Playing for Time by Fania Fénelon

must have looked particularly uncomprehending, because Little Irene explained to me: “The camp of Birkenau mustn’t have more than about a hundred thousand internees;
to
maintain this figure, they make selections, though of course this doesn’t prevent the daily murder of individuals, which doesn’t alter out lives at all. Five minutes don’t go by without a sick person, a Jew, or a Moslem being put in Block Twenty-five.”
    “Why Moslems in particular?”
    “ ”Moslem‘ is the name given to those who are just walking corpses.“
    “Why?”
    “No one knows. The person who first used it must have had his reasons, but it must have been a long time ago, and we’ll never know.”
    I’d survived the selection of my arrival, but I didn’t know what the criteria were, or how other selections took place. I wanted to ask, but kept a feeble silence. However, Irene talked on, perhaps wanting to unburden herself of the horror that was stifling her. One had to be new here to agree to listen to her.
    “I think that the selections carried out on those who aren’t new arrivals are the worst. You see, when you’ve just arrived you don’t know anything. When you’ve spent some time here, you know, it’s always the same saga: whistles blowing. They whistle at the slightest pretext: for supper, for coffee, to disperse the girls who go from block to block looking for something to trade or eat. In two minutes the camp is empty, a desert. The trucks arrive, stop in front of the blocks. Inside, a safe distance from the foul smell, the SS point out those selected: the thinnest, the shivering, the sick who try and hide, the girls who are disliked by the blockowa, the
kapo,
the kitchen girl… why not? And they’re brought out with blows from rifle butts, clubbed, kicked, punched, butted. The blockowas, egged on by the SS, are the worst; they lash out most of all. Some women shriek and fight. I saw one throw herself at an SS man, nails clawing his face; he clubbed her down, and everyone was forced to walk over her body, still living, just one mass of red…”
    I wished she’d stop, I didn’t want to hear any more. But Irene continued, and I could only hope it was therapeutic:
    “The scenes I saw in the quarantine block before coming here, Fania… Some climb in completely spinelessly, others sing, laugh. They climb into the trucks knowing quite well where they’re going. I’ve seen the whole range of reactions imaginable before the most extravagant horror ever known. And the SS wander around amidst this, cool and casual as you please. When they’ve closed up the trucks they laugh and pat one another on the back as if they’ve just enjoyed a good lark. The ones who shut the doors of the extermination blocks where the Zyklon-B gas is react the same way. Afterwards they go back into their mess to have a quiet drink, play the piano, have a girl—never a Jew, that’s not allowed—or they come here to listen to music: Viennese waltzes, Peter Kreuder. When it’s over, after what they’ve done, they all want to do something else. And that’s what I can’t understand. Can you?”
    “Perhaps they want to forget, not be alone with themselves? Or perhaps they get drunk to complete the pleasure of killing, to celebrate it. What do we know about them?”
    “In the music block we’re more isolated so we can stand up to it better, but once you’ve seen it, you can’t forget it.”
    A voice admitting of no nonsense called to us to be quiet, to go to sleep. I’d have dearly liked to. Already the crematoria chimneys were beginning to smoke; tomorrow, a sickening smell of charred flesh would impregnate our clothes, our skin… and I had to remain indifferent—indeed, to take no notice. To what kind of heaven should one turn to pray for this kind of insensitivity?
    I must have fallen asleep again, because the entry of a runner startled me. She was out of breath.
    “Achtung! Schneller, schneller!
Mandel’s on her