H. Adler - Panorama

Josef escaped the expected punishment and since then has enjoyed the heightened attention of the most powerful collaborators who make plans for his transport. On that day he was doubly lucky, for in the yard the lost ones were subjected to an intense body search, they being forced to hand over their coats and everything they had or were not supposed to have. After that there were random beatings, the worst offenders being those who went around with a blanket wrapped around them. Just after Josef had been let off by the section leader the search took place, so he behaved as if none of it had anything to do with him as he passed beyond the group in a wide arc and entered his hut from the back entrance, where there was no one who cared what he did. He still carried his notes with him, for he wanted to save them, as he wasn’t yet done with life, he wanted to survive, and now more than ever he wouldn’t let himself die, he wanted to bear witness to the existence of the lost ones. At the same time he could not grasp why he, and especially why he should survive. He feared that afterward life would be bleak and empty, nor did he know where he would go after the war, and therefore perhaps anything he could say would be senseless and would find neither acceptance nor sympathy, and he would be alone, without a wife, without a family, without friends or anyone, homeless, Bohemia no longer his homeland, yet where would he find a homeland? The world will seem strange, Josef no longer able to immerse himself in day-to-day life, a table, a stool, a bed, none of it will be a comfort. Josef just wants to sleep peacefully for once, to sleep forever, and he wants to be alone, to not have to listen to the iron rails, not have to wait for the next blow, not have to wolf down the sour, watery soup. Everything has become rotten and disgusting, everything is destroyed, mankind having dragged itself into the muck and done itself in, Josef only able to mourn the fact that no day will ever be untroubled again, for the eyes can find nothing beautiful to look at, the ears no pure music to listen to any longer. Instead there will only be trains headed to Pitchipoi to the calls of “Faster! Away! Away! You greedy bastards, why don’t you just pack it in, you miserable assholes!” Poisonous gas wipes out the masses of people, the flames spit out of the chimney of the Red Cross! And yet Josef wants to live on, he wants to survive the curses raining down in so many tongues, for on those evenings where you are not forced to stay too long in the underground factory and are able to crawl out of the cavernous works, then the sunset is still there, the rays of the sun spread their red over the lit-up hills, the woods stand quiet, Josef senses the breath of approaching spring, the view opens up, something that cannot simply be forbidden, he having said so to Étienne and Milan, even pointing it out with his finger in order that it be noticed, though a lost one never wants to be noticed, for that’s too dangerous, any opinion, even the slightest word, allowing attentive guards to rush in, though fear no longer made any sense. If the oppressor wants to raise the cane, it no longer causes any fear, for there is now only everything to win and nothing to lose, though, indeed, one doesn’t want to be arrogant or foolhardy, since razor-thin is the path on which the lost ones stand, the precipice steep below them, and whoever wants still to be standing tomorrow has to take care today.

Sometimes Josef would like to lie in the woods, to pick bright berries and look for fragrant mushrooms, these being the start of the Harz Mountains, it not being far to Goslar, and Wernigerode after that, followed by so many wonderful places, though they are still distant. Josef also longs for solitude, which he’d give anything for, as he is exhausted and drools at the idea of rest. Everything is a useless nightmare, no one able to think beyond the day itself, the panorama narrow and closed in, the panorama underground with its view of nothing more than the concrete hall that is now complete, where garish neon lights glow, everything at last ready, the masters imagining that they can make airplane parts here, a firm with the fablelike name of Malachite Works, Inc., Halberstadt installed here, the firm part of the Junkers airplane works, nothing more has been done as yet, for first the lost ones have to wearily install the machines under duress, as well as fill the hoppers with material made of aluminum.

After a difficult start in Langenstein, Josef is assigned to a typewriter, his fingers stiff and clumsy in the ice-cold chill of the underground hall, he not being allowed to wear a coat, though it’s much better than having to slave away at backbreaking work on the transports, where one of the overseers even beats German civil servants, while even in front of the typewriter Josef is not freed from being ordered to schlep heavy goods, whereby he is exhausted after an hour. The man in charge of Josef and some of his comrades is named Kiesewetter, and demands high productivity, though he doesn’t beat the lost ones who sit at the typewriters, and at the request of his prisoners he even makes sure that his people are excused for the most part from having to schlepp heavy goods. Josef has a view of the continuing armament of the Conqueror, despite being on his way to defeat, hundreds of letters from German firms passing through Josef’s hands, he having to fill out orders for supplies and confirmation of their arrival, all of it in duplicate, though it’s all quite chaotic, the whole war machine having run itself into the ground, the foolhardy game played out no longer winnable through the slave labor of the starving lost ones, their labor of no value even if they worked their best, the slave holders having miscalculated, as it doesn’t matter if Herr Langer, a German who has a minor position here, and who, after wondering why Josef is “in this club,” pompously claims that “German ways will save the day,” and that once the war is over better days will dawn for Josef and all the Jews, and when Josef looks him in the eye and asks directly, he answers convincingly that of course Germany will win the war, the Conqueror has yet to realize his greatest triumphs, there are new secret weapons, and the Conqueror is a good person who will find for Josef and all the Jews a nice spot on earth where they can live well. No, such empty words no longer work, for chaos is already spreading its demoralizing effects among the Conqueror’s own ranks, orders greeted by counter-orders, the civil servants no longer working full tilt, but instead continually going through the motions until exhaustion sets in, the belief they had at the start now lost, they having lost their wits as well, no longer seeming human, but instead continually ridiculous, for even if they remain a danger until the very last moment they can no longer be taken seriously.

Josef laughs at how they carry on, how they order equipment to be moved from one hall to another, then back again, no one knowing what the other is doing, a confusion of terms having set in, all of them speaking the same language but no longer understanding one another. This makes Herr Weber want to scream, though it does no good to complain about the conspirators and the collaborators in charge, all of them are already confused, having been told only a couple of days ago that the malachite operation was to be moved from Zwieberge to Leopoldshall, and that prisoners from Langenstein were also to be sent there, but now that’s not what’s going to happen. Instead, it’s too late, the fools have run out of time, though they themselves still don’t realize it, and so the gears keep grinding, each day consuming more lost ones. Meanwhile, the tank works at Zittau are supposed to be moved to Zwieberge, railcars full of machines from Zittau standing on the supply lines that run from Halberstadt to Zwieberge, some already having been unloaded and schlepped into the hall and set up by the lost ones, who are continually tormented, though the civil engineers cannot get them to work since they have been damaged and won’t work anymore, the efforts of millions of men wasted, the work of the Conqueror destroyed, it having done itself in, though don’t the masters see at all that it’s time to give up? No, they don’t see it, and so death continues its harvest in Zwieberge, the conspirators continue to harass the lost ones, six men always assigned to the foul-smelling morgue of the Langenstein camp to carry rough-hewn wooden boxes, two skin-covered skeletons in each, those carrying them hounded out of the gate and toward the pits, despite almost buckling at the knees because of their own weakness, the skeletons tipped out there, some chlorinated lime spread over them, then the boxes are carried back to camp. This goes on for days, maybe even weeks, for here in the halls bad characters can still swing their heavy batons and yell, “Hurry! Hurry!” At this you schlepp pieces of airplanes out of the bins that are no longer fitted together, schlepping them to the waiting railcars, which will transport them to Leopoldshall, Zwieberge emptied out more and more, a frayed network of finished and unfinished passages, a maddening ant heap full of whining and whimpering, the lost ones as lost as ever, an idiot from the factory guards watching over the spigot that only uniformed men and civil servants are allowed to drink from, though the old man in black clothes fends off each lost one wanting to ease his thirst, as if he were death itself.