building wall, and he knew his ears were nearly frozen. Instinctively, he hunched his shoulders higher and turned his head slowly from side to side. His left ear was still sore, a good sign, but he could not feel his right ear against his collar. Fearing frostbite, he rubbed the side of his head with his free hand, an attempt to warm the exposed flesh and coax back the circulation. He pulled off a glove and pressed his palm against the numb ear. Frostbite would betray him. His enemies would ask questions. Those goddamn Polacks, he thought. Kapos, block seniors, Jews, or criminals. To him it really made no difference. They were all hyenas after the prey. The Jews did not see him as one of them. To them he was just another German out to save his own ass. If the flesh died and the sores became obvious, the finger pointing would begin. They would challenge his health to bring him down. Any sign of weakness, any vulnerability on his part, could undermine his status and end in a trip to the furnaces. If needed, he would visit the zone infirmary. The doctor there would protect him. But how long could he count on his support? He tugged gently at the lobe which did not seem to be as cold to the touch now.

Disregarding his ears for the moment, he checked the scene around him. Birkenau was awash in a shifting mosaic of moonlight and scudding cloud shadows. For nearly five minutes, he watched the mottled pattern sweep down zone B2d’s regimented length. Unrestrained by the barracks and miles of barbed wire, the shadows raced silently onward to a freedom denied the living.

Abraham looked carefully up and down the road that ran past the end of the kitchen building. The shadows were deceptive; they made it more difficult to see. To the north, he could barely see the framework of zone B2d’s gate, even though its location was marked by hooded lights on either side of the structure’s masonry pillars. No one seemed to be on the road in the vicinity of the zone office; the area to the front of him and immediately south appeared deserted. He softened his focus and turned his head to the right, his eyes sweeping the road. He took several cautious drags on his cigarette, cupping his hands to shield the glowing ember from anyone who might be stalking the zone. Sated by the nicotine rush, he stripped the butt, scattering its remnants at his feet. Then he wadded up the small bit of paper and flicked it into the wind. The ritual observed, he shifted his rubber truncheon from under his arm to his left hand, pulled on his glove, and stepped cautiously away from the building.

To the west, some four hundred meters beyond B2d, the night sky glowed red above Birkenau’s four square, brick crematoria chimneys. Occasional fat-fueled flames belched upward from the stacks, only to be caught and extinguished by the stabbing wind. Abraham turned and stared at the red haze. Crematoria Two and Three seemed to have received the bulk of the night’s new arrivals. He could not remember if the runner had told him they were French Jews. There had been so many transports lately.

In the swelter of Crematorium Two, Sonderkommando Eleven’s Jews were busy feeding the furnaces the final two hundred bodies from the last transport. The teeth pullers, buckets and pliers in hand, stood against a wall and waited for the night to end. Other squad members were retrieving clothes the victims had hung neatly on pegs lining the walls in the long room in which they had undressed. They tossed shoes, artificial limbs, and eyeglasses into separate boxes. Others were hosing down and scrubbing the underground gas chamber, washing the feces and urine into floor drains to preserve its fiction as a shower for the trainloads of new, unsuspecting victims expected within the next twenty-four hours.

In a heavily guarded section of Crematorium Three, dentists melted the gold from hundreds of teeth into bars for the bimonthly shipment to Berlin. They had fallen behind and were working hard to catch up. The room’s whitewashed walls intensified the glare from several unshaded ceiling lights, giving the space an antiseptic, hospital aura. An Unterscharführer watched the dentists carefully, his ruthless gaze and unholstered Luger the deterrents to pilferage. He walked back and forth between the long tables, noting the numbers of finished bars as well as the quantity of fractured teeth remaining in each dentist’s pail.

Commandant Rudolf Hӧss, master of Auschwitz-Birkenau, had recently expressed his profound concern about bribery and smuggling. Fearing many SS officers and men could fall victim to corruption, he had reminded them of their special mission, one that would be glorified throughout history. The Unterscharführer had arrived at Birkenau four months earlier; he had heard rumors about many of his brothers who accepted gifts from Jews. Smuggling and theft. He was determined there would be none of it on his watch, at least among the Jews.

After watching the dentists, the guard turned to the man responsible for inspecting and cataloging jewelry. He was seated away from the others at his own table which was laden with a tangled mass of necklaces, bracelets, and brooches. One by one the jeweler untangled and inspected each piece, recording detailed descriptions in a green, clothbound ledger. Pearls, diamonds, carat weights. Each entry, each word reflected the precision of his life’s work. The Unterscharführer paused in front of the table and poked the pistol’s muzzle into the jumbled mass. Ignoring him, the jeweler dipped his pen into the small bottle of ink in front of him, rubbed the excess ink off on the rim, and inscribed his notations.

A series of rapid, shallow sneezes interrupted the silence and work. Startled, the guard turned back to the dentists. What is all this fucking nonsense? he demanded angrily, taking several menacing steps toward them.

One of the men snapped to attention and requested permission to leave the room for a drink of water. Heavy beads of perspiration dotted his ashen forehead.

Suspicious now, the guard walked back to the table and noted the number of gold bars arranged in their neat rows, just as the man covered his mouth and suppressed a sneeze. The Unterscharführer stepped back, covered his own mouth with his free hand, and waved the man away with his pistol. Be quick about it!

At the far end of the room, the jeweler lowered his hand beneath the table and slipped a gold ring into his shoe top.

Elsewhere in each of the four crematoria, in the attic areas above the ovens, Sonderkommando Jews washed and spread out piles of human hair on the warm floor to dry. In Crematorium Two, a young man, his shaven head covered by an overly large beret, knelt on the floor away from the others. He preferred to work alone, to arrange the hair according to color and length, as if the exercise would confer some sort of legitimacy on his life. Pleased everything was in order, he rocked back on his heels to admire a long, golden braid amid the mass; it was almost a meter long and, surprisingly, still intact. He reached forward, picked it up, and wondered who the owner had been. How old was she when she perished? Had she been a bride? Had her children come to Birkenau with her? Was she beautiful? He thought about unbraiding the hair but placed it back on the floor in the pattern spread out before him. Humming softly to himself, he tried to ignore the older Jews in a neighboring room. Finished with the transport, they were playing cards and arguing the finer points of the Talmud before returning to their block. What is the nature of God and Man whom He created? What did God mean by this or that commandment? Who is really a Jew? Every day it was the same quarrels. Trump slammed on the table. The sharp clink of vodka bottles on glasses punctuated the rising tempers and loud voices.

The youth glanced over his shoulder toward the argument. He knew his elders were denying the inevitable. The SS supplied them with liquor and pills so they could cope with the horror of their lives and serve the system; they were the ones who had to pull their brothers and sisters from the twisted pile of corpses in the gas chambers. Maybe the alcohol helped by nourishing a faint hope they would survive it all, that they would be the exceptions and be spared. The Sonderkommandos never survived. Rumors held there had been at least ten or eleven of them since Birkenau was raised from the birch forest.

The boy leaned forward and moved the braid in the pattern. He knew why he was still alive. In an unguarded moment, the guards had seen him juggle four small stones. Amused, they ordered him to perform for them. Weeks later they discovered he had a voice, and they taught him their marching songs. Seeing an opportunity for survival, he committed tunes and lyrics to memory and rendered them upon request in the appropriate dialect. On occasion, when new SS men reported to the unit that supervised the special squads, the veterans would ask him to play the sentence game for them.

Say, ‘Pile the hay in the wagon.’

Assessing the origins and mood of his audience, he would come to attention and recite the sentence in the Alemanni dialect, the language of the southern Black Forest. Pile the hay in the wagon, Dieter! Schnell!

The Bavarians would slap their knees and rock with laughter at the oddity of the tongue. Then at the proper moment, he would repeat the sentence in the dialect of Bavaria’s farmers. The tables would be turned, and the SS men from St. Peter and St. Märgen would laugh and point.

Pile the hay in the wagon! he crowed

The SS men from Hamburg and Berlin would howl their approval and point their fingers at, to them, their southern, bumpkin brothers.

As the boy’s reputation spread, the demand for his performances increased. But in his heart he knew it would all end. It would eventually be his turn, and someone else would kneel in his place to arrange the hair. He hummed louder and tried to shut out the arguments that were becoming more heated, the pursuit of elusive truth in hell. He knew the arguments, like the vodka and the pills, were only hiding places.

The Scharführer and Unterscharführer assigned to the attic detail sat alone on small stools near the door, talking and smoking. Anticipating the end of their shift and a visit to the brothel, they stared at the Jew kneeling with his back to them. They, too, tried to ignore the arguments emanating from the next room. Day in and day out, it seemed to be the same endless babble. The Talmud meant nothing to them. They could not understand the Jews and would never have cared.

Outside, the wind continued to punish Birkenau, whining through the wire barriers and tearing at the buildings. Abraham checked the area a final time, softening his vision to better detect any movement. Certain he was alone in the night, he traversed the fifteen meters that separated the end of the kitchen from the road. More confident, he went cautiously yet purposely on his way, his demeanor fortified by equal measures of fear and a sense of mission. To prowl the zone at night was at best dangerous. If discovered and questioned, indecision could invite death and a swift journey to the furnaces. Although the SS officers and enlisted personnel would be preoccupied with the pleasures of the brothel or safe from the weather in their barracks, their absence surrendered Birkenau to equally venomous prisoner functionaries: kapos and block seniors, whose survival depended on their service to the SS master.

Abraham shuddered and rubbed his sore ears. Despite his rank of kapo, thoughts of rival kapos and seniors distressed him. They hated him because he had survived them, and they were jealous of his position in B2d’s kitchen. Dismissing his Jewish ancestry, they hated him because he was German. He had withstood their challenges for five months and wondered how long he could endure. Hearing, sight, and sense of smell responded to coursing adrenaline as he walked by the seemingly endless blocks, grotesque wood-frame monuments to centuries of hatred run amok. He counted the blocks as he moved south: odd numbers to his left, even to the right. Passing those containing zone B2d’s newest Jews, he thought he heard someone praying.

My God, My God. Why hast thou …

He stopped and cocked his head.

My God …

Nothing. Perhaps it was only the wind bloated by four millennia of suffering on its way from Jerusalem to a timeless future.

Freiburg im Breisgau: 1938

The streetcar clanged its insistent warning as it traveled down Kaiser Joseph Strasse past Bertold’s Brunnen toward St. Martin’s gate. Pedestrians heeded the warning and hurried from its path. There were more people than usual in the streets. They had finished their shopping and were eager to get home. Freiburg and the southern Black Forest had been treated to an unusually clear November day that now surrendered to early evening. As the sun set behind the Vosges Mountains, it bathed the Münster’s steeple and the Schlossberg in fading amber.

Abraham Mahler shifted his briefcase to his left hand and turned the corner at Wallstrasse. Head bowed, he hastened up Marienstrasse to his home. More troubled than usual, he ignored the weather and the few people he passed. Telephone calls to Albert Ludwig University that afternoon had reported an attack on a German embassy official in Paris. It was rumored the attacker was a Jew. Anguished tirades bore the news through the university, unleashing a storm of speculation among students and faculty as to what might come. As he left the library, friends warned him that hundreds of uniformed storm troops were assembling around the city at their favorite cafes. Their mood was black, dangerously sullen. He heeded the advice and took several detours, avoiding the inns and the heavily guarded synagogue. There were more police in evidence for that time of day; they appeared to be nervous and stood in small groups talking in hushed voices.

When Abraham reached his front gate, he checked over his shoulder to see if he had been followed. Marienstrasse was deserted. Though it was still light, he noticed his neighbors’ shutters were closed earlier than usual. Up and down the street, every house was dark. Once inside, he bolted the door behind him. The heavy silence that greeted him was broken when Pfennig, his cocker spaniel, raced down the hall, wagging her affection and barking to be fed.

Pfennig. What kind of day have you had? Ja? You don’t care about any of this, do you! Come here to me.

Abraham placed his briefcase on the floor beneath the hall table, unbuttoned his coat, and patted his thighs. The impatient cocker would have none of it and spun around several times before racing down the hall toward the kitchen at the rear of the house.

After feeding the dog, locking the doors, and closing the first-floor window shutters and curtains, he retired to his study, an island of stability in a seemingly mad sea. The familiar smell of the leather furniture and the mahogany-trimmed walls calmed him as he sank back into the sofa. The great clock’s slow, rhythmic beat lent a deceptive permanence to the moment. Shelves of books, the cherished possessions of his father and grandfather, who had enjoyed distinguished university careers and in whose footsteps he would have followed, graced the study walls.

Leaning his head back, his eyes closed, he thought about his mother. She had died shortly after his eighth birthday. In his quiet moments he tried hard to remember her life and her loving, reassuring nature. Yet it was his father who had, with the help of a succession of housekeepers, raised him. Eventually, both of their lives had connected at the university: one the professor, the other the ardent student.

Despite their closeness, their relationship was troubled by the father’s attempt to raise the son in the synagogue, efforts Abraham resisted. Youth was a faith unto itself. As he began his university studies, politics replaced religion as the subject of their strained discussions. The father was apolitical and seldom spoke of the turmoil that infected the land. Raised in the chaos of Weimar democracy, the son embraced Social Democracy and drifted away from the synagogue. He was certain his mother would not have understood. She never would have forgiven his lack of faith.

Ignoring Pfennig’s impatient nuzzling, he recalled the encounter with his father on the day President von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor. Agitated by the news, his father was in the study rummaging through his desk.

What’s wrong? What are you looking for?

Disregarding the questions, he continued to shove the drawer’s contents from side to side. He’s done it. I can’t believe it, he blurted. Who’d have thought Hindenburg would have accepted the Austrian corporal.

Hitler is chancellor? When did this all happen?

When? Where in God’s name have you been? Late this morning. The radio is full of it. Papen is Vice-Chancellor. Blomberg has returned to Berlin from Geneva and is Defense Minister. Noble watchdogs, I’m sure, he scoffed.

Surely Hitler won’t have any impact on the country’s situation. No one else has. He won’t be around any longer than Papen and Schleicher. Besides, the army will always stand by the President, Abraham insisted, hoping to settle his father’s troubled mood.

Rubbish. Hindenburg won’t live forever and the army is no different from … He halted his search through the desk drawers momentarily and pointed at the puppy, …from Pfennig. It will follow the hand that feeds it. Anyway, I’m concerned more than ever about our future. Germany will become an even more dangerous place for Jews.

Abraham was struck by the depth of his father’s agitation and his uncharacteristic decisiveness. Within weeks of Hitler’s appointment, as Nazi storm troops drove their political opponents from the streets, he traveled to Strasbourg. Other trips followed until the bulk of the family’s savings and his mother’s jewelry were safe with trusted friends. Viewing his father’s actions as unnecessary, he questioned the decision. Hitler would settle down eventually; he would have to address the same economic malaise and political instability that had driven his predecessors from office. But the trips continued. Strasbourg, his father declared, would be a refuge. If life became too difficult for them in Freiburg, they would escape to France.

Lost in thought, Abraham failed to notice Pfennig’s sudden interest in noises outside the house. He was in awe of his father’s intuition. Perhaps it was best his parents had not lived to witness the Nazi triumph. In eighteen breathtaking months, Hitler had bludgeoned the country into submission and purged Röhm and his storm troop followers, squashing their revolutionary ambitions. In the wake of Hindenburg’s death, Blomberg forced soldiers and sailors to take a personal oath of allegiance to the new Führer. Nazi storm troops, supported by the police, persecuted Jews openly with impunity. With the passing years, Hitler defied the world. The Rhineland, Austria, and the Sudetenland fell like ripe plums into the dictator’s jaundiced hands. It was so ridiculously easy.

Abraham leaned forward and pulled off his shoes, not bothering to unlace them. After settling back into the comfort of the sofa, he scratched Pfennig’s head aimlessly and ran his fingers down the length of her nose.

His father’s passing and Hitler’s triumphs confirmed the ruin of his own life. The government isolated Jews by excluding them from the professions. Had it not been for the quiet intercession of family friends, he would not have been able to maintain even informal links with professors and a small circle of loyal friends at the university.

Despite the danger and futility of their clandestine meetings – a feeble conspiracy against the new German God – a conflict raged within him. Visits to the university took him past the synagogue, a persistent reminder of his heritage. But Hitler’s success had rocked