I had thought of going to Galicia to inspect a work camp, such as the one run by the unfortunate Lexi; but my time was limited, I had to make choices, and I knew that aside from minor differences due to local conditions or personalities, the problems would be the same. I wanted to concentrate now on the camps in Upper Silesia, the “Ruhr of the East”: the KL Auschwitz and its many annexes. From Lublin, the quickest way was to drive through Kielce and then the industrial region of Kattowitz, a flat, gloomy landscape dotted with pine or birch copses, and disfigured by the tall chimneys of factories and blast furnaces that, standing out against the sky, vomited bitter, sinister smoke. Thirty kilometers before Auschwitz, already, SS checkpoints carefully verified our papers. Then we reached the Vistula, broad and murky. In the distance we could see the white line of the Beskids, pale, shimmering in the summer mist, less spectacular than the Caucasus, but wreathed in a gentle beauty. Chimneys were smoking here too, on the plain, at the foot of the mountains: there was no wind and the smoke rose straight up before bending under its own weight, scarcely disturbing the sky. The road ended at the train station and the Haus der Waffen-SS, where we waited for our quarters. The lobby was almost empty; they showed me to a simple, clean room; I put away my things, washed, and changed my uniform, then went out to present myself at the Kommandantur. The road to the camp ran along the Sola, a tributary of the Vistula; half hidden by dense trees, greener than the broad river into which it ran, it flowed in peaceful twists and meanderings, at the foot of a steep, grassy bank; on the water, pretty ducks with green heads let themselves be carried along by the current, then took off with a tension of their whole bodies, necks stretched out, feet folded in, their wings projecting this mass upward, before lazily dropping down again a little farther on, near the shore. A checkpoint barred the entrance to the Kasernestrasse; beyond, behind a wooden watchtower, stood the long gray cement wall of the camp, topped with barbed wire, behind which the red roofs of the barracks were silhouetted. The Kommandantur occupied the first of three buildings between the street and the wall, a squat stucco building with an entrance reached by a flight of steps, flanked by wrought iron lamps. I was taken immediately to the camp’s Kommandant, Obersturmbannführer Höss. This officer, after the war, acquired a certain notoriety because of the colossal number of people put to death under his command and also because of the frank, lucid memoirs he wrote in prison, during his trial. Yet he was an absolutely typical officer of the IKL, hardworking, stubborn, and of limited abilities, without any whims or imagination, but with just, in his movements and conversation, a little of the virility, already diluted by time, left by a youth rich in Freikorps brawls and cavalry charges. He welcomed me with a German salute and then shook my hand; he didn’t smile, but didn’t seem unhappy to see me. He wore leather riding breeches, which, on him, didn’t seem an officer’s affectation: he kept a stable in the camp and rode often; he could be found, they said in Oranienburg, much more often on horseback than behind his desk. While he spoke, he kept his surprisingly pale, vague eyes—I found them disconcerting, as if he were constantly on the point of grasping something that had just evaded him—fixed on my face. He had gotten a telex about me from the WVHA: “The camp is at your disposal.” The camps, rather, for Höss managed an entire network of KLs: the
