And now came the most horrible episode of them all. The Bund leaderfn3 warned me that if I lived to be a hundred I would never forget some of the things I saw. He did not exaggerate. The military rule stipulates that a freight carriage may carry eight horses or forty soldiers. Without any baggage at all, a maximum of a hundred passengers standing close together and pressing against each other could be crowded into a carriage. The Germans had simply issued orders to the effect that 120 to 130 Jews had to enter each carriage. These orders were now being carried out. Alternately swinging and firing with their rifles, the policemen were forcing still more people into the two carriages which were already over-full. The shots continued to ring out in the rear and the driven mob surged forward, exerting an irresistible pressure against those nearest to the train. These unfortunates, crazed by what they had been through, scourged by the policemen, and shoved forward by the milling mob, then began to climb on the heads and shoulders of those in the trains.
These were helpless since they had the weight of the entire advancing throng against them and responded only with howls of anguish to those who, clutching at their hair and clothes for support, trampling on necks, faces and shoulders, breaking bones and shouting with insensate fury, attempted to clamber over them. More than another score of human beings, men, women and children gained admittance in this fashion. Then the policemen slammed the doors across the hastily withdrawn limbs that still protruded and pushed the iron bars in place. The two carriages were now crammed to bursting with tightly packed human flesh, completely hermetically filled. All this while the entire camp had reverberated with a tremendous volume of sound in which the hideous groans and screams mingled weirdly with shots, curses, and bellowed commands.
Nor was this all. I know that many people will not believe me, will not be able to believe me, will think I exaggerate or invent. But I saw it and it is not exaggerated or invented. I have no other proofs, no photographs. All I can say is that I saw it and that it is the truth. The floors of the carriage had been covered with a thick, white powder. It was quicklime. Quicklime is simply unslaked lime or calcium oxide that has been dehydrated. Anyone who has seen cement being mixed knows what occurs when water is poured on lime. The mixture bubbles and steams as the powder combines with the water, generating a large amount of heat. Here the lime served a double purpose in the Nazi economy of brutality. The moist flesh coming into contact with the lime is rapidly dehydrated and burned. The occupants of the carriages would be literally burned to death before long, the flesh eaten from their bones. Thus the Jews would ‘die in agony’, fulfilling the promise Himmler had issued ‘in accord with the will of the Führer’ in Warsaw, in 1942. Secondly, the lime would prevent decomposing bodies from spreading disease. It was efficient and inexpensive – a perfectly chosen agent for their purposes.
It took three hours to fill up the entire train by repetitions of this procedure. It was twilight when the forty-six (I counted them) carriages were packed. From one end to the other, the train, with its quivering cargo of flesh, seemed to throb, vibrate, rock and jump as if bewitched. There would be a strangely uniform momentary lull and then, again, the train would begin to moan and sob, wail and howl. Inside the camp a few score dead bodies remained and a few in the final throes of death. German policemen walked around at leisure with smoking guns, pumping bullets into anything, that by a moan or motion betrayed an excess of vitality. Soon, not a single one was left alive. In the now quiet camp the only sounds were the inhuman screams that were echoes from the moving train. Then these, too, ceased. All that was now left was a stench of excrement and rotting straw and a queer, sickening, acidulous odour which, I thought, may have come from the quantities of blood that had been shed, and with which the ground was stained.
As I listened to the dwindling outcries from the train, I thought of the destination toward which it was speeding. My informants had minutely described the entire journey. The train would travel about eighty miles and finally come to a halt in an empty, barren field. Then nothing at all would happen. The train would stand stock-still, patiently waiting while death penetrated into every corner of its interior. This would take from two to four days. When quicklime, asphyxiation, and injuries had silenced every outcry, a group of men would appear. They would be young, strong Jews, assigned to the task of cleaning out these carriages until their own turn to be in them should arrive. Under a strong guard they would unseal the carriages and expel the heaps of decomposing bodies. The mounds of flesh that they piled up would then be burned and the remnants buried in a single huge hole. The cleaning, burning and burial would consume one or two full days.
The entire process of disposal would take, then, from three to six days. During this period the camp would have recruited new victims. The train would return and the whole cycle would be repeated from the beginning.
I was still standing near the gate, gazing after the no longer visible train when I felt a rough hand on my shoulder. The Estonian was back again. He was frantically trying to rouse my attention and to keep his voice lowered at the same time.
‘Wake up, wake up,’ he was scolding me hoarsely. ‘Don’t stand there with your mouth open. Come on, hurry, or we’ll both get caught. Follow me and be quick about it.’
I followed him at a distance, feeling completely benumbed. When we reached the gate he reported to a German officer and pointed at me. I heard the officer say, ‘Sehr gut, gehen Sie,’ and then we passed through the gate. The Estonian and I walked awhile together and then separated.
Karski returns to the village shop, and then collapses, physically and mentally. For the next two days and nights he has a violent fever, vomits uncontrollably, both food and blood. Only on the third day, with the help of the shopkeeper, does he have enough strength to return on the train to Warsaw.
J. reads by the dim light of the train carriage. He’s not scribbling notes in pencil as he usually does. He doesn’t say anything. Fifteen minutes, maybe more. He finishes and looks out of the window, as if defeated. When I try to talk to him, he waves me away in a gesture I don’t think I’ve ever seen him use before. I question whether giving this passage to J. was the right thing to do. Words can create physical changes, sometimes changes that are too subtle for us to comprehend. As the train now edges through PłaszÓw, floodlit factories on a site of yet more butchery, I try to remember those lines of Viktor Klemperer: ‘Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.’
We’re back in Krakow, coated in white now, sparkling at night. We find our hotel just off the square. All faded 1930s grandeur, pale greens and white, fine ironwork around the lift. J. is silent. I hear myself becoming jollier to counteract this unusual situation. We go out to try and find somewhere to eat. The waistcoated man at reception in his sixties, with limited but elegantly accented English, isn’t sure about restaurants at this time, but picks up a brochure: ‘To-morr-ow tours? Ausch-witz? Salt mines?’
He recites this with a kind of sing-song intonation. A much-repeated offer, made to every guest. And obscenely jarring. It is precisely why, despite all my research over the last decade, I have never been to Auschwitz. To have been made into just another tick on a tourism itinerary seems a blasphemy. Day 3: Prague, Kafka’s old town, the Charles Bridge, Mozart; Day 4: Krakow, breakfast in the Market Square, trip to Auschwitz, back in time for a concert in the cathedral … It’s late now, Sunday and out of season, most of the restaurants are already closed. We end up in an almost deserted fast-food place, picking at unappetising kebabs. The wildness of the mountains and Andrej’s Bar seems a world away.