Afterwards, instead of a moldy sausage and a piece of stale bread, the orchestra received an actual meal—potatoes with sauerkraut and even some meat—from the very grateful camp leader. Upon Alma, her new favorite pet Jew, Mandl bestowed an additional favor the very next day: a personal pass signed by Lagerführerin herself and a permission to go to the Kanada.
“Take whatever you like,” Mandl declared generously when Alma inquired politely what it was precisely that she was permitted to take. “Show the Rottenführer in charge your Ausweis when you get there and give him my personal oral orders to provide you with whatever you need. And do not lose your pass. Only very few privileged inmates have those, so make sure you keep it on your person at all times whenever you go outside women’s camp territory. My colleagues sometimes get overly enthusiastic in their duties and may very well shoot you if they find you wandering around without an Ausweis.”
It was an odd and frightening experience, walking through the camp alone. Well-trodden paths, a maze of barbed wire, guard towers, endless rows of barracks and shouts—Halt!—coming from above, menacing and invisible, whenever Alma stepped in the wrong direction. Rigid with fear, she held her arms up high with the Ausweis in it, screaming at the black muzzles of machine guns directed at her.
“Please, don’t shoot! I have a pass!”
“It’s a restricted zone!”
“Lagerführerin Mandl sent me to the Kanada detail.”
“Does it look like the Kanada to you?”
“I don’t know where it is… Could you perhaps kindly point me in the right direction?”
The muzzle of the gun swung to the left grudgingly. “Along that road, through the men’s camp, to the left of the medical barracks.”
“Many thanks,” she replied, backing away, half-expecting a burst of the machine-gun fire.
“Watch where you’re going! Another step and you’ll fry yourself on the electric fence. Feebleminded cow!”
By the time she had reached the men’s camp, Alma’s back was entirely wet with sweat. The sun was rolling westward, but the air was dull with ash. Foul-smelling clouds of it dimmed the dusky sky and turned it into the premature twilight. It snowed in great greasy flakes all around her; the remnants of the annihilated humanity landing softly on her exposed skin.
Alma wiped her hand down her arm, but the ash only smeared. Her palm was now a dusty dull-gray. It was in her eyelashes, impossible to blink away, in her nose; she opened her mouth to take a deep breath and tasted it on her tongue.
Tearing her kerchief off her head, she turned it inside out and cleaned her tongue, her face, her eyes, her bare arms. Such was her terror and disgust that it had dulled her other senses to such an extent that another enraged SS shout—“Out of the way!”—had scarcely registered with her. Only when the guard had physically installed himself in front of her, eyes wild with rage, hand raised with a whip in it, did Alma leap back guided by sheer instinct.
“I have an Ausweis—”
“Stay out of the way! The men are marching!”
Just now did she see them, led by a Kapo, five abreast, a ghostly army of gray skeletons returning from their daily labors.
The outside gangs.
It was a grotesque parade; Dante’s Inferno, the ninth circle of hell. They marched and marched, all shaved heads; scaly, weather-worn skin; emaciated frames; black, bare feet; torn rags on which the stripes had long disappeared under the layers of blood and dirt. Their eyes stared fixedly forward, dull and devoid of a single spark of hope. Their shoulders were stooped like those of the ancient men, yet they couldn’t have been older than forty.
Caps pressed against their seams, they marched past the SS man, who towered over them like some ancient cruel deity. From time to time, he amused himself with slashing their sweat-smeared cheeks with his whip. They barely flinched, having long lost the ability to feel the pain. They marched on, the tormented, accusing apparitions, reduced to nothing, the former lawyers, civil servants, prominent physicians, university professors, set decorators, bank clerks. It appeared almost unconceivable now, the very idea that they used to be anything but this faceless slave force.
Alma felt herself shuddering. Before that day, she had carried the bubble of self-deception like a sort of a protective cocoon around herself. She was Alma Rosé. The SS wouldn’t dare touch her. Now, she was suddenly terrified with the chilling thought that at least some of these men must have nursed the same exact empty illusion when they had stepped onto the Auschwitz ramp.
Moving as though in a nightmare, Alma stumbled her way to the Kanada detail. Here, it was a different world entirely. Astounded, Alma stopped and contemplated the rows and rows of warehouses that stood with their doors thrown open. From inside, women’s laughter could be heard, brilliant and careless. There were no SS guards in sight; only a Kapo offered lazy comments from the pile of mattresses on which he was presently lying like some Oriental pasha, a cigarette in hand. Although, it appeared that inmates only half-listened to his half-hearted instructions. If it wasn’t for the Kapo’s distinctive armband, Alma would have trouble distinguishing him from his underlings—nearly everyone in the Kanada was dressed in civilian clothing.
In the distance, a group of girls attired in dark slacks, shoes, and light summer shirts were sorting the luggage. Alma stared at their styled hair, wristwatches, and dazzling smiles and thought she was dreaming. A couple of inmates were hurling the suitcases from the back of a truck and onto the ground, their muscular arms straining under white undershirts. Only striped caps betrayed their belonging to the camp population.
The contrast with the men’s camp was beyond any comprehension.
An SS man with the Rottenführer insignia on his uniform strolled out of one of the warehouses, yawned and stretched his arms over his head, squinting at the setting sun like an overfed cat. Having approached the group of women, he pointed at something lazily and grinned—one of the girls appeared to have made a joke. Another inmate trotted over to him, took his cap off, clicked his heels and opened his palm. Interested, the SS man fingered at the object. In an instant, it disappeared into his pocket.
The SS will take anything, Alma recalled Magda’s words. But in such an insolent manner? Right in the open?
Though who would say anything to that? Perhaps, it was a blessing in disguise that the SS were so corrupted. Just one look at the inmates who supplied them with all of these riches was enough of an argument in the SS corruption’s favor. What a difference they made from the lifeless army on its last breath Alma had just seen marching back to their airless barracks.
She approached the Rottenführer and showed him her Ausweis signed by Mandl herself. He barely glanced at it and signed to one of the women who were presently emptying the suitcases within mere steps from him.
“Kitty will escort you inside.” He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke away from Alma’s face. “No gold, jewelry, or currency is allowed to be taken. Reich orders.”
Alma almost asked him what she would do with that currency here, but stopped herself. “Yes, Lagerführerin Mandl has told me that much.”
“Jawohl, Herr Rottenführer,” the guard corrected her.
Alma looked up at him; much to her amazement, he was grinning.