nudged and encouraged her. He found Eva to be a soft, gentle person in this subterranean existence. As a goldsmith, she was spared the worst of the KZ. She was clean, too thin of course, but not emaciated like the rest. She was seventeen years old, from Duselberg. Her father had been a jeweler there and she had learned to work gold as a child. She looked at Peter with those liquid eyes of sorrow. He often wondered what it would have been like to have met her somewhere else.
Eva showed him her work. She made religious pieces, mostly crucifixes, the Madonna and Child.
“Why do you make Christian pieces?” he asked.
“I am Catholic. It gives me peace.”
“A Catholic? Was your father a communist?”
“No.”
He let it pass. People were here for many different reasons. Some probably were wrongly imprisoned. The prisoners never told you the truth. But she was very different from everyone else. Still, he could not expect the truth.
But inevitably Peter learned her story. He could not resist asking. She was the only child of her Catholic father and mother. Her mother had been unable to have more children and died when Eva was eight. When she was ten her father married a Jewess. This had been very foolish since the Party had come to power by then and official policy towards Jews was clear. But her stepmother was French and her father rationalized that since she was a foreign national it did not matter. The new couple had two children.
Two years earlier, her father had been forced to renounce his marriage. He had been inducted and sent to the Eastern Front. Eva had remained with her stepmother, who was in poor health, to help with her brother and sister. She had still been with them eighteen months before when all of them had been arrested as Jews and shipped here. Her stepmother and the small children had been gassed, as she was to be. Eva had only been spared because Sol, in need of a goldsmith, was convinced she could do the job and pulled her from the Himmel Weg to the shower moments before her death.
Eva was devoted to Sol. He was in his sixties from the look of him, and Peter had to admit he was a skilled artisan. His work was exquisite. Max, seeing him with Eva, would loiter as long as he dared. There were always officers about.
“Don't tell me you believe that story?” he asked the day Peter heard it.
“I don't know. I guess not.”
Max laughed. “Smart man. They’re all liars.” A bit later: “You should take her. She won't care. She expects it. It will make her feel safer.”
“No. That wouldn’t be right.”
Max laughed again. “When will you learn that whatever we do is right? Take her! If you don't, someone else will. Working in the hut won't protect her forever.”
After the first heavy snow Peter was assigned one morning to the SteinbruchKommando. SS-Unterscharfuhrer Koch, with the heavy smell of liquor on his breath, told him the duty was easy though a bit cold. The usual SS guard was being treated for syphilis. The Kommando was under the supervision of a powerfully built Reichsdeutscher with the green triangular badge of the professional criminal. He was kapo number 23 and his name was Schlage. Peter knew he had been taken from prison, where he had been sentenced during the Weimar Republic for the axe murder of his family.
It was the Reichsdeutscher’s practice to kill at least two members of his Kommando each day and the prisoners dreaded being assigned to it. The Kommando was used as punishment or replacements were taken directly from the trains. No single inmate lasted so much as a month. To march to the quarry under the sadistic eye of this Jew-hating kapo was an imminent sentence of death. He carried no club for he killed with his bare hands.
Following the morning count, in a bitterly cold, heavily overcast morning, they marched out under the KZ arch to the strains of a military march, along the Lagerstrasse and onto the narrow dirt road that wound three kilometers to the quarry.
Eva showed him her work. She made religious pieces, mostly crucifixes, the Madonna and Child.
“Why do you make Christian pieces?” he asked.
“I am Catholic. It gives me peace.”
“A Catholic? Was your father a communist?”
“No.”
He let it pass. People were here for many different reasons. Some probably were wrongly imprisoned. The prisoners never told you the truth. But she was very different from everyone else. Still, he could not expect the truth.
But inevitably Peter learned her story. He could not resist asking. She was the only child of her Catholic father and mother. Her mother had been unable to have more children and died when Eva was eight. When she was ten her father married a Jewess. This had been very foolish since the Party had come to power by then and official policy towards Jews was clear. But her stepmother was French and her father rationalized that since she was a foreign national it did not matter. The new couple had two children.
Two years earlier, her father had been forced to renounce his marriage. He had been inducted and sent to the Eastern Front. Eva had remained with her stepmother, who was in poor health, to help with her brother and sister. She had still been with them eighteen months before when all of them had been arrested as Jews and shipped here. Her stepmother and the small children had been gassed, as she was to be. Eva had only been spared because Sol, in need of a goldsmith, was convinced she could do the job and pulled her from the Himmel Weg to the shower moments before her death.
Eva was devoted to Sol. He was in his sixties from the look of him, and Peter had to admit he was a skilled artisan. His work was exquisite. Max, seeing him with Eva, would loiter as long as he dared. There were always officers about.
“Don't tell me you believe that story?” he asked the day Peter heard it.
“I don't know. I guess not.”
Max laughed. “Smart man. They’re all liars.” A bit later: “You should take her. She won't care. She expects it. It will make her feel safer.”
“No. That wouldn’t be right.”
Max laughed again. “When will you learn that whatever we do is right? Take her! If you don't, someone else will. Working in the hut won't protect her forever.”
After the first heavy snow Peter was assigned one morning to the SteinbruchKommando. SS-Unterscharfuhrer Koch, with the heavy smell of liquor on his breath, told him the duty was easy though a bit cold. The usual SS guard was being treated for syphilis. The Kommando was under the supervision of a powerfully built Reichsdeutscher with the green triangular badge of the professional criminal. He was kapo number 23 and his name was Schlage. Peter knew he had been taken from prison, where he had been sentenced during the Weimar Republic for the axe murder of his family.
It was the Reichsdeutscher’s practice to kill at least two members of his Kommando each day and the prisoners dreaded being assigned to it. The Kommando was used as punishment or replacements were taken directly from the trains. No single inmate lasted so much as a month. To march to the quarry under the sadistic eye of this Jew-hating kapo was an imminent sentence of death. He carried no club for he killed with his bare hands.
Following the morning count, in a bitterly cold, heavily overcast morning, they marched out under the KZ arch to the strains of a military march, along the Lagerstrasse and onto the narrow dirt road that wound three kilometers to the quarry.
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