We called it The B. We never referred to it by its full
name. None of us could do it every day
if we had used its full name. We just
said, “hand me a can of The B,” and did our jobs.
I heard that it was used as a
pesticide. I didn’t know anything about
pests. All I know is that it killed
humans real good. Two minutes, tops.
Before the war, I was a miner. I had hauled coal for the better part of my thirty
seven years. The heavy labor had given
me a muscular build. I guess that’s why
they selected me for the job. The only
other reason I can think of is because I was a Jew. Juden.
---
I arrived at Birkenau on February 1st,
1942. I was on one of the first
passenger trains to enter this new camp.
I call it a passenger train, but it wasn’t. It was a cattle car. And from the day I was abducted from my home
in Konigsberg, seven days prior, I had been standing. We were hoarded into the car by Germans
shouting at us in a language we didn’t understand. They pointed machine guns in our faces and
stabbed at us with the butts. They
locked us into the cars with padlocks.
My friend, Gregor Kuznitisin, who I had
known since the day I was born, attempted to jump off the train. They shot him four times in the chest. After he fell, the man in charge walked over
to Gregor, pulled out his Luger, and shot him in the head. That was the last time I ever saw anyone try
to escape.
For seven days and six nights, we
traveled through Poland to get to Birkenau.
There were 77 people in my car when we left Konigsberg. When we arrived at Birkenau, only 40 were
left alive. The others died from
despair.
On the seventh night, we arrived. The train pulled directly into an encampment,
passing under the German words, “arbeit macht frei.” We were told that this meant “work will set
you free.” This was another of the
kraut’s lies. No one was ever
freed. In the 757 days that I spent at
Birkenau, I never saw anyone go free.
The
padlocks were cut and we were thrown onto the platform, much the same way we
had been loaded onto the train in the first place. We were separated by sex, men to the left, women
to the right. That was the last time I
ever saw my neighbors alive, Mr. and Mrs. Nikolai Rozentov. I saw them two days later when I saw their
bodies lying on a pile of hundreds.
