Of Mutants and Men

[04]

    "My name is Albert Frederick Fischer and I am a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz.

Before I was arrested for smuggling and, well, being a Jew, my family and I lived in the Warsaw ghetto. Under the commands of the Germans, Judenraete, Jewish Councils were established in different ghettos. They needed to be sure we complied to every one of their ridiculous rules, and who better to ask the names of Jews than Jews themselves?

Following the invasion of Poland, my father, Diedrich Adam Fischer was appointed as the leader of Judenraete in Warsaw. The Germans demanded he write a list of names if he did not desire to see his family starved to death. On July 22 1942, the day deportations began in Warsaw, my little sister, Eliza, found his body hanging from the ceiling.

If this war ever ends, historians will no doubt find the remains of my people and the survivors. But I still felt the strong urge to write this letter, to tell future generations to never cease fighting for freedom and what's right.

Both fortunately and unfortunately, I was caught whilst smuggling but they did not shoot me down. Instead, I embarked on the train to Auschwitz. The year was 1943.

Inside the freight car, we were over 100. The one-way to trip to hell was hellish in every way; with no sufficient place to sit or to do one's business, the journey was torturous even more so for those in poor health.

Men whispered among them, thrilled by the idea to receive a portion of bread and jam. The Germans had lured them to their own doom with false promises of food and a job. Some were unintentionally carried away by the massive flood of people going on board.

What pains me the most is that I do not know what happened to my family. Seeing how the SS mercilessly murder young children, the elderly and the sick, I can't help but think of the worst. It did not help when I heard they annihilated the Warsaw ghetto and slaughtered most of the survivors.

Since the day I set foot in this camp, I lost my name. After the Zentra Sauna, a so-called disinfection procedure, I was given a six-digit number, tattooed on my forearm, and a few months later, I became a Sonderkommando.

The Sonderkommando is a special unit of prisoners in charge of guiding the newcomers to the gaz chamber, extracting gold teeth, shaving their heads, sorting their last belongings and burning the bodies.

Those who are responsible for the newcomers have to blatantly lie in the faces of soon-to-be-murdered-prisoners that they are going to take a shower before working when the "shower" is actually a gaz chamber.

While the SS took care of the gassings, a team would... prep the bodies and transport them to the Crematorium where other teams would do the last sorting – teeth and clothes – before cremating the remains.

Yesterday, 200 were randomly called out from Crematorium I to V and they were gassed. The Germans intend to kill us all. They said it was because of their failing health which rendered them useless but we know the truth. The SS is afraid of us. We are the witnesses of their horrors; they fear we will fight back against them.

They are right. We will fight back.

Upon arrival at Auschwitz – I suppose it's the same for other camps – the first thing they do is registering us as nameless prisoners. You are taught that you are filth, a slave to the superior race. Girls are forced to work in munitions factories where they make gun powder used to kill their friends, families and acquaintances; does that not say enough of the Germans?

The living quarters are very over-crowded. We are all forced to sleep on our sides on a paper mattresses stuffed with what we named "wood wool". They feed us the rotten remains of their foods. When they felt like being generous, they distributed inedible potatoes which we kept till nightfall and shared among friends. It's a constant reminder that we are unworthy, not human.