H. Adler - Panorama

Josef thinks about the Gypsy camp and sees it as both the darkest and the lightest time of his life, he having openly resisted such destruction, which is why he doesn’t feel the kind of misery that he sees in others’ eyes, but instead he feels defiant and strong before the final end, and he can bear the pangs of hunger and the incredible weariness, he having remained locked up within himself, as others have done as well. For instance, there is little Jossel from Lodz, almost a child in years, but one who feels that all is lost, though he faces it stoically and wants to learn a great deal from Josef, asking him about Spinoza’s Ethics , after which Jossel recites some Yiddish poems, since he can’t write them down, because there is no paper or pencil, but nonetheless he knows them by heart anyway:

No grain in the fields and no bread ,

Hard times can be found all over .

The young flock in droves toward death ,

And the children learn nothing more .

Men are cut down like harvest meadows .

Who is left to mourn them now?

Yet a generation rises, demanding to know

Life will return to these fields somehow .

Thus Jossel recites his poem, though he also brings a slice of bread, insisting that Josef take it. Almost ten years older than Josef is Mordechai, who knows that his wife is hidden away somewhere with Taubele, his young daughter, no chance of any henchman finding those so well hidden away, both of them having fake papers while living with reliable people, evil having no chance to hurt his loved ones while they are in such safe confines. As it is allowed to ponder such things here in the quarantine, Mordechai speaks about what is written in the Sayings of the Fathers , namely what Akavia ben Mahalalel said: “Observe three things, and you will not fall into sin: know from where did you come, where you are headed, and before whom you will lay yourself one day in order to give your account and be judged. And from just where did you come? From a miserable drop of nothing. Where are you headed? To a place full of dust, mold, and worms. Before whom will you lay down to account for yourself and be judged? Before the King of Kings, before the Holy One, may He be blessed!” Josef should consider well that, above all, such consummation is possible, above all, there is good counsel to keep, above all, and even if it is done silently, one can still lift oneself in prayer, Mordechai saying that indeed there is mercy in their being able to come to the huts and stand inside next to Josef in order to talk and exchange ideas, none of that is pointless, even if they don’t survive this test. “Yet why shouldn’t we survive it?” says Mordechai, receiving a smile in return. “That they give us slippers made from holy prayer shawls shows how foolish they are, for we end up walking at ease within them, for in such shawls we cannot be harmed as long as we pray!” There are other men in the huts who lose themselves in timeless questions, it being easy to think on the meaning of life here, there are no limits to the moment, time having been stripped away, the only thing to do is to wait, and when there is nothing to look forward to, then everything is easy. What still exists cannot be found in one’s surroundings, they are of no help to the spirit, each having to depend on himself, one’s perceptions seeming more true than ever before, as alone a person considers his true worth.

On a narrow planted strip between the huts, where otherwise there is nothing but sticky excrement that turns into a filthy sty when it rains, some flowers are growing, which Josef marvels at, it seeming a sign, as well as the chain of mountains to the south, namely the Beskydy Range, a minimum of two days of strenuous hiking away, gray-blue they stretch away, the foggy , damp air above the passage in between not allowing the mountains to appear any closer or lighter in color. The mountains are pure, and there it must be pleasant, closer to home, even a part of the homeland, and there you would have no idea of the Gypsy camp and the chimneys, those seeming part of an evil tale that cannot be true, no, none of that is true, simply invented by evil-minded vermin who smear the pure name of the Conqueror, oh no, those supposedly murdered are in fact alive, and the dead simply slumber and are not murdered, what strange ideas others have. Woe to those, however, who dare to violate the everyday with such mad visions of innocent children thrown into the fire whose leaping flames are oil-fired and fed by living bodies, no, those are all lies, the conspirators have never done that, and whoever did happen to do that did so against the will and without the knowledge of the Conqueror, no, nothing more about such horrors, for not even the most unforgiving enemies in Russia or America would believe it! It’s understandable that a genuine opponent of the Conqueror would not see him as a benefactor, but instead they hate him, they who reside in the Beskydy Range, as well as in subjugated lands such as here in Birkenau, but the Conqueror also has his merits, he is not guilty and means well, he not having promised his own people that much, but giving them something, namely work, fuel for winter, Volkswagens for his autobahn, and the power of a thousand years of joy. Who wants to smear the Conqueror by saying there are flaws in his Reich? He knows nothing of them, he is kind and gentle, he can’t even kill an animal and eats only vegetables, he loves the silent glory of the untouched Alps, where he watches over the good of the people from his mountain retreat.

Josef imagines all of this and sees as well the chimneys smoking before him, hearing the screams of those choking on the gas, the screams of the departing intended for this world, other screams breaking into praise, as amid the moment of death they say the name of the One who is the only One. Josef’s thoughts must wrap themselves around the death rattles, as he sees how the blood runs from the eyes, from the nose, from the mouth, he sees how body after body writhes and stretches and rears up and screams, screams, screams, as long as they can scream, and how their screams seethe, how they sink together, the Zyklon gas having already exterminated them. It’s important to guard those crystals, they’re expensive, use them sparingly! That’s why the dusty purveyor of death is slowly transported in sealed and protected lead containers to the killing grounds in a car on whose sides and roof an insignia is painted that some still hold as holy, though through this misuse it is forever put to shame, the insignia being that of the Red Cross of the Geneva Convention. An accomplice takes the murderous cargo from the car with its red cross, and soon he is atop the roof with a mask on his face, opening the tin can and dumping its contents down into the narrow shaft. In this the cowardly hero has simply done his duty, the victims decimated, a single heap of lifeless bodies. Josef sees the lost ones who are part of the special command, themselves used to the goings-on inside the circle of murder, everything the same there, today the dead, tomorrow the living, and to it all music flutters and whistles and tweets, “Play something lovely, really lovely!” Each morning and evening this music can be heard at least once, as out of the neighboring D-Camp the lost ones march out to or back from work, marches pressing them on, pleasant marches, audible all the way out to the beetle grove and birch woods that are just beyond the plain where the lost ones’ camp is located. This area used to be a hinterland that few people knew before the most loyal ones under the accomplices settled in where the borders of three kingdoms meet. Among the hecatombs, hardly anyone knows the name of the place, the accomplices having earmarked it as a place for extermination to which the victims were sent from many countries in endless trains. For three years it has gone on, and there is no end in sight.