Lobstergirl’s Reviews > The Tale of the Ring: A Kaddish > Status Update

"I'm from Auschwitz," I said, when the conductor asked me for the fare. Other passengers looked at me with curiosity. Somebody whispered, "And I thought the Germans had gassed them all." I felt a deep bitterness coming over me.

Now, soon, I'd be free to go. To go where? I realized more dramatically than ever that there was no place for me to go, no people for me to embrace. A deep sadness enveloped me.

Dr. Mengele at Birkenau studied twins. Twin siblings were searched for in each incoming transport, to be kept alive for his research. As soon as this became known, on a number of occasions children of equal age who were strangers were paired by their doomed parents, in the hope that their lives might be saved.

[A] group of four Jews underwent the testing of a truth serum. They were all given a cup of coffee containing the truth medicine in various concentrations. All four fell asleep, and only one woke up again.

A group of Jews had their testicles removed, after which their sexual responses were examined. They were stripped naked, put next to naked women, and examined for erection.

One thing was good about Auschwitz: you did not have to worry about unemployment.

The Lagerkommandant himself confirmed the importance of organizing: once, in a speech directed at the Haftlinge population of Auschwitz, he said, "The diet in this Lager has been calculated scientifically so that its consumer should stay alive not less and not more than three months. Therefore whoever has been here longer than that and is still alive and functioning is, by definition, a thief."

While Treblinka presented to the inexperienced eye a picture of utter chaos, Auschwitz struck me as a place where rigorous discipline was the overlord.

....Auschwitz prisoners “would leave the clinic with a white paper bandage around their heads, which, in combination with their skinny bodies and starved faces, gave them the appearance of desert nomads. This probably accounted for the name by which this ultimate proletariat of Auschwitz came to be known: Mussulmen, or Muslims."

Every Blockaltester had a Schreiber ("secretary"), who was actually his alternate and his liaison with the population of the block. Such secretaries weren't officially recognized, as this was a purely nepotistic appointment, often assigned by a homosexual Blockaltester to his lover.