The Barbed Crown (The Vatican Knights Book 13) Read online

  “And more will come. More always come.”

  “Where will they go? The camp is only so large.”

  Hans gave a one-sided grin, which appeared more feigned than amused. “As some enter,” he said, “others leave through the chimneys.” He pointed to the twin stacks at the complex’s far end.

  “I don’t understand,” said Becher.

  “You will.”

  For a long time they watched Mengele direct his SS guards to filter out the chosen ones, as mothers cried out in opposition when their children were whisked away or removed from their grasp, with the women beaten mercilessly with truncheons until they could voice their disapproval no more, only pain.

  Becher took on a disgusted look, which was picked up by Hans.

  “You’ll get used to it,” he told Becher. “And do not forget your teachings as a member of the Jungvolk and Hitler’s Youth… They are only Jews.”

  More beatings from truncheons that delivered cries and pleas to stop, only for their appeals to fall on deaf ears.

  Becher closed his eyes, teachings or not, and tried to dismiss all that was going on around him. He could hear people scream, which provoked an occasional gunshot. Then the slapping of a truncheon against flesh, a sickening noise which evoked additional cries that sounded like banshee wails.

  Then more gunfire.

  More madness.

  And the day was still young as the overhead sun marked the beginning of noon.

  Then Becher opened his eyes and noted that Josef Mengele appeared to be smiling with malicious amusement, as he chose the fates of those who crossed his path.

  With a flick of his cane to the left: death.

  To the right: a reprieve.

  And Becher wondered if those saved and sent to the right were blessed at all.

  Perhaps immediate death, he thought, was the true blessing here inside this dark kingdom.

  And then Hans’s hand alit on Becher’s shoulder. “You’ll get used to it,” he told him. “Once you become numb to it… then you become a part of it.”

  Becher wanted to shake his head and say ‘no.’ Nor did he want to admit to Hans that his teachings and grooming about the Jews never really took root or became firmly entrenched, but was more of an afterthought that held little weight to it.

  But as the day wore on and children were wrenched from their parents’ grip, as beatings became a way to inform the Jews that this would be common practice for methods of control, Becher realized that Hans was right about growing up quickly in Auschwitz. Children either break quickly under such measures, or become desensitized by them. And if Becher did not separate himself from the madness that was unfolding before him, he would surely fall. So in order to make it through this ongoing carnage that played out around him, he would need to become a part of the system as Hans did.

  Hans’s hand remained on Becher’s shoulder. “At least here,” Hans said to Becher, “it’s better than being on the Russian Front, yes?”

  “Is it?”

  “The Red Army is making gains and is reportedly marching toward Berlin. Germans are dying by the thousands, which is why some chose this detail instead of fighting along the border. So tell me, is it not better to be here? In Auschwitz?”

  Becher never felt as dirty as he did now, as he could feel himself buckle to the accordance of the Nazi system. Then softly, he finally admitted: “Yes… It’s better to be here.”

  Then he watched the beatings continue while Mengele chose who lived or died.

  Chapter Four

  Auschwitz-Birkenau

  Crematorium I

  Dror Rabin had thinned to the point of appearing critically ill, though his stamina and agility spoke differently, as he moved from oven to oven inside the crematorium. Though he was only thirty, he appeared much older. Both cheeks had sharpened over time along with the line of a once strong-looking chin that had dwindled to the shape of a garden spade, long and pointed. And his eyes, once sapphire-blue that had changed over time to a dullish gray, began to recede into the hollows of his head, with the areas surrounding his eyes nothing but dark rings.

  He had been working the crematorium for several months along with Aaron Baumstein and Ephraim Levy, all having been transported from the Warsaw ghetto with two thousand others on a single transport. Over the period of their incarceration while having been consigned to the disagreeable work of operating the ovens, they barely recognized those who had accompanied them on the train when their ruined corpses had been wheeled to the crematorium.

  Dror stood at the foot of the cart and measured the new arrival of the dead—all nude and prepped for the ovens—with neutral features. Men, women and children laid bound in a wild tangle of limbs. Some had their eyes at half-mast and mouths slightly open, showing rows of rotting or missing teeth. Others, however, appeared less weathered by the atrocities, a sign that Mengele had sent them to the Red House the moment of their arrival.

  Dror looked at Baumstein and Levy. “Why do we stand here and wait?” he asked them.

  “And what would you have us do, Dror?” returned Baumstein.

  Dror reached into the cart, grabbed a woman who was so physically wasted, he was able to lift her with little effort and place her on the tray before the oven’s opening. Then he stepped back and pointed to her with a gloved hand. “Bernice Loebl,” he said. “She came with us on the transport, do you remember? She stood next to us saying that it would be ‘all right.’ And she continued to give us hope throughout the journey.” Then he pushed the tray into the oven for the fires to consume. Then in even detachment, he added: “I’m tired of watching my family and friends burn to ashes in the flames.”

  Ephraim and Aaron watched the body burn, the act eliciting little emotion from either, since they had become numbed by the repetitive process.

  “So I ask you once again,” said Dror. “I ask both of you: Why do we wait for our time in the ovens? We all know it’s coming.” Then he gave them a sidelong glance as the fire’s light caused his eyes to reflect the glint of burning flames. “Every morning I pick scabs from my sores and use the blood to color my face to make the guards believe I’m capable of performing my duties for the day. You do the same, Ephraim. I have watched you.”

  “And your point?” asked Ephraim.

  Dror walked away from the oven, the glint in his eyes dissipating. “Yesterday I heard two SS guards talking about Jews, obviously loud enough so that I would hear. Do you want to know what they said?”

  Neither man spoke, accepting this as rhetorical.

  “They said that Jews were good at one thing… That we were good at dying.”

  “Dror, we all know that that’s not true,” said Aaron.

  “Then we need to prove them wrong,” Dror shot back forcefully. “As many as two thousand Jews arrive on a single transport, which means that two thousand more must pass through the chimneys in order to make room. Some are starved to death. Others are beaten. Sometimes entire blocks filled with Jews are killed in the gas chambers. But in the end, Aaron, they all cross our paths and are burned in the ovens, most without lifting a finger.”

  Aaron Baumstein could not deny this. Neither could Ephraim Levy.

  Then from Ephraim: “We have no power here.”

  Dror raised a gloved hand and balled it into a fist. “Then we create it,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “How?” asked Aaron.

  Dror turned to him. “Nearly three months ago there was an uprising in Treblinka, and one hundred Jews escaped. Two weeks ago in Sobibor, another three hundred—”

  Aaron immediately raised a hand and patted the air as a means for Dror to stop talking. “Hold on,” he told him, still patting the air. “Many of those, if not all, were killed in Treblinka,” he said. “And then as punishment for attempting to do so, hundreds of Jews who took no part in the uprising were executed as an example to others.”

  “But at least they died on their feet, Aaron, and not on their knees.” Then Dror raised a fing
er in emphasis. “And tell Ephraim about Sobibor, since you appear to know so much.”

  “What’s to say?” he said, shrugging. “Other than many Jews were killed there as well.”

  Dror faced off with Ephraim. “Then I will tell him.” Dror appeared somewhat rejuvenated and full of energy when he spoke. “Three hundred escaped from Sobibor two weeks ago,” he told him. “Many were captured and killed, true. But fifty managed to escape, Ephraim… Fifty!”

  “And tell Ephraim what happened to those inside the camp, Dror. Tell him how the SS guards executed far more than the fifty who escaped.”

  “That’s not the point, Aaron,” he lashed back, his eyes ablaze with madness or fury, something Aaron couldn’t quite decipher or decide as to which it was, or perhaps it was both.

  So Aaron raised a hand to calm him. “Then suppose you tell me, Dror, what the point is.”

  Dror took a step closer to his friend. “Aaron, look around you.” Then he pointed to the pushcart. “Bodies are placed on the cart like blocks of wood being tossed into a wheelbarrow. Then they are brought to us for disposal. And then what happens? We take the ashes and throw them into urns with the ashes of others, who have no other commonality other than suffering. Then the urns are placed in a cold, dark subbasement for collection. So my point, Aaron, is if we don’t do something soon, then you, me and Ephraim will end up on these trays and pushed into the flames. Once consumed by the fire, once we’re nothing but a pile of ashes, we’ll simply be swept into a jug, and sheltered inside a basement with our only legacy being that we were Jews who did not have the dignity to stand up and fight.”

  “And what do you propose we do, Dror?” asked Aaron, sounding frustrated. “Go up against a thousand armed guards?”

  “If we stand together, yes. They stood together in Treblinka. They stood together in Sobibor. Now we must stand together in Auschwitz.”

  “There will be a cost,” said Ephraim. “Many Jews will die.”

  “Success does not come without struggles, my friend. We’re all going to die anyway.” Then Dror stood back and held his arms out to his sides to display how much his garments were hanging on him, the size that once fit him properly now too large for him. “I’m shrinking away to non-existence, as are you two. Sooner or later we’ll be too weak to do anything. And when that day comes, my friends, then the ovens will finish us off and we’ll be reduced to ashes. This is fact and you both know it.” He let his arms drop by his side. “Like I said before, we either die on our feet or we die on our knees. The choice is ours to make.”

  Ephraim and Aaron looked at the cart filled with skeletal remains, than at the fire that burned the body within the oven, the stench acrid but something they had become used to over time.

  “There will be a problem,” Ephraim finally said. He turned away from the devouring flames. “It will be hard to trust many within the camp. There will be those who will try to gain favor with the guards in order to prolong their lives by telling them our strategies, so we must choose wisely as to who we can trust and who we cannot.”

  “And we leave the kapos out of this, since they have chosen to do what they do.” said Dror.

  A kapo was a prisoner who was assigned by the SS guards to supervise forced labor among the Jews. They were known as the camp policeman who maintained the prisoner functionary system, which minimized costs by allowing camps to perform with fewer SS personnel. The system was designed to pit kapos against fellow prisoners to maintain the favor of their SS overlords. And since they were Jews and should they fall derelict in their duties, then they would be returned to the status of ordinary prisoners and no longer be an integral part of the camp system. But as a kapo, they were spared physical abuse and hard labor, had access to certain privileges such as civilian clothing (though they were marked with orange stars to signify their rank within the system), a private room, and much to eat.

  “Kapos don’t deserve anything but what’s coming their way,” Dror added.

  When Dror added the remark about what kapos deserved, it was because he knew that the lifespan of a kapo was three months, then they were systematically killed off and replaced with new kapos. Why kapos refused to see this was beyond him, since the system never changed. Perhaps, Dror considered, if the kapos acted brutal enough and acted like their SS guards, then perhaps they would become accepted by them and continue on. It was a very dark hope they had clung to, one that offered promise in the beginning but delivered Hell in the end.

  “Go out and talk to those you trust most,” Dror continued. “Be careful. But build an army. Give them hope by telling them that this is not the end, but a beginning.”

  “Tonight,” said Ephraim, “I’ll start in my Block. It’ll take time. But we’ll formulate a plan.”

  Dror nodded. “That’s good,” he said. Then he turned to Aaron. “My friend?”

  Aaron nodded as well. It was the first time in a long time he felt desire about something. “I have many friends in Block Eleven,” he told him. “It’s a good start.”

  Dror gave off a preamble of a smile, something he hadn’t done for a long time. “Hope is a wonderful thing,” he said. “Hang on to it because it might just see you through.”

  And then the men went to work by lifting and placing emaciated bodies onto trays, and then sliding these trays into the ovens.

  Chapter Five

  The camp’s senior officer, also known as the Lagerkommandant, was sitting behind his desk when SS Sergeant Kaiser entered the room.

  “Herr Lagerkommandant, you wanted to see me?” The SS sergeant offered a stiff-armed salute while keeping his eyes fixed to a point on the wall behind the Lagerkommandant.

  “Relax,” the Lagerkommandant told him. Then he pointed to a seat in front of the desk as an invitation for the sergeant to take.

  Lagerkommandant Höss, unlike the simian appearance of his sergeant, was a man of medium height and slender build, with a moon-shaped face and small, unblinking eyes. Having the appearance of someone least likely to wield formidable power, Lagerkommandant Höss was nevertheless the Goliath of Birkenau who yielded the scepter of rule, with absolute cruelty serving as his governing faith.

  After the sergeant took the seat, Höss repeated once more for Sergeant Kaiser to relax. In this setting between two men, nothing was formal with the exception of the data that was shared between them.

  Lagerkommandant Höss eased back into his seat, tented his hands, and bounced his fingertips against his chin in deep thought. Then “How are you, Herr Sergeant? Good, yes? Everything appears to be running smoothly under your command, I see.”

  Kaiser gave a nod that was more of a downward tilt of his chin. “I try my best, Herr Lagerkommandant.”

  Höss continued to bounce his tented fingertips against his chin. “As you know,” he began, “the Polish ghetto has nearly been evacuated in its entirety with trainloads transporting more Jews than we can handle. Nearly two hundred thousand at this point inside the camp. We are well beyond our saturation point, even with the systematic process of cleansing.”

  “True, Herr Lagerkommandant.”

  “More prisoners, less guards. And as you know, Herr Kaiser, they’re sending more soldiers to the Russian Front to slow the progress of the Red Army. But I’m afraid it’s a lost cause at this point, since they’re sending children from the Jungvolk to defend Berlin and Munich.”

  Sergeant Kaiser nodded in agreement, having seen the new breed of soldiers coming into the camp as of late, those from Hitler’s Youth organization between the ages of seventeen and eighteen, since the adults had been conscripted to fight along the Front.

  “Word is, Herr Kaiser, that Germany is about to fall within a year, maybe less.”

  Sergeant Kaiser maintained his ape-like features with stoic appearance.

  “But I do have a major concern,” added the Lagerkommandant, “which is why you are here.”

  Kaiser gave another tilt of his chin. “You know I’m here to serve the Reich to the best
of my ability.”

  Lagerkommandant Höss stopped bouncing his fingers against his chin, leaned toward his desk, and fanned his elbows out on the desktop. “My concern,” he told the sergeant, “is in regard to the recent uprisings in the camps. First it was Treblinka, then in Sobibor. As much as we maintain a secure perimeter, I’m afraid word from the outside can still reach those inside the fences. The Jews can be crafty, make no mistake about that. And the last thing I need is for them to rediscover hope. Because hope, Herr Kaiser, can be a very powerful weapon. What happened in those camps will not happen here. Therefore, I am informing those under my command to maintain strict watch over the kapos that are under your leadership, and to inform the Blockführers to start clearing the blocks to thin the herd.”

  “The Red House?”

  “Day and night, if need be. Also, mass graves in the fields outside the camp would be preferable as well.”

  “Understood, Lagerkommandant Höss.”

  “We need to cleanse the camp before the barbarians reach the gates,” Höss added. “This coming from the Führer himself.”

  Sergeant Kaiser finally let out a sigh; the admission that Hitler had commanded the final extermination was also an admission that everything would be lost. Kaiser, the large man getting to his feet and offering a stiff-armed salute with his palm facing the Lagerkommandant, and with his eyes once again fixed to a point on the far wall behind his leader, said: “Heil Hitler!”

  Lagerkommandant Höss nodded his approval and said: “Start clearing the blocks.”

  Sergeant Kaiser nodded. “Immediately, Lagerkommandant Höss. As you wish.” And then the large man was gone, the door closing behind him with an audible click.

  After a long pause, Höss sighed as the rigors of being a senior camp officer was beginning to weigh on him. He had granted Josef Mengele the right to choose whether you lived or died, and to use some of the Jews for genetic research. But in the end as the camp’s leader, Höss realized that he was the one responsible for approving the atrocities, and therefore, the one who would be held accountable.