prisoner in Totenhausen Camp had been standing on the hard-packed snow in roll-call formation for forty minutes in a freezing Arctic wind. Wearing only wooden shoes and gray-striped burlap prison clothes, they stood in a line seven deep and forty persons long. Nearly three hundred souls, all told—withered old men, mothers and fathers in their prime, strong-limbed youths, small children. One colicky infant screamed ceaselessly in the wretched ranks.
This Appell had been a surprise. The two scheduled roll calls—seven in the morning and seven at night—had already taken place. The camp veterans knew no good could come of the change in routine. In camp, all change was change for the worse. After only five minutes standing in the Appellplatz, they had caught the faint sound of the Polish prisoners whispering the feared word seleckja—selection. Somehow the Poles were always the first to know.
The newest prisoners in the line were Jews. Yesterday they had been clubbed out of an unheated rail car that carried them here from the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where they had been pulled from lines leaving trains newly arrived from the far corners of Western Europe—France and Holland mostly. They were the last of the lucky who had avoided the early deportations.
Their luck had run out.
One of the Jews standing in the first rank was no newcomer. He had been in Totenhausen so long that the SS called him not by his number or name, but by his occupation—Schuhmacher. Shoemaker. A lean and wiry man of fifty-five, with a hawklike nose and gray mustache, the shoemaker did not shiver like the other prisoners, nor did he try to whisper to those on either side of him. He simply stood motionless, burning as few calories as he could, and watched.
He watched SS Sergeant Major Gunther Sturm strut before the ragged assembly, his face clean-shaven for once, his lank blond hair combed across his bullet-shaped head. The shoemaker saw that the screeching of the infant annoyed the sergeant to no end. He had studied Gunther Sturm for two years, and could easily imagine the thoughts churning behind the slate eyes: How did that brat’s whore of a mother slip it through the selection net? Under her skirts, no doubt. The Auschwitz SS stay drunk and the prisoner Kommandos are lazy. How the hell do those laggards expect to win a war when they can’t outsmart one crafty Jewess? Sturm’s growing frustration was of great interest to the shoemaker. On any other night the sergeant would have walked over and strangled the infant on the spot. But tonight he did not. This fact told the shoemaker something.
Tonight was special.
He studied the impressive display of force assembled to insure that tonight’s activities proceeded in an orderly fashion. Eighty storm troopers of the SS Totenkopfverbände—Death’s Head Battalions—stood stiffly at attention in their earth-brown uniforms, rifles at the ready in case some witless newcomer should make a dash for the wire. They were backed up by Sturm’s beloved German shepherds—canines carefully bred with wolves to enhance their killing instinct—and also by the two machine gun towers at the forward corners of the camp.
A slamming door heralded the arrival of Sturm’s immediate superior, Major Wolfgang Schörner. The senior security officer of Totenhausen marched smartly across the snow and stopped two meters from the shoemaker. Unlike the Death’s Head guards, he wore the field gray uniform of the Waffen SS. He also wore a black patch over his left eye socket—a souvenir from his participation in the bloody retreat from Kursk, the turning point of the war in Russia—and a Knight’s Cross at his throat.
Though only thirty years old, Schörner understood instinctively the dynamics of intimidation. Prisoners were forbidden to move during Appell, but the entire mass of bodies had drawn back slightly at his approach. With his good eye Major Schörner inspected the front line from end to end, looking for something or someone the prisoners could only guess at. Few had the courage to return his probing stare.
One who did was the shoemaker.
Another was a young woman of about twenty-five, a Dutch Jewess by the name of Jansen. Unlike the shoemaker, she had her entire family with her: husband, two small children, her father-in-law. The shoemaker had seen them arrive on yesterday’s train. The woman’s head had been shaved, but her large brown eyes flickered with a quick intelligence that had long since faded from the eyes of most of the other camp women. The shoemaker admired her bravery in returning Schörner’s gaze, but he knew that it was hollow. She had no idea what lay in store for her family.
The shoemaker did. He didn’t need to hear the whispers of the Poles. During the afternoon he had seen SS men taking great pains to avoid the area of the gas storage tanks behind their barracks. Obviously some new and potent poison had been pumped into the tanks from the laboratory. Yes, tonight there would be a selection. And selections were the exclusive province of the Herr Doktor.
“Excuse me, sir,” the young Dutchwoman whispered in Yiddish. “I am Rachel Jansen. How long must we stand here in the cold?”
“Don’t talk,” said the shoemaker, keeping his face forward. “And keep your children quiet, for their sakes.”
“No talking!” Sergeant Sturm shouted. At the sound of his voice the German shepherds burst out barking.
The shoemaker looked up at the sound of another slamming door. SS Lieutenant-General Herr Doktor Klaus Brandt, Commandant of Totenhausen Camp, stood before the rear door of his quarters wearing his elegant pale gray dress uniform. The tunic was immaculate. With a slow, purposeful tread he walked toward the Appellplatz and his assembled prisoners. It always intrigued the shoemaker to watch this man. Not only was Klaus Brandt exactly his own age—fifty-five—but to his knowledge was the only concentration camp commandant who was also a medical doctor. This had been tried once before, at a different camp, but the chosen physician had made a muddle of the administration. Not Brandt, though. The balding, slightly podgy Prussian was an obsessive perfectionist. Some believed he was a genius.
The shoemaker knew he was insane.
The commandant’s SS uniform also signaled that tonight was a special occasion. Klaus Brandt considered himself a doctor first and a soldier second, and on most days wore his white lab coat over a business suit. He also insisted that he be addressed by his subordinates as Herr Doktor rather than Herr Kommandant. Of course he might be wearing the uniform simply to keep out the cold. The shoemaker could not remember a wind like this for many weeks. Earlier he had seen SS men building fires beneath their vehicles to keep the motor oil from freezing in the crankcases.
When Brandt came within ten paces of the line, Sergeant Sturm snapped to attention and yelled: “All prisoners present, Herr Doktor!”
Brandt acknowledged this report with a curt nod. He examined his watch, then leaned over and spoke quietly to Major Schörner. Schörner checked his own watch, then looked toward the main camp gate forty meters away. One of the gate guards shook his head in reply. Schörner looked questioningly at Brandt.
“Let us begin, Sturmbannführer,” Brandt said.
Major Schörner signaled Sergeant Sturm with a flick of his head. Sturm marched toward the far end of the line and began pulling men from the ranks. The shoemaker saw immediately that this selection was different from all others he had seen. The criteria for selections were usually self-evident—sometimes certain adult men were selected (those of a certain approximate weight, for example), other times women having their menstrual cycle. Never had the shoemaker seen more than ten adults selected at one time, and for a simple reason: Brandt’s testing chamber had not been designed to handle more.
Also, the usual procedure was for Brandt to walk along just behind the sergeant, approving the selections or, in rare cases, granting an on-the-spot dispensation. The Lord of Life and Death
