“Auschwitz. A Monograph of the Human”. Part 3. Inner Life

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 3. Inner life
Read by Grey Stafford

The life of the concentration camp person had two worlds: that of the camp, daily, continuous, terrible, and that of his or her own—internal, fleeting, illusory, nostalgic, but how very much one’s own! The only escape from the outside world was the inner world. Nostalgic thoughts, imagination, imaginings, dreams—everything that for at least a moment occupied one’s thoughts with something other than the all-encompassing camp. Longing after the normal world, home, family, freedom, a life full of everyday underappreciated pleasures that were unattainable in the camp—all this came to life in the mind, though while for some it was an escape, for others it had destructive effect.

Zofia Kossak
“Here in the camp, bordering with death, only the essentials mattered, therefore no one mentioned longing after parties, distinctions, travels, intellectual pleasures. Only for what the soul cried out in pain, for the children, the husband, the family, the home…”

Bogdan Bartnikowski
“Home… the memories of home come back every day. But why? We saw our homes burning; we know that it’s just ruins that remained. But we still stay—our home, at home, go home…”

Anything that resembled or was otherwise reminiscent of home and normality, took on mythical proportions. Nostalgic recollections were among the ways of temporarily escaping from camp realities. In the short term, they relaxed and lessened the tension of camp life.

Viktor Frankl
“This intensification of inner life helped the prisoner find a refuge from the emptiness, desolation and spiritual poverty of his existence, by letting him escape into the past. When given free rein, his imagination played with past events, often not important ones, but minor happenings and trifling things. His nostalgic memory glorified them, and they assumed a strange character”.

Gerta Solan
“I also play the game of nostalgia, recalling the memories of past to forget, for a while, the terrible present. The game was to specify a street in Prague, name one store after the other and list the merchandise they carried”.

The ability to create a free world, one composed of memories and dreams, but one that was different from that camp world, allowed one, at least for a moment to escape from Auschwitz with one’s thoughts. The proportion between that which realistically occurred during past experiences and that which was longed for, unrealistically desired, and idealized was irrelevant. As long as this world allowed one to escape from reality.

Mieczysława Chylińska
“Beyond the barbed wire, the world of imagination really existed. It was enough to close your eyes to see it. for us it was the vison of ideal images, awaited though elusive, but by unshakeable will summoned. “We’re living an illusion,” said a close companion. Think of what hurts more, submitting to the intrusions of imagination or to a reality replete with bestiality? “The illusion we all feel gives us strength, reality takes it away,” I replied”.

Primo Levi
“We preserved the memories of our previous life, but blurred and remote, and hence profoundly sweet and sad, like the memories of early childhood and all things that are over …”.

A specific moment when stories from the time of freedom could be shared was in the evening. Conversations on the bunks or berths often rose to become real institutions of mutual spiritual and mental support. Shared reminiscences of those lying next to each other allowed prisoners to drift away into slumber imagining in their dreams all that was unattainable.

Camille Touboul
“Each tells the story of her life “before”, perhaps beautifying it because every experience is a history we want to dream about. And the countries to which their journeys took us, did we really see the them? It doesn’t matter!”

Charlotte Delbo
“Clustered in little groups of friends, we chatted. Each one spoke of her province, her home, invited the others to visit her. You will come, won’t you? You will come. We promised. We made so many trips”.

Such stories had a therapeutic effect when faced with misfortunes. In this respect, Raya Kagan’s account of receiving news that the Wilno ghettos had been liquidated is telling. Indeed, remembering was often an invocation of a world that was gone. And here, of course depending on what the lost world meant, we find completely different emotional references.

Paula Gruber-Herszkopf
“During the day, I had no time to reflect. It was only at night, when I was laying hungry and exhausted in my bunk that my thoughts strayed back to the past. I thought again and again of the last day that I was together with my parents and how they were driven to their deaths after that. There had not even been a chance to say goodbye. Had they suffered much, were they together until the last minute? I knew that they were happy that I was not with them”.

Halina Birenbaum
““I have left a little daughter at home…” she added after a moment, but so indistinctly that I hardly understood her. At the word “home” I felt bitterness overwhelm me. I envied this red-faced, ugly Alwira, who spoke German as well as the oversees, for having somewhere a home, a family, a little daughter to whom she would return when the war ended. But where should I go, to whom would I return if I managed to survive this hell? Who in this world would be waiting for me? Who would rejoice at my return?”

For memories, even if for a moment they allowed thoughts to escape from the camp, could also bring on great pain. Many accounts even present them, on balance, as dangerous, as something that could overwhelm, weaken the will, break resistance, bring someone down. That is how, among others, Primo Levi perceived it when lying sick in the camp hospital, when he had more time to reflect:

“We know where we come from; memories of the world outside crowd our sleeping and our waking hours, we become aware, with amazement, that we have forgotten nothing, every memory evoked rises before us with painful clarity”.

Jerzy Brandhuber
“And in the evening, you hear fewer and fewer whispered conversations about being released. They lie and think, still they think, and often a tear in their eyes speaks of the subject of their distant thoughts. Those who cannot stop it, break down”.

Hence, some of the prisoners constantly struggled against their memories, incessantly attempting to eradicate the past, not returning to it even in their thoughts. Fighting nostalgia was particularly an important element of survival for all those who saw the faces of loved ones of the past, about whom nothing was known other than perhaps the fact that they were already dead.

Liliane Badour
“I reject any thought. Returning to the past, to joyful moments destroys my willpower. I don’t want to think about Henri and René anymore. I have to fight with myself. I must search for something positive in this impossible situate ion”.

Leon Ariditti
“Oscar murmurs, “We must have no past, no more past,” in an altered voice, the voice of someone different from his ordinary self. “The past is our enemy. It will weaken us.” Oscar is right. Yet the past is Papa and Ida”.

Was it at all possible? In the short-term—certainly. Everyday life in the camp and the incessant number of external stimuli—at least during the day—allowed or rather even forced prisoners to concentrate on the present. Nostalgia, ever-vigilant, would return at any free moment. Suddenly a clear signal associated with the free world would appear, causing a deep emotional crisis.

Anna Molnar Hegedus
“In my Waschraum, the workers were of a high caliber—there was an opera singer from Vienna with an enchanting voice who used to scrub the wash basins to the sweet sounds of La Traviata or Rigoletto. The heart-rending sounds opened the floodgates of my feelings, and tears started pouring from my eyes. Things were only bearable as long as we didn’t allow anything to touch our souls, as long as we worried only about having enough to eat”.

David Wisnia
“I pictured my aunts living their comfortable and safe lives in New York. It was unfathomable to me that we inhabited the same planet and looked up at the same sky”.

Maurice Cling
“Stooping over the bowls, I noticed on the other side of the river, school children, properly dressed with satchels on their backs. So, there is normal life on the other side of the river? Perhaps school has already started in France? Best not to think about it. The chasm is too great”.

Even the letters and parcels, that desired link with the old world, available only to “Aryan” prisoners and the object of great envy for others, also brought on bouts of nostalgia that the recipients struggled to cope with.

Zofia Kossak
“Each arrival of a letter rattled the soul, it stirred the deepest recesses of thought, feelings that had been trampled on and buried by the misfortunes and mundaneness of camp life. Faced with a letter written with the hand of a loved one, the happy past stopped being a myth, a dream. It was once again very close, real, as if you had just had it. All the efforts of the will to accustom yourself with its loss, crumbled, all self-control was lost. The wound now hurt as much as it did at the moment of separation”.

So, everything returned from the past, from that world, and it devastated nerves. Adults, involuntarily, began to think about their youth and childhood. In moments of extreme danger or nervous breakdown, scenes of childhood safety returned, primal feelings from one’s earliest years were revived.

Marian Pankowski
“My land was underwater. Only one word was saved from the flood: mama. And it was even detached from the Sanok landscape, from the linden tree with clouds of bees making music above it, from the grass smelling of chamomile and thyme… Only one word, two Indo-European syllables, baby-like with a milky fragrance, mama”.

Romana Duracz
“We only really need her in childhood. When we take our first steps. Lost in the great incomprehensible world. Totally reliant on her. When she feeds us, dresses us, hums us to sleep, cuddles us. As we grow older, we start moving away from her. With time, mother must give way to a boy, then a husband and children of your own. Over the years, she becomes less and less essential. Only for one more moment does she become the only one. Only at the hour of our death, when we resemble that defenseless child, we summon her with frigid lips: “Mama!””

Often, the greater the difficulty to survive the concentration camp reality, the greater the exhaustion and the threats, the more, therefore, contrasted and dangerous were the memories, the more often and harder they struck—and, additionally, they struck at unexpected moments. Nostalgia was one of the key factors in camp life.

Stefan Budziaszek
“It was as impossible for prisoners to overcome nostalgia as it was for them to eliminate their hard labor, hunger, infectious diseases, etc.”.

Similar in effect to nostalgia were fantasies, though an essentially different spiritual narcotic, anaesthetizing everyday hardships. They did not refer to the past, but presented a different, fictitious image of the present or of a blissful future that was to come after liberation, after the war, once “all this was over.”

Maria Ślisz-Oyrzyńska
„Dreams saved me from breaking down and gave me moral strength. Free thoughts ran far away towards blueish mountains on the horizon . My world of dreams was very helpful to me in my despair, longings, disappointments, it restored dying hope, sated me with its beauty and visions, it soothed me with memories of my mother, sisters, home and freedom”.

Mieczysława Chylińska
“Living in the world of imagination was often the proverbial lifeline. One dreamed of everything that concerned freedom. The prisoner fantasized, imagined situations in the free world and imagined herself telling loved ones about them, savoring the smallest details”.

Fantasies must have accompanied all prisoners, but on the bunks in the evenings, it is a fact that most often such fantasies were recounted by some, while absorbed by others, who listened intently, asking for details, pondering over possible developments in certain themes, all of which indicates how great there was the need to escape into the world of fantasy.
Objects and experiences that the prisoners missed most became the subjects of their reveries. And that which was missed was quite common in the concentration camp reality.

Eva Schloss
“On our bunk, Mutti and I fantasized about what we would do when we were free again. We talked about warm baths with soap, sleeping between clean sheets, eating with knife and fork—all the civilized delights that we had taken for granted and that had been denied us for what seemed like a lifetime”.

Many fantasies, however, were experienced individually, in the secrecy of an individual’s own imagination.

Alojzy Fros
“Among my various defense mechanisms, probably subconsciously at the time, was my world of dreams and fantasies. Lying on my camp bunk, I was able to immerse myself in some idealized world of the future and forget about my surroundings, more, I lost touch with my surroundings to such an extent that returning to reality required some mental effort. I also managed to go so deeply into a fantasy world where the experiences were so strong that I had a hard time making myself understand that it was all unreal. The most frequent ones included gliding through the air, defying the laws of gravity, an extremely pleasant experience, and so intensive that to this day, in some deep recesses of my consciousness, these wonderful sensations still exist”.

Willi Berler
“And I must admit that what stopped me, in those atrocious days of suffering and exhaustion, from drowning in a black hole of desperation and allowing myself to fall to my death, was not longing for home, not regret for a life foolishly interrupted, nor any grand ideal. No, at the risk of sounding frivolous, I must confess that what kept me going was a desperate wish to return one day to the mountains and hurl myself down the ski slopes onto the bright soft snow”.

The subjects of fantasy were inspired by hope, which in turn was inspired by the conditions in which a given prisoner lived. When additional food portions appeared in the camp hospital, delivered illegally by fellow prisoners from the camp kitchen, this bolstered morale and thus the patients’ musings would be shaped by notions of freedom.

Tadeusz Sobolewicz
“As a result the atmosphere there became friendly and conversations were started up about freedom. “What will I do when I get out of this hell?”—that was the constant theme among us convalescents”.

This momentary euphoria, triggered by even a partial satisfaction of hunger, can be contrasted with the fantasies of many prisoners on the verge of total exhaustion. Two quotes by Kazimierz Piechowski describing his own state extreme fatigue may serve as an example:
Most often my dreams concern a slice of bread. I long for life, and so far, it is unimaginably far away.

“Most often my dreams concern a slice of bread”.

“I long for life, and so far, it is unimaginably far away”.

More resilient prisoners perceived nostalgia, escapes to the past and dreams of the future as weakening factors, pleasant delusions that drew the individual away from what was most important, the daily struggle to survive.

Zofia Posmysz
“Dreams of freedom, making plans for the future, demobilized. A heavy price was paid for such dreams. Too heavy. Experienced prisoners, like Tadeusz, thought of survival. That is what they focused on. They summoned all their strength for what needed to be done now”.

Primo Levi
“Alas for the dreamer: the moment of consciousness that accompanies waking in is the most acute suffering”.

Awakening is most often understood literally: as a return from sleep. If prisoners began to have nostalgic thoughts and longings in that short period when they lay on their bunks in the evening, then these thoughts naturally would transform into dreams as they fell asleep, dreams they could no longer control. Therefore, we should concentrate on such dreams610 because they also reflected the inner life of prisoners forced to exist in the concentration camp world.

Gracjan Fijałkowski
“Night provides no respite. When the eyelids close, a ribbon of colorful images unfurls, out of nothingness it evokes a deceased form of life. The day is the prisoner’s enemy, the night is his friend”.

Maria Jezierska
“There is no silence in the night. From above and below, strange, clinking voices can be heard. Distorted, like on a mistuned radio. Something rings, something trembles, something resembles human speech, muffled, unclear. The words are unknown: perhaps Hungarian, maybe Dutch, maybe Yugoslavian. But no one understands what they are calling out, no one is listening. No other heart has a receiver, and no one puts headphones over closed ears. So, what if these voices make a sound? A sound in the emptiness of several hundred human existences”.

Mira Paszkiewicz
“Smoke all around, nothing but smoke; it is so strong that you have to close your eyes because the acrid smoke inflicts quite some pain. It’s hard to imagine such palpable, debilitating, overwhelming fumes. Suffocating… Suffocating…”.

Sleep in such a situation could hardly be called sleeping. It cannot be compared to the sleeping and dreams we know and experience.

August Kowalczyk
“Night at the camp was drawing to a close. A time of rest; but the sleep of those who were hungry and exhausted, sometimes beyond the limits of human endurance, was sporadic. In fact, sleep in the concentration camp could well be the subject of medical research. It more resembled a persistently recurring malignant fever than the state we would normally call sleep. The room’s entire floor was covered with palliasses, on each of which slept two prisoners. The air was stuffy and foul, and the dirty, louse-infested bodies of those trying to sleep were trampled by those rushing to the toilet because of diarrhea. There were also the terrifying cries of half-conscious people and the deaths that occurred in the night. And there was also the restless vigilance for fear someone might steal the piece of bread you occasionally had hidden inside the rolled up trousers that served as your pillow”.

Sleeping and dreaming were nevertheless necessary, not only as a time of rest, but also as a time of escape. A doctor assisting Josef Mengele in his pseudo-scientific research, on the one hand, psychologically burdened, and on the other, having access to medicines unattainable even in the camp hospitals, recalls the situation as follows:

Miklosz Nyiszli
“After supper I swallowed two 0.1 g tablets of luminal. I was on the verge of nervous breakdown and all I wanted to do was sleep, to fall into deep, luminal induced slumber—that was my only escape”.

Most dreams were about freedom, escaping from the camp and about returning home. In response to increasing hunger, prisoners dreamed of food—interestingly, not of luxurious and refined food, but instead the food the longed for every day in the camp: bread, thick soup and potatoes.

Victor Frankl
“What did the prisoner dream about most frequently? Of bread, cake, cigarettes, and nice warm baths. The lack of having these simple desires satisfied led him to seek wish fulfillment in dreams. Whether these dreams did any good is another matter; the dreamer had to wake from them to the reality of camp life, and to the terrible contrast between that and his dream illusions”.

Raphael Esrail
“At night, in silence, head under a blanket, shoes wrapped in trousers as a pillow, I was able to think and dream… The shouting, “Schnell” from every side, and the blows, faded away. Our constant fear lessened. That feeling of freedom I think up and create for myself allows me to transcend the constant sensation of hunger. I’m not a believer. My thoughts are confused. Why so much hatred? Where is our civilization? I fall asleep, imagining I’m next to Liliane”.

There were decidedly fewer dreams about the camp. Just as the events of the whole day influenced dreams, so too dreams at times had an influence on the behavior of prisoners the following day. For in dreams—as will be discussed later—prisoners searched for hidden meanings and prophesies that they expected to be fulfilled. The more positive the dream, the greater the contrast with camp realities. Consequently, and inevitably, the morning reveille racket became increasingly distressing. It was then that in a split second the old world vanished. More than one former prisoner recalled that in the mornings, the sudden reveille made them want to cry. With all its specificity, at the double, as always, the concentration world returned. And it, and it alone was the reality.

Krystyna Żywulska
“Waking up in the morning was the worst. The moment I realized where I was, I needed courage to rise and start the new day …”

This was the third 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 from 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 memoris used in podcast:

Zofia Kossak (64491), “Z otchłani”, p. 79.
Bogdan Bartnikowski (192731), “Childhood Behind Barbed Wire”, p. 86.
Victor Frankl (119104), “Man’s Search For Meaning”, p. 50.
Gerta Solan (A-27635), “ My Heart is at Ease”, p. 29.
Mieczysława Chylińska (44658), “Kobiety w Oświęcimiu-Brzezince,” Przegląd Lekarski– Oświęcim (1988) p. 157.
Primo Levi (174517), “If This Is a Man”, p. 113.
Camille Touboul (72420), “Le plus long des chemins”, p. 67.
Charlotte Delbo (31661), “None of Us Will Return”, p. 67.
Paula Gruber-Herszkopf (n.n.), “Lasting Pain. Memories of My Life”, trans. Yvette Joy Blog (Create Space-Assigned 2013), p. 111.
Halina Birenbaum (48693), “Hope Is the Last to Die”, p. 173
Primo Levi (174517), “If This Is a Man”, p. 52.
Jerzy Brandhuber (87112), Account in: Memoirs, vol. 7, p. 61.
Liliane Badour (75127), in: Esrail, “L’espérance d’un baiser”, p. 104.
Léon Arditti (169738), “Vouloir vivre. Deux freres a Auschwitz” (Paris: Editions L’Harmattan, 1995), p. 67.
Anna Molnar Hegedűs (n.n.), “As the Lilacs Bloomed”, p. 64
David Wisnia (83526), “One Voice, Two Lives”, p. 43.
Maurice Cling (A-5151), „Wy, co wchodzicie tutaj”, p. 91.
Zofia Kossak (64491), „Z otchłani”, p. 78.
Dawid Pankowski (46333), „Z Auszwicu do Belsen”, p. 24.
Romana Duracz (43544), in: „Przekaz Oświęcimski”, p. 21.
Stefan Budziaszek (20526), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 88a, p. 28.
Maria Ślisz-Oyrzyńska (40275), cited in: Ryn, Kłodziński (20019), „Śmierć”, p. 73.
Mieczysława Chylińska (44658), cited in: Ryn, Kłodziński (20019), „Śmierć”, p. 74.
Eva Schloss (A-5272), “Eva’s Story” (London: Evelyn Kent Associates, 2008), p. 138.
Alojzy Fros (136223), cited in: Ryn, Kłodziński (20019), “Śmierć”, p. 74.
Willy Berler (117476), “Journey Through Darkness” (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2004), p. 63.
Tadeusz Sobolewicz (23053), „But I Survived”, p. 174.
Kazimierz Piechowski (918), „Byłem numerem”, p. 46.
Ibid., p. 47.
Zofia Posmysz (7566), „Królestwo za mgłą”, p. 366.
Primo Levi (174517), “If This Is a Man”, p. 41.
Gracjan Fijałkowski (137632), “Odwszenie w Birkenau. BIId,” Zeszyty Oświęcimskie No. 8 (1964), p. 72.
Maria Jezierska (24449), Account in: Memoirs, vol. 2, p. 404.
Mira Paszkiewicz (84722), Account in: Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 140.
August Kowalczyk (6804), “A Barbed Wire Refrain II”, p. 10.
Miklosz Nyiszli (A 8450), “I Was Doctor Mengele’s Assistant”, p. 52.
Victor Frankl (119104), “Man’s Search For Meaning”, p. 40-41.
Raphael Esrail (173295), “L’espérance d’un baiser”, p. 108.
Krystyna Żywulska (55908), “I Survived Auschwitz”, p. 40-41.