This one is a little bit gruesome in places so be warned.
Chapter Seven
It had been three months now since they had arrived at Auchwitz and life was worse than they could ever have imagined. What Ardeth had gone through before was quite mild to what they had to endure here.
They had heard that all the children that had arrived with them were dead as well as their friend Rudi. Alex seemed to be coping quite well with what was happening to him although he didn't say very much. Karl had voiced his fears about Ardeth one day and Alex told him what had happened all those months ago when he was in Germany before.
"Well we will have to help him, make sure he is not on his own as much as we can. I have seen it before, he will try and mask his own fears in front of you and probably me as well. If he doesn't talk about things he will end up worse than before"
"But we are going to die anyway" replied Alex "He was talking about trying to get out of here a couple of weeks ago, just after that illness he had but then he said nothing more about it"
Karl passed some more things to Alex to sort out, Ardeth was taking some stuff to one of the guards.
"He spoke to me too, I told him that there was no chance of getting out of here. No-one had ever escaped from here and those that had tried were shot"
Ardeth came back and they pretended to speak about the gold they were sorting out until a guard heard them and told them to shut up. He knew they had been talking about him but he kept quiet. He was becoming more and more scared of what was going on and more worried about Alex. He didn't care about himself but if there was any way of getting him out of there he would.
It was Sunday morning and someone shouted that fifty men were needed at the unloading bay. The guards picked a load of the men from Canada, including Ardeth, Alex and Karl and they were marched to the bay.
"Wonder why they want us over here?" asked Alex.
"There is another transport coming in and they need someone to take off the people" replied Karl.
The guards marched up and down with their rifles ready and hit anyone who they saw was talking. The three friends shutup. They waited for the train to arrive and when it did, they were move to the doors. When they were opened, a lot of the people fell out, suffocated with swollen faces.
The injured and the children had been trampled to death by the others in the wagons as they tried to get some air. Even in this very cold winter, the temperature inside the wagons must have been over 30 degrees.
Several of the men were sick and beaten for the trouble. Ardeth and Alex felt the same but tried to control it as best they could. They had to load all the bodies, dead and injured onto trucks and soon as one train was emptied, the next one came in.
This went on for two days by which time, Ardeth and the others were dead on their feet and finally were marched to their huts at 1am, where they collapsed on the bunks, knowing that they would be woken again at 5am. They were weak too from lack of food, even more so the last two days as they had only been given coffee and one bowl of watery soup. Alex had nearly passed out twice and had to be held up by Karl at one stage in case one of the guards saw him.
One of the trains had about two hundred children on it, each with a loaf of bread under their arms. As they were marched off the train, they had to put the bread in a basket and then they were taken to the gas chambers. This was the final thing to get to Ardeth and he seemed to end up crying at this terrible thing that was being done to the children, some as young as two years old.
"Come on Ardeth, for Gods sake don't let them see you like this, you will end up in the gas chamber with the others" said Karl later that night.
"Just leave me alone" whispered Ardeth turning his back from them "If I had a gun I would kill them all"
"We all feel like that my friend" replied Karl "But you have to work through this. Shut off, somehow, that is the only way you will survive this place"
Ardeth knew the man was right but how could he, those childrens faces would haunt him for the rest of his life. But they weren't the worse things he would see, not by a long way. The next day they were back on the trains, and after the bodies were loaded they had to get the others into line who didn't want to leave the wagons.
One girl with long red hair, was sitting in the corner of one of the wagons, rocking too and fro, obviously whatever had happened to her, had turned her mind. Ardeth tried to coax her out.
"Come on, everything will be fine but you have to leave here" he said quietly.
Looking at her, all he saw was blankness on her face, she seemed to look straight through him, as though he wasn't even there. There was no response at all. Suddenly a guard shouted to him to get her on a blanket if she wouldn't get out and carry her.
As they rolled her onto the blanket and ran with her, they stumbled and fell as she was quite heavy and they were getting weaker. The SS slashed across Ardeths and Alexs shoulders and the blanket slipped from their numb fingers. He shouted to them to drag her and as they did, she bumped over the frozen ground and she eventually stopped crying and moving.
They put her in the lorry and went back to get someone else. This went on until all were in the lorries and they stood and watched them drive off, knowing that they would all be dead in the next half hour.
It was getting harder to work but easier to cope with what was going on, there were no more tears to cry. Their bodies worked but their minds and feelings were shutting down. They were becoming oblivious to the pain and suffering.
About two weeks later, the trains stopped for a while and the commandant was pleased because the bodies were piling up and they would have to work even harder to clear them before the next ones came in.
The crematoria had worked at full strength the last few days and it was still struggling. The ones burned had been without food and water for days, weeks and some had been dead in the wagons and the rest didn't take long to gas. All that remained was a pile of rags and when Ardeth glanced up at the chimney, he saw the lightening rods at the corners were all twisted and bent because of the heat generated from the ovens.
The only good thing about being chosen to work in the ovens was that they could get warm for a while. Their bodies were so cold that any feeling had long since gone altogether.
"I am so cold" said Alex "I can't keep going"
He slid down the wall of the hut but was pulled up by Karl who tried to make him walk back to the crematoria.
"You have to, once we are in here, you will warm up, that is the one advantage of working here, come on"
The only problem they had was that the bodies from the chambers had to be carried on the mens backs to the ovens and that was hard work. If they fell, they were beaten till they got up again, if after that they didn't get up, they were shot and followed the others into the ovens.
One of the bodies that Ardeth was carrying was really heavy and he had to let him fall as he sagged to the ground in exhaustion. Suddenly a voice spoke to him and turning round he saw that it was the man he had been carrying. He got up to help him but felt whip lashes on his back as the SS officer beat him and then pulling his gun, shot the man.
"Get up and take him to the ovens. If you don't, you will be shot too, MOVE"
Ardeth struggled to his feet and staggered back inside and helped the other men with the bodies. He was losing his fight and really wished that he was dead. He had no wish to go on and even Alex and Karl could not get through to him.
They were never allowed to stay at the same job for more than a few days at a time and they were soon moved to another place. This time it was the gas chambers themselves, where they had to take out the bodies after they had been gassed.
Standing by they watched the people go into the room, naked and they all assumed they were going to be showered and then put to work. Alex would have liked to have told them exactly what was going to happen to them but he dare not.
The doors were closed and bolted and then the lights turned out. That was when they heard the screaming, until that moment they had not been privy to that and it sent a chill down their spines. The Zyklon-B had been put in the vents and as it vaporized the people banged on the doors to try and get away.
Soon the noise stopped and after about fifteen minutes the doors were opened and Ardeth and the others had to pull out the bodies. Three of the men passed out at the sight including Alex and they were kicked into the corner by the guards. If by the time the people had been taken out they were not up and working again, they would be joining them.
Somehow Karl managed to get Alex up and out of there before the guards came back and they hid him behind the pillar next to one of the ovens for a while till he felt better, risking his own life as well.
"Come on Alex, you have to help, the guards will be back in a minute and they walk behind there" said Ardeth.
"I'm…coming" said Alex summoning the energy somehow to get up just as the guards came back in.
Seeing that they were all working they went out to have a crafty cigarette. One of the other men came over and gave Alex some water, very dirty water but something to drink all the same. He thanked them.
On the second day, one of the men found a bundle and saw that it was a baby, still alive. The guard took the bundle from the man and saw the baby waving its arms. Before anyone could do anything, he had put it on the floor and crushed it's neck with his foot.
This was too much for Ardeth, he hit the guard and then ran outside and was violently sick. The guard ran after him and hit him with the rifle butt and he doubled up on the ground while the man continued to kick him.
When he was sure that Ardeth was at least unconscious he went back inside and called the others guard. Between them they dragged the man to the fence at the back of the crematoria and tied him by his hands to a post which was about seven foot off the ground. Ardeth hung there, still out cold and was left there as a reminder to the others.
When he came round, what he thought was a few hours later, his arms felt as though they were being pulled out of their sockets and he realized that he was hanging by them. It was dark and the pain he felt every time he moved, was excruciating. He had no feeling in any of his limbs at all and he could feel himself either passing out or dying, he didn't know which.
Then vaguely he felt himself being lifted down and carried. When he opened his eyes he saw that he was in the barracks and Alex was trying to give him some water.
"Take it easy Ardeth" he said "You have been up there for two days. The commandant made us take you down. He said you are to stay here tomorrow"
"Leave me, let me die" gasped Ardeth weakly.
"No way, we have come this far. There are rumours that the war will be over soon, one of the guards, the nice one in Canada told Karl. They reckon by the end of the year it will all be over" said Alex.
"I can't carry on for another day, let alone a few months" he replied "I've had it, all those people dead and I have helped to do it"
Alex held the man in his arms and he realized that Ardeth was losing a lot of weight, his face was drawn and grey with dark circles under his eyes. But then he must have looked the same. The only thing that reminded him of the warrior he knew was the tattoos. This place was slowly killing them all, maybe Ardeth was right, they would have been better being gassed when they arrived.
"We have each other, we have to try and survive this, listen to me"
He laid there and talked to Ardeth, reminding him of their home, his parents and all the things that had done together and all the things that he wanted to do when this was all over. Ardeth tried to remember but his mind wouldn't let him get past that baby or the others that had died. He realized that he wasn't as strong as Alex was. He didn't know why, maybe the experience from before had something to do with it but he just wanted to go to sleep and never wake up again.
Chapter Seven
It had been three months now since they had arrived at Auchwitz and life was worse than they could ever have imagined. What Ardeth had gone through before was quite mild to what they had to endure here.
They had heard that all the children that had arrived with them were dead as well as their friend Rudi. Alex seemed to be coping quite well with what was happening to him although he didn't say very much. Karl had voiced his fears about Ardeth one day and Alex told him what had happened all those months ago when he was in Germany before.
"Well we will have to help him, make sure he is not on his own as much as we can. I have seen it before, he will try and mask his own fears in front of you and probably me as well. If he doesn't talk about things he will end up worse than before"
"But we are going to die anyway" replied Alex "He was talking about trying to get out of here a couple of weeks ago, just after that illness he had but then he said nothing more about it"
Karl passed some more things to Alex to sort out, Ardeth was taking some stuff to one of the guards.
"He spoke to me too, I told him that there was no chance of getting out of here. No-one had ever escaped from here and those that had tried were shot"
Ardeth came back and they pretended to speak about the gold they were sorting out until a guard heard them and told them to shut up. He knew they had been talking about him but he kept quiet. He was becoming more and more scared of what was going on and more worried about Alex. He didn't care about himself but if there was any way of getting him out of there he would.
It was Sunday morning and someone shouted that fifty men were needed at the unloading bay. The guards picked a load of the men from Canada, including Ardeth, Alex and Karl and they were marched to the bay.
"Wonder why they want us over here?" asked Alex.
"There is another transport coming in and they need someone to take off the people" replied Karl.
The guards marched up and down with their rifles ready and hit anyone who they saw was talking. The three friends shutup. They waited for the train to arrive and when it did, they were move to the doors. When they were opened, a lot of the people fell out, suffocated with swollen faces.
The injured and the children had been trampled to death by the others in the wagons as they tried to get some air. Even in this very cold winter, the temperature inside the wagons must have been over 30 degrees.
Several of the men were sick and beaten for the trouble. Ardeth and Alex felt the same but tried to control it as best they could. They had to load all the bodies, dead and injured onto trucks and soon as one train was emptied, the next one came in.
This went on for two days by which time, Ardeth and the others were dead on their feet and finally were marched to their huts at 1am, where they collapsed on the bunks, knowing that they would be woken again at 5am. They were weak too from lack of food, even more so the last two days as they had only been given coffee and one bowl of watery soup. Alex had nearly passed out twice and had to be held up by Karl at one stage in case one of the guards saw him.
One of the trains had about two hundred children on it, each with a loaf of bread under their arms. As they were marched off the train, they had to put the bread in a basket and then they were taken to the gas chambers. This was the final thing to get to Ardeth and he seemed to end up crying at this terrible thing that was being done to the children, some as young as two years old.
"Come on Ardeth, for Gods sake don't let them see you like this, you will end up in the gas chamber with the others" said Karl later that night.
"Just leave me alone" whispered Ardeth turning his back from them "If I had a gun I would kill them all"
"We all feel like that my friend" replied Karl "But you have to work through this. Shut off, somehow, that is the only way you will survive this place"
Ardeth knew the man was right but how could he, those childrens faces would haunt him for the rest of his life. But they weren't the worse things he would see, not by a long way. The next day they were back on the trains, and after the bodies were loaded they had to get the others into line who didn't want to leave the wagons.
One girl with long red hair, was sitting in the corner of one of the wagons, rocking too and fro, obviously whatever had happened to her, had turned her mind. Ardeth tried to coax her out.
"Come on, everything will be fine but you have to leave here" he said quietly.
Looking at her, all he saw was blankness on her face, she seemed to look straight through him, as though he wasn't even there. There was no response at all. Suddenly a guard shouted to him to get her on a blanket if she wouldn't get out and carry her.
As they rolled her onto the blanket and ran with her, they stumbled and fell as she was quite heavy and they were getting weaker. The SS slashed across Ardeths and Alexs shoulders and the blanket slipped from their numb fingers. He shouted to them to drag her and as they did, she bumped over the frozen ground and she eventually stopped crying and moving.
They put her in the lorry and went back to get someone else. This went on until all were in the lorries and they stood and watched them drive off, knowing that they would all be dead in the next half hour.
It was getting harder to work but easier to cope with what was going on, there were no more tears to cry. Their bodies worked but their minds and feelings were shutting down. They were becoming oblivious to the pain and suffering.
About two weeks later, the trains stopped for a while and the commandant was pleased because the bodies were piling up and they would have to work even harder to clear them before the next ones came in.
The crematoria had worked at full strength the last few days and it was still struggling. The ones burned had been without food and water for days, weeks and some had been dead in the wagons and the rest didn't take long to gas. All that remained was a pile of rags and when Ardeth glanced up at the chimney, he saw the lightening rods at the corners were all twisted and bent because of the heat generated from the ovens.
The only good thing about being chosen to work in the ovens was that they could get warm for a while. Their bodies were so cold that any feeling had long since gone altogether.
"I am so cold" said Alex "I can't keep going"
He slid down the wall of the hut but was pulled up by Karl who tried to make him walk back to the crematoria.
"You have to, once we are in here, you will warm up, that is the one advantage of working here, come on"
The only problem they had was that the bodies from the chambers had to be carried on the mens backs to the ovens and that was hard work. If they fell, they were beaten till they got up again, if after that they didn't get up, they were shot and followed the others into the ovens.
One of the bodies that Ardeth was carrying was really heavy and he had to let him fall as he sagged to the ground in exhaustion. Suddenly a voice spoke to him and turning round he saw that it was the man he had been carrying. He got up to help him but felt whip lashes on his back as the SS officer beat him and then pulling his gun, shot the man.
"Get up and take him to the ovens. If you don't, you will be shot too, MOVE"
Ardeth struggled to his feet and staggered back inside and helped the other men with the bodies. He was losing his fight and really wished that he was dead. He had no wish to go on and even Alex and Karl could not get through to him.
They were never allowed to stay at the same job for more than a few days at a time and they were soon moved to another place. This time it was the gas chambers themselves, where they had to take out the bodies after they had been gassed.
Standing by they watched the people go into the room, naked and they all assumed they were going to be showered and then put to work. Alex would have liked to have told them exactly what was going to happen to them but he dare not.
The doors were closed and bolted and then the lights turned out. That was when they heard the screaming, until that moment they had not been privy to that and it sent a chill down their spines. The Zyklon-B had been put in the vents and as it vaporized the people banged on the doors to try and get away.
Soon the noise stopped and after about fifteen minutes the doors were opened and Ardeth and the others had to pull out the bodies. Three of the men passed out at the sight including Alex and they were kicked into the corner by the guards. If by the time the people had been taken out they were not up and working again, they would be joining them.
Somehow Karl managed to get Alex up and out of there before the guards came back and they hid him behind the pillar next to one of the ovens for a while till he felt better, risking his own life as well.
"Come on Alex, you have to help, the guards will be back in a minute and they walk behind there" said Ardeth.
"I'm…coming" said Alex summoning the energy somehow to get up just as the guards came back in.
Seeing that they were all working they went out to have a crafty cigarette. One of the other men came over and gave Alex some water, very dirty water but something to drink all the same. He thanked them.
On the second day, one of the men found a bundle and saw that it was a baby, still alive. The guard took the bundle from the man and saw the baby waving its arms. Before anyone could do anything, he had put it on the floor and crushed it's neck with his foot.
This was too much for Ardeth, he hit the guard and then ran outside and was violently sick. The guard ran after him and hit him with the rifle butt and he doubled up on the ground while the man continued to kick him.
When he was sure that Ardeth was at least unconscious he went back inside and called the others guard. Between them they dragged the man to the fence at the back of the crematoria and tied him by his hands to a post which was about seven foot off the ground. Ardeth hung there, still out cold and was left there as a reminder to the others.
When he came round, what he thought was a few hours later, his arms felt as though they were being pulled out of their sockets and he realized that he was hanging by them. It was dark and the pain he felt every time he moved, was excruciating. He had no feeling in any of his limbs at all and he could feel himself either passing out or dying, he didn't know which.
Then vaguely he felt himself being lifted down and carried. When he opened his eyes he saw that he was in the barracks and Alex was trying to give him some water.
"Take it easy Ardeth" he said "You have been up there for two days. The commandant made us take you down. He said you are to stay here tomorrow"
"Leave me, let me die" gasped Ardeth weakly.
"No way, we have come this far. There are rumours that the war will be over soon, one of the guards, the nice one in Canada told Karl. They reckon by the end of the year it will all be over" said Alex.
"I can't carry on for another day, let alone a few months" he replied "I've had it, all those people dead and I have helped to do it"
Alex held the man in his arms and he realized that Ardeth was losing a lot of weight, his face was drawn and grey with dark circles under his eyes. But then he must have looked the same. The only thing that reminded him of the warrior he knew was the tattoos. This place was slowly killing them all, maybe Ardeth was right, they would have been better being gassed when they arrived.
"We have each other, we have to try and survive this, listen to me"
He laid there and talked to Ardeth, reminding him of their home, his parents and all the things that had done together and all the things that he wanted to do when this was all over. Ardeth tried to remember but his mind wouldn't let him get past that baby or the others that had died. He realized that he wasn't as strong as Alex was. He didn't know why, maybe the experience from before had something to do with it but he just wanted to go to sleep and never wake up again.
