We had already moved on to the Kanada, where the confiscated goods were sorted and warehoused before being distributed, when the chimneys of the crematorium that we had just left began to smoke, spreading that same sweetish, hideous smell I had experienced in Belzec. Höss, noticing my discomfort, commented: “I’ve been used to this smell ever since I was a boy. It’s the smell of cheap church candles. My father was very religious and took me to church often. He wanted me to be a priest. Since there wasn’t enough money for wax, they made the candles from animal tallow, and they gave off the same smell. It’s due to a chemical compound, but I’ve forgotten the name; it was Wirths, our head doctor, who explained it to me.” He also insisted on showing me the other two crematoria, colossal structures, inactive at that time; the Frauenlager, or women’s camp; and the sewage treatment station, built after repeated complaints from the district, which alleged that the camp was contaminating the Vistula and the surrounding aquifer. Then he took me to the Stammlager, which he also had me visit from top to bottom; finally he drove me to the other side of town to show me rapidly the Auschwitz III camp, where the inmates working for IG Farben lived: he introduced me to Max Faust, one of the factory engineers, with whom I agreed to return another day. I won’t describe all these installations: they are very well known and are described in many other books, I have nothing to add. Back at the camp, Höss sought to invite me horseback riding; but I could barely stand up and wanted a bath more than anything, and I managed to convince him to drop me off at my quarters.

Höss had assigned me an empty office in the Stammlager Kommandantur. I had a view of the Sola and of a pretty square house surrounded by trees on the other side of the Kasernestrasse, which was in fact the home of the Kommandant and his family. The Haus where I was staying turned out to be much quieter than the one in Lublin: the men who slept there were sober professionals, passing through for various reasons; at night, the camp officers came to drink and play billiards, but always behaved correctly. We ate very well there, copious helpings washed down with Bulgarian wine, with Croatian slivovitz as an after-dinner drink, and sometimes even vanilla ice cream. My main interlocutor, aside from Höss, was the chief physician of the garrison, Sturmbannführer Dr. Eduard Wirths. He had his offices in the SS hospital in the Stammlager at the end of the Kasernestrasse, opposite the premises of the Politische Abteilung and a crematorium due to go out of service any day now. Alert, intelligent, with fine features, pale eyes, and sparse hair, Wirths seemed exhausted by his tasks, but motivated to overcome all difficulties. His obsession was the struggle against typhus: the camp was already going through its second epidemic of the year, which had decimated the Gypsy camp and also struck, sometimes fatally, SS guards and their families. I spent long hours in discussion with him. He reported, in Oranienburg, to Dr. Lolling, and complained about the lack of support; when I let on that I shared his opinion, he opened up to me and confessed his inability to work constructively with a man so incompetent and furthermore addled by drugs. He himself was not an IKL professional. He had served at the front with the Waffen-SS since 1939, and had won the Iron Cross, second class, but he had been discharged because of a serious illness and assigned to camp service. He had found Auschwitz in a catastrophic state: for almost a year, the desire to improve matters consumed him.

Wirths showed me the reports he sent monthly to Lolling: the conditions in the different sections of the camp, the incompetence of many doctors and officers, the brutality of the subalterns and kapos, the daily obstacles blocking his work, everything was described in plain, straightforward language. He promised to have copies of his last six reports typed out for me. He was particularly up in arms about the use of criminals in positions of responsibility in the camp: “I’ve talked about it dozens of times with Obersturmbannführer Höss. Those ‘greens’ are brutes, sometimes psychopaths, they’re corrupt, they reign with terror over the other inmates, and all with the connivance of the SS. It’s inadmissible, not to speak of the fact that the results are lamentable.”—“What would you prefer? Political prisoners, Communists?”—“Of course!” He began to count on his fingers: “One: they are by definition men who have a social conscience. Even if they can be corrupted, they’ll never commit the same atrocities as the common-law prisoners. Do you realize that in the women’s camp the Blockältesten are prostitutes, degenerates! And most of the male block elders keep what they call here a Pipel, a young boy who serves as their sex slave. That’s what we have to rely on here! Whereas the ‘reds,’ to a man, refuse to use the brothel reserved for inmate functionaries, even though some of them have been in the camp for ten years. Two: the priority now is organization of labor. Now, what better organizer than a Communist or an SD activist? The ‘greens’ just know how to hit and hit again. Three: they object to me that the ‘reds’ will deliberately sabotage production. To which I reply that, first of all, it couldn’t be worse than the present production, and then that there are ways to control this: political prisoners aren’t idiots, they’ll understand very quickly that at the slightest problem they’ll be sacked and that the common-law criminals will return. It will thus be wholly in their own interest, for themselves and for all of the Häftlinge, if they guarantee good production. I can even give you an example, that of Dachau, where I worked briefly: there, the ‘reds’ control everything and I can assure you that the conditions are incomparably better than in Auschwitz. Here, in my own department, I use only political prisoners. I have no complaints. My private secretary is an Austrian Communist, a serious, self-possessed, efficient young man. We sometimes have very frank conversations, and it’s very useful for me, since he learns from other inmates things that are hidden from me, and he reports them to me. I trust him much more than some of my SS colleagues.” We also discussed the selection. “I think the principle is odious,” he frankly confessed to me. “But if it has to be done, then it might as well be done by doctors. Before, it was the Lagerführer and his men who ran it. They did it any which way, and with unimaginable brutality. At least now it takes place in an orderly fashion, according to reasonable criteria.” Wirths had ordered all the camp doctors to take their turn at the ramp. “I myself go there too, even if I find it horrifying. I have to set an example.” He looked a little lost as he said that. It wasn’t the first time someone had opened up to me this way: since the beginning of my mission, certain individuals, either because they instinctively understood that I was interested in their problems or because they hoped to use me as a channel to air their grievances, confided far beyond the requirements of the service. It’s true that, here, Wirths must not often have found a friendly ear: Höss was a good professional, but devoid of any sensitivity, and the same must have been true for most of his subordinates.

I inspected the different parts of the camp in detail. I went back several times to Birkenau, and had them show me the systems for inventorying the confiscated property at the Kanada. It was chaos: crates of uncounted currency lay in heaps, one walked on banknotes, torn and pressed into the mud of the alleys. In principle, the inmates were searched at the zone’s exit; but I imagined that with a watch or a few reichsmarks, it must not have been difficult to bribe a guard. The “green” kapo who kept the accounts confirmed this to me indirectly: after showing me around his piles of clutter—the shifting mountains of used clothing, from which teams unstitched the yellow stars before repairing the clothes, sorting them, re-piling them; the crates of glasses, watches, pens, jumbled together; the orderly rows of strollers and baby carriages; the clumps of women’s hair, consigned in bales to German firms that transformed it into socks for our submariners, mattress stuffing, and insulating material; and the disparate piles of religious paraphernalia, which no one really knew what to do with—this inmate functionary, as he was about to leave me, said to me carelessly, in his cheeky Hamburg dialect: “If you need anything, let me know, I’ll take care of it.”—“What do you mean?” “Oh, sometimes it’s pretty easy. Anything to be of service, y’know—we like to oblige.” That was what Morgen was talking about: the camp SS, with the complicity of the inmates, had come to consider this Kanada as their private reserve. Morgen had advised me to visit the guards’ barrack rooms: I found SS officers lounging on expensively upholstered sofas, half drunk, staring off into emptiness; a few female Jewish inmates, dressed not in regulation striped uniforms but in light dresses, were cooking sausages and potato pancakes on a large cast-iron stove; they were all real beauties, and they had kept their hair; and when they served the guards, bringing them food or pouring them alcohol from crystal carafes, they addressed them familiarly, using the du form, and calling them by their nicknames. Not one of the guards had gotten up to salute me. I gave the Spiess who accompanied me on my visits a shocked look; he shrugged: “They’re tired, Sturmbannführer. They’ve had a hard day, you know. Two transports already.” I’d have liked to have them open their lockers, but my position didn’t authorize me to: I was sure I’d have found all kinds of objects and money. What’s more, this generalized corruption appeared to rise to the highest level, as remarks I’d overheard suggested. At the bar of the Haus der Waffen-SS, I had surprised a conversation between a camp Oberscharführer and a civilian; the noncom, sniggering, was explaining that he had delivered to Frau Höss “a basket full of panties, the best quality, in silk and lace. She wanted to replace her old ones, you see.” He didn’t say where they came from, but I guessed readily enough. I myself received propositions; I was offered bottles of Cognac or victuals, to improve my usual fare. I refused, but politely: I didn’t want these officers to mistrust me; that would have harmed my work.