| |
| Chapter 8 |
| |
|
| |
| Selections on the Ramp
|
| |
| |
They were all doctors. |
|
| |
— Auschwitz survivor |
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
| The Victims’
Experience |
| |
To Jews arriving at the ramp, nothing medical seemed to be
occurring — though much of their experience there was orchestrated by Nazi
doctors. It was a terrifying scene of vast confusion, in many ways an extension
of a journey of persecution that had begun when they were driven from their
homes, and continued through the days or weeks of the slow, cruel, dehumanizing
train journey to the camp in brutally overcrowded railroad boxcars. Arriving
Jews usually saw the SS doctor standing on the ramp as just another SS officer
with absolute power over them. Many had little sense that a selection process
of any kind was taking place.
The experience of Marianne F., who
arrived at Auschwitz from Czechoslovakia in early 1943 as a seventeen-year-old
girl, is typical. First, the bizarre reception: |
| |
We arrived at night .... Because you arrived at
night, you saw miles of lights — and the fire from the ... crematoria. And
then screaming and the whistles and the “Out, out!" [now she shouted]
“Raus! raus! raus! raus!” [colloquial German for
“Out!”], and the uniformed men and the SS with the dogs, and the
striped prisoners — we, of course, at that time didn’t know who they
were — and they said, “Throw everything out. Line up —
immediately!” |
| |
| And then the confusing, rapid-fire selections: |
| |
They separated you and then lined up everybody in
fives, . . . and there were two men standing .... On one side, was the doctor,
one was Mengele, . . . and on the other side was the ...
Arbeitsführer, which was |
|
