The Boy Who Drew Auschwitz

HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Originally published as Youth in Chains in 1958 and Guns & Barbed Wire in 1987

This updated illustrated edition first published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

FIRST EDITION

Text and drawings © Thomas Geve 2021

All original artworks by Thomas Geve, holder of the copyrights thereof, are part of Yad Vashem Art Museum collection. Photographs of the drawings © Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem

Maps by Lovell Johns © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021 Photographs courtesy of the author with the following exceptions: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ilona Penner Blech; Bildarchiv Pisarek/akg-images; © Paul Bodot / AFBDK Paris; Ardean R. Miller, National Archives, Washington; Walter Chichersky, National Archives, Washington; Charles W. Herr, Jr., National Archives, Washington.

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2021 Cover photographs: Courtesy the author (author as a child); all original artworks by Thomas Geve, holder of the copyrights thereof, are part of Yad Vashem Art Museum Collection. Photo: © Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem; Galerie Bilderwelt/Hulton Archive/Getty Images (Auschwitz survivors, front).

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Thomas Geve asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008406387

Ebook Edition © Jan 2021 ISBN: 9780008406400

Version: 2020-12-16

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Page numbers taken from the following print edition: ISBN 9780008406387

In memory of:

Eva-Ruth

Sally

Jonathan

‘Little Kurt’

‘Long Kurt’

‘Blond Gert’

‘Saucy Gert’

Ello, a lad from Slovakia

Mendel, a lad from Bialystok

Jendroe, a lad from Bohemia

Maurice, a lad from Salonika

Leo, a Dutchman

Poldi, a Swiss

Mr Pollack, a Czech

Block doctor 7a, a Belgian

Sigi, room-elder 7a, a German

Block-elder 7a, a German

Camp hairdresser, a German

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

NOTE TO READERS

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE – AN UNKNOWN FUTURE, Berlin 1939

PART 1

Chapter 1 Stettin and Beuthen 1929–39

Chapter 2 Berlin 1939–40

Chapter 3 Berlin 1941–2

Chapter 4 Liquidation 1943

PART 2

Chapter 5 Auschwitz-Birkenau

Chapter 6 Quarantine

Chapter 7 Bricklaying school

Chapter 8 Surviving

Chapter 9 Exhaustion

Chapter 10 Desperation

PART 3

Chapter 11 Kindness among chaos

Chapter 12 A veteran now

Chapter 13 The wind of change

PART 4

Chapter 14 Retreat from liberty

Chapter 15 Gross-Rosen camp

Chapter 16 Evacuation

Chapter 17 Buchenwald camp

Chapter 18 Free at last

EPILOGUE

NOTE FROM CHARLES INGLEFIELD

FOOTNOTES

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

FOREWORD

It was often said that survivors of the Holocaust were silent after the Second World War. True, for many it was a suffering too painful to recount, and for some it remains so to this very day. But many did want to speak. They had promised their fellow inmates, most of whom did not survive, that they would bear witness and tell the world. And so they tried, only to encounter a world unable and often unwilling to hear. Survivors of the Holocaust were not silent. They were silenced.

Thomas Geve was among those who attempted immediately after the Holocaust to explain in detail what had just happened. At first, he simply wanted to tell his father, through an album of drawings. His father had been in England during the Second World War and could never imagine what his child had been through. Then Thomas wrote down his experiences for publication, only to be disappointed. But he did not give up. For over seventy-five years he has told the story you are about to read, a story that will take you deep into the terrifying world of the Nazi concentration camp system, where children, like him, were its prey.

Thomas Geve is a remarkable documentarian. His determination to detail what happened in the death and work camps in the Nazi concentration camp world reaches back into Auschwitz itself, where he found charcoal and scraps of cement sacks – he was in the bricklaying Commando – and sketched what happened there in real time. The original sketches did not survive, but the memory of what was on those scraps of paper remained in his mind, and immediately after the war, he began to draw again. He saw that other former inmates were documenting what had happened. He had his own facts to share. Somehow, the 13-year-old in Auschwitz had the presence of mind to pay attention to the details – to check, measure, count and memorise. He had remembered the daily routine by the hour, the ration portions to the gram. Even the colours of the badges the prisoners wore were committed to his mind’s eye.

It seems that Geve perceived something at his tender age that adults many years his senior took much longer to realise: the minute detail of how the concentration camp system worked is key to understanding the nature of the crime itself. Through his innate curiosity, he understood that the malfeasance was so unbelievable that it may in fact not be believed, or that details could one day be erased. He was right of course: the role of Auschwitz-Birkenau at the heart of industrialised state-sanctioned genocide resulted in over a million Jews being gassed in carefully designed facilities. It was and remains unprecedented, and deserves our attention, but it was not all that happened there. Wrapped around those killing facilities was an entire machinery of sadistic daily torture and depravation. The Nazis not only murdered their victims; they created an entire system to make them suffer. That is what Geve documented first in his drawings, then in his text.

I have observed that there is a stickiness to testimony. The facts that survivors recount in their testimonies do not drift as much as one might imagine over time. I have also observed that the sooner after events accounts were documented, the more likely they are to reveal the precise nuances of the individual’s own direct experience, without the overlay of later tropes and reader expectations. Geve’s testimony is a case in point. His first drawings were sketched in Auschwitz in 1944, followed in 1945 by the full set of more than eighty, many of which you will encounter in this book. He then wrote an accompanying narrative in 1947, when the memories were still vivid and not interpolated with later reflection, published in 1958 as Youth in Chains. Through the immediacy of Geve’s account, we get close and personal details of other inmates’ characters, including the friends he made and lost. We learn about the moral ambiguity within the inmate hierarchy, and the pervasiveness of sexual violence among the prisoner population, both of which are often muted in accounts that survivors gave later. We also learn of the power of friendship and the sacrifices made to help each other survive. Though it is well known that some prisoners cooperated for survival, especially in the women’s sections, I have never heard testimony of a four-way food pact such as he and three of his friends created. Aspects of his story are positive in ways that are new and insightful.

Geve’s arrival at Auschwitz is chillingly and correctly recounted. ‘For miles, I could see no trees, just empty fields. A mist rose in the distance, doubtless hiding whatever was lurking there and waiting for us.’ Geve accurately describes his arrival at Auschwitz at the little-known Alte-Juden Rampe – the old Jewish platform, a siding in a barren landscape out of view of the camp structures. Over 600,000 Jews arrived there, but it is rarely described in later accounts, because the image of the trains pulling directly into Birkenau surrounded by barracks, with the white-gloved Josef Mengele standing by, has become the authoritative version of arrival at Auschwitz. But Geve did not know that then. And so he told the only version he knew – the one he experienced.

Seventy-five years later there is a raw and authentic ring to Geve’s descriptions only possible in the immediate aftermath. He talks about victims’ groups such as the Roma and political prisoners with disarming clarity. His description of the Death March, and helping the most needy while walking with blistered and aching feet, shows his sense of community and generosity even in the direst of circumstances. Most importantly, Geve’s account provides an insight into just how much inmates really did know about what was happening around them, and precisely how it happened. It also shows that the inmates themselves could not comprehend the magnitude of what was unfolding before their eyes. On one drawing, Geve estimates the total death toll in the gas chambers to be hundreds of thousands. It is not that he was being inaccurate; at the time he was there, the tally was not calculated for the benefit of the prisoners. How could he possibly have guessed the number of Jews, gypsies and others would be so much higher?

I am grateful to Charles Inglefield for retaining much of the original testimony. While this edition of Geve’s testimony is now layered with nearly eight decades of revisions and additions, the central spine of the text is faithful to his 1947 manuscript, his 1958 publication Youth in Chains and his 1987 edition of Guns and Barbed Wire (both of which I have reviewed). Testimony does not provide the kind of evidentiary document that, say, an original photograph or transport list provides. But it is its own kind of historical document; one that provides the human story. Testimony is an extension of the author’s lived experiences, seen through the ever-changing prism of life, over time. What marks Geve out is that he has consistently chosen to be faithful to his original text and reflect his testimony through the impressions he documented at the time. To this day, he takes us back to when he first told his story; that is what makes this book so unique, so authentic.

While reading this book I would urge you to take time to linger on Geve’s drawings. Rarely does testimony come in both words and pictures. These two are his testament. The simple child-like stylisation belies the complex truths they tell. I imagine him as a 15-year-old furiously drawing on tiny index cards with swastikas on the back, the war not yet over, as he set to work. Even then, he knew he was the eyes and ears of the world.

He still is.

Stephen D. Smith PhD

Finci-Viterbi Executive Director Chair USC Shoah Foundation UNESCO Chair on Genocide Education

INTRODUCTION

In November 1945, I arrived in London, carrying in my suitcase an album of drawings, my silent witness to 22 months of life and survival in three concentration camps. The album was for my dear father, Erich, whom I hadn’t seen for six long years of war.

A year later an enthusiastic young journalist contacted me. He got to know me and my drawings and believed in the importance of revealing them to the world. He then urged me to put my drawings into words, and so I did. Writing allowed me to add another layer of expression to the facts and scenes that I had drawn. The words brought back memories, experiences, thoughts, fears, consolations and victories, all of which had been part of life during those harsh years of war. They also allowed me to talk about the many different people I had come across. The variety of human interaction and reaction – from despair to hope, from defeatism to bravery, from cruelty to kindness – all was there and everyone was affected. Most of all, these stories gave voice to my comrades who did not get to see the day of liberation. My world was their world as well. My words would give their personalities and dreams, which had perished so unfairly and too soon, eternal life.

Back in 1946, the world wasn’t ready to hear. Although the London publishers shared the journalist’s interest in my story, they did not have the enthusiasm to print it. ‘The boy is not a Picasso,’ they said. ‘And audiences are looking for more cheerful topics nowadays.’ Coloured printing was also beyond most publishing budgets in Europe in those post-war years.

However, my inner calling to tell the world what had really happened in Europe during the Second World War did not vanish. Years later, in 1958, a small pocket version of my word-testimony was published for the first time. My wish to protect my privacy as well as my belief that this story was not just my own but that of my camp comrades and our whole generation brought about my decision to choose a pseudonym. Thomas Geve became my testimonial name and has remained a part of my identity to this present day.

Over the years, my written and drawn testimony has been published in different versions and languages, as well as through various media. I became an active witness, giving talks to students and adults across Europe.

In summer 2019, yet another journalist contacted me. It was Charles Inglefield. He was gripped by the testimony and believed it should be re-published in a wider and updated version. This young man’s interest and dedication more than 70 years later warmed my heart. This time, not only did London share the interest but HarperCollins also had the enthusiasm. We are honoured they became our publisher.

Seventy-five years ago, I set out merely to record the truth. It became my life’s mission to pass on these facts, details and stories so that they will forever be believed and remembered. I am privileged to share with you, dear reader, this new edition of my written and drawn testimony. I truly hope that it will be an eternal reminder of our human calling to make our world a kinder place for all.

This grim chapter of our past was created by people and it is people who can create a brighter future …

Thomas Geve, 2020

PROLOGUE – AN UNKNOWN FUTURE BERLIN 1939

It was a hot, stifling summer’s day. Shoppers, travellers and sightseers descended upon Potsdamer Platz. Delicatessens displayed delicious luxuries, neatly wrapped and labelled. Florists showcased roses in full bloom while people admired the latest noise-free trams making their way through the heart of the city. Berlin was abuzz with activity and invention. There was much to admire, with a new subway station, a triumph of modern engineering, and queues forming outside the government’s experimental television studio.

At the big glass- and steel-topped railway terminal, a semaphore arm was raised. The green light was given and yet another train puffed westwards. It was taking one of the last transports of men, who, threatened with imprisonment, had no place in this new Germany: Jews, freethinkers, democrats and socialists. Their destination was England. But it was already crowded. Others were knocking at her door, too: Austrians, Czechs, Italians and Spaniards were all seeking refuge. Among those men on the train was a Jewish doctor. He was one of the lucky few to be admitted.

A neatly dressed boy of nine, tall for his age and with meticulously combed hair soaked in brilliantine, was standing in front of a florist’s window. He was bored with waiting and passed the time watching droplets of water trickling down the inside of the shop’s windowpane. Through the condensation, he recognised roses, tulips and orchids. How well they were looked after.

A young and attractive dark-haired woman wearing her Sunday-best emerged from the throng of passers-by. She stopped in front of the florist’s. She was crying. The boy was abruptly jerked away from his dreamy paradise of dew-dropped flowers. He thought, Why must people be nervous and crying? After all, it is a beautiful day.

The boy was me, the woman my mother, Berta,* and the Jewish doctor on the train was my father, Erich.*

Potsdamer Platz was busy, but now we felt alone. We returned to my grandparents’ place, our temporary home. My grandfather, Julius, and my grandmother, Hulda,* lived at 19 Winterfeld Strasse, a quiet middle-class street in Schöneberg, Berlin’s seventh district.

‘I’ll be busy making arrangements for joining Dad,’ sighed Mother, ‘and grandparents have their own worries, so you’ll have to be a good boy from now on without someone there to discipline you.’

That day I thought for the first time about what people called ‘the future’. I grappled with my thoughts and tried to imagine what was to follow. It had all happened so abruptly, so unexpectedly, and far too quickly for me to understand.

CHAPTER 1 STETTIN AND BEUTHEN 1929–39

I was born in the autumn of 1929, in Stettin on the Baltic, near the Oder in Germany.1 Mother, too, had been born there, while Father hailed from Beuthen in Upper Silesia. My father had studied medicine and had served briefly in the First World War before taking over the practice of Dr Julius Goetze in Stettin. Now established as a General Practitioner with his own practice, he fell in love and married my mother, Berta, the doctor’s daughter.

As a toddler, strange faces seemed to have frightened me. Like most babies, my pastime was crying. The nightly wail of the siren that called out the voluntary fire brigade terrified me. For it sounded like the howling of a monster lurking in the dark, eager to snatch me away at the first opportunity.

Picking the best tomatoes – Stettin, 1933.

Time passed and my early childhood became more cheerful. Auntie Ruth,* my mother’s sister, took me on rowing trips across the Oder to our garden plot. Being in nature and sitting in a boat in the middle of the wide stream made great impressions on me. Even more so than being allowed to pick and devour the best tomatoes. There were also fun excursions to seaside resorts. I loved being around animals and plants and being surrounded by nature. But my favourite occupation was that of snail hunting: catching and collecting slimy little rolls that climbed up park walls.

This map shows the position of the German-Polish border in the 1930s.

My happy early childhood – Stettin 1933

When, in 1933, Hitler came to power, these leisurely and carefree times disappeared.

My father had been a doctor and surgeon in Stettin, but lost his practice due to the discriminatory laws, and we had to return to his hometown of Beuthen, about three hundred kilometres southeast of Berlin. Mother’s family, including Auntie Ruth and my grandparents, had moved to Berlin. And although I was only three then, I felt that I was constantly being left in the care of others, including my Aunt Irma* and our housekeeper, Magda.*

Beuthen was a mining town of some hundred thousand inhabitants with a strong Polish community. The German/Poland borders crossed suburbs, parks and even mining tunnels. Some of Beuthen’s streets had both German and Polish tramways running through them. People there spoke Polish in what was Germany, and German in what was Poland. When I returned from walks to the suburbs to Krakauer Strasse 1, a large four-storey building where we lived, I was never quite certain which of the two countries I had actually been through.

The town’s main square was even more confusing. To simple folk, it was ‘The Boulevard’. To more pedantic people, it was ‘Kaiser Franz Joseph Square’. But now, the new power in Beuthen decided it would become ‘Adolf Hitler Square’. And it was on that square that pure and loyal Germans swore allegiance to their new god.

If I had not been told off, I might have cheerfully joined them. For I rather liked this new cult. It meant flags, shiny police horses, colourful uniforms, torchlights and music. It was also free and easily accessible, meaning that I did not have to pester Dad to take me to a Punch and Judy show or be treated to an hour beside my auntie’s radio set. But I was chided for my improper enthusiasm towards this new presence in town. Instead I was given more pocket money, and, to avoid any further embarrassment to the family, an instruction to toe the family’s anti-Nazi line – whatever that meant to a four-year-old boy.

So, I obeyed. While the other youngsters on the square learned of their superior origin and destiny, my role would be that of the underdog.

Enjoying the beauty of nature – Beuthen, 1936.

Quickly, my life became a more secluded one. In the morning I was escorted to the nearby Jewish kindergarten. The afternoons were filled with solitary play or piano lessons under the tutelage of Father’s sister, Irma, a music teacher, who now lived with us.

I was supposed to have inherited much of Auntie Irma’s musical ability, but my rebellious temperament soon ruled out the chance of my becoming a slave to the giant, black ‘Bechstein’ piano. Instead, my talents were limited to gobbling up the fragrant apples that served as props to help me learn how the musical notes split into fractions. My interest in playing a musical instrument vanished, but my love of music, songs and remembering lyrics had just been ignited.