Life flooded back into the upturned faces of the men and women listening eagerly to every word. The desired effect had been achieved: initial suspicion gave way to hope, perhaps even to the belief that everything might still end happily. Hossler, sensing the change of mood, quickly began to speak. In order to invest this large-scale deception with the semblance of complete honesty, he put on a perfect act to delude these unsuspecting people. “You over there in the corner”, he cried, pointing at a little man, “what’s your trade?” “I’m a tailor”, came the prompt reply. “Ladies or gents?” inquired Hossler. “Both”, the little man replied confidently. “Excellent!” Hossler was delighted. “That’s precisely the sort of people we need in our workrooms. When you’ve had your shower, report to me at once. And you over there, what can you do?” He turned to a good-looking middle-aged woman who was standing right in front. “I am a trained nurse, sir”, she replied. “Good for you, we urgently need nurses in our hospital, and if there are any more trained nurses among you, please report to me immediately after your shower” …
All the people’s fears and anxieties had vanished as if by magic. Quiet as lambs they undressed without having to be shouted at or beaten. Each tried his or her best to hurry up with their undressing so that they might be the first to get under the shower. After a very short time the yard was empty but for shoes, clothing, underwear, suitcases and boxes which were strewn all over the ground. Cozened and deceived, hundreds of men, women and children had walked, innocently, and without a struggle, into the large windowless chamber of the crematorium. When the last one had crossed the threshold, two SS men slammed shut the heavy iron-studded door which was fitted with a rubber seal, and bolted it.’
Müller then describes other SS men with gas masks climbing onto the crematorium roof, and pouring crystals into the six openings. At this moment all the trucks in the yard turned on their engines, to prevent anyone in the nearby camp buildings hearing the sounds of the dying, shouting from inside. Aumeier and the others checked their watches to see how long it took for the sounds to cease, and then proudly boasted to the junior officers who’d been observing the process: ‘Well, you two, have you got it now? That’s the way to do it!’
Later in summer 1942, the four purpose-built gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau become operational, and the focus of the mass killings moves from Auschwitz I to Birkenau – two kilometres north-west of where we are standing.
*
The temperature falls perceptibly as we go inside the chamber. Nobody else here. A blackened oblong of stone and concrete, streaked walls, dimly lit by naked bulbs.
No words here.
Nothing.
Nothingness.
We walk into the adjoining room – the prototype crematorium. Two ovens survive, with the proud logo of their manufacturers, Topf & Söhne, of Erfurt – so proud of having supplied ovens to the Reich that they retained their brand name after the war.fn5
At the back of the ovens is a kind of storeroom, and inside we can make out dozens of rusting metal implements, used for dealing with the remnants of charred bodies. Some are like twisted rakes, some like pitchforks, some not like any known object, improvised for barbarism. Seeing these, in an instant, the work of Joseph Beuys is illuminated. The rusted scream that all his work returns to. Knowledge stained irrevocably.
We leave, shaken and without words. We’re walking eastwards again, just outside the perimeter fence, past little houses, wondering who would want to live here. Then along a busy main road, up to a roundabout, and we cross the River Soła, where Commandant Höss and his children used to enjoy swimming.
Through a little park, following what seems to be a kind of ring road around the town, fields on our right. I take photographs every 500 yards. Up a slight incline towards blocks of flats, ten, twelve storeys tall, following the road swinging to the right, and into older buildings now, what seems like another town. Marked on our map as ‘Osiedle Chemików’ (chemists’ estate) – surely related to the vast chemical works that IG Farben built at Monowitz? After another mile or so these houses peter out, another avenue of trees, every branch etched in ice. And just beyond, we arrive at the south-western corner of the Buna complex. We’ve come three, maybe four kilometres across the town.
We start to walk northwards, next to a main road. Behind red-and-white barriers to our right, we see a sign with the words ‘Firma Chemiczna Dwory’ on it, and lorries carrying liquid nitrogen waiting to go in. It astonishes us that this part of Buna at least is still functioning as a chemicals plant. That a corporation can simply take over a site of mass murder and continue to do business here. A little further on the right and we see what must be the monument – an abstract barbed-wire motif, but it’s thickly covered with snow and ice and there doesn’t appear to be any inscription, nothing to explain to people passing by the nature of this place, its origins. We dig for some time, scraping off the ice, trying to find any words, trying to unbury history, but there seems to be nothing there.
We are losing the light now and flurries of snow are beginning. We return to the south-western corner and start to walk along the southern perimeter of the complex, next to constant traffic on the road to Zator.
But we’ve misjudged the sheer scale of this complex. It’s vast. A straight line continuing for kilometre after kilometre. I’m concerned now that we will not even be able to reach Monowitz, the site of the camp where Primo Levi was imprisoned for that unimaginable year. The traffic roars along the icy main road. But still, to our left, behind concrete posts and rusting barbed wire, the chemical works sprawls on. Industrial sheds, tangled pipelines, chimneys, towers of brick. A repeated question in my head: which of these buildings were there in the 1940s? This strange yet insistent notion of bricks and windows as witnesses, as if they bore the traces of the people who once brushed against them. On one of the sheds a number in white paint – 739; any detail could be significant, so wiping the flakes of snow from the lens, I take another picture. It amazes me to see some of these buildings still functioning – some that would have been here during the war, buildings which Levi and his slave-labourer colleagues helped to build, their chimneys still spewing smoke into the sky. On some of the buildings, more painted figures – 761, 922. I take more photographs, wanting to document everything. Twenty minutes, twenty-five minutes walking this straight line, under metal bridges and more pipelines. Almost dusk now, the temperature has dipped viciously. After half an hour walking this perimeter, a sign on our right – ‘Niwa Monowicka’. We have arrived.
Monowitz. We are here. The little rectangle on the map, just at the south-eastern corner of the Buna complex. I have had a visual image of this place for over twenty years, since first reading If This Is a Man. For some reason, this small patch of land has inhabited me, hasn’t let go. I return to the thousands of people who lived and suffered and died here and the minority, Primo Levi among them, who survived. On reflection, three of these four verbs seem quite inadequate: ‘died’ is factual, the others we cannot know. What would living or suffering or surviving mean in such a place? How to reach the reality of these words? When, of the people, we have only traces.