The Barbed Crown Read online

  Looking at the photos of his family, a beautiful blond-haired woman and two pretty girls, ages ten and eight, he knew that hardships were coming. The Russians were approaching at a phenomenal rate, taking new land with every passing moment, a machine moving with purpose. Now Höss had to determine the best way to save his family. There had been talk about absconding to places like Argentina, which was sympathetic to the Nazi cause. At least there they would have a chance, a single mother raising her children under the welfare and support of the Argentine people.

  Reaching a hand out to the photos, Lagerkommandant Höss traced his fingertips lovingly around the frames of his wife and children.

  Hitler had offered everyone hope. “But all you delivered was evil,” he commented softly to no one in particular. And here I am, stuck in the middle of bad decisions that will surely damn me to Hell.

  Once again, Lagerkommandant Höss sighed.

  Chapter Six

  Ayana Berkowitz remembered quite clearly the day that being a Jew was grounds for persecution. She was ten, a girl too young to understand much of anything outside of adoring her dolls, her siblings, and the family members who loved her just as much as she loved them.

  Though she wasn’t schooled in a conventional institute of learning, she did learn. In Poland where life was simple, where farming was the mainstay of living, when neighbors gave a helping hand even when one wasn’t needed, Hitler’s regime came, saw, and conquered, replacing it with a lifestyle rooted in prejudice. Jews had become vilified. Their fields had been confiscated and their houses now under the ownership of the Nazi regime. Summarily thereafter, after being classified a Jew, a substandard member of society, they had been relocated to the Warsaw ghetto after walls had been created to keep those of inferior rating contained. Food was hard to come by, other than spuds of potatoes. Jews were relegated to wearing the stitching of the Star of David on their clothing, a yellow star. Refusing to do so often saw the summary executions within the streets of the Warsaw ghetto, the killings a reminder to those who refused to adhere to the current laws were subject to death. After the first public killings, everyone labeled a Jew wore the stitching as required. Ayana, however, even though she wore the sewing of the star upon her lapel, did so as a measure to stay alive, even though her boldness to declare herself proudly as a Jew never wavered.

  In time she witnessed the Nazis, often at night, drive down the roads in their vehicles to stop at nearby residential buildings. Lights suddenly went off, the occupants hiding within the dark, all hoping to be invisible. But the hope was easily diminished when the soldiers ordered everyone down below and into the streets, where they were ordered against the wall and executed.

  She had seen death over and over again—had witnessed slaughter for the reason of underlying prejudices so deep that her future had been cast, which was no future at all. And by the age of eleven, she understood that her dolls had no foothold in her life, no meaning. She was now a woman.

  As time went on, Ayana Berkowitz watched as the ghetto thinned out, the people being relocated to destinations unknown. Few skirmishes rose within the quarter, Jews who had the audacity to confront their dark overlords, their devils, only to be killed in the process.

  And this only added to her resolve, her strength, the child who had become a woman at so early an age, now a rebel at heart.

  And then one day, though years later, they came for her and her family, as well as those within the building to further cleanse the city of Jews. They had been herded like cattle, taking with them their few belongings in a single suitcase, which were turned over to the soldiers standing post at the railways, all items confiscated as they were forced onto trains that were covered with strands of barbed wire.

  The ride had been long and cold, with babies and children crying against the effects of freezing weather. People wept, some crying out that ‘this is the end,’ and in some cases correct in their assessment. Others told them to shut up, offering hope by stating that this ‘was not the end’ but a new beginning, also correct in their assessment, though it would be dark in nature.

  And all along Ayana remained strong and persevered. She would hold her chin high for those who had been killed before her, those who had fought for the right to be a Jew without the fear of consequence, and ultimately died for their cause.

  I am a Jew… And I am proud.

  And this had become her mantra. No matter the hardships that would come her way, she would never relent and never surrender the fact that she was who she was.

  I am a Jew… And I am proud.

  And what I am is not a crime.

  When the train pulled into Auschwitz, ramps were planted by those wearing striped garments and caps. German Shepherds barked manically as soldiers yelled the constant monosyllable orders of Schnell! Schnell!

  As people descended the ramps they were forced into lines. And then they were ordered to enter the camp.

  …Schnell!…

  …Schnell!…

  And then a man with a cane who was dressed in an impeccably neat uniform, motioned his staff to the left or the right, a message to the soldiers as to where to redirect those coming off the train for processing. Of those within her family, she was the only one chosen to go to the right, whereas her family went to the left. But this did not go without disapproval on her part. She adamantly fought against the soldiers who tried to force her to the right, extending her arm for the grasp of her mother’s outreaching hand as she was being dragged to the left along with her father and sisters. In anger she cried out, damning the soldiers who forced her to the right when she wanted to be with her family, no matter the consequence. Then came the strikes of the soldier’s truncheon, the blows a reality-check of pain. And before she knew it, she had become a living product of the camp and a subservient member of the reigning class of prisoners.

  She had been catalogued, shaved and deprived of a past identity, becoming merchandise in an inventory of disposable goods. Yet, for her to still be alive, then she still had purpose.

  As she stood by the window of her barrack, she looked out at those in striped garments working their details, everyone a slave to their master, thin and wasted in appearance.

  Will that be me in the months to come? she wondered.

  Most likely.

  And my family?

  In the distance, chimneys belched columns of smoke and ash.

  Though tears stung and threatened to spill, she maintained herself because that was what her parents would want of her, to be strong and press on.

  And then from behind: “You’re new.” It was a statement and not a question.

  Ayana turned: “I am,” she answered. “From the ghetto.”

  “As we all are,” came the response. The woman was aged, around sixty, maybe younger considering the difficulty she had gone through, since it was hard to tell in the camp. Then the woman pointed to a bunk next to the buckets that served as the latrine. “There’s a tin cup lying on the bunk,” she said. “You’d be wise to lay claim to it. No cup, no food. The past owner no longer needs it.”

  “And why is that?”

  The woman’s answer was simple. “Because she went up the chimney.”

  Ayana returned her gaze through the window as the stacks continued to chuff with smoke, and watched as the landscape became gray with the settling of ashes. “Those chimneys,” she said to the woman. “What’s their purpose?”

  The aged woman shook her head as if the question was foolish. “They’re the beginning of the end for all of us,” she answered.

  Ayana, however, believed otherwise.

  Chapter Seven

  On the following morning, just as streamers of light were beginning to spring from the horizon in the east, the SS Blockführer responsible for Block Eleven kicked the door wide, and started to rap his club against the wooden posts of the bed bunks.

  “Up! Up! Everybody up!”

  The kapos also joined in, barking and yelling orders to galvanize those laying on h
airs of straw to form lines in the courtyard.

  “Schnell! Schnell! In the yard! Everyone! Now!”

  Aaron Baumstein turned over, his body aching from a restless night. Lying next to him was a man in his sixties, thin and wispy-looking, his shoulders like a coat hanger beneath his shirt.

  “What’s going on?” he asked Aaron.

  But before he could answer, a kapo was on top of them screaming for them to move, which they did with Aaron aiding the old man to his feet, and then to the doorway.

  “Schnell! Schnell! Move it, you lazy Jews!” yelled the Blockführer.

  When Aaron reached the courtyard, he and the rest of the Jews—all 236 of them—were greeted by a gauntlet of SS guards in their neatly pressed uniforms and submachine guns. The length of the line stretched all the way to the showers.

  “New clothes!” said the Blockführer. “And wash away the lice! Trust me, you’ll feel good afterwards, yes? No more smelling like the filthy animals that you are!”

  Aaron took note of the long line of German soldiers on both sides on them. They were either grinning with malicious amusement, or prodding them along with kicks to rear ends to hasten their pace.

  “Faster, Jews! Many showers must be taken today!”

  The old man turned to Aaron. “The showers,” was all he could say, his eyes welling with tears.

  “Move Faster!” said the Blockführer. “We haven’t got all day!”

  Aaron said nothing—could say nothing, as the brickhouse neared with every step taken.

  “You know what this means?” the old man asked him.

  Aaron remained quiet.

  “Aaron?”

  “It’ll be all right,” Aaron finally said to him. “We’ll feel better afterwards.”

  “There is no afterwards. You know this.”

  The Germans on both sides taunted them, using curt and vulgar language by stating that a shower would clean away their animal stink.

  “I don’t want to die, Aaron.”

  “We’re not going to die,” he said. “It’ll be fine.”

  “No. It won’t. It’ll never be fine.” The old man pulled away from Aaron and attempted to break the wall of Germans to their left. “I have to go!” he hollered, moving his arms in a swimming motion to break the gap between two guards, trying to escape the line. But the guards easily pushed him back, the man weakened by age and hardship. But when he tried to breach the gap once again, one of the soldiers, perhaps no older than a teenager, grabbed the old man by the collar, tossed him to the ground, leveled his submachine gun, and set off a short burst. Rounds stitched across the old man’s chest, the holes of his striped garments marching systematically from one side to the other as aerosol mists of blood erupted from each puncture wound.

  As the old man lay there bleeding out onto the gravel, Aaron was shoved along with the butt of a machine gun, a German telling him to move along—that there was nothing to see.

  “Move!” yelled the Blockführer. “Anyone who breaks the line will suffer the same fate! Is it not better to be clean? Or do you prefer to live like animals? What we offer you is luxury, yes?”

  Aaron moved along with the others between the lines, the brickhouse getting closer, the doors already open, waiting. Once inside, they were ordered by the kapos to undress, which they did, slowly, some men weeping, some sobbing. Then the kapos informed everyone that clean clothes would be waiting for them on the other side, their words sounding off with hope.

  As soon as the men were herded inside the showers, the doors closed behind them with a metal clang that somehow had a sound of finality to it, and then the turning of the bolts, locking them in.

  Aaron looked up at the shower heads attached to the pipelines that ran from one end of the room to the other. He saw the wide heads and the perforations for the streaming of water. And he noted the drains along the floor, the metal rusted.

  Aaron then closed his eyes and prayed to his God.

  * * *

  An old man tried to push his way through the line with eyes ablaze with panic, before crying out: ‘I have to go!’ That was when Frederic Becher forced the old man back in line and expected him to move along. But the old man was resilient in his attempt and once again tried to break his way through. That was when Becher grabbed the man by the collar, tossed him to the ground, leveled his weapon, and as if driven more by instinct and impulse rather than by conscience, he pulled the trigger.

  As the Blockführer called out to the Jews warning that any further attempts to breach the line would be met with a similar fate, the young German processed the moment as he watched the old man bleed out onto the gravel. He had reacted spontaneously and without thought, becoming one with the system. Whereas others may have found gratification, he found confusion. The teachings had conditioned him after all by stripping away the principles of his moral compass. Becher had simply reacted without thinking.

  Clenching his teeth until the muscles in the back of his jaw worked, as a wave of self-loathing swept through him, Frederic Becher realized that he would never get used to killing.

  Becher continued to stare at the old man who laid on the ground with a clawed hand stretching for the sky, as if he was reaching for something only he could see. But when Becher looked skyward, there was nothing but a few renegade clouds.

  Behind him, the Blockführer continued to bark orders as the Jews continued their walk to the brickhouse.

  * * *

  Time seemed eternal inside the showers. The room was getting hot and stale, and the smell of body odor and sweat became thick and syrupy in the air, almost unbearable.

  “I’m sorry about Gideon,” a man said from behind.

  Aaron turned to him and feigned a half-smile, one that said ‘thank you.’

  “I knew the two of you were close.”

  “We had come far together,” Aaron told him. “A place like this causes people to bond closer than siblings.” And this was true. Aaron had been close to his brother and sister, people he hadn’t seen since Mengele sent them to the left. But shared hardships seem to bring people closer together as if they were family. “He was like an uncle to me,” he finalized. “And he was definitely a good man.”

  “Perhaps you shall see him soon, yes? Perhaps we both will.” After the man said this, he disappeared into the throng of naked bodies.

  And Aaron, standing beneath one of the shower heads, lifted his arms by his side in mock crucifixion, and waited for the end.

  Chapter Eight

  Dror Rabin and Ephraim Levy had been working their duty inside the crematorium short-handed, the three-man crew per oven now down to two. And this was because Aaron Baumstein had missed roll call along with everyone else in Block Eleven, which was never a good sign. Nevertheless, they had primed and readied the furnaces for the day’s undertaking. Dror and Ephraim were already perspiring, as their shirts began to show the sweaty-Rorschach stains beneath their underarms and backs, even before the arrival of the first cart.

  Though they manned Oven One, which had always been their station, Oven Two and Oven Three had been fired up as well, with three-man crews working each one, alongside a kapo who maintained a keen and watchful eye. These particular indications often pointed to an active day inside the crematorium, something Dror and Ephraim had seen many times as Sonderkommandos when the numbers were about to move up greatly.

  “Orders must have been issued,” Ephraim whispered to Dror. “Three ovens at once. To run all day and night, no doubt. And I hate to think about what happened to Aaron.”

  “Word is that Block Eleven went to the showers,” Dror whispered back, making sure that the kapo could not hear the correspondence going on between them.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Aaron’s not here, is he?”

  They turned and watched the kapo talk to members of another team, as he slapped a truncheon against the palm of his hand as a show of his authority.

  “Liev Bodner,” Dror whispered with venom. “A trai
tor to his own people to win the favors of the SS. I’m sure he knows what’s coming our way.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Ephraim answered.

  And then a work detail consisting of four men dressed in banded garments pushed the first of a series of carts through the door and into the crematorium. They had been laden with bodies with wispy-thin limbs that intertwined with other wispy-thin limbs, the entanglement of corpses appearing like a macabre puzzle strewn together. The skins of the dead were discolored, a sure sign that they had fallen to Zyklon B poisoning.

  The teams, under the watchful eye and scathing tongue of the kapo, worked furiously to remove the bodies onto the trays, and into the ovens. Three-foot-tall urns had been lined up along the wall for the collection of ashes that would eventually be carted off to the sublevels of a neighboring warehouse close to the crematorium.

  As the bodies were lifted from the carts and laid upon the trays, Dror thought his heart was about to misfire the moment he saw Aaron Baumstein looking up at him with eyes that had glazed to a milky sheen.

  Ephraim, too, held the look of incredulity with his jaw hanging. Then he looked at Dror and whispered: “They know.”

  “Nobody knows anything,” Dror reassured him. “Orders to move the numbers up came from the Lagerkommandant, as they always have in the past. If they had learned otherwise, everyone inside Block Eleven would have been executed publicly as an example to others.” Dror pointed to Aaron. “If we don’t do something soon, Ephraim, you’re looking at our future. This could be us tomorrow, the day after, or perhaps even a month from now. But eventually it’s coming.”

  Ephraim looked at the kapo, who was still engaged with others, and turned back to Dror. “Perhaps it’s best to wait for the Russians—”

  “We don’t know if the Russians are coming or not,” Dror said louder than intended. “That could be nothing but a rumor to keep moral high.”