Seven Days in April

By Zoltan Vincze

April, 1945. Buchenwald. One of the biggest Nazi concentration camps. Many of the prisoners of war were selected as part of the camp’s Kommando units – Jewish workers organised by the SS to function as specialised labourers. One of those Kommando units housed six Hungarian Jews. Six friends bound by religion, race, brotherhood and circumstance. This is their story.
During a routine shift to move bodies from the gas chambers, orders from the chain of command are to halt work and hunker down. The allied troops are spotted closing in.
The team of six Kommandos find themselves locked inside the gas chamber. With Hitler’s extermination policy draining their spirit, circumstances for the small crew point to their demise. Their only options – wait out a suffocating death or make a break for it. An urgent plan for survival is executed, resulting in a breakout and subsequent manhunt. With minimal expectations and zero resources, only their wits and instincts can save them.
Their escape transports them into a horrific world outside the perimeter where things aren’t always what they seem. Where war never ceases to show its ugly face. With the Nazis in constant pursuit, the starved and exhausted men must fight through whatever their nasty world throws at them. Their will and hope in surviving is bonded only between each other and God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jul 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528992398

Zoltan Vincze

Zoltan Vincze holds a Bachelor of Exercise Science, a Master of Professional Communications (Screen Studies), a Graduate Diploma in Education and a Graduate Certificate in Theology. He is also a qualified Personal Trainer and spent time as a Queensland Police Officer. He is of Hungarian descent and a current serving Australian Army reservist – a Driver Specialist with the R.A.C.T. In his full-time work, Zoltan is a Physical Education, and Film and Television teacher. He lives on the Gold Coast, Queensland, with his wife and son.

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Prologue

There’s only one positive about all of this evil: knowing what good looks like. It gives a point of reference. Sometimes, just the thought of revenge provokes a feeling of elation. Getting back at the evil things, humans do to us and righting horrific wrongs with violence is a pleasurable thought. A satisfying act, in theory. But is that in itself still evil? A question I ask myself, and dream about daily.

The one thing that has left me since being inside is the ability to grieve properly. That’s a hard one. Most of the time, when I watch people die, people I know, I can’t cry for them anymore like I used to. Working, surviving, grieving, is like running a marathon every day. So much wear and tear on the body, the spirit, the mind. Initially, the grief would not stop. Now, those days are gone. Not grieving is a strange thing in itself. There’s a certain numbness to the mind, like a mild headache, but one that stays with you. Never going away. It becomes part of you. It’s just…there. Pulsing with the body as the nervous system fights to stay alert and not shut down.

Most of the time, I forget what day it is. It often takes me about a minute to count back, check the days and recent occurrences in my head to come up with the right day. Days just blend here. One after the other, after the other. Nobody really cares what day it is anyway. It’s only ever about surviving the day. There’s death at every corner, or twitch of the eye, or turn of the head. So, we survive the day and move on. Even motivating each other to live often goes by barely noticed. If you just focus on surviving, focus on your own survival, pushing every unnecessary materialistic want from your existence, you become something else. Your frame of mind becomes sharper. Clearer. There’s a certain focus and clarity. For us, that clarity is hope. The hope in survival.

In this camp life, which isn’t apt to be a long one, you only have to smell the decaying bodies in the pits to know what lies ahead. As Kommandos, we see what goes on around the camp more than most other prisoners. And it hurts. We try not to show it, but it is terrible. It’s hard knowing we cannot change it. Only God will make that change…in His good time. There is always that hope in prayer that He will change things sooner than later. And we need hope in this place. We need whatever He can offer.

It is surprising what the body, mind and spirit can do when its sole purpose is to merely survive for another hour, or another day’s rations. In the beginning, we were awfully appalled and shaken that this kind of human act was happening in the twentieth century. It was a situation nobody was ready for or believed. Motivation now slips through many minds and fingers like fish in a barrel. Some hope does remain, though. Thanks be to God. Every one of us needs a constant refuelling of hope. That motivation to continue to live. Unfortunately, some never attain it. Or have it, then lose it. Mine slipped once, but I held onto it, only barely. I can see and understand why so many can’t hold onto it, as it is so very easy to lose it in here. Even within the sanest of minds, hope can be fleeting. Rising and falling like an ocean tide.

At twenty years of age, I was in perfect health for the work in the camp. I didn’t even have to lie about my age when giving my particulars. I was part of the Kommando unit. The Kanada Kommandos. Kanada, because we prisoners believed that the country (Canada), was a place of wealth and luck. Like the way we lived inside. Lucky enough to be alive, wealthy enough to be given work and extra rations. Compared to the unfortunate who were sent here to die, or wait out a slow death in the barracks, we were privileged. Those of us who lived in the Kommando blocks, who sorted dead Jewish belongings, cut rocks in the quarry and cleaned the gas chamber and crematorium, gave it the ironic title. We were fit. Capable. Punctual. Obeyed orders. Maintained self-discipline. Maintained personal order. All part of the willingness to survive and see the light of the next day.

Much of those attributes of discipline, order and perseverance were passed down to me by my dear father. A hardened soldier from the first world war. A Hungarian soldier. An artillery sergeant. He demanded those qualities firmly but fairly, and I’ve held onto those qualities like I’ve held onto his memory. I loved my father. He demanded a lot, but he never demanded respect. He earned that. Unlike the Nazis. He never beat us senseless without cause. Never got drunk. Never made us feel worthless and never cursed to put anyone down. Sure, cursing was part of his language, but it’s the way most military folk speak anyway. Part of their sentence structure. And I’m positive I got my foul mouth from him too. He loved talking about weapons. Guns, ammunition, tanks, trucks, artillery. All that good-fun military know-how. It was normal table chatter in the home. Being military minded from my father’s influence has helped me work as a Kommando in the camp. Having heard and seen the presence of military life in the home has been an asset. A big part of what has kept me alive. I got to know how things should be run. I got to know the mindset, the language and the attitude. I got to know order. I now know the ins and outs of various military grade weaponry used around the world. From our Magyar motherland, to Germany, Russia, Britain and America. Everything I’ve learnt, I’ve put to good use here inside.

Chapter One

Saturday 7th April 1945

Four Days Before Liberation

It gets really dark inside our sleeping block at night. Block Five, Kommando block. The pitch black helps to sleep deep and recover. Even when the others around you are restless or snoring, the dark is peaceful. Comforting. One of the simple things in the camp I look forward to. Still, it’s hard if it’s one of those nights when you can’t sleep. Your mind loops over all the horrors from the days gone by, and the horrors to come in the days that follow. Who’s dying tomorrow? How will it happen? What will I see? Will it affect me?

Sometimes I lie there at night and it is so dark, I think, ‘are my eyes open, or closed…am I sleeping, or am I dreaming?’ I’d much prefer to be sleeping. Sleeping without dreaming is ideal. Unknowing. Unaware of anything. Dead to the world. Often my dreams are sad. Intensely stressful and vivid. Sometimes traumatic.

I hate dreaming. I often wish my dreams could be the memories of better times with Mother and Father, and Lilly, my sister. Times without responsibility. Times of swimming at Lake Balaton and running through Váci Street in Budapest. Watching pretty girls in summer dresses and eating twisty chimney cake dipped in hazelnut chocolate at the top of Fisherman’s Bastion. Fun times before the Third Reich. If I dream, I always wake up nauseous.

Normal wake up time in the camp is 6:00 am standard every day. No weekends off. The time now, as my chronoception figures it, is 4:30 am. I call this No-man’s hour. Because there’s not a single man in sight around the grounds. Those who are awake, are on perimeter security. Sentries tasked to the watchtowers. They’re on duty around the clock. On routine night shift right now. The sentries scan with floodlight beams on raised wooden towers built a few meters back from the electrified fence-line. Scanning their designated zones and shining their searchlights into the open fields of the forest and surrounding landscape. They don’t tend to scan inside the compound much. No need. That’s left to the supervision of the Kapo’s and lower ranked Nazi soldiers. Privates. The Kapo’s watch over the inmates, the working crews of Kommandos. Making sure everything is kosher inside the barracks and out in the workshops and compound grounds. A Kapo is a supervisor for sections of Jews and are Jews themselves. Tough-nut Jews. Hard arses. Block leaders assigned by the SS to oversee the Jewish prisoner population and carry out their orders. They’re supposed to be harsh, alert and hypervigilant at all times. Some of them are worse than the Nazis themselves. At this hour though, everybody is tired. All human beings are tired at 4:30 am, no matter what you’re doing or what shift you’re on.

The cold, skin-shrinking mornings were over, thankfully. And because it’s 4:30 am, I need to take a shit. It’s springtime, April. My favourite time of the year. Even though it’s a concentration camp, leaving the barracks to take a shit in spring isn’t too bad. It is, however, terrible in winter. In Winter, it was an ordeal to go to the toilet at any hour let alone before the crack of dawn. Like the shells of a couple of small walnuts, my balls would be in a constant shrivelled state. Sunken inward towards themselves. I hated the getting-out-of-bed process when a toilet run was required in the cold. It would take over five minutes to merely gas up the courage to get out of the bunk. You would start with ripping your scabby, single layer of Winter-select blanket off, then hustle to wrap on a coat, all the while trying not to scream as the skin of your warm toes nipped the cold hard floor. And that’s all before you step outside and start fighting the ice and snow down the path to the latrines.

I’m not entirely sure why my body needs to go at this hour. My body clock never really recovered to any kind of normal operation since being captured. Since being ordered out of Budapest and forced to relocate here. I think it’s a nervous thing that comes from stress and fear; not knowing what will happen to you or your friends every day, every next day, and the day after that and so on. Getting up this early normally happens every second day: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday. Then followed into the next week on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. It is as it is, and I’m used to it. So far, I’ve been good at never being caught when heading from our sleeping block to the toilet block. Never caught, never seen.

Every other night, on the alternate nights, I sleep through all the way until the siren at 6:00 am. I sleep through because I’m so exhausted. I’ll work my guts out all day, watch a few people get beaten, maybe watch a few die, then wake early to go crap. I hate how my body clock does this. During the day, never knowing when it will be my turn for a beating is the worst part of living in the camp. That’s the stress and fear part, which is normal. It’s a survival mechanism. A bodily function to maintain and preserve life. It allows us to keep pushing on.

So, on every alternate night, my body needs that extra hour-and-a-half of sleep.

Last night, being a Friday night in spring, they served us cabbage and bean soup. Routine. Week in, week out for the season. Not the most popular item on the POW menu, but it has a decent amount of fibre. Which brings me to now; the need to snap an urgent licorice bar at 4:30 am. There are no positives to being up at this hour in the camp. It’s dark, eerie and quiet. After sixteen months inside, even my testosterone levels are scared of rousing. In fact, living the POW life has made sure I don’t even wake up with a morning glory anymore. Probably a good thing. Means I don’t walk around with a tent-pole, so there’s no awkward, embarrassing moments. The days of waking up hard are long gone. A terrible thing for a twenty-year-old. I can’t even remember the last time my pecker woke me up feeling any kind of buzz, and in this place, nobody dreams anything remotely sensual or stimulating. There is zero reason to feel any sense of sexual urgency behind the wires.

After grabbing my threadbare shoes and inching them on my feet from the shoe-line, I stealthily crept to the door like a hundred times before. I clasped the doorhandle and took a quick glance above the frame. Sometimes the pigeon crap above the awning is pretty thick, dripping down and rendering the door jammed. The poo becomes like glue, which means you need to work the door open, making a loud crunching sound in the process. Sleep was highly respected, so opening the door needed to be done with finesse. But tonight, some idiot has left it slightly ajar. It looked closed, but the latch-bolt wasn’t clicked in. The door pushed free, which works in my favour. Means I didn’t make a sound. I stepped outside and closed the door gently, ready to head to the toilets. A short walk away down a stony dirt path. As I looked around, scoping the surrounds, the dead man on the wire came into view.

The man hanging against the electrified wire thirty metres to my right must have lost hope. He must have forgotten what good can look like. It was the eyes I liked to look at if I could, trying to find the reason behind his adamant will to commit to death. Commit to suicide. Why did he figure his time was up? Why did he feel like all hope was lost? The barbs of the fence had cut into the middle of his neck and chest, so I would have had to pull his pierced, bloody neck off the barbs – risking my own electrocution – then peel his eyelids back to look for the answers to those questions. From the distance I was standing and with the dark of the morning, I couldn’t see who it was. I couldn’t see his face.

Sometimes their bodies fell in a way that made their heads face inward towards the centre of the compound. Sometimes their heads faced outwards, like this guy. Once the electricity finished them, sometimes their eyes remained closed, sometimes they stayed open. Seeing the eyes remain open was the most interesting. Sad, but interesting. Looking into their eyes, wondering why, raised various questions of a man’s suicidal thought processes. Much of it I could understand, and it always gave me something to think about and philosophise over. The Nazis would take care of him later in the morning. Poor bastard. May God find peace for his soul. You get used to the numbers necking themselves on the wire. I’ve thought about it myself from time to time. Sometimes I think death might even be a blissful, enjoyable experience. Comparative to living in these conditions. In here, it’s all about keeping your head above water. And that water is always dirty.

My father always drilled it into us to persevere. Keep on keeping on. Still, it amused me as to the human nature behind suicide. In some ways, I guess, it was probably better than being beaten to death at the hands of the Nazis. But electrocution would hurt too. Maybe it felt more dignified to have died at your own hand rather than at the hands (or bullets) of a Nazi. Not giving them that satisfaction was satisfaction in itself. But it was that loss of hope that I wondered about most. When was hope completely lost? How do you feel when you’re at that point? This guy was the third one this weekend. There were two yesterday evening during dinner. I’ve seen countless now. The electrified fence is both a deterrent for escape, and a sly way to kill us off when we lose our minds. It’s only a novelty the first two or three times you see it. It then becomes less and less of a spectacle the more often it happens. Like anything.

The two men who took their lives yesterday sprinted from Block Four, leaving their dinner table. I remember thinking and hoping they’d eaten their meal before running off. Otherwise it was a waste of food. And food is key here in Buchenwald. They choreographed their plan in unison, which deserved some credit. One of the SS Officers nearby yelled Halt! and went for his Luger, but it was too late. The officer didn’t really care anyway. Not because he wanted them to live or had any compassion for them, that was never a Nazi trait; they wanted us all to die. He yelled out because it was his duty to maintain the numbers of men for the work in the compound. For the sorting in the warehouses, for making hinges, mending shoes, breaking rocks, dumping murdered bodies and removing gassed bodies. All that shit. The kind of stuff that at first makes your head swim and want to neck yourself. But then, there lies that hope and perseverance stirring somewhere in your soul. Something required in here. Necessary. A Jewish trait I believe many of us have done well to uphold.

It’s often easier to see why the Kommando divisions of men have persevered. We were selected for the work over many others. And because we worked, we often got more food as well. The Nazis needed us. As for the rest of the Jews, well, if they couldn’t make it through the living conditions, they often just died from sickness and starvation. Sometimes if they looked too sick, and made the soldiers paranoid about catching some disease, they’d just shoot them on the spot and have a Kommando discard the body.

Chapter Two

From my position out the front of our block, the sensible, logical part of my brain says the guy on the wire is one of our guys. A Block Five guy. That same part of my brain says he walked out and left the door open during the night some time. He forgot to close it before his mind flipped and committed. That’ll mean one down for roll call.

Being early April, the morning temperature is perfect. My mind smiles. My face doesn’t. I think about the dead man. Still and lifeless. I continue pondering on what his thoughts were in his final moments, then I think about whether I’ll get back to sleep later. Will it be difficult, or will my mind slacken and let go? I think about the dreaded work that lay ahead. Will we be tasked to dig pits for the dead, or pack hinges into boxes, or shovel human decay from the furnaces of the crematorium? I hear Grandpa Maurice moan loud in his sleep inside the bunks behind me. Behind the door. Talking incoherent gibberish. The old man has lost his mind. It’s survival of the fittest here, and part of that survival means rest and sleep. If you can’t sleep, you better start trying, otherwise you’re dead. He’s pissed enough of the other Kommando workers off that his time is close to being up anyway. He’s already been beaten for it on numerous occasions. At some point he’s going to piss off one of the SS Officer’s just enough that they’ll put him down for good. Like a pest. Like a cornered rat. They won’t even bat an eyelid. Some part of my brain thinks that would be a good thing. More sleep for us. But another part of me is so very ashamed for the terrible thought. I shouldn’t think too much on these things. Besides, he’s not really my real grandfather, or any of Block Five’s grandfather’s. He may certainly be someone’s grandfather. We just call him that because he’s the oldest. In a way, for a fifty or sixty-year-old (no one can tell), he’s doing well to still be with us.

I took the path to the toilet block. The moon was crisp. Staunch and unwavering. Doing its thing. Illuminating a healthy glow. All forms of noise at this hour seem artificially amplified: the leaves rustling in the forest trees, the cuckoo birds calling gently, the distant hum of electricity around the fence-line. All sounds are louder than normal. A subtle fog nestles around the compound, easing across the dirt. Hiding the horrors, the mess, the shame, the atrocities. At least I don’t have to sit next to anyone when I go. With all the holes in the cement latrines, I can do my thing comfortably. Privately. One of life’s little pleasures. These small little indulgences are tiny gifts. I love this little bit of time to myself. Of course, shitting one’s bowels into a toilet that doesn’t flush isn’t great. In winter, the shits stay frozen. That’s one thing winter has as a positive; the smell isn’t as bad. Sometimes I wonder, when it’s cold, how long does it take for it to freeze solid? Two minutes? Five? It’s the little thoughts that keep you sane. In spring, the smell starts getting pretty bad. Things start warming up. The rising temperatures in spring calls for more flies and the beginnings of putrid odours. Even then, no matter the season, that smell stands as small fry compared to the burning and decaying bodies.

I forget about the dead man on the wire as I approached the latrine door. My shoes lightly shimmy against the floor as I opened the door, then closed it. No sound. All clear. There are no lights to turn on in the block. Only silver luminosity shines from the open windows far above, eschewing the pitch black. I like clear nights like this.

I thought I’d made it inside the toilet block clean as boiled water. Right until the silhouette of a man stood back from one of the many holes in the floor. The various lenses in my eyes focused. Depths of field adjusting, the retina working out light from dark. An officer. He zipped up his fly, buttoned the top, adjusted the belt, smoothed his field-grey SS uniform and stared straight at me. He stood halfway down the toilet block corridor. My heart jumped into my throat, my shit stiffening inside. It’s Gebhardt. Officer Karl Gebbhardt. A phantom figure. In and out of the camp irregularly. A physician, and highly ranked. Sometimes we’d see him moving about the camp with subordinate soldiers, dragging Jews inside the officer’s buildings, never to be seen again. Sometimes he’s seen driving out of the camp with Jews stuffed in the back of trucks, which meant two things: the Jews he took had certain skills needed for special operations, or, they were taken for surgical operations. Medical experiments.

Gebhardt couldn’t have been on night shift, that wasn’t part of his duties. Too high on the pay scale for that. Maybe he was finishing outstanding paperwork tonight. Maybe he needed a break from his clandestine operations.

‘Jew, is it six o’clock yet?’ he said. He spoke German. No Hungarian. We cater to them.

I’m thinking, ‘what is he doing here? Using our toilet block!’ The only conclusion I could come to was either the officer’s toilet block was full, or it has plumbing problems. Which was bad news for us regardless. It means one of the tasks this morning would be more cleaning, plus pipework to clear up their sanitation.

I knew German well enough. You needed to learn it quickly in here to be able to follow orders fast.

‘No sir, I’m just busting.’

‘Number one or number two?’ he said slowly, glancing down at his hands as he lit a smoke.

‘Two sir.’

‘Hurry it up Jew-boy, before I give you four extra wheelbarrows in the digging pit in the morning. You know the rules. You can’t be up before six, you skinny kike dog.’

I hated how he said the word skinny. "Dunn. Holding the vowel, like, skiiiiny. Duuuun". That’s when his eyes looked into my face. Making a point of it. Sure, I’m skinny, but it’s not my fault. I’d eat more if they gave us something substantial. I stared slightly off to the left. Limiting direct eye contact. Nazis never liked direct eye-to-eye from Jews.

Gebhardt marched forward. His hard, leather jackboots clomping on the cement floor; ca-lomp, ca-lomp, ca-lomp, resonating through the stillness. His dark suit, boots and cap made him look like the Grim Reaper coming to get me. A dominant, chilling figure in the shadow of the moon’s misty light. He stuck his hating face right in front of me, pinching the end of my nose hard. He came so close, that in the greyed-out darkness, I could see that the prick still had crusty sleep stuck in his eyes. Amateur. Tobacco, coffee, sardine’s and a dark chocolate aroma wafted from his mouth. The dark chocolate was almost pleasant smelling. Almost.

‘Hope it smells nice in here for you. And if you don’t leave it sparkling, you’ll be cleaning it as well. By yourself. As well as ours at Headquarters. Inside-out. In fact, tomorrow, you will do four extra wheelbarrows of dirt from the pit. Count on it, or I’ll have someone crack your skull in.’

He squeezed my nose tighter, like a vice, then he smiled his self-righteous, jerk-smile. He let go and walked around me, snorting a laugh low in his throat as he walked towards the door. It was the first time an officer had been in here the same time as me. At least he didn’t shout at me, beat me, or shoot me. I was aptly grateful.

‘And don’t you dare go pulling your dick in here, Jew,’ he added, sniggering to himself as the door swung closed. A fine trail of burnt tobacco lingered as he left. I could hear his boots crunch along the stony dirt as he walked off. Walking back to hell from where he came.

I chose a hole and squatted. How the hell could anyone rub one out in here anyway? It’s a concentration camp, and it reeks. And if anyone has any testosterone to spare, it’d be used up in the warehouse or the stone quarry, digging up rock. That’s not to say prisoners haven’t tried jerking off in here, but hey, worse things have happened.

As strange as it may seem, sometimes, you can shit too much as a POW. Which is both good and bad. Good for the relief, but bad because you feel even more empty than you wanted to going in. It’s like you should have held a little back. To keep you feeling fuller for longer. But you don’t always get what you want.

I finished up, cleaned up, adjusted my pants and started my walk back to Block Five. The warm ring of moonlight stared down kindly. Watchful and tearful. Like it was trying to help me out in the only way it knew how. It must have been lonely being the moon. Forced to watch the world from above, watching over these appalling conditions. So, it gave me a guiding light as a gift. A faint light, illuminating the failing world we lived in. Thanks, moon, much appreciated. This truly is the end of the human race, I thought. Or at least humanity. Or at least us Jews. I thanked God in my head. For both the shine of the beautiful moon, and the fact I was still alive. I then thanked Him for Gebhardt not losing his temperament, and that it wasn’t me stiff against the electrified fence.

As soon as I walked back inside our Block, I went into selfish mode and thought about my pillow. I thought about how flimsy, soft and thin it was. I looked around the triple bunks for a space. A space where a body would usually be, but was now outside, dead on the wire fence. Electrocuted.

I found it. Middle row. Right-side wall. He was one of our guys. Nothing could be done about him now. Being a spare pillow from a dead man, it was first in, best dressed. I wanted to swap it out, so I walked over and tried it. It was firmer than mine. A little fatter, a little thicker. A nice exchange. I liked it this way. Maybe a fatter duck or chicken with bigger feathers had died just for this pillow. Just for me. Just for tonight. Good for them. Thanks chickens, thanks ducks. I took the pillow, walked to my bunk, climbed up and replaced my pillow with his. I then put my old thin pillow back in the bunk where the dead guy used to sleep. He was never going to use it again. It was hard to get the right pillow combination with the straw beds we slept in. This was a good find, and the right combination.

The last I remember thinking before falling asleep was how nice it would be to shower and brush my teeth. I missed being clean. A lot. It was so hard to keep hygienic in these conditions. Living in the camp made many of us sick. My mouth often felt like a feral cat found me in the middle of the night and pissed in it. I missed looking at my face in the mirror too, brushing my tongue and trying to make myself gag as I scrubbed the back of it. Those fun little memories mattered, and it was nice to remember them.

Then, I was out like a light. Getting back to sleep was a breeze. A pleasant surprise. In the early days of camp life, it was hard falling asleep. I suppose that would be a natural reaction for a new inmate. Fresh-faced campers always had their minds on a loop of stress and fear. It was normal. Being scared is what makes us human. For weeks I couldn’t fall asleep properly with all the death that surrounded us. But tonight, everything felt right, including my pillow. Not a sound