26 Man's Search
for Meaning
told by someone who worked there, had the word "bath"
written over its doors in several European languages. On
entering, each prisoner was handed a piece of soap, and
then
but mercifully I do not need to describe the events
which followed. Many accounts have been written about
this horror.
We who were saved, the minority of our transport, found
out the truth in the evening. I inquired from prisoners who
had been there for some time where my colleague and
friend P
had been sent.
"Was he sent to the left side?"
"Yes," I replied.
"Then you can see him there," I was told.
"Where?" A hand pointed to the chimney a few hundred
yards off, which was sending a column of flame up into the
grey sky of Poland. It dissolved into a sinister cloud of
smoke.
"That's where your friend is, floating up to Heaven," was
the answer. But I still did not understand until the truth
was explained to me in plain words.
But I am telling things out of their turn. From a psycho
logical point of view, we had a long, long way in front of us
from the break of that dawn at the station until our first
night's rest at the camp.
Escorted by SS guards with loaded guns, we were made to
run from the station, past electrically charged barbed wire,
through the camp, to the cleansing station; for those of us
who had passed the first selection, this was a real bath.
Again our illusion of reprieve found confirmation. The SS
men seemed almost charming. Soon we found out their rea
son. They were nice to us as long as they saw watches on
our wrists and could persuade us in well-meaning tones to
hand them over. Would we not have to hand over all our
possessions anyway, and why should not that relatively nice
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 27
person have the watch? Maybe one day he would do one a
good turn.
We waited in a shed which seemed to be the anteroom to
the disinfecting chamber. SS men appeared and spread out
blankets into which we had to throw all our possessions, all
our watches and jewelry. There were still naive prisoners
among us who asked, to the amusement of the more sea
soned ones who were there as helpers, if they could not
keep a wedding ring, a medal or a good-luck piece. No one
could yet grasp the fact that everything would be taken
away.
I tried to take one of the old prisoners into my confi
dence. Approaching him furtively, I pointed to the roll of
paper in the inner pocket of my coat and said, "Look, this
is the manuscript of a scientific book. I know what you will
say; that I should be grateful to escape with my life, that
that should be all I can expect of fate. But I cannot help
myself. I must keep this manuscript at all costs; it contains
my life's work. Do you understand that?"
Yes, he was beginning to understand. A grin spread
slowly over his face, first piteous, then more amused, mock
ing, insulting, until he bellowed one word at me in answer
to my question, a word that was ever present in the vocabu
lary of the camp inmates: "Shit!" At that moment I saw the
plain truth and did what marked the culminating point of
the first phase of my psychological reaction: I struck out my
whole former life.
Suddenly there was a stir among my fellow travelers, who
had been standing about with pale, frightened faces, help
lessly debating. Again we heard the hoarsely shouted com
mands. We were driven with blows into the immediate
anteroom of the bath. There we assembled around an SS
man who waited until we had all arrived. Then he said, "I
will give you two minutes, and I shall time you by my
watch. In these two minutes you will get fully undressed
28 Man's Search for Meaning
and drop everything on the floor where you are standing.
You will take nothing with you except your shoes, your belt
or suspenders, and possibly a truss. I am starting to count—
now!"
With unthinkable haste, people tore off their clothes. As
the time grew shorter, they became increasingly nervous
and pulled clumsily at their underwear, belts and shoe
laces. Then we heard the first sounds of whipping; leather
straps beating down on naked bodies.
Next we were herded into another room to be shaved:
not only our heads were shorn, but not a hair was left on
our entire bodies. Then on to the showers, where we lined
up again. We hardly recognized each other; but with great
relief some people noted that real water dripped from the
sprays.
While we were waiting for the shower, our nakedness was
brought home to us: we really had nothing now except our
bare bodies—even minus hair; all we possessed, literally,
was our naked existence. What else remained for us as a
material link with our former lives? For me there were my
glasses and my belt; the latter I had to exchange later on
for a piece of bread. There was an extra bit of excitement
in store for the owners of trusses. In the evening the senior
prisoner in charge of our hut welcomed us with a speech in
which he gave us his word of honor that he would hang,
personally, "from that beam"—he pointed to it—any per
son who had sewn money or precious stones into his truss.
Proudly he explained that as a senior inhabitant the camp
laws entitled him to do so.
Where our shoes were concerned, matters were not so
simple. Although we were supposed to keep them, those
who had fairly decent pairs had to give them up after all
and were given in exchange shoes that did not fit. In for
real trouble were those prisoners who had followed the ap-
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 29
parently well-meant advice (given in the anteroom) of the
senior prisoners and had shortened their jackboots by cut
ting the tops off, then smearing soap on the cut edges to
hide the sabotage. The SS men seemed to have waited for
just that. All suspected of this crime had to go into a small
adjoining room. After a time we again heard the lashings of
the strap, and the screams of tortured men. This time it
lasted for quite a while.
Thus the illusions some of us still held were destroyed
one by one, and then, quite unexpectedly, most of us were
overcome by a grim sense of humor. We knew that we had
nothing to lose except our so ridiculously naked lives.
When the showers started to run, we all tried very hard to
make fun, both about ourselves and about each other. After
all, real water did flow from the spraysl
Apart from that strange kind of humor, another sensa
tion seized us: curiosity. I have experienced this kind of
curiosity before, as a fundamental reaction toward certain
strange circumstances. When my life was once endangered
by a climbing accident, I felt only one sensation at the
critical moment: curiosity, curiosity as to whether I should
come out of it alive or with a fractured skull or some other
injuries.
Cold curiosity predominated even in Auschwitz, some
how detaching the mind from its surroundings, which came
to be regarded with a kind of objectivity. At that time one
cultivated this state of mind as a means of protection. We
were anxious to know what would happen next; and what
would be the consequence, for example, of our standing in
the open air, in the chill of late autumn, stark naked, and
still wet from the showers. In the next few days our curi
osity evolved into surprise; surprise that we did not catch
cold.
There were many similar surprises in store for new ar-