The Kindly Ones

Piontek didn’t wake me, and I slept until eight o’clock. The kitchen was still working and I had an omelette with sausage. Then I went out. At the Stammlager

and in Birkenau, the columns were pouring out of the camp. The Häftlinge

, their feet wrapped in whatever they’d been able to find, were walking slowly, at a shuffling pace, surrounded by SS guards and led by well-fed, warmly dressed kapos. All those who had one had taken their blanket, which they generally wore draped over their heads, a little like Bedouins; but that was all. When I asked, I was told they had received a piece of sausage and bread for three days; no one had received any orders about clothes.

The first day, though, despite the ice and the wet snow, it still seemed to be going all right. I studied the columns leaving the camp, talked with Kraus, walked up the roads to observe a little farther on. Everywhere, I noticed abuses: the guards had prisoners pushing carts loaded with their things, or else forced them to carry their suitcases. Here and there by the side of the road I noticed a corpse lying in the snow, the head frequently bloody; the guards were applying Bär’s stern orders. Yet the columns were advancing without confusion and without any attempt at revolt. At midday I managed to make contact with Schmauser to discuss the problem of the clothes. He listened to me briefly and then swept aside my objections: “We can’t give them civilian clothing, they could escape.”—“Then shoes at least.” He hesitated. “Arrange things with Bär,” he said finally. He must have had other preoccupations, I could tell, but I would still have preferred a clear order. I went to find Bär at the Stammlager

: “Obergruppenführer Schmauser has given the order to have shoes distributed to the inmates who don’t have any.” Bär shrugged: “Here, I don’t have any more, everything has already been loaded for shipment. Just see about it in Birkenau with Schwarzhuber.” I spent two hours finding this officer, the Lagerführer of Birkenau, who had left to inspect one of the columns. “Very well, I’ll take care of it,” he promised me when I gave him the order. Around nightfall, I found Elias and Darius, whom I had sent to inspect the evacuation of Monowitz and several Nebenlager

. Everything was happening in a more or less orderly way, but already, by late afternoon, more and more inmates, exhausted, were stopping and letting themselves be shot by the guards. I left again with Piontek to inspect the nighttime stopover points. Despite Schmauser’s formal orders—there was a fear that inmates would take advantage of the darkness to escape—some columns were still advancing. I criticized the officers, but they replied that they hadn’t yet reached their designated stopping point, and that they couldn’t let their columns sleep outside, in the snow or on the ice. The points I visited turned out to be insufficient in any case: a barn or a school, for two thousand inmates, sometimes; many of them slept outside, huddled next to each other. I asked that fires be lit, but there was no wood, the trees were too damp and no one had tools to cut them down; where boards or old crates could be found, they made little campfires, but these didn’t last till dawn. No soup had been planned, the inmates were supposed to survive on what had been distributed in the camp; farther on, they assured me, there would be rations. Most of the columns hadn’t gone five kilometers; many were still in the almost deserted camp zone; at this pace, the marches would last ten to twelve days.

I went back to the Haus muddy, wet, and tired. Kraus was there, having a drink with some of his colleagues from the SD. He came and sat down with me: “How are things?” he asked.—“Not so good. There are going to be needless losses. Bär could have done a lot more.”—“Bär couldn’t care less. You know he has been named Kommandant at Mittelbau?” I raised my eyebrows: “No, I didn’t know. Who will supervise the closing of the camp?”—“Me. I’ve already received the order to set up an office, after the evacuation, to manage the administrative dissolution.”—“Congratulations,” I said.—“Oh,” he replied, “don’t think I’m happy about it. Frankly, I’d have preferred something else.”—“And your immediate tasks?”—“We’re waiting for the camps to be emptied. Afterward, we’ll start.”—“What will you do with the inmates who are left?” He shrugged and gave an ironic little smile: “What do you think? The Obergruppenführer gave the order to liquidate them. No one must fall alive into the hands of the Bolsheviks.”—“I see.” I finished my drink. “Well, good luck. I don’t envy you.”