ABSTRACT
The tram clanked to a bumping halt in an unknown place. Not one of us who saw the station's name could recognize it. It was half-past-one in the morning. The long nightmare, we thought, was at an end. We had sat, crouched, sprawled, or stood, up to 140 to a freight-car, without food or water, shivering in a temperature of 20 degrees below freezing. The train had barely stopped when the bolts of the doors were pulled out, the doors pulled back, and there before us were the SS, a hundred of them, with huge snarling dogs. 'Kanaken, 'raus!' came the screams of the guards, who at once sent us back to drag out the sick and the dead. Then they began to strike us with their cudgels and rifle butts as they pulled us to the ground. We dropped on to snow which reached our knees, pressing it to our mouths. Some of us had no shoes. Carrying the few possessions we had, we ran die gauntlet through the blows and the bites until we reached the assembly point on the station platform. '¡Hijos de puta!', '¡Maricones!,' the Spaniards were saying. The Germans did not understand, but now let loose a barrage of insults at the Spaniards, who replied, unseen by the SS, with the forearm signal. 'Angetreten!' We formed up in fives. There we were counted and recounted. Then, 'Im Gleichschritt, marsch!' We set off in quick march, a row of SS on each pavement, the dogs behind, down the road that leads from the station to the village. Because of the cold and the poor condition of many of the prisoners, we were ordered to march arm in arm, but our feet still slid on the ice-covered cobblestones. Our eyes searched for a light in the houses, perhaps a face. A Gasthaus stood almost opposite the station, 1 but it was in darkness. The dogs went on baying and nipping at the ankles of the two outer ranks, who soon envied those in the middle three. At the bottom of a short hill we reached a small triangular park, where the road swung sharply to the right. We passed another Gasthaus, that faced the Danube, 2 and then we stopped. Alberto the interpreter announced: 'We are crossing the village. Anyone who stops or mounts the pavement will be shot on the spot.' We crossed the silent village. A church on the left, another on the right. Catholic Austria is not pagan Germany, it seemed to say. In the centre of the village, where the road forked, we scarcely glimpsed the baroque oddity of the building as we moved through at a now rapid pace. 'Dalli, dalli!' ('Get moving!') The formation had broken from fives into twos. The SS, who seemed to bark more ferociously than the dogs, began to beat those who lagged. We stopped again as Alberto announced: 'We have three kilometres to go. Anyone not keeping up will be shot. Anyone who tries to escape will be eaten alive by the dogs.'Jaime, with some view of the road ahead, noticed an apple in the gutter and bent down quickly to scoop it up. A guard saw him, pulled him from the file, and beat him brutally before shoving him back into the ranks. We reached a hill, but the pace did not slacken. 'Wollt ihr laufen, ihr faulen Hunde! ihr Drecksäcke!' We were indeed running. Paco staggered and dropped the package he was carrying. Two guards fell on him, pulled him from the ranks and began to beat him by the side of the road, in full view of the prisoners behind, as though they would beat him to death. We were gripped in fear now. Would we all die here on the road? We reached a turn and gaw the silhouette of a massive fortress above us. 3 We continued to climb, passing a crucifix, and beside it, a post with a skull and crossbones painted in white on its dark base. Finally we arrived at the top of the hill, and caught a glimpse in the moonlight of rails and tip-trucks. The SS ordered us back into fives. In front of us stood the main gate, Mongol in style, with its huge wooden doors which opened as we approached. We passed between the granite pagoda-like towers, under the arch. We had arrived in Mauthausen. All of us but seven: the seven who had died in the four kilometres between the station and the camp. 4
