“Auschwitz. A Monograph of the Human”. Part 8. Fear

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 8. Fear
Read by Grey Stafford

Of course, in contract to any positive feelings that could possibly be felt in the camp, there was a daily, predominant sense of fear.

Ruth Bindefeld Neray
“Nothing is normal for a person who has lived under conditions where death can be met at any moment”.

Simone Alizon
“Adapting to life in the camp was such a painful, such a traumatic experience that we almost felt paralyzed. Fear prevented us from rebellion, and those who were sufficiently strong to be fearless, paid for it with their lives”.
A child from the Theresienstadt ghetto John Freund remembered it as follows:

John Freund
“We got used to the smoke [from the chimneys] and to the smell, but never to the fear that we would be burned next”.
Fear of death had been described as worse than death itself, and fear of pain as worse than pain itself. Fear was the imagination of what could happen to a person, and that imagination was propelled by hearing the cries and other sounds of others being beaten and tortured, by seeing the effects of inflicted pain, by seeing death itself. All these elements were integrated by fear within one’s imagination, and this, as many survivors concurred, was worse than what was actually experienced.

Mieczysława Chylińska
“The need to find a place amid the worst specters of anti-humanity led to the most diverse fears of what could possibly happen, not knowing in what form, not knowing for what reason and not knowing to whom it could happen. To make matters worse, by hiding within oneself—as mentioned before—one more quickly and more completely destroyed the sense of security than would otherwise have happened”.

Abraham Kajzer
“We dig with great difficulty; the block supervisor hurries us on with his stick. Everyone’s gaze is fixed to the ground. No one dares to look around for fear of seeing the approaching block supervisor. Fear of being hit is worse than actually being hit. As long as you didn’t see…”
For similar reasons, terrible fears and stress affected people in uncertain situations, where the future was unclear or impossible to predict.1474 This was the case with anticipated changes. Changes were feared. Unexplained changes portended that something disadvantageous to the prisoners would happen.

Primo Levi
“At bottom, we all had a certain fear of change: “When things change, they change for the worse” was one of the camp proverbs”.

Tadeusz Niedzielski
“Every change brought a state of uncertainty for today and tomorrow. Most often a sense of danger! Nerves constantly on edge, unremitting anxiety and fears… You were alert to every movement, every murmur in the camp”.

For this reason, it was a curse when prisoners were forced to make a decision. Every such decision was a shot in the dark, without rules—a matter of life or death. This is because the consequences of each decision were unknown and there were no rules, but it would probably be a matter of life or death.1479 Should one volunteer for a transport to an unknown destination? Should one take the opportunity to be transferred to a different Kommando?

Viktor Frankl
“The camp inmate was frightened of making decisions and of taking any sort of initiative whatsoever. This was the result of a strong feeling that fate was one’s master, and that one must not try to influence it in any way, but instead let it take its own course”.

Raphael Esrail
“Most of the deported men or women testify that at one point or another they were confronted by a decision the price of which was there life. It is hard to imagine the existence of a “choice” in that [camp] world where the prisoner would be able to make an informed decision. Instead, in such situations, the prisoner was forced—against his will—to play Russian roulette, or proceed blindfolded near a precipice. Would he fall into the abyss or would he walk away?”

In a situation of uncertainty, every relatively constant element, such as one’s “own” bunk or place in a line became fundamentally important, not only for tactical reasons, but primarily for psychological ones.

Zofia Czerwińska-Kossakiewicz
“From a distance, the areas where roll calls took place looked like trampled squares. Even the stones were crushed under the constant treading in one spot. Every prisoner had his trampled spot, if he had been in the same block for a couple of months, knew his place so precisely that he would never stand in anyone else’s place and would never allow anyone stand in his place”.

A person in Auschwitz, in the first stage of his or her duration in the camp, sacrificed, after all, whatever remained of one’s strength in order to adapt to this new situation, to reconstruct some kind of space of relative safety around oneself, to forge relations with fellow prisoners on the bunk. Every change could not only destroy all that had been achieved and force a renewed adaptational effort, it could—contrary to expectations and intentions—also bring about a general worsening of the situation.

Władysław Kowanetz
“One day, after evening roll call, the block writer came to our room with the intention of recruiting prisoners for work. No one wanted to volunteer because a rumor had circulated among the prisoners that volunteers would go to the wall, i.e. they would be shot”.

Tadeusz Sobolewicz
“A nervous, tense atmosphere hung over most of the prisoners who had been put on the transport list. Each of them knew what to expect in KL Auschwitz. Other camps were unknown quantity. In the environment of a different camp the prisoner would have to struggle for his survival by starting all over again, at the very beginning. He would become a Zugang, a newcomer…”

Miklosz Nyiszli
“I therefore do not exaggerate in the conviction not believe an SS-man who told you that something was black even if it might also seem be black to you”.

Choices were usually made in situations when a decision could no longer be delayed, for example, when one was threatened with death. Then uncertainty could prolong any sense of hope.

Jan Kwiatkowski
“In the summer of 1944, when young and healthy Gypsies were selected for a transport to do work in Germany, I asked Dr Śnieżko at the camp hospital to also select me because I didn’t want to be burned in the crematorium. I wanted to live”.

No uncertainty aroused such stress, such fear, such extreme experiences as did the selection in the camp.1489 While the fate for those selected on the Birkenau ramp soon after their arrival could initially be unknown, everyone was fully aware of the meaning of being selected in the camp. Observation of the selected group left no doubts as to their fate. There were only two options: continuation of life as a slave or imminent death in a gas chamber. Selections regularly took place in the camp hospitals, barracks and blocks and their purpose was to select for death in the gas chamber prisoners who were too exhausted to work efficiently, the Muselmänner, the sick, and especially those suspected of having infectious diseases. This was an exam with an outcome that was dependent on a single glance from a bored SS doctor.

Mietek Weintraub
“The whole camp is as if in mourning. No one is talking. The men hover like specters. Even hunger isn’t as oppressive when death is imminent”.

The symbol of these selections, both those in the camp as well as those on the ramp involving the newly arrived transports of Jews, was Josef Mengele. If all the accounts that mention him were to be taken literally, Mengele would have been present at practically every selection. But this would have been physically impossible.

Ester Tencer
“Dr. Mengele would come over—I do not know if he was doctor, he was an SS man in any case—and everyone had to line up in front of the block, strip naked, and then he would walk along the row of prisoners and point people out: “This one, this one,” etc.”.

Simone Alizon
“Knowing that your entire life could depend on a discerning glance, and that it could happen at any moment, must lead to madness. How could you bear the thought that your entire life would unfold under the terrible but indifferent gaze of an SS man who was routinely performing his work”.

On those very rare occasions when I wanted to talk about it [i.e. the selections], people looked at me strangely. I could read in their eyes that they thought I was insane. They would look away out of sensitive pity, as if I was talking nonsense. They thought they knew. But I knew what I was talking about. Nothing is truer than what is unbelievable.1497

For clearly emaciated prisoners, every parade in front of the SS almost became a selection.

Edward Ferenc
“I was a Muselmann. My entire head was covered with ulcers, so I wore a bandage on my head. Every time I passed though the camp gate, I trembled that my bandaged head would cause one of the SS men to call me out and send me to be killed in the gas chamber. At the time, there were constant selections of Muselmanner, who were then sent to the gas chamber”.

Fear of death was as ubiquitous as death itself. It affected every prisoner. It was with them every day, until the very end. Especially those who had arrived in the camp from a prison or jail already with a death sentence and had to be prepared that at any moment the decision would be made for their sentence to be carried out. Every moment was a postponement, but at every moment there was the fear that what had come from the outside and had been recorded in one’s given prisoner file would be fulfilled.

Stanisław Rubaszewski
“In Auschwitz, I lived in constant fear because during my last interrogation at the Gestapo headquarters in Pomorska Street, Krakow, they told me that a death sentence would be issued, and that I was to wait for the execution in Auschwitz”.

Franciszek Karwacki
“One day, before the reveille gong, the block supervisor entered our room, turned on the light and started reading out numbers from the Lublin transport, exactly the one in which I arrived on 5th April 1941 (Palm Sunday). With trepidation I listened to the consecutively rising prisoner numbers as they approached mine—a momentary pause before the next number was read out, my entire life went before me, in a fraction of a second; a lightning speed film. After that nerve-racking silence, the next number to be read out was higher than mine. … They were all shot”.

Fear caused irrational behavior, it distorted logical analysis of the situation. In the following quote, it is worth noting the dramatic use of the word “naturally” in the final sentence.

Jakub Wolman
“They beat us again when handing out bread. I remember that one time there was a single portion left on the table after the bread had been distributed. The room orderly asked: “Who didn’t take their bread?” Nobody answered. Eventually, after half an hour, they figured out who had not taken their bread. He had done this out of fear—although he was so hungry, he preferred not to come to the table so as not to risk being beaten. Naturally, he was later beaten again for not taking bread”.

Only extreme hunger and becoming a Muselmann relativized fear. That was when hunger became the only driving force, a yearning for which the demands were such that no risk, not even actual beating could restrain the prisoner from appeasing it.

Adam Ziemba
“Only profound hunger can stifle the emotion typical for every human being: fear. Fear of death, fear of suffering, fear of pain, in any form”.

Fear could be of the everyday sort—“normal” would not be an appropriate word here. However, in certain situations, fear became an extreme experience, exactly because it resulted from a realistic analysis of the situation. The very young Max Eisen, having already had lost most of his family during the selection on the ramp, now lost the last person who could still support him; his father. Moreover, he was sick, tired and weak. He knew that death was imminent. The recording of this fear undoubtedly reflects the feelings of many people in similar situations. Max survived; hence his experiences appear among the memoirs of former prisoners. The majority, the vast majority of those who had found themselves in a similar situation, had no opportunity to record their feelings.

Max Eisen
“I understood that my fate was sealed. A feeling of helplessness and fright overtook me. How could I prepare myself to face the gas chamber? I would be reduced to a simple pile of ashes. I had always planned, as a last resort, to run to the electrified fence and die by my own action, but this was no longer an option because I had lost my mobility. I began to wish that the Kommandant had put a bullet in my head. I thought of my family and how they must have felt while facing their own demise. When my mother entered the gas chamber, she had my three siblings in her care. How she must have fought until the last breath in that horrible chamber. What would it be like for me? Slow or fast? Would my soul leave my body? Would I meet my family again? Would they all be waiting for me? How would I know them? What shape or form would they be in? I felt utterly alone, with no one to take care of or comfort me. No one could save me”.

Prisoners sensed fear in the face of every prisoner functionary and every SS man, while the prisoner functionaries feared the SS men because they did not want to lose their position.

Romana Duracz
“Smudged with blood from our chafed hands, drenched in sweat, disheveled and feverish, we fell into mad despair: “Come what may, we won’t touch them anymore.” But it was enough to look at the guard, enough for him to grasp his rifle and to hear the metallic click, to be deterred from any untimely whims, sulks, hysterical sobs or laments”.

Bogusław Dąbrowski
“The kapo, on the other hand, was afraid of the SS man. Losing the good post of a kapo would almost certainly be equivalent to a death sentence”.

Fear wreaked havoc to the mind, it made it impossible to make decisions or abreact to tension, it was present in every aspect of everyday life in the camp. It lasted longer than the camp. Some of the reactions and dreams of the survivors indicate this profoundly.

Anatol Adamczyk
“The eyes of a concentration camp prisoner always gave him away, even when he had escaped in a camp, was dressed, washed and already well fed, it would seem that he looked like a normal person. For one thing, his eyes would constantly dart in all directions for fear of the danger that constantly threatened him”.

This was the eight 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:
Ruth Bindefeld Neray (75912), “To Auschwitz and Back”, p. 1.
Simone Alizon (31776), “L’exercice de vivre”, p. 193.
John Freund (168329), “La fin du printemps”, [n.d. (Canada)], 2009, p. 42.
Mieczysława Chylińska (44685), ‘Działania SS w Brzezince’, p. 157.
Abraham Kajzer (n.n.), „Za drutami śmierci”, p. 45.
Primo Levi (174517), “If This Is a Man”, p. 113.
Tadeusz Niedzielski (423), Account in: Memoirs, vol. 76, p. 119.
Victor Frankl (119104), “Man’s Search For Meaning”, p. 66.
Raphael Esrail (173295), “L’espérance d’un baiser”, pp. 85-86.
Zofia Czerwińska-Kossakiewicz (49973), Account in: Memoirs, vol. 16, p. 38.
Władysław Kowanetz (29638), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 5, p. 666.
Tadeusz Sobolewicz (23053), “But I Survived”, p. 177.
Miklosz Nyiszli (A 8450), “I Was Doctor Mengele’s Assistant”, p. 101.
Jan Kwiatkowski (Z-5573), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 3, p. 400.
Mietek Weintraub (n.n.), “The Arrival”, p. 166.
Ester Tencer (n.n.), Testimonies in the criminal trial of former SS staff [IPN GK 196/110], Chronicles of Terror, vol. 6, p. 210.
Simone Alizon (31776), “L’exercice de vivre”, p. 188.
Edward Ferenc (281), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 21, p. 91.
Stanisław Rubaszewski (83781), Account in: Testimonies, vol. 29, p. 30.
Franciszek Karwacki (14143), Account in: Memoirs, vol. 69, p. 54.
Jakub Wolman (33611), Testimonies in the trial of Rudolf Höss [IPN GK 196/87], Chronicles of Terror, vol. 5, p. 113.
Adam Ziemba (21855), “A Piece of Bread”, p. 66.
Max Eisen (A-9892), “By Chance Alone”, p. 115.
Romana Duracz (43544), in: Przekaz Oświęcimski, p. 43.
Bogusław Dąbrowski (18375), in: Dąbrowski, „Nietypowy więzień”, p. 37.
Anatol Adamczyk (23241), cited in: Ryn, Kłodziński (20019), „Na granicy”, p. 43.