However, judging from the treatment of the inmates employed, it didn’t seem that their ultimate fate was a major preoccupation for Schenke or his colleagues. In the midst of the immense, muddy construction site that was to become the factory, columns of scrawny Häftlinge in rags carried at a run, under the shouts and cudgel blows of the kapos, beams or bags of cement far too heavy for them. If a worker, in his big wooden clogs, stumbled and let his load fall, or collapsed himself, the blows redoubled, and blood, fresh and red, gushed onto the oily mud. Some never got up again. The din was infernal, everyone was yelling, the SS noncoms, the kapos; the beaten inmates screamed pitifully. Schenke guided me through this Gehenna without paying the slightest attention to it. Here and there, he paused and conversed with other engineers in well-pressed suits, holding yellow folding rulers and little fake-leather notebooks in which they jotted down figures. They commented on the progress of the construction of a wall, then one of them muttered a few words to a Rottenführer, who began to yell and viciously hit the kapo with his boot or rifle butt; the kapo, in turn, dove into the mass of inmates, distributing savage blows with full force, bellowing; and then the Häftlinge attempted a surge of activity, which died down on its own, since they could scarcely stand up. This system seemed to me extremely inefficient, and I said as much to Schenke; he shrugged his shoulders and looked around him as if he were seeing the scene for the first time: “In any case they don’t understand anything but blows. What else can you do with such a workforce?” I looked again at the undernourished Häftlinge, their rags coated in mud, black grease, diarrhea. A Polish ‘red’ stopped for an instant in front of me and I saw a brown stain appear on the back of his pants and the rear of his leg; then he resumed his frenetic run before a kapo could approach. Pointing him out, I said to Schenke: “Don’t you think it’s important to oversee their hygiene better? I’m not just talking about the stench, but it’s dangerous, that’s how epidemics break out.” Schenke replied somewhat haughtily: “All that is the responsibility of the SS. We pay the camp to have inmates fit for work. But it’s up to the camp to wash them, feed them, and take care of them. That’s included in the package.” Another engineer, a thickset Swabian sweating in his twill jacket, let out a coarse guffaw: “Anyway, Jews are like venison, they’re better when they’re a little gamy.” Schenke smiled thinly; I retorted curtly: “Your workers aren’t all Jews.”—“Oh! the others are hardly any better.” Schenke was beginning to grow annoyed: “Herr Sturmbannführer, if you think the condition of the Häftlinge is unsatisfactory, you should complain to the camp, not to us. The camp is responsible for their upkeep, I told you. All that is specified in our contract.”—“I understand very well, believe me.” Schenke was right; even the blows were administered by SS guards and their kapos. “But it seems to me that you could obtain better output by treating them a little better. Don’t you think so?” Schenke shrugged: “Ideally, maybe. And we often complain to the camp about the workers’ condition. But we have other priorities besides constantly splitting hairs.” Behind him, knocked down by a cudgel, an inmate was dying; his bloody head was buried in the thick mud; only the mechanical trembling of his legs showed that he was still alive. Schenke, as we left, stepped over him without looking at him. He was still thinking about my words with irritation: “We can’t have a sentimental attitude, Herr Sturmbannführer. We are at war. Production counts above all else.”—“I’m not saying otherwise. My objective is just to suggest ways to increase production. That should concern you. After all, it’s been, what? Two years now that you’ve been constructing, and you still haven’t produced a kilo of Buna.”—“Yes. But I should point out to you that the methanol factory has been functioning for a month.”
