Day 64 - The Army of the Damned

I think I had the luck of innocence on my side.  I  never had to wear an exclusive striped suit with big targets on it like other recaptured escapees. I don't know who I had to thank for that but it was as if my file had been changed or disappeared - or as if , "the organization" was looking after me.  However, I was still in the camp so danger was lurking at every corner.
The confusion was probably helped along by the fact that the Germans, even with their over-efficiency, had too much going on to be concerned with every detail happening within the camp. 


At times, we thought the S.S. played darts when picking victims for execution.  Frequently, they would call out random names over the loud speakers.  When this happened we always sat in fear, minute by minute, expecting to hear our name being called at any moment - we never saw anybody coming back from those calls!   Often, the S.S., would have to come and fetch their victims and drive them up and away like reluctant animals to the slaughter -  realizing that their time was up the chosen victims would often resist until the very end!


I can see all these episodes vividly in my mind as clearly as the day they happened.  We just slithered through it all by sheer luck, resilience, strength and endurance.  For your own sake, you had to be like Samson and also very much like a soldier at the front - there really was not much difference except that a soldier at the front could shoot at the enemy.


No matter how desperate we became there was no way you could join the S.S.
What did happen was that you could join, "The Army of the Damned", under the impression that you could make a quick getaway.... 

Day 63 - ""Never Give Up and Persevere at all Times!

The food was deficient in nourishment and our hard labour in the quarry extremely heavy.  This was another weeding out process to identify the toughest prisoners.  There was no respite; the "round the clock" S.S. bullies were on our backs all the time!  The whips wound around their wrists ready for the first prisoner they could catch, especially those who were trying to hide in the crevices. 


Luckily, all of us were capable of being actors when necessary - sometimes we would allow our picks to go up and down breaking next to nothing, this was the only way to last out and to survive a bit longer!  Sometimes, they would harness from six to a dozen of us and with a stick placed across our chests we would have to pull slabs of stone up the slope.


One day, at about noon, I dropped down and fell onto the only patch of clover I had ever seen in this place.  I picked out a four leaf clover which I put into my small religious book.  For a long time after that I kept this book, together with my meticulously written in diary and when I left the camp these two books and the four leaf clover left with me!


One day, I was wounded when my ankle got knocked when I slipped among the rocks on the cliff.  The old prisoners had told us that the stones were poisonous and to make sure that we didn't get scratched.  My wound never did heal up properly but I managed - as I had to: -


 "To Never Give Up and Persevere At All Times - through thick and thin".


The fleas and lice on our block were a terrible nuisance.  I had big holes in the same leg as the wounded ankle due to the fleas and lice.  Some of the holes in our flesh were big enough to enable a person to insert their little finger.  Our wounded flesh looked like we had beri-beri -  that is likely because of the lack of nourishment and Vitamin C, which would have assisted the healing process.


If a flea bite could do that much harm you can imagine how other wounds fared!  The people who had been badly bitten by the dogs, when we arrived, died in agony shortly afterwards, mostly from tetanus.  People still kept dying and transports were in the offing again!  I stayed on and I do not know why.  Puzzle.!!!


Eventually, I passed through the labour exchange and was consigned to Gouzloff Werke and to the Upper Camp or rather Senior Camp now, the luck of the draw or maybe picked, I don't know!!!  After the stripes another suite with squares on instead of indelible dye, it seemed as if I had been chosen!  My haircut was pretty normal too, not in the Iroquois style of cocks comb!


I had a cross-interrogation by an elder from my new block.  He appeared to be a well-trained Belgian who came from somewhere around Poperinge. He had been in Moscow and had also belonged to a Belgian resistance group.


In other words, he was a communist agent and commissar - another foreign power's intelligence too.  He was likely chosen for the job because he could verify many of my home regions, recognition points as well as my immediate background in Ostend - my place of origin.


They already knew of some of my exploits through other prisoners, like my escape, reliability and knowledge.  It seemed that I fitted the needs of their organization and pattern of operations.  Having contacts on the outside was also very important too!  I was in their hands now and I am convinced I was also in other people's hands too!!!




To be continued ....

Day 62 - Prisoner Justice!

We discovered that there was camp money in circulation - marks that could be changed.  We would receive camp money for our first work commando which was the quarry for sure - a touch of the hardest labour to begin with!  
The quarry was called "Steinbuck", and was on the southern side of the hill overlooking the forested undulations of Franconia and Bavaria - the nearest town being Eisenach. 


"Steinbuck", would have been a good point to have escaped from had it not been for a close chain of guards.  When it was misty and if there were low cloud they doubled the guard - the grey uniforms, Totenkaphen, which consisted of four, foreign S.S., entwining Ukranians!  They had formed their own international too which was in the style of the Nazi's of course.


On one off our "off duty", days we followed a black marketeer who convinced us how to get rid of our money.  He led us to the rear end of the quarantine camp where we encountered two, poor desolate figures huddled together in a corner.  So that's what the money exchange was for - for those "Miserables" still speculating.


One turned out to be grandfather, Michelin and the other an Armenian millionaire.  They had both sold crucifixes and other paraphenalia at Lourdes before having received their wages for sin here!  This practice was looked at with distaste by the other prisoners.  In no time, our black marketeer was spotted and chased and we were warned not to take any heed of him.


On our way back we noticed a prisoner with two buckets full of stones and sand standing fixed on a wooden box.  This prisoner had stolen food from his comrades - we now realized what severe punishment could happen if caught in such as act and we quickly learned our lesson.


The camp was like an underworld full of petty intrigue and corruption.  After a while in quarantine, all pent up revenge on suspected and guilty traitors would break loose and a quick trial would be executed.  This would be carried out by commandos bringing in sharp instruments or by drowning - this involved holding the victim's head down in the troughs, surrounded by the crowd.


Another method was to chase the fellow out into the evening, at curfew -  with no other alternative but to throw themselves onto the barbed wire near the electrical fence were they would be shot simultaneously by the "Miradors".  They were not always suicides as shown in photos.


The S.S. didn't care a bit and the bodies were just added to the rest laying along the block with the others, to be taken away by the "leich tragers", body carriers to the crematorium, it's yard infested with rats and other vermin.  The mouths of the victims open and limbs broken before burning and being thrown onto a death pile until ready for cremation.


The Jews in Buchenwald had almost completely disappeared, either to Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen or Mathausen.  There were still thirty Jews hidden amongst us - strong builders and probably more that I didn't know about, the rest were mixed in with us and unknown to anybody.  We saw the shoe piles left from past prisoners, only the uppers, the soles had been used by other prisoners.


Personal fights in desperation only landed people in the crematorium.  The people killed as traitors, which I witnessed, were as far as I could make out,  guilty without a doubt.  On one occasion, we had watched an individual, from Eastern Europe, flattering the S.S. around us in a very obvious manner.  French inmates knew that he had given them away on previous occasions while in French jails.  They loathed him, his ways and manners gave him the look of a creep.


One day his ordeal came to pass!  He was stabbed in the liver with a small, needle sharp bar, which had been smuggled in from the Guzloffe-Werke.  He was then gradually driven to the trough and from there pushed in and held under water until drowned.  After this, I remember his accusers, straight-away, looking around for others - it seemed to be easy, once done, such was the mood.  In addition, people were apt to commit bestialities with impunity and no second thoughts about it.


One of the Capo's had become as cruel and crude as the S.S.  He beat up  other prisoners with his stick until they were laying flat on the ground and then kicked them -  to the delight of the watching S.S.


This one had to go for sure, one way or the other!






To be continued ...

Day 61 - Injections and Indoctrination Movies!

There was also an unemployment bureau within the camp.  This bureau would determine which task we were was best suited to perform.   Behind the S.S. buildings was a quarry which supplied stones for the roads and camp and even contracts further afield.


In a place called "Valkenhof", falcon house, there were more animals and a fenced park for deer and boar which was tended to by prisoners.  There was also Villa's for the V.I.P.'s - between 1944 to 1945 the camp was closely associated  with the einsatz groups of the S.S who very likely stayed in these villas. 


We had arrived at a good time to join the international resistance within the camp, which, at that time was growing stronger and stronger by the day.  The  camp resistance group had originally been started by Germans, of which eighty percent had now disappeared.


Personalities who had been at the camp prior to their release in 1940 were; Richard Thalmann, Hood and Walter Poller. From our side were people like; Blum, the Brussels redactor!, from the newspaper, "Le Peuple", Dewever, a dentist from Antwerp and many other representatives with diverse political opinions - not just from the left, as implied by the press and other sources.  To our dismay and to the merriment of the Nazi's rivalry, chauvinism, bias and small mindedness were always rife and present within our ranks,.    


We now moved slowly to the lower camp, a quarantine camp.  Here we could verify most of the things we had recently heard from the other prisoners.  The atmosphere and environment we now found ourselves in was very similar to Auschwitz.  A dirty, little quagmire with closed barracks, one blanket, open pit toilets and outside washing pipes with troughs.  We were separated from the upper or senior camp by a fence.  We were also kept separate from the brothel and indoctrination hall below us.


For the next three weeks we received so many injections that we were warned to try and dodge them by passing them through the skin pressed between our fingers, inside one way and out the other if possible.  The injections were administered by the Capo's and camp helpers and an S.S., who couldn't always be everywhere -  so this was the method to employ while he was distracted.


During the quiet spells there we searched for lost friends and at other transports for news of friends and acquaintances back home.  We were also taken to the indoctrination block to be photographed, measured and receive more new numbers.  Then we were shown an S.S. film about their superior qualities in training and fighting - which we had to watch.  Nothing about cruelty as they had enough experience of that with the prisoners and for us to look at within the camp! 


After that our new numbers were sewn on the coats and trousers which were striped.




To be continued ...

Day 60 - Lamp Shades and Ilsa Koch

"We were now greeted by a big open space.  We then saw the confines of the wooden billets.  For the next mile or so, after the billets, were row after row of two story, stone buildings.  Below were more buildings, which included a brothel and an indoctrination hall for propaganda films and picture taking, no lectures.


A quarantine camp was situated in between the junior and senior camps  which appeared to be two to four rows in depth and length.  On your left was a small first aid station or hospital.  To the right was the crematorium but no gas chambers.  The crematorium was smaller than a single building in Auschwitz but similar to the building we had last seen with the little girls.
We then entered the shaving block area and finally came to a large kitchen.  The kitchen struck us as not very big for the camp size! 


The hanging tree of Goethe was in front of us   It was a big, thick oak tree and was just coming into bloom. In the center were concrete trenches used to dangle victims after being hung.  Goethe used to sit at that tree writing and looking at the landscape, very likely in serene meditation not realizing what would become of his special place in the coming years.


In all of this horror there had to be some salvation for the international prisoners represented at Buchenwald.  This presented itself in the form of, "The Ark.  "The Ark", was an underground resistance movement which gave, some of us, the strength to float above the atrocities and survive.


We now entered the sorting and shearing rooms again, as we passed through we just had enough time to gather more information about the camp from senior prisoners.  It was the 14th of May, 1944 and we were facing a new period of detention albeit with a diminished group.  The CAPO's and helpers guiding us through the process under the surveillance of a single S.S. 


The inmates warned us that we needed to be on our best behavior at all times -  which meant orders had to be followed promptly.  We were also instructed to be subservient, to the extreme of what one could bear and at the same time be unobtrusive!


Lastly, they said it was better not to be covered in or show beautiful tattoos.  They said,  "keep those fellow/fellows out of view".  The reason being that the wife of the Commandant had a peculiar hobby of picking those bodies out for the purpose of covering lampshades!


The Commandant's wife was, Ilse Koch.  She would spy on potential candidates from secret holes and compartments and look for anything that appealed to her morbid sense of satisfaction, which included making lampshades from human skin.


Once again, we were shaved all over our bodies and bathed too.  Our clothes, from Auschwitz, were exchanged for striped ones with red triangles on that had numbers for this camp.


We were ever reminded of the nightmare that we were still involved in as the cruel stories continually reached our ears from the other prisoners".


To be continued ...

Day 59 - "Jedem Das Seine" or "To Each his Own"

"Recht oder Unrecht mein Vaterland", Right or Wrong my Country.


"To commit wrongness in the name of patriotism is certainly not the right thing to do!  It brings to mind the saying "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel".


We now came to the habitat of the Commandant, at "half way house".  It was on the left of us and well constructed with a garden and in front of it were two soixante-quinze guns. You could call him the son of a gun then!
The house was in the Cararcho Weg/Way and was quite nice.  No formal greeting here that would be coming.


On our right, we could see the electrical fence and some of the camp site sloping downwards and there was also a lane of tree coverage between us.  The setting and decor was ideal and grand and it would get better.  As we proceeded we walked as if to eternity, getting one surprise after another.  Continually, moving towards the sunset now or in the morning to the sunrise, heads bobbing up and down.


We came to what looked like part of an actual zoo.  These animals had come from the Berlin Tiergarden Zoo to be put in a safe place away from the bombing  and under the protection of the camp.  There was, of course, the rock garden with baboons showing their bald bottoms to us.  There was also a black bear present who we guessed was being better fed than we were. 
Behind the animals was a dug out space with a ramp of soil. 


This space was there to receive the impact of the machine gun bullets from the ripped in half victims who were placed on the wooden stakes - more often to be replaced than not.  I suppose the barking of the dog baboons assisted in muffling up the noise that was made.  One can comprehend how the nerves of these animals must have become agitated every time executions were carried out.


With our "dimmed view", we now had to wait on the spot.  Looking over the camp and on a short curve to the right, we could now see a big center tower.  It had cellular constructions extending from the base, these were the execution or torture cells which were located on each side of the tower.  They also used these constructions for quick interrogations and for firing squad and guillotine transports.


The "Mutzen ab", order was given again and then we had the "privilege" of hearing the best band in Germany performing or beating time for our benefit. 
They were dressed in the most colourful uniforms taken from the nineteenth century orchestra or military capelle.  They looked like real clowns or a circus band.  By the way, these people were originally  musicians from the Philharmonic Orchestra of Prague,  they were taken as hostages for some disturbances that had occurred in Czechoslavakia at that time.  Only the best were good enough for this.


Around the camp were many "Miradors", as the French called them, or Watch Towers - these were manned by a machine gunner with a search light and two more soldiers.  On the center tower were several search lights placed on the balcony.  From this point, the Administration could watch the crowds, who were to be counted, as well as see the entirety of the whole camp which was in the shape of a nearly perfect pentagon and on a slope.


On a clear day we could see the statue of Barberossa which was an enormous obelisk in the distance.  Barberossa was a Swedish, Field Marshal and conqueror of renown.  More often than not, in the late season, as we stood for roll call, we were covered with a mist or rather low passing clouds.


Turning in from the corner end our band stood, the Commandant in the company of his wife of a certain fame, named Ilse Koch and his S.S. Handlangers! with their whips ready.


We were now faced with the gate in wrought iron!  On the bars in letters about the width and height of a man were the words, "Jedem Das Seine" or "To Each his Own". 


The gates opened for us and we would enter now!  It was like the entrance of hell on the way to heaven, guarded by the devil and his demons.  Only Saint Peter was absent".....


To be continued ...  

Day 58 - "Caracho Weg", Good Road or Paradise Way!!

"Our files followed us everywhere and while in Buchenwald our deaths would come about by hard labour in the quarry or strassen-bau, firing squad, machine gun, hanging, injection, torture and chopping off of heads -  which was the privilege of another outside department, you were specially sent for on this occasion!


There were also a number of on-demand applications performed by the S.S. doctors such as garotting! with piano wires or meat hooks and dissecting, as well as other medicinal and scientific experiments.  The human guinea pigs were there in ample supply and always available at any time.


There was a tower too, the Bismarck Tower, I could now faintly see the silhouette of the tower though the mist.  Under this tower were the broken bodies of so many buried in mass graves.


Towards the direction of Weimer, beyond the work places, was Goethe's tree house.  This stood near to a double gate with more fences.  Goethe wrote many of his best works here and spent many hours relaxing at this spot. We couldn't see the tree house as we were walking but could see an indictor/sign that pointed to Wiemar. 


The road for the prisoners in the camp was nicely captioned too and was written in Russian and read as,  "Caracho Weg",  meaning the Good Road or Paradise Way - so Buchenwald might as well have been called Shangri-la too!  The sarcasm of it all had just begun!


At this point, we were just reaching two guard houses, one on each side of the road when we encountered two representatives from this "mock paradise", with weapons pointed they ordered us to; Mutzen ab" (caps off).


Perched on a pillar, in the middle of the road was an enormous eagle, carved in stone, hewn from the quarry.


On a wooden board, above the guardhouse entrance was inscribed, in Goethe script,  "Recht oder Unrecht mein Vaterland" , meaning, "Right or Wrong my Country".






To be continued ...