REVOLT

A young man wrote to me and asked why didn't the prisoners of Auschwitz rise up and revolt against their Nazi guards.  It's a good question.  Why didn't we?  Why didn't we square off with those Nazi thugs like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood or Arnold or Rambo would have?  There were many reasons why we didn't. True, there were incidents of concentration camp prisoner revolts, one happened at Auschwitz-Birkenau while I was in Auschwitz-Monowitz, but they were isolated incidents.  For the majority of the "Muselmaenner"* in Auschwitz and other camps a mass revolt was more or less impossible in an environment where day-to-day survival took everything you had. 

The only time you are strong enough physically and mentally to try and overrun armed guards is when you first arrive at the camp, but even then you are not in tip-top shape.  You get off that train or truck after a few days ride with hardly any food or water (in many cases no food or water) and that is enough to deliver you to your Nazi handlers exactly as they want you, dulled.  How do you feel when you haven't had anything to eat for eight hours?  Now, how do you think you would feel after not eating for 48 hours? Do you think you'd have the energy to take on a guard carrying a rifle with a bayonet at the end of it?  Do you think you would have the presence of mind to rally the men who had been stuffed into that train car with you to rise up and fight?  Remember, too, that none of you have any idea what is in store for you. You might have heard rumors, but is that enough motivation to fight well armed SS guards? Add to that the confusion of not knowing where the hell they have just dropped your ass, guards screaming at you in a language you don't understand (I was lucky that I did knew German and 3 other languages), the barking of dogs who act like they can't wait to tear into the meat of your thigh, and the crying, pleading and palpable fear of your fellow new arrivals.   No, once out of that train car your spine, if not broken, is severely weakened.

The first few weeks in the camp you are still strong, but you are now in a camp where a dozen or so different languages are spoken.  How will you communicate with all these men you will need to join your rebellion? Even if you had a common language, 75% of those men can barely drag themselves out of bed to do their slave labor. And how many men do you think you can rally under one cause?  You have people from all over Europe and not only Jews, but Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, Gentiles, Catholics, Communists, Socialists, Homosexuals, family men, single men, teenagers, all with their own agendas and their own schemes on staying alive. How will you convince enough of them to rush the gate, to overthrow the bastards who have rifles and machine guns?

A big problem in your burgeoning revolt is the green triangles. Most of these green triangles are German convicts and the Nazis have wisely put them in charge of all the barracks and work parties.  These men don't want their party spoiled, they're lives are now better then what they had behind those penitentiary walls. They are not rapists and murders and thieves anymore. They are the Kapos (supervisors) and Vorarbeiters (foremen) and they run the show inside the camp. They are big shots and they are fed and treated well as long as things run smoothly and the SS stooges don't have to get involved.  Even a hint, a whisper that you are trying to start a rebellion (or merely an escape) and those green triangles will kill you and no one will bat an eye. And there are plenty of prisoners, who to win favor with their Kapo, would sing like a canary and you would have your brains knocked out of your skull.

If you haven't been able to orchestrate your little revolt in a couple of months then I would say you were shit out of luck.  By that time the only thing you are concerned about is FOOD and making it back to your barracks alive after doing slave labor for twelve hours.  Working 10 to 12 hours in below zero temperatures, slaving away in the blistering sun with no safe drinking water in sight, working when in any civilized world they would have placed you in a hospital bed because of malnutrition, dehydration and a smorgasbord of diseases. And you are expected to work and work hard. If you don't work then the Kapo will kick, punch and bludgeon you with his truncheon until you are working or dead.  Either is fine with the god with a moustache and his SS stooges. 

Oh yes, FOOD…

"…There was only one image that had become more vivid and it savagely haunted me - FOOD.  In my mind, I could conjure up the most complicated recipes.  Delicious and appetizing smells would fill my nostrils and my mouth would water until my salivary glands were close to cramping, but it did nothing for my fucking belly…"

Most days there will be no sound louder then the growling of your shriveled, empty belly. You would fight tooth and nail for your bowl of evening soup, possibly be willing to kill for it. A bowl of soup that in the sane world (which you barely remember exists) you wouldn't give to a stray dog because it would be inhumane. Any clear, lucid thoughts you still have are consumed by all those wonderful delicacies your mother made every day; meals that you didn't give a second thought to in that sane world.  Talk of FOOD can even cause fights to break out.

"…One night I heard men swearing in French outside the Block.  I went to investigate and found two men scratching, biting and clawing each other by the latrine. They were enraged beasts and I had difficulty separating them. One brawler was a Parisian and the other had a southern French accent.  They were real Muselmaenner and had spent what little strength they had in their fight. On hands and knees, their chests heaving for air, they sobbed like children. The fight was ignited by a culinary difference of opinion. The Parisian preferred to cook with butter while the Southerner swore by olive oil.  I stared at the sad fools and wondered if they realized that they would never taste food cooked in either fat ever again…"

Each day you are in that camp is one day closer to your death.  One day closer to having no more muscle between your skin and bone.  Your eyes are sunk so deep in your head that they might just drop down your throat.  If you can still put two thoughts together they will be about self-preservation and any thoughts of rebellion or escape are now the fantasies of a loon.  My overriding concern at the time was making it through the "selections."

"…Licking my bowl clean of the tasteless evening soup, I noticed a bored SS officer standing just inside the doorway. Wilhelm, our Blockaeltester, yelled orders for us to undress.  It was a selection. We were hustled into one corner and the Boche handed out the green cards that we had filled out on our arrival.  One by one we filed past the Nazi. He took my card, looked me up and down then examined my backside.  Why was he dragging this out?  I'm no Muselmann. I just turned nineteen.  On September twenty-sixth to be exact.

"Der Bengel ist noch ganz kraeftig,"--"The rascal is still strong," Wilhelm said.   

I turned around. The SS officer gave me another look then shrugged indifferently. He took my card out of his pocket and put it on the table with the others.

"We'll wait until next time," he told Wilhelm.

I rejoined my companions on rubbery legs. I ducked the reaper again. But did I have any real reason to be thankful?With a frigid winter almost on top of us, there was no possibility of putting on weight and regaining strength before the next SS officer looked me over. I was only a condemned man who had been given a short reprieve. If my "selection" was inevitable then wouldn't it be better to get it over with than endure another month or two of pain and suffering before they pulled my card?..."

The men of the Sonderkommando, who led people into the showers and stoked the ovens with their corpses, orchestrated the revolt that took place in Auschwitz Birkenau.  These men were fed better then us, worked for the most part out of reach of the elements and they had contacts with the Polish underground. These men also knew they were living on borrowed time. Inmates that worked in the Sonderkommando were recycled every three to six months. A new group was brought in and the old group was placed in the ovens (The SS didn't want any witnesses to their crimes). There is no denying they were a very brave group of men and women. They succeeded in blowing up one of the ovens rendering it useless, but the SS had enough ovens that it didn't slow down the slaughter.

 Even if I did manage to lead a revolt that smashed through the gates to freedom or if I alone had been able to escape where would I have gone?  I wasn't in France, I was in Poland. I was in a Nazi occupied country where I didn't speak the language or know a soul. Why would an ordinary Pole risk torture and death to help me?  I had no connections with the Polish Underground, the only people who might have helped me and that was also a big "if".  What value was I to them?  I couldn't pick up a gun and fight. No, I needed time in a hospital bed and that is a liability to people who are always on the run.  Maybe if I was in a camp in France I could have entertained thoughts of escape and survival, but I couldn't at Auschwitz. 

I wanted to live.  I wasn't going to step on anyone else's neck to do that, but I also wasn't going to take any unnecessary risks.  I have seen the destructive power of a German machine gun stationed on a guard tower.  No swarm of human skeletons could overpower it.

* MUSELMANN/MUSELMAENNER (GERMAN) Muslim/s -- Camp slang for an inmate near death, who has given up on life.