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74 Warsaw–Paris, Paris–Warsaw, June–September 1945 9 A new inquiry into Eliezer’s conduct in the camps got under way on May 25, 1945. Once again it was a panel sponsored by the Polish Communist Party. Its members included two men named Kowalski and Eisner .1 The inquiry was conducted in Warsaw, Buchenwald, and Paris, and was divided into three principal parts that were carried out in parallel in these different locations: the presentation of the accusations, the collection of evidence , and the examination of witnesses. This first part was concluded on September 7, by which time Eliezer was already preoccupied with the subsequent French investigation. The second part began the following June 3, with Eliezer’s opening statement and questions put to him in person and in correspondence, and lasted until August 22. The third part, which took place on August 13, consisted of a rigorous inquisitorial cross-examination. The verdict was written in September 1945. Each point in the verdict included a one- or two-line summary of the evidence that the judges considered critical . The verdict itself was concise, just a line and a half long, and it sealed Eliezer’s fate.2 This time the charges were much more detailed, there were many more witnesses, and the proceedings were much longer. Eliezer’s responses to the commission were also more detailed, and a reader cannot help but be impressed both by the extent of his knowledge about underground activity in Auschwitz and the centrality of his involvement, to the extent that a prisoner at Birkenau could play a major role in such a terrifying and compartmentalized environment. The evidence presented to him outlined an “indictment” centered on his transgressions against Communist Party ideology and policy; verbal violence and viciousness; withholding assistance from members of party cells; commerce in food stolen from prisoners; preventing those under his sway from receiving medical care; abuse of prisoners in his block via his helpers; direct Friling - Jewish Kapo.indb 74 4/11/2014 2:48:59 PM Warsaw–Paris–Warsaw, June–September 1945 ||| 75 abuse of prisoners; beating prisoners and causing permanent injury; dispatch of prisoners to the gas chambers; abetting manslaughter and murder; and manslaughter and murder. He responded to these charges in writing and orally, at length and in detail, in his opening statement, under cross-examination, and in his summing-up. He questioned witnesses and wrote personal letters to the coordinators of the inquiry, urging them to bring it to a conclusion. All this was carefully documented in party documents that eventually made their way into the Polish national archives, where I hunted them down. The files contain dozens of pages in Polish, most of them typed on manual typewriters, with the addition of handwritten proofreading marks and notes. The file also includes documents relating to the trial conducted against Eliezer and his Communist cell comrades in Łódź in 1929—during the postwar proceeding, some witnesses referred obliquely to his youthful transgressions against the party.3 In his lengthy opening statement, Eliezer surveyed his actions from the time he and the other members of his group were taken from Beaune-la-­ Rolande, through his time in Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna-Monowitz, Jawischowitz , and Buchenwald. Here and there he referred to his time in Spain, Paris, and Poland. His aim was to place his endeavors in the context and inform his judges of the background to his deeds. He clearly understood that not only his place in his Communist cell and his right to remain part of it were at stake, but his life as well. He did everything in his power to respond to the entire range of accusations that had been leveled at him, both minor and major. To every extent possible, he sought to make distinctions between different kinds of offenses, from the seemingly mild to the more serious. In doing so, he sought to place his actions in perspective and proportion. It was an environment where denying a prisoner shoes, a slice of bread, or a shirt, or assigning him to a hard-labor detail, might have been the equivalent of sentencing him to death. Here and there the proceeding extracted very personal emotional reactions to the inexorable way in which the prisoners in the camps regressed into a herd mentality and into their basest animal instincts. He also spoke of his personal sense of betrayal, his frustration at what he saw as a lack of appreciation for his efforts. Implicitly but also...

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