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CHAPTER VII
DER SCHEBER
THREE weeks after my arrival I was "coordinated," together with seven other comrades, by the camp Poliice Department. Our names were called at evening inspection, and we were ordered to line up outside the Administration Building at six-thirty the following morning. The SS officers of the Police Department arrived at ten, went to lunch at twelve-thirty, and returned at three. We stood and waited. The first men were summoned upstairs at six. We heard chairs overturning, roars, blows-then we saw the prisoners, pale as death, descending the stairs, accompanied by two troopers. They were led off to the coop.
My turn came last. Two stormleaders were seated at their desks in the small, freshly painted room. The wall confronting me bore in black letters the words:
"THE COMMON GOOD TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER THEGOOD OF THE INDIVIDUAL."
Above one of the desks hung a photograph of Roehm, above the other a photograph of Goering. Between them stood a plaster bust of the Leader, his lovelock falling over his forehead, his natty moustache clipped short. I took everything in at a glance. The two troopers at the door locked it. The "examination" began.
The first few seconds are the hardest for the prisoner. Worse than the nerve-racking twelve-hour wait, worse even than the certainty of physical torture to come, is the uncertainty as to what the Secret Police may know of his Party work, legal or underground. Documents may have come to light, imprisoned comrades may have made statements incriminating him. Because of new evidence unearthed by the police he may find it necessary to make certain admissions here which will lend greater plausibility to his denials elsewhere. Yet any concession, however slight, may serve to place him and other comrades in a hopeless situation. Better not start anything. But they will beat him to death if he refuses to talk.
It is all much easier after the first question has been put, for that question marks the beginning of a concrete struggle in which the blackjack ceases to be all-powerful. The prisoner can use his head, can put his brains and his eyes and ears to work. He promptly perceives the gaps in the incriminating evidence, he gathers from the questions what the Secret Police are chiefly interested in, and it does not take him long to gauge the examining officer's capacity for understanding the essence of underground Party work. Ninety times out of a hundred the petty bourgeois gone mad entertains the most idiotic notions of what the Party is like.
"You did subversive work among the Reichswehr1 of Kustrin."
I felt relieved. The comrades I had worked with either had not been caught or else had refused to talk. And we had no spies in our ranks. My heart leaped with joy. They were on the wrong track.
"No."
The officer jumped up and punched me under the chin. I fell across the desk of the other stormleader, who kicked me so hard in the back that I was hurled into the middle of the room. That was the signal for the waiting troopers.
They grabbed me, one of them forced my head between his legs, and while they held me in that position the heroic officers administered the Hindenburg alms with their blackjacks. I set my lips and made no out-cry. After a while they stopped."Hm," the first officer grunted, "I'm in a sweat and you haven't dirtied your pants yet, you scoundrel!"
This was his way of paying tribute to my self-control.
"Why did you join the Communists instead of coming to us?"
"When I joined the Communist Party the National Socialist Party wasn't known."
"And why didn't you come over to us later?"
"I didn't believe in the socialism of the National Socialists."
"Do you believe in it now?"
"No."
The second stormleader made a threatening move in my direction, but the first one motioned him away. He had evidently had his fill of flogging for the day, and decided that some "conversation" would offer a little variety."Why don't you believe in it?""Because I can see that the National Socialist Party is fighting only against the revolutionary workers."
"But we've dissolved the German-National Party, the Center, and all the Jewish parties too," he said. "And we've sent a number of capitalists who've infringed on the rights of the workers to the concentration camps."
I made no reply.
"Is that true or isn't it?"
"It's true but capitalism itself hasn't been touched. I sensed that the "discussion" was nearing its end.
He regarded me for a moment through half closed lids, and it seemed to me he was himself dissatisfied with Hitler's "socialism," but it irked him to have a Communist give expression to his own critical ideas.
"The curtain hasn't fallen yet," he remarked at length. "The second act's still to come." Then, promptly regretting having taken me so far into his confidence, he bellowed, "Get out of here!"
The two guards at the door kicked me so violently in the buttocks that my knees, striking the steps outside, began bleeding profusely.
Back in the company quarters the comrades surrounded me.
"All over? How was it? What did they want to know? Do you have to go up again?"
"You see," said Schultz, "it's nothing at all; we never make any fuss about things like that."
During the night those parts of my body which had been beaten swelled painfully, pustules formed under my shoulder blades, and I could barely control the muscles of my legs and back
Next morning my comrades rubbed me down with the lard which they had scraped from their bread for that purpose, and put my shoes on for me. They all advised me not to report sick nor to stay behind in camp, but to go to work as usual. So I hobbled along with the rest of them. Schultz did his best to cheer me up and make me forget my pain, carrying my tools and talking about everything under the sun. But when he saw I was too wretched to be diverted his own mood clouded, and he walked beside me in silence, smoking his pipe.
"What do you think?" he said at last. "Should I write my girl or not?"
"Does she write to you?"
"She's written three times. You can read the letters if you like."
He reached into his coat pocket and got them out for me.
"Later," I said. "After lunch."
I did not work that day. The Schieber told the guard I would take care of the fire, but it was he himself who hauled the stumps from the forest and piled them up. The guard offered no objection.
While two of them paced back and forth, talking, the Schieber drew the third into conversation.
"Training for National Socialism," he said to the guard, pointing to me. The guard, a boy of not more than twenty, eyed me in silence. "How many of us do you think are National Socialists when we leave camp?"
"Well," replied the other slowly, "we can hardly expect you to join us while you're still in camp."
"But that's the one reason for the camp's existence. You're supposed to train us here to be useful members of the Third Reich. Or else you might as well shoot us."
"We know that the best of you'l1 come round when you see that we're really accomplishing something."
"That kind of thing, you mean?" asked the Schieber, pointing to me again.
"Oh, you'll find brutes wherever you go."
For a time neither of them spoke.
"What were you before you came here?" the guard asked me, handing me a cigarette. "Communist?"
"Yes."
"I guess you're all Communists in this squad."
"Yes."
The other two guards approached the fire. The Schieber went for fresh wood.
At noon Schultz gave me his girl's letters to read.
DEAR RICHARD: Wrote you a lot of letters but tore them up, because I know everything's over between us. Just wanted to tell you that I don't know myself how I could have done it. Wasn't right in the head. Don't have to tell you how sorry I am. You won't believe me and you don't have to, either, but it's the truth. They wanted me to tell them even more but I threw them out of the house. Haven't gone to M. since then to do the washing. Dear Richard, if you'd only believe me. I know everything's over and I don't want a thing from you. They got me worked up and I believed it all. Went across the mountains twice to see your mother, but she wouldn't let me into the house. Dear Richard, your pipe still lies on the shelf. And half a package of tobacco. Shall I send it to you? I could send you a little butter too and some cakes. But I guess you're too proud to go on taking anything from a person like me.-Regards from BERTHA.
DEAR RICHARD: Brunner, who is now the leader of the local Nazi group, says to tell you if you make a petition they'll have the local group sign it. Because your mother's sick and your brother-in-law in L. is Stormleader now. You don't have to worry about your mother. I go over there every second day to look after her. It's old age and all the excitement. I'm so glad she talks to me again now. The first fever is now dying down here. You can understand why I don't want to write much about that. The butcher's going to take me to L. next Sunday, and I'll write you what your brother says.
Dear Richard, you didn't answer my letter. I couldn't expect you to, either. If you only knew what I'm going through, you'd at least write a few lines this time. I don't want another thing from you, if only you get safely out again. You can go with anyone you like. I told your mother so, too. They wanted me to take away your picture in the uniform, but I grabbed it out of their hands and put it back on the cupboard again.-With regards, BERTHA.
DEAR RICHARD: Your brother wasn't home. I left a letter for him. Brunner says if you'll join them, he'll see that you get out. He says he'd rather have you than all the lukewarm scum who are reporting to him now, and he says it's time for you to face facts. But I know you've got your own ideas. Your mother says too, he knows his own business. The Count's head keeper came to see her last week and asked for you. He said, when you're out and if you join the Steel Helmets, you can work in the woods again. Dear Richard, the people don't speak badly of you, only of me. It serves me right and I don't deserve any better. If I'd known how everything was going to turn out, I'd have thrown myself into the river long ago. Marie, who's to blame for it all, married Ziegler. He's got the business in his own name and he's president of the Nazi league for the middle classes. But it's going to be dissolved, they say.
Dear Richard; this is the last letter I'll write you if you don't answer. You didn't even send me your regards when you wrote to your mother. My head's in a jumble, I've been bawling so much. You might at least send me your regards
-BERTHA
Schultz was watching my face as I read. I handed the letters back."You can read it too, if you like," he told the Schieber, who was sitting beside me."Have you been going with her long?" I asked."Over three years.""Why didn't you marry her?"
"Can't marry everyone."
"Is she a comrade?"
"No. She wasn't interested in politics. She's whatever I am."
"How did she happen to give you up?"
"That's a mystery to me, too. I'd never have believed it of her. I had something to do for the Party in Tarnowitz and spent the night in P. as usual. She'd been suspecting for a long time that I was going with some woman there, and when the Nazis went to her place to look for me, they told her they could find me without her help. Everybody knew with whom I spent my nights so often. They kept on razzing her till she got so wild that she said I hadn't been home in three days. Let them go to the other woman in P., she said. They'd be sure to find me there."
"It's your own fault, Richard," the Schieber broke in. "You go with her for three years, you don't marry her, you fool around with other girls, you don't take the slightest trouble to make a comrade of her. What else did you expect?"
"Lousy thing to do just the-same give me away when she knew what the Nazis would do to me."
"She must have lost sight of that for a moment. Did you ever bother to explain politics to her? No, you treated her as the Nazis treat their women-good for the bed and the kitchen and the laundry and, for the rest, keep your mouths shut. That was her way of defending herself. You've got no kick coming. She loves you, and I say you ought to help her instead of climbing up on your high horse. If you write to her now and treat her like a comrade instead of a petticoat, I'll stake my head that she'll never betray you again."
I added my persuasion to the Schieber's, and Schultz was apparently pleased to have Party comrades, whose judgment he respected, advise him to do what he would have been glad to do of his own accord, had his pride not forbidden. He had been afraid, too, that the Party would frown on any continued association with her. He was very cheerful on the way home, and when the guards called for music, struck up with an old army song in which the soldier dreams of returning home and marrying his sweetheart.
The impressions I had gathered in the hell of Columbia were confirmed here in camp-the workers were far better able to cope with the situation than the intellectuals. It was not a matter of personal courage, with which the latter were as well supplied as the former. The difference lay in the fact that fascism seemed to the intellectuals an impenetrable wall, closing them in-a monster in whose ugly face no human feature could be detected. The workers, on the other hand, could see through the black SS uniform to the wearer beneath; they saw the swaggering brass buttons but under them the son of the debt-ridden innkeeper of Niederwellingen or the broken-down assistant cashier of the Savings Bank of Frunsbuttel or the former captain of thc Seventh Uhlans who after the war became a traveling salesman for wines and cognac. Fascism, the abstraction, dissolved for them into a series of concrete parts-SS guards, filthy food, "examinations," blackjacks, coop, forced labor-and it was not at all impossible to adopt certain defensive measures against one or another of these parts.
All sorts of elements, for example, were represented among the guards, with many of whom personal contacts could be established and exploited to our advantage.
This was a gift which the Schieber of our squad possessed to a marked degree. He profited by his three-year experience as a war prisoner, and knew all the tricks. He started activity in the morning before we marched off to work, prowling around to see that we got the "right" guards. The Storm Troopers liked to be assigned to his squad. Fritz, an ardent admirer of the Schieber's, told me of various episodes which had won the latter his enviable reputation among the lower ranks of the Black Shirts.
One day on the march to work a guard shot and wounded a doe on a private estate. The incident had been reported to the local game warden, and the camp administration investigated. The Schieber and his work squad were compelled to file past the whole line of SS guards, to identify the culprit; but not one of them gave the guilty guard away. Five members of the squad were locked up in the coop for eight days, then were again confronted with the guards. Again no one squealed.
This made a profound impression on the rank and file Black Shirts. Once they felt sure that the prisoners would not betray them to the officers, they fell into the habit of relieving the tedium of guard duty by going off for an occasional glass of beer or lying down under some bush for a nap, trusting to us to waken them when we heard the drone of an inspecting officer's motorcycle. In this way, of course, they were putting themselves more and more completely into the power of the prisoners, who availed themselves of the opportunity to get whatever they could for themselves. Hence, various major and minor breaches of discipline on both sides served to build up in the course of the months a silent community of interest between certain of the troopers and certain of the work squads.
We, for example, passed a group of road workers every day on our two-hour march to the dyke and struck up friendly relations with them. If we had our "own" guards with us, they gave us permission to "relieve" ourselves. The road workers would hand us their tobacco pouches so that we could fill our pipes, and would give us bread and sausage from their knapsacks. Every morning two girls working at a near-by tobacco factory would pass us on bicycles and would throw us a box of cigarettes. A number of the peasants, too, despite their fear of persecution, would slip things into our hands. The women were more courageous than the men. Several times the camp administration and the Secret Police had found it necessary to warn the populace against any dealings with us.
"Like to have your wife pay you a visit here?" the Schieber asked me one day.
"I don't know where she is. Besides, what's the good of having one look at her across the length of a room?"
"Listen. I've got two of the guards to the point where they're willing to let a few of us send for our wives to come to the forest here. All we've got to do now is to bring the third one round. The three are on duty together every Friday. If your wife can't come, maybe you could make an appointment with one of the comrades, so he could take your people a message from you. Write at once and give me the letter after evening inspection. Only be sure it's addressed to someone you can trust.'
I had heard nothing, of course, in reply to my letter to Julius. The thought of the uncoded list in my former apartment still tormented me. Nor did I know whether my work had been turned over to Otto, whether Otto was still at liberty, whether Kathe had been notified of my arrest. After some reflection, I decided to write. Kathe was abroad. I wrote to Anna of my old Party unit to come.
Schultz approached me while we were at work.
"Did the Schieber tell you?"
"Yes."
"Are you going to have yours here?"
"I'm going to try."
"I'd like to write Bertha too. What do you think?"
"Certainly write her-if you can be sure she'll know how to handle herself in case anything should go wrong."
"You can be sure of that."
"Good. Then write."
"Will you have a little time for me this evening?"
"Yes, at seven-in the company quarters."
Four men in our squad decided to run the risk of writing.
A letter to Bertha wasn't a simple matter. Schultz had his own decided views as to what he wanted to write her. The letter must not be too short, but it must not be too long, either. It must be conciliatory in tone, yet it must leave everything open and commit him to nothing. His masculine pride was in the ascendant again when he started dictating, and I had to drive home a few harsh truths before I could make any headway with him. He finally professed himself satisfied with the following composition:
DEAR BERTHA: Received your three letters, for which I thank you. I'm glad you're looking after mother. I hope she'll be better soon. I won't have anything to do with the petition of Brunner and my brother. Let them write one if they like, but I won't have anything to do with it.
You write me that you're very much worried about me now. [We wrangled violently over that "very much"-Schultz objected to it, but I insisted.] You should have worried sooner. You could have spared us both a great deal. But what's done is done. You've got to think about the future now. Can't write much in a letter so I'd like to see you. But no one must know about it-no one, do you understand? -only mother, not even my brother. You can't come to camp, because visitors are forbidden just now. You couldn't come anyhow, because we're not married. We can talk that over too. But you can come to the forest where we work. Better bicycle as far as T. and take the train when you get there. For fifty pfennigs you can park your bicycle in the baggage car. From the Hubertshof depot you ride along the Graumutz road to milestone 21.4, then turn left into the forest. Go on riding till you come to a clearing and stay on the left-hand path till you reach the water. Arrange to get to the forest by noon. Between the clearing and the water someone will ask you, "What time is it?" Then you say, "I'm sorry. My watch stopped." Then he'll say, "Are you going much farther today?" Then you say, "That depends on how soon I can get my business done. Maybe you can tell me how to get to the dyke?" Then he'll take you there. Don't forget the words. You've got to answer twice and ask once. Tell mother to give you the fare and to take it out of the money I got from Koszinsky in February. Come next Friday if you don't hear from me again. Dear Bertha, I'll be glad to see you again. I hope everything will be all right.-Auf Wiedersehen,
RICHARD.
He vetoed emphatically my suggestion that he sign himself "Your Richard."
We could rely absolutely on one of the guards. He was engaged to the sister of a comrade and was under her influence. It was through him that the Schieber learned what went on among the Black Shirts and the members of the camp administration. It was he too who smuggled the letters out. He had a friend in his outfit-an intelligent fellow who came from a Social-Democratic home, from which he brought an interest in politics. We could talk to him as though Hitler were not yet Reichskanzler nor the Schutz Staffel an organ of the government. Nor was he entirely convinced that the Third Reich was destined to endure for more than a thousand years. We were not sure of the third guard, who was afraid of getting into trouble.
During the noon recess, when we all sat around the fire, we propagandized the SS guards. It was a pleasure to watch the comrades turning and guiding the conversation to the point where they wanted it. It was an indescribable sensation-listening to the old arguments of our meetings in the Friedrichshain and the Pharus Hall here under the very rifles of the Black Shirts, and noting their effectiveness. The work of the Party hadn't been in vain; the "Commune" stood fast.
"I hear you get paid by the stagger system now," Fritz remarked.
"Yes," one of the guards admitted. "The administration hasn't got the money to pay us all in full on the first and the fifteenth."
"And you've been cut again, too."
"Only temporarily-we're supposed to get our old pay again next month."
"What old pay? What you got at the very start? You've been cut twice already, haven't you? What do you get now?"
"Twenty-five a month," one of the prisoners cut in.
"Nothing of the kind," blurted the guard. "Thirty."
"But you got ninety at first."
"What does a stormleader get?" a comrade asked.
"Two hundred and fifty a month at least," suggested another provocatively.
"No," said a guard. "Not now any more."
"Your stormleaders are pretty young. Can't have been in the SS very long."
"Do you have Marzgefallene 2 among your officers too?"
"Well," the Schieber said, "one thing I've got to admit. You people are faster workers even than the SPG. Their bureaucrats had to sweat like galley slaves before they got to the top. But if your friend is a Nazi group-leader you can get your three stars for the asking."
"While the old fighters can stand guard at thirty marks a month," another prisoner added.
"Well," said the Schieber, "the government can't get everything done at once. First, they've got to expropriate the Jewish department stores; and lease them to the small shopkeepers. Then comes the turn of the corporations and trusts. How far have you got with them?"
"Oh, Tietz 3 is selling newspapers now in Potsdamer Platz," a prisoner said.
A shout of laughter, in which the three guards joined.
"Go ahead and laugh," one of the guards said. "This is just a starter."
"Sh!" said the Schieber. "Haven't you read that there's to be no talk of a sequel? No second revolution?"
"That's all right--we don't need a revolution like Russia's or the kind you want to start," a guard said "You've got to admit that there was less blood shed in our revolution than in any other." "We'll be able to tell whether that was a revolution when we see what you do with the power. Damned little, so far."
"Twenty million people lost their lives in the Russian revolution," a guard said. "What for? Do you really believe the workers there are living in clover? You've been in power there for fifteen years and the people haven t enough to eat. A cousin of mine in the building trade went to Russia to work. He and sixty others made a contract in Berlin to have part of their pay turned over to their families in Germany. They were promised a place to live and God knows what else. But when they got to Russia there weren't any rooms. First the company paid for them at a hotel-that cost more than what their wages came to. Then they had to live in barracks. The food's rationed, and the unrationed food's so expensive that a worker can't buy it. And the Russian workers grumbled because the Germans got more on their cards than they did. You can hardly blame them for that. Then, six months later, the company told them they couldn't go on paying in valuta. If they didn't want to work for rubles, they could go back. My cousin came back with twelve others. They all quit the Communist trade union. Do you call that Communism or Socialism by any chance?"
"Didn't he have anything else to tell?" said the Schieber. "How about unemployment in Russia? Whom do the factories belong to? And why aren't there enough rooms? Didn't he see anything of the cities that are being completely rebuilt, or the millions of peasants who are being turned into industrial workers?"
"That may be," the guard admitted. "But we can't have anything like that here. We've got too much industrial activity as it is. That's why we've got unemployment. Our problem is to transplant the city people back to the land. With all their slaving, the Russians will be in fifteen years just where we are today. And then the whole merry-go-round starts going the other way again."
"We haven't got too much industry," said the Schieber. "We've got far too little. There's too much of it only for private profit. In the Soviet Union every factory that's built means more wealth for the workers and peasants. But for every new factory that's built here, two old ones are closed down and the workers dismissed. The capitalists can't get rid of their junk because the people are too poor to buy it. Have you changed that state of affairs?"
"It's being changed, you can bet your boots on that," the guard said. "The capitalists know perfectly well that there's a new spirit abroad and that they can't go on doing as they please. Hitler'll see that justice is done to the people."
"Justice!" said the Schieber. "Look at it! Ninety five per cent of the prisoners in camp are people who've been struggling for a better existence. They wanted justice for themselves and their children. They were fed up with living at the mercy of the masters. Your justice consists of locking them up and treating them worse than criminals. Your papers say that all the foreign news stories about the mistreatment of prisoners are atrocity lies. Yet you see what goes on here under your very eyes. What about Schmitz, whom they beat to death? What about Heisten, who died in the First Aid Station? Keller hanged himself in the coop; the guards literally tore that fellow from Hamburg to bits. I don't have to go through the whole list for you. And the government knows it and tolerates it, but hasn't the courage to admit it. Is that your justice? Is that the moral renascence of the German people? Don't you realize that all this is bound to be avenged some day?"
The Schieber had spoken in such dreadful earnest that the trooper's face twitched with emotion
"Yes," he burst out, "but what would you have done to us? At least we have let you live. You'd have killed us all."
"We don't have to kill any workers," said the Schieber. "They belong to us. We've got the courage to acknowledge our revolutionary code before the whole world. In our concentration camps the parasites'll learn to work-the fine gentlemen who grew fat on our labor. We won't abuse them, but neither will we conceal the fact that we'll shoot them if they work against us. As long as you're in power, the prisons'll be filled with revolutionary workers. You'll take care not to do away with the concentration camps. You can't serve two masters, and because you serve the capitalists, you're bound to persecute the workers."
The Schieber took out his watch. "Well, time to work.
The letters had been written. The third guard had finally agreed to close his eyes to whatever went on. We waited in hope and anxiety for Friday. Anything might happen to ruin our plans-a letter seized, an unexpected change in the guard, an inspecting officer, treachery.
The Schieber forgot nothing. He even organized the line of retreat, in case things went wrong. Schultz, famous for his persistent "capitulations," took only one helping of potato gruel.
Friday came.
Never before had we followed so intently the progress of morning inspection and the assignment of the guards. We were given the right ones, which did away with the principal danger. Hardly a word was spoken on the march, and for the first time the squad worked as though they were performing voluntary labor. Thc inspecting officer kept us waiting longer than usual but we heard him approaching at last. "All is in order," the guards reported. Shortly afterwards the Schieber went to get wood and did not return till just before the noon hour.
"Yours is here," he whispered to Fritz. "To the right there, behind the pine trees in the hollow."
"May I step out, please?" Fritz asked the guards, and walked slowly toward the pines.
The guards and the prisoners maintained appearances. Not one of them betrayed by the slightest sign that anything unusual was afoot. The Schieber sent me for more wood.
"Go out on the road and relieve Kessler," he said. "I sent mine down there into the brushwood. I won't be gone more than an hour. If anything goes wrong, whistle on your fingers."
I remained on the lookout for Anna and for Schultz's girl. The forest was very still. It was a clear day in late autumn. The gossamer threads of cobwebs glittered and swayed in the sunlight.
Bertha came at a quarter past three. She had made poor train connections and arrived fifteen minutes before we had to return to camp. She walked beside Schultz as far as the highway, weeping hysterically. He kept patting her shoulder and said nothing.
On the way back to camp Schultz said to me, "Even if I had to spend a day in the coop for every minute she was here, I would not regret it."
Anna did not come.
Everything remained quiet at camp. Other comrades in the squad were beginning to talk of sending for their wives when trouble broke out in the first watch.
Since there was no money to pay their wages a number of troopers were dismissed. The commandant made a speech to the dismissed men on the sacredness of duty. To be a German, he said, meant to do a thing for its own sake. He promised them reinstatement as soon as the camp should be enlarged. The troopers listened to the speech in silence. Next morning the following inscription was discovered, smeared in tar on the door of the guard room:
"We're fighting not for German honor.
We're fighting for new millionaires."
By order of the commandant ten of the dismissed troopers who had already left camp were arrested and brought back. They all protested their innocence but were locked up in the coop till they should be ready to confess. The incident had far-reaching consequences. The inquiry shifted from the troopers to the prisoners and many facts were brought to light. The officers discovered that discussions between prisoners and guards, although strictly prohibited, had been carried on in almost all the work squads; that the prisoners bought tobacco and cigarettes in the villages although forbidden to carry money with them; that the ban on smoking had been violated with the knowledge and connivance of the guards; that letters had been smuggled in and out of camp. The administration was furious. Some of the guards were replaced; twenty-five of them were kept in camp as special prisoners. All the work squads were broken up and reassembled. Our Schieber fell a victim to the "reorganization."
The camp police did not forget that, despite flogging and confinement to the coop, the Schieber had refused to name the guard who shot the doe. Now they took their revenge. He was accused of having provided the CPG with information about the camp and was ordered to name his accomplices among the troopers. At first they promised him immunity from punishment if he would tell what he knew. He only replied, "I had nothing to do with any of it. But apart from that, I wouldn't betray any SS-man." They beat him till he couldn't move.
I was assigned to another squad where I was a stranger and knew none of the comrades. The comfortable tempo at which we'd worked in Dyke Squad Number Two was a thing of the past. The guards beat us when we did not fill the handcars or drag them uphill fast enough. Not a word was spoken all day that was not absolutely essential. That evening it was rumored about camp that the Schieber had been shot. His words, "I wouldn't betray any SS-man," went the rounds.
Two days later he was removed to the standing coop. This consisted of cells thirty-two inches wide, twenty inches deep, and six feet high, in which the prisoner could only stand upright. A few small holes at face level provided him with air. Gerhart Seger, a prisoner who escaped from the concentration camp at Oranienburg, has called these cells stone coffins. At Hubertshof they were wooden coffins, built from the commandant's specifications in the camp carpentry shop. The floors were planed off at a sharp angle to prevent the slightest possibility of the prisoner's crouching on the ground. Indeed, the prisoner could not really stand upright. He had to slide forward, knocking his head against the door. After the first few hours his ankles would start swelling, and when the coffin was opened twenty-four hours later he would fall out like a sack of potatoes.
In such a cell the Schieber, who must have been seriously ill from the abuse he had been subjected to, was kept for three days and three nights. The camp police were determined to drive him to suicide, but they did not know that the guards opened his door at night and let him out so that he could move his limbs. They brought him sandwiches and coffee, too, and rubbed him with alcohol. They were afraid he might still tell what he knew.
Three days later he was examined again. He stuck to his original statement. They put him into the penal work squad and commended him to the special "care" of the guards. It wasn't long before he'd been made Schieber of the penal squad by tacit agreement. He had managed to get around the new troopers too.
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