"A hat on his head - a bowl, a ladle in his hand - a ladle. Is it a picture from a highlander theater? Not. This is an account of a game organized ... in the camp barracks in Auschwitz.
One free Sunday a friend approached August Kowalczyk (camp number 6804) and - to his surprise - invited him to block 3 for an "artistic morning". Prisoners used rare moments of freedom to break away from everyday life in the camp. And for a moment feel a substitute for normal life.
The first point of the program that Kowalczyk saw was wrestling for capos. The mattresses served as the wrestling mats. After they had been cleared away, prisoners-artists appeared on the "stage" made of blankets. They sang, among others, camp couplets, from which prisoner number 6804 remembered the refrain: There is a brick chimney, / But we fool him. / And let's go home! . He also remembers a cabaret monologue about the murderous work on the construction site of the Buna Werke factory (later Monowitz sub-camp) and a poem recited by actor Stefan Jaracz.
The contrast of these performances with the reality in which they were organized was overwhelming. Kowalczyk described it in his memoirs as pure surrealism and macabre . The same impression was made by him talking about "entertaining" topics in everyday conversations:
Next to the news about the deaths of colleagues, subsequent shootings, news from freedom, there were jokes, anecdotes, and sometimes entertainment programs, the scripts of which were born, depending on the topic day or circumstances.
Kowalczyk's account, along with a number of other testimonies, indicates that Auschwitz prisoners sought respite from the daily toil and the threat of death also in self-organized entertainment. Of course, only those they could afford during the LAG nightmare ...
Actor and theater director August Kowalczyk described the fact that Auschwitz offers "entertainment programs" as "surrealism and macabre" (source:public domain).
Recitations, Summaries, Ordinary Life
The most common (because available to many) entertainment was listening to stories. The attention of the prisoners was focused around those who could tell stories in an interesting and vivid manner, right after the gong announcing the silence of the night. The topic of the talk could be anything:a poem, a summary of a literary work, a play or a film. The aforementioned Stefan Jaracz and another actor, Zbigniew Sawan, excelled in this. On the other hand, in the infectious diseases ward, you could hear Mickiewicz reciting Leon Pietrzykowski, the theater specialist.
The stories about life in the wild were equally popular. Especially when women occupied a lot of space in them. In the evenings, a chemist reported on his pre-war adventures with lovers, of whom there were "probably twenty". Their number was so significant that he treated his stay in the camp as ... a kind of penance for his marital infidelity. Engineer Stanisławski was also listened to, who was building a railway in the Caucasus before the war and had a lot to say not only about the promenades in Sochi and Yerevan, but also about romances with the locals. The joy was aroused by Adam Brodziński, who was the secretary of the famous Pola Negri before the war and had a lot of anecdotes from the life of the star up his sleeve.
The function and meaning of these stories were obvious. They allowed to distract from hunger, cold, pain, fear and constant mental tension. We fell asleep detached, even for a moment, from the terrifying reality that surrounded us - one of the prisoners recalls.
The orchestra after hours and not only propaganda cinema
The prisoners also listened to music. The role of the camp orchestra was ambivalent. At first no one thought she liked her. After all, she played the obligatory marches at the exit of the working columns by the wires, or - perversely - bouncy hits when the commandos returned to the camp.
On the other hand, the members of the orchestra were prisoners themselves. Sometimes, after the necessary rehearsals, they managed to discreetly borrow instruments from the music room in block 9. Their meetings and conversations, as the violinist Franciszek Stryj recalled, turned into "conspiratorial word-music evenings" with other Häftlings . Someone was whistling, someone was playing the harmonica ... Not only were recited but also sung. The repertoire was wide:from pre-war songs and songs to arias from Moniuszko's operas!
Those who could tell colorful and interesting stories were popular among the prisoners. The sculptor Xawery Dunikowski (photo:Benedykt Jerzy Dorys) and the actor Stefan Jaracz (source:public domain) are among those who are warmly remembered for their gift of eloquence.
When the regime in the mother camp softened a bit, real stage and even circus performances were organized there. There were mimes, acrobats, clowns and even an illusionist. One of the prisoners, to the delight of others, parodied highlander dances, performing both as a dancer and a dancer. On the head there is a hat - a bowl, and a stick in his hand - a ladle. (...) He danced, chaired, pecked, walked, shouted, sang - we read in one of the reports.
Even films were screened from time to time. Although Nazi or anti-Soviet propaganda dominated among them, from time to time a piece of "normal" cinema appeared between them.
Alcohol as a currency and sex as a reward
Prominent prisoners had easier access to alcohol. These privates were punished just for capturing it. What could be smuggled into the camp thanks to civilian workers or bought on the black market was eaten in hiding. The hardly available alcohol served not only as a stimulant, but also replaced the currency. For example, it was used as a bribe to kapos not to make a criminal report.
The camp's alcohol most often came from smuggling, from the world behind the barbed fence. Unfortunately, it was usually of poor quality and caused numerous poisoning (photo by Mateusz Giełczyński, license CC BY-SA 3.0).
The risk of a penalty was not the only risk associated with drinking alcoholic beverages. The liquors hitting the barbed wire came from unknown sources and were mixed or even mistaken for chemicals. So, there were frequent poisonings. Drugs were used even less frequently. They were replaced with the painkillers that appeared in the camp thanks to the smuggling:codeine or morphine.
The place of probably the most ambiguous entertainment for the prisoners was the camp Puff - a brothel, opened in the summer of 1943. Himmler had come up with the idea some time earlier that the prospect of this type of "reward" would increase the productivity of non-Jewish prisoners . It is possible that it was also about minimizing the scale of homosexual contacts between prisoners.
Initially, such establishments appeared in Mauthausen and Buchenwald. Then it was time for Auschwitz. In the rooms of block 24, the walls were painted, curtains were put in, and in the door… there were large peepers. The Germans wanted to keep an eye on everything. They explained this by the need to prevent "perverse" sexual contacts and the need for prisoners to develop closer relationships with prostitutes.
A prisoner who deserved this peculiar "award" received a kind of "ticket" to Puff from the kapo. After bathing and being tested for venereal diseases, he could spend about 15-20 minutes with the prostitute. For many of them, it was the first contact of any kind with a woman in a long time. I thought about hugging her as much as possible, because it was three and a half years when they arrested me. It was three and a half years without a woman - recalled Ryszard Dacko.
A visit to the brothel, which was located in block 24, was to be a "reward" for prisoners for good behavior (photo:PerSona77, license CC BY-SA 3.0 pl).
It must be remembered that what was a reward and entertainment for the prisoners, for the female prisoners "employed" in the camp brothel, was a tragedy. Some were forced into this profession by threat, others were encouraged by the vision of "lighter work" and better food, or even ... release from the camp. Meanwhile, it meant compulsion to have a huge number of forced sexual relations, often in front of SS men .
"Sport" versus sport
In general, the word "sport" associated Auschwitz prisoners with the cruel gymnastics to which new arrivals were herded to the camp. But with time, behind the knitting needles emergence of real sport and gymnastics as well.
In the squares among the blocks, running competitions and basketball games were organized. A Czechoslovak prisoner, a sports masseur, was organizing rehabilitation gymnastics for some time. Water polo was also played - in the "pool", which was in fact a fire reservoir! At first, only prisoners from the fire department who enjoyed some privileges had access to it. They built a quasi-springboard, thanks to which they and other selected prisoners could swim in the reservoir.
The article was based on, inter alia, the book by Jan Masłowski “Oświęcim. Cemetery of the World ”, which was published by the publishing house Książ i Wiedza.
Two separate chapters of sport in Auschwitz are boxing and football. The fights organized in the ring built in front of the kitchen, in which the Polish boxer Tadeusz "Teddy" Pietrzykowski took part, have gone down in history. In probably the loudest of such duels, the Pole faced Kapo Walter Düning, the former German middleweight champion.
The SS men agreed to such a fight because they were convinced that Pietrzykowski, weakened and weighing only 45 kg, would fall under the blows of an opponent weighing 70 kg. But an experienced Polish boxer defeated his rival by a technical knockout and the prisoners reacted with euphoria . It was feared whether the camp staff would shoot Pietrzykowski in retaliation, but he received a loaf of bread and margarine as a reward. He was also sent to the prisoners considered to be a better job "indoors" - in the SS canteen.
The prisoners managed to organize in the camp even a makeshift swimming pool in the fire-fighting tank (photo:Pimke, license CC BY-SA 3.0).
The history of football matches goes back almost to the beginnings of the camp. The initiative to create a prison team came from ... one of the capos, German criminals! The team included, among others, a few pre-war Polish league players. The Germans were so anxious to play this match that they arranged for their opponents additional food rations. The match ended with the Poles winning 3:1.
It was the first of many games of this type. They were usually held on Sunday afternoons. Individual commandos played among themselves, sometimes they played "interstate", sometimes prisoners played against the officials. It is hard to believe that the camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, allowed the organization of such a camp "league". For him, however, it was one of the elements of taking care of appearances…
How to tame the untamed
Everything that was considered entertainment in Auschwitz was united by a specific camp humor. He was unsophisticated, most often revolving around death, hunger, and generally the fate of a prisoner. Morale was sustained by sayings like: Morning avo, evening kasza / Our fucking dola .
The camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, himself living in a luxurious villa, agreed to organize football games. It was one of his ways of keeping the impression that the prisoners' situation was not so dire. (source:photo on the left photo:Schutzstaffel, public domain; photo on the right photo:יאיר ליברמן, license CC BY-SA 3.0).
They had fun - although it was risky - also at the expense of the SS men. They were given the contemptuous nicknames of "Aries." One of the paramedics had smelly cheese stuffed into the holster of a pistol. Some kapo opened a cupboard and poured a whole can of grease on himself, which was impossible to clean. They also chattered when stool samples were placed in the camp hospital on the pages of the weekly "Das Reich". The prisoners later exchanged such stories in the latrine, which acted as a forum for the exchange of information.
All this served to tame the untamed. Nobody summarized the attempts to escape to entertainment in Auschwitz better than Józef Paczyński: Music plays beautifully, and a few kilometers away the crematoria smoke day and night .
Bibliography:
- Kazimierz Albin, The wanted poster. The story of my escape from Oświęcim and my underground activity, National Publishing Agency 1989.
- August Kowalczyk, Barbed wire chorus. True trilogy , Pszczyna Town Hall 1995.
- Jan Masłowski, Oświęcim. World Cemetery , Book and Knowledge 1995.
- The numbers speak. Memoirs of KL Auschwitz prisoners, comp. Zofia Stochowa, Silesian Publishing House 1980.
- Laurence Rees, Auschwitz. The Nazis and the "Final Solution" , crowd. Paweł Stachura, Prószyński i S-ka 2005.
- Tadeusz Sobolewicz, I endured, so I am , Publishing House of the State Museum in Oświęcim, 1995.
- Agnieszka Weseli, Puff in Auschwitz [in:] "Polityka" 4.11.2009.
- Wójcik Aleksandra, Zdziarski Maciej, Good night, Auschwitz. Report on former prisoners , Horizon 2016 sign.