Auschwitz by Laurence Rees Page A

university students.
    The immediate task for these new arrivals was simple—they had to build the camp themselves. “We used very primitive tools,” recalls Wilhelm Brasse. “The prisoners had to carry stones. It was very difficult, hard labor. And we were beaten.” But not enough construction materials had been provided to complete the task, so a typical Nazi solution was found—theft. “I worked at demolishing houses that used to belong to Polish families,” Brasse continues. “There was an order to take building materials such as bricks, planks and all kinds of other wood. We were surprised the Germans wanted to build so rapidly and they did not have the material.”
    The camp quickly developed a culture of theft, not just from the local population, but from within the institution itself. “The German Kapos would send us inmates off and say, ‘Go and steal cement from another work commando—we don’t care about the other guys,’” says Brasse. “And that is what we did. Planks or cement would be stolen from another commando. In the camp lingo that was called ‘organizing.’ But we had to be very careful not to be caught.”
    Nor was this culture of “organizing” confined to the inmates. In those early days Höss too stole what he needed:
    Since I could expect no help from the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, I had to make do as best I could and help myself. I had to
scrounge up cars and trucks and the necessary petrol. I had to drive as far as 100 kilometers to Zakopane and Rabka just to get some kettles for the prisoners’ kitchen, and I had to go all the way to the Sudetenland for bed frames and straw sacks. 33 Whenever I found depots of material that was needed urgently I simply carted it away without worrying about the formalities. 34 I didn’t even know where I could get a hundred metros of barbed wire. So I just had to pilfer the badly needed barbed wire. 35
    While Höss was “organizing” what he considered necessary to make Auschwitz into a “useful” camp, behind the newly pilfered barbed wire it soon became clear to the Poles that their chances of survival depended chiefly on one factor—which Kapo they worked for. “I very quickly understood that in the ‘good’ work commandos the prisoners would usually have full, round faces,” says Wilhelm Brasse. “They behaved differently from the ones who had the hard jobs and looked haggard—like skeletons wearing uniforms. And immediately I would notice that with this Kapo it’s better because the prisoners look better.”
    Roman Trojanowski struggled under the command of one of the cruelest Kapos, who once punished him for a minor transgression by smashing him in the face and then making him squat for two hours holding a stool in front of him. The harshness of life in this work commando was breaking him. “I had no strength to run around with wheelbarrows every day,” he says. “After one hour the wheelbarrow would fall out of your hands. You just fell on the wheelbarrow and you would hurt your leg. I had to save my skin.” Like many inmates, before and after him at Auschwitz, Roman Trojanowski knew he had to find a way out of his current work commando or perish.
    One morning an announcement was made at roll-call—experienced carpenters were required. So Trojanowski volunteered and, even though he had never been a carpenter in his life, said that he had “seven years of practice.” But the plan backfired: it was obvious once he began work in the carpentry shop that he could not do the job.
    The Kapo called me, took me to his room and stood there with a big stick. When I saw that stick I felt weak. And he said that for damaging
material I’d get twenty-five hits. He told me to bend over and he hit me. He did it especially slow so that I would taste every blow. He was a big guy. He had a