“Auschwitz. A Monograph of the Human”. Part 10. Hope

Transcription of the podcast

The book ‘Auschwitz. A Monograph on the Human’ is the first of its kind in the world to try to depict human emotions within the reality of Auschwitz camp. Its author, Museum Director Dr. Piotr Cywiński, draws on fragments of memoirs and testimonies from more than 450 Survivors. It is the words of these direct witnesses that form the basis of this reflection on the human condition amid the process of dehumanization at the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz. In the podcast, we present ten chapters of this unique story about humanity facing the most extreme test.

Part 10. Hope
Read by Grey Stafford

Halina Birenbaum entitled her fundamental memoir Hope is the Last to Die. And this not a poetic sentiment telling us to always hope for a better future. In the light of the vast majority of concentration camp memoirs, it is a rule of nature and physical reality. A human being lived only as long as he or she still had hope.

Halina Birenbaum
“There were people among us who had lost strength for the struggle for existence due to the beatings, mud, physical and spiritual anguish. They preferred an instantaneous death on the camp’s electrified wires, or they reported sick, which amounted to suicide. Yet most of us wanted to survive at any price and we clung to life with all our might”.

Viktor Frankl
“The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly, in the form of a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced camp inmate. We all feared this moment—not for ourselves, which would have been pointless, but for our friends. Usually it began with the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and wash or to go out on the parade grounds. No entreaties, no blows, no threats had any effect”.

Eugenia Kaczyńska
“And I, dear God, don’t even know why I’m still alive. Perhaps I’ve got a little more luck than others? Just luck. Because I certainly don’t have more physical endurance. Or maybe it’s because I never lose hope. Hope is the medium that allows me to persevere. Hope keeps ignited the spark of life and prevents me from losing my mind”.

On the other hand, if there was a moment of physical or mental breakdown, or a sober assessment of the chances of survival for a few weeks, then clinging on to hope was no longer a matter of course.

Hermann Langbein
“In Dachau I had hoped to survive the camp, but in Auschwitz I quickly lost this hope”.

Samuel Althaus

“It was an existence completely devoid of hope. Simple instinct led us to try to make it through one more day, or one more hour, or even one more minute”.

Raphael Esrail
“We are just condemned men waiting to die. Ultimately, the unfavorable for the Nazis turn of events in the war will only increase the danger for us—convicts with a deferred execution. The SS will have to “liquidate” us before the Soviet troops arrive. It is difficult to have sensible hope in these conditions”.

Dora Goland-Blaufoux
“Denise, who kept on saying “they’ll send me there”, was indeed selected. She attracted all the misfortunes because she was convinced, they would come”.

Similarly to Dante Alighieri’s words of greeting, Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate, already from the outset, in a premeditated and organized way, the objective of camp was to deprive the Zugang of any hope. That was the purpose of the brutal murder of selected individuals from practically every newly arrived transport, that was the purpose of the quarantine terror, and that was the message of all the welcoming speeches.

Andre Balbin
“Blockältester stands before us: “The first commandment: no talking in the ranks. Here I warn you, if you behave well, you will have a chance to live for three months. Understood?” He pauses to see if his words have made an impression. The response is a deathly silence. All the heads are bowed. “You will have a chance to live for three months.” Yes, we understand. We are sentenced to die”.

It was not the prospect of death that the camp showed, but rather its omnipresence, constantly knocking on the barrack door of every prisoner.

Bolesław Dziewięcki
“I then saw a huge flame from the crematorium chimney. I was overawed by horror and a fearful longing for freedom or passing away to the afterlife”.

Shari Leibovitz
“And the smoke-laden air was a constant reminder that life was precious, not only in terms of a normal span of years, but every hour and every moment of it”.

It is, therefore, not surprising that the Sonderkommando prisoners, who worked in the very center of the killing machine, were totally convinced that sooner or later they would themselves be murdered and burned. As the “bearers of secrets”, they were indeed first on the list, and even if several dozens of them actually survived the camp, it was only thanks to the chaos of the final moments of the evacuation of Auschwitz.

Shlomo Venezia
“No, my horizons were restricted to the moment when I would be killed. Some people say they resisted because they still hoped to get free one day. But I didn’t think I’d ever be able to free myself from that hell. I don’t think any of the men in the Sonderkommando maintained such a naive hope”.

Uncertainty may theoretically coexist with hope; indeed, such is the experience of many people in the normal world. On a deeper level, one can be tempted to say that there is no need for hope when there is a hundred percent certainty. But for hope to develop in a situation of constant uncertainty in the camp it had to be fed with at least the tiniest signals making the possibilities of survival to seem feasible.

Viktor Frankl
“Former prisoners, when writing or relating their experiences, agree that the most depressing influence of all was that a prisoner could not know how long his term of imprisonment would be. He had been given no date for his release. (In our camp it was pointless even to talk about it.) Actually, a prison term was not only uncertain but unlimited. A well-known research psychologist has pointed out that life in a concentration camp could be called a “provisional existence.” We can add to this by defining it as a “provisional existence of unknown limit”.”

Therefore, it is worth taking a closer look at what factors raised hopes among prisoners according to what was most frequently mentioned in the post-war accounts of the survivors. The first were conversations that allowed one to make plans about the future. Not entirely important, or true, or corresponding to the chances of survival, but these, together with developments on the warfront provided the prospect of liberation. It was a bit like escaping into the world of dreams, but theoretically feasible enough to treat survival as a challenge so as to be able to achieve something in life.1641 The chief role of such conversations—at least how it seems to me—was the rejection of death and a very conscious strengthening of the conviction that there was something to strive for. So, there were conversations about what would happen after the war, who would be engaged in what, what the priorities would be, what they would personally try to achieve, and what spheres they would like to prove themselves in. Above all, prisoners convinced each other that the prospect of returning to the normal world was real.

Charlotte Delbo
“To talk meant that we could make plans about going home, because to trust we would return was a way of forcing luck’s hand. The women who had stopped believing they would return were as good as dead”.

Józef Matynia
“We have hope, not knowing exactly what for. We have to persist. A friendly glance, a kind word is enough”.

The second factor was that of predictions of the approaching end of the war, the end of the Nazi system and the downfall of Germany. And here again it was irrelevant whether or not the premises were well-founded or whether the prospect was too remote to constitute any realistic consolation. The important thing was that it convinced prisoners that the end was coming and that it would arrive sooner rather than later.

Halina Birenbaum
“I pulled Hela onto her bunk. I washed her wounds, scratches and bruises with the herb concoction we were given to drink, I wrapped her in a blanket and tried to comfort her. So I told her that we should certainly live to see the day of liberation soon, as everything was pointing to a rapid end to the war. My words, though very far from reality, clearly brought Hela relief. I could see this, even though she could not answer me”.

Liana Millu
““The doctor reads the papers,” whispered Gustine, as if letting me in on a priceless secret, “and she said it’ll all be over in two weeks.” I had been hearing that line for four months and would endure the equivocal pleasure of hearing it for still another year”.

Any piece of information, any rumor could be the basis for strengthening this conviction, and the verification of facts was irrelevant. It was not a desire to know the real state of affairs: all that mattered was what the person wanted to hear, what his or her ears needed to hear. An analogy here could be made to mythical religious rules that supposedly explain the meaning of life.

Rudolf Diem
“The release of prisoners from the camp was always a great experience for all those who remained. More than one deluded himself: now it will be my turn. Because they released a prisoner two numbers behind or in front of me, because he was arrested under a similar charge to mine, etc.”.

Krystyna Żywulska
“We feverishly hung onto every possible opportunity and every hope of getting out. A naive rumor circulated that during an international conference between Churchill and Hitler, Churchill had demanded that Hitler abolish the concentration camps, particularly Auschwitz. Hitler had to give an answer within hours otherwise Germany would be razed to the ground. In general, we were convinced that whole world thought and cared primarily about us”.

As the front neared in late 1944, every thud heard from over the horizon unequivocally confirmed the inevitability of the fall of Germany and the liberation of the camp. Each air raid in the Auschwitz region (there were four massive air raids, mainly targeting the nearby Buna-Werke synthetic rubber factory) heralded the coming of liberation forces.

Natan Żelechower
“We listen out in the nighttime silence for distant sounds. We wait for the first boom of artillery. Every stutter of a motorbike we are ready to interpret as machinegun fire, every knock as the firing of a gun”.

Mietek Weintraub
“It’s total euphoria. For the first time in these five agonizing years, I can see the beginning of the end. The light at the end of the tunnel”.

Naturally, those who observed, or who actually took part in dismantling the installations of the mass killing, drew from this event—incidentally, quite rightly—conclusions that were very hopeful. News about such developments spread very quickly throughout the camp.

Maria Dziurdzia
“In December 1944, some of the women prisoners of our Kommando were taken to “Abbruchkommando Krematorium III.” We worked in that Kommando together with male prisoners in the dismantling of the crematorium. There were five ovens in this crematorium. The male prisoners knocked out the bricks and we arranged them on trestles. We also took out window frames. I was, moreover, in the basement, where the gas chamber was. I remember that the walls of the chamber were painted with a light color. Although the work was not light, it gave us great satisfaction and inspired hope that we would survive to be free. The dismantling of the crematorium buildings was tantamount to the defeat of the Nazi Reich”.

Such events and such types of optimism could work miracles on a prisoner’s mentality, they were able to provide him or her with additional strength because they opened up perspectives—perhaps it was because new perspectives were so sorely lacking in the camp, perspectives that were essential to having any sense of hope.

Simone Alizon
“Ultimately, life or death were all the same to me. I was convinced of victory. Believing in something so much could move mountains. It is not important what you believe in, it is enough just to believe. But it has to be total, absolute, unshakable faith”.

In conditions of uncertainty, however, when there was a lack of rational conditions on which to build hope, one had to search for them elsewhere. And here there emerged a collective tendency in the camp to search for explanations in what was irrational, in signs, in fortune-telling, predictions and paranormal perspectives, which—analyzed and obligatorily positively commented upon—additionally helped drown out the lack of real prospects and in themselves satisfied the need for good news.1658 That was the third important factor in creating the missing space for hope.

Primo Levi
“We had an incorrigible tendency to see in every event a symbol and a sign”.

Jerzy Brandhuber
“An important role in the camp was played by so-called “parols.” Throughout the camp “news” was incessantly circulated that the war would end in three months’ time”.

Dreams were also interpreted in the camp on a daily basis. There was even a special guide to camp dreams, based on pre-war dream dictionaries and adapted to concentration camp realities. I have covered this subject in a previous book, and I shall not cite here all the numerous examples of dreams that inspired hope. It is fascinating, however, that some of these dreams were indeed prophetic, which only convinced the prisoners to believe in them even more. The woman whose dream is described below did indeed die exactly six weeks later, and many other such examples appear in the memoirs of former prisoners.

Zofia Kossak
“Gentle, quiet Miecia Korompay had a dream that her daughter, the adorable Elisabeth, who had been tortured by the Gestapo in front of her mother’s eyes, came to her and said: “Don’t cry, mother, in six weeks your sorrows will end…” The dream was exceptionally vivid, realistic and Korompay awoke still hearing her daughter’s voice. She had no doubts—and her companions shared her conviction that the dream had a prophetic meaning. … In that time, the Pawiak transport experienced an apparently inevitable phase of unhealthy mysticism, prophetic dreams and all sorts of supernatural phenomena concerning the future. What caused this wave? That stubborn desire to find some grounds for hope at a time when it was still too early to give up, but all the evidence from the outside made it unsustainable—was it really a premonition on the eve of decisive events of finding oneself at the end of the road? It is hard to say. One way or another, at the end of November 1943, the camp was showered with supernatural phenomena. There wasn’t a day without a new dream, fortune-telling, signs in the sky”.

Jadwiga Apostoł-Staniszewska
““Don’t let yourself be taken in by dreams,” said Stasia decisively. Guard yourself against them like lice. They gnaw away at your nerves. … Some find having their fortunes told helps them survive, I don’t. I’ve developed a thick crust; I won’t allow for strong impressions”.

Primo Levi
“If we were logical, we would resign ourselves to this evidence, that our fate is utterly unknowable, that every conjecture is arbitrary and has absolutely no foundation in reality. But men are rarely logical when their own fate is at stake …
I already know the Lager well enough to realize that one should never anticipate, especially optimistically”.

The fourth factor that had offered hope was every single improvement, no matter how small. It could be something truly significant, such as being transferred to a different, much better Kommando, receiving a parcel from home, or fixing an arrangement with someone in the camp aristocracy. It could also be the first warm days in spring following a bitterly cold winter, the healing of a troublesome wound, organizing a more comfortable pair of shoes, or finding an acquaintance that one thought was long dead.

Neftali Frankel
“During the time I had worked as an unskilled laborer, as Father also did, I had entertained no idea of improving my lot, not even regarding my future. The truth was that my cynical fatalism had grown to the point that, deep inside, I had merely accepted a fate from which there would be no escape. I lived with utter indifference for what tomorrow might bring. I felt that my fate was linked to that of thousands upon thousands who, day after day, were being exterminated at the death camps where we lived. There had been times, in fact, when I had come to wish that my own final moment would not take too long in coming; at least it seemed like one way out of my miserable existence. … After getting the welder’s apprenticeship, my attitude changed for the better. I felt a bit more hopeful …”

Jadwiga Sarnowska
“[After getting into a good Kommando working in Rajsko] I will never forget being overcome with emotions at the sight of blooming daises and hens strutting in the field. I then thought to myself that apart from camp mud and the crows screeching above it, there was, after all, also another life”.

Hope is a great force in the face of danger. But like every force, it can work either to a person’s advantage, or disadvantage. The SS understood this perfectly. Polish Jews deported to the camp, especially from mid-1943, were increasingly aware of what to expect in Auschwitz. But those deported from other parts of occupied Europe were deliberately and systematically fed various lies, so that they also had hope. They were told: you are going to be resettled, take your most essential items, sign your luggage, so that you can more easily reclaim it later, the elderly will be driven away in trucks to a transit camp, (in the undressing room) tie the shoelaces together so that you don’t lose your shoes, don’t forget about the towel and soap… A person who is in no real danger does not appreciate the power of hope. And a person standing on the verge of death, if capable of thinking coolly and rationally for a moment, would have to come to the conclusion that his or her situation was quite literally fatal. And yet, in such situations, people will clutch at the tiniest glimmer of hope. The will to survive causes a person to sharpen the meaning of that very will, and in his or her mind, often integrates only that which assures a personal sense of safety, relief, and postponement of the visions of the worst.

Wacław Maliszewski
“Crowds of Hungarian Jews had to wait for their turn. Sometimes we worked near these people [as the glaziers’ Kommando]. Once, seeing a crowd waiting for their turn to go the gas chambers, I turned to my two assistants, who were Hungarian Jews, to explain to their compatriots what fate awaited them. I looked with interest at the faces of the people as they were talking. Then I saw them start arguing. Of course, I didn’t understand anything of what they were saying. After a while, my companions gave up and walked away from the waiting Jews, shrugging their shoulders. I asked my companions about the outcome of their conversation and they said that the newly arrived refused to believe them, saying since “you are alive, so we shall surely also be able to coexist in the camp”.”

Krystyna Żywulska
“That’s what this whole horror is about, that people have hope until the last minute. That is why they go. And we, in spite of such experience, we do the same. Can you be surprised by those people? Everything suggests that these are our last ours. We are afraid to face the truth”.

Providing deceptive glimmers of hope was systematically practiced by the SS1676 and not only in the case of the mass murder of Jews. Analysis of all the aspects of SS procedure shows that they had weaponized hope.

Jerzy Skotnicki
“I also remember seven Russian officers who had just arrived from the POW camp: they were bathed, had their Aufnahme sheets compiled, and were then tattooed, but all this was done to deceive them, as they suspected that they were going to be executed. Apparently, resistance on their part was anticipated”.

These are, however, reports of what was seen from the side. Obviously, there are no recollections whatsoever from the murdered victims. We will never learn what had then gone on in their minds, and thus we remain at the mercy of our imagination. On the other hand, the situation was different in the camp. Those who had been there for a longer time, knew its mechanisms, also sometimes had established contacts in the prisoner community, and at least could try to escape death… Sometimes, not even these possibilities, but a simple stroke of luck meant that someone who had already been chosen, selected to be put to death—unlike those on the ramp—being perfectly aware of what awaited them, nevertheless avoided being killed.1678 These are quite extraordinary records of the thought processes going through the human mind when facing imminent death. They have reached us by sheer chance. The survivors of such situations had not planned to write down their experiences. The first quote is about the so-called death block in the women’s camp in Birkenau, where women selected for the gas chamber were held without anything to eat or drink until a sufficient number of them had been gathered.

Anna Kowalczykowa
“Block No. 25 was surrounded by a wall. The block had no floor, only sludgy mud. Corpses lay at one end of the block and around three thousand women sat at the other end, listening out for the engine sounds of the truck that would deliver them to the gas chambers. The mood was terrible. Tears, lamentations, constant praying and cursing. Women crazed with fear threw themselves at each other, hitting, biting, scratching, slashing at each other. I could not cry. I stood motionless at the barred window wondering whether death by gassing was painful and whether you could feel anything during the burning of corpses. I wondered whether they would kill us with gas or burn us alive”.

Lusia Haberfeld
“But there were five crematoria, how could I not worry? I was not yet thirteen, and I wanted so much to live. I ached, thinking how I would never see the sky or sun again. Never see a flower or a blade of grass, or feel the wind on my body—never to love a man or be loved. Never to be married and have children. Instead, to be burned in flame and ashes. I was very, very frightened. I had been sentenced to death, and lay sick and worried every night”.

Hope is the last to die, as in the title of Halina Birenbaum’s book. Hope was the force that could take one through the worst situations, it moved mountains, strengthened a person in an extraordinary way, but it was also the force that drove people to their own death because it told them to read all the signs in heaven and earth always in an uncritically positive way. Regardless of what they actually meant. This affected survivors often even many years later in their assessment of the situation, specifically, whether betrayed or not, the faith of the survivors in humanity outside of the camp. It was a paradoxical faith:

Raya Kagan
“We who have experienced on our own skins the cruelties of that period in the heart of Europe have not ceased to believe in the conscience of humankind”.

But this had an even broader effect, still inside the camp, on their assessment of the return to normalcy, one that was possible if they only had managed to survive. This was very important because every hope was rooted in the prospect of returning to normalcy. Yet in their minds, the prisoners also felt that their sense of normalcy had once and for all died. They could not return to it after experiencing two worlds that were so completely different. They feared that even if they had left the camp, the world beyond the barbed wire fence of Auschwitz would neither recognize, nor understand them.

Krystyna Żywulska
“Do you think that even if you survive, you’ll be similar to normal people?”

Zofia Kossak
““I fear the moment of return,” admits one. Mummy keeps praying for me to return—though not actually for me, but for the girl who left home… Yet now I’m a completely different person”.

This was the tenth episode of the podcast based on the book by Dr Piotr Cywiński ‘Auschwitz. A Monograph on the Human’.
Read by Grey Stafford

The voices of the survivors were provided by volunteer narrators of the Auschwitz Memorial:
Toon Dreessen
Sarah Edwards
Greg Littlefield
Mike Skagerlind
Michael Takiff
Tom Vamos
Kate Hannah Weinrieb
and Therese McLaughlin

Adaptation for the podcast: Agnieszka Juskowiak-Sawicka
Introduction words: Paweł Sawicki
Music: JivexMusic

Testimonies and memoirs used into the podcast:
Halina Birenbaum (48693), “Hope Is the Last to Die”, p. 114.
Victor Frankl (119104), “Man’s Search For Meaning”, p. 82.
Eugenia Kaczyńska (45887), in: „Byłem numerem”, p. 132.
Hermann Langbein (60355), “People in Auschwitz”, p. 91.
Samuel Althaus (73538), “Where is God?”, p. 74.
Raphael Esrail (173295), “L’espérance d’un baiser”, p. 146.
Dora Goland-Blaufoux (80593), “Un présent qui s’accroche a moi”, p. 94.
Andre Balbin (41796), “De Lodz a Auschwitz en passant par la Lorraine”, p. 67.
Bolesław Dziewięcki (125546), „Z dna piekła”, p. 43.
Shari Lebovitz (39439), [“Shari: A True Story”], p. 93.
Shlomo Venezia (182727), “Inside the Gas Chambers”, p. 104.
Victor Frankl (119104), “Man’s Search For Meaning”, p. 78.
Charlotte Delbo (31661), “None of Us Will Return”, p. 99.
Liliane Badour (75127), in: “Esrail, L’espérance d’un baiser”, p. 103.
Halina Birenbaum (48693), “Hope Is the Last to Die”, p. 119.
Liana Millu (A-5384), “Smoke Over Birkenau”, p. 148.
Rudolf Diem (10023), Account in: Memoirs, vol. 172, pp. 48-49.
Krystyna Żywulska (55908), “I Survived Auschwitz”, p. 90.
Natan Żelechower (127262), Account in: Memoirs, vol. 83, p. 66.
Leon Weintraub (n.n.), “The Arrival”, p. 170.
Maria Dziurdzia (7408), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 36, p. 93.
Simone Alizon (31776), “L’exercice de vivre”, p. 210.
Primo Levi (174517), “If This Is a Man”, p. 73.
Jerzy Brandhuber (87112), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 78, p. 226.
Zofia Kossak (64491), „Z otchłani”, pp. 211-212.
Jadwiga Apostoł-Staniszewska (26273), „Echa okupacyjnych lat”, p. 280.
Primo Levi (174517), “If This Is a Man”, p. 33.
Victor Frankel (161040), “I Survived Hell”, pp. 112-113.
Janina Sarnowska (29860), Account in Testimonies, vol. 35, p. 105.
Wacław Maliszewski (59195), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 16, pp. 69-70.
Krystyna Żywulska (55908), “I Survived Auschwitz”, p. 221 .
Jerzy Skotnicki (125762), Testimonies in the criminal trial of former SS staff [IPN GK 196/89], in: Chronicles of Terror, t. 5, p. 78.
Anna Kowalczykowa (27658), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 19, p. 67.
Lusia Haberfeld (48703), “Lauferin. The Runner of Birkenau” (Victoria, 2002), p. 51.
Raya Kagan (7984), “Des femmes au bureau de l’enfer”, p. 80.
Krystyna Żywulska (55908), „I Survived Auschwitz”, p. 106.
Zofia Kossak (64491), „Z otchłani”, p. 245.