Doctors

Nikolai hurried to the smallish building on the edge of the camp. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his long coat, it was cold and damp. Nikolai liked the winter but not the cold, a paradox he'd never quite understood. He was worried about Werner, it had been a week since he'd had to herd the prisoners into the gas chambers; and he still spaced out constantly, and when his mind was half-present his expression was almost always blank. Nikolai had watched him work; his commands weren't delievered loud enough, sometimes his voice had refused to work. He was nervous that his young friend might be reported as "untauglich" (unfit) and be punished. So he'd decided to try and work some magic on the officers and try to get the man into another part of Auschwitz...an area that Werner might find possible to work in. 

He knocked on the door of the little hut and entered. The Lagerfüher, some other SS gentlemen and two men that Nikolai had never seen sat at a shortish table that was square and not rectangular. Nikolai felt put off by the table...why wasn't it a rectangle? He shook away the thoughts of wooden tables and smiled at the officers. 

"Guten Abend." He greeted them, holding out his arms as if he wanted to embrace them all. The officers might have been surprised at his gesture and smile if they had not known him, but they did and a smile was so typical for him that they couldn't change it. Nikolai almost always smiled. 

"Abend, Nikolai." The Lagerführer said, his voice the loudest of all the men who chorused "Guten Abend" around him. "Was suchen Sie hier? (Why are you here)?" 

"I'm here because of a comerade of mine...I don't think he's in the position he should be." Nikolai explained. 

"Are you talking about Werner?" The Lagerführer interrupted. Nikolai was taken aback; how did the Lagerführer know who he was talking about? There were so many people that he was in close contact with...was he being watched? Was he being suspected? But Nikolai was a master of his face and he just smiled and nodded, showing that he was impressed by the officers memory. 

"Exactly. He recently told me about his life before the war; he'd done an apprenticeship at a hospital in Berlin. I was wondering if there was a possibility to relieve him from his duty as an overseeing official to someone who worked with the doctors."

"We're short on assistants." The Lagerführer said slowly. "If he's interrested in switching to that part of the camp we can definitely arrange that. If he'd like to, he can meet with one of the doctors tomorrow. He'd recently complained to us that he needed more help to execute his experiments." 

"That sounds lovely." 

"I'll send someone to him tomorrow at breakfast or lunch, they'll call him in so he can meet Dr. Ziegler. Thank you for coming to see me, Offizier Hart." 

"Thank you, sir. I wish you all a good evening and good-bye." Nikolai gave everyone a big smile and nodded his head in respect. He then left, softly closing the door behind him. He lit a cigarette in front of the door, then head back to his bunk. 

***

Werner was horrified as Nikolai told him the 'good news'. "You what?" He asked with white lips. "You what?"

"I thought it might be easier for you. I've been watching you, Werner, you don't look well. And I don't want you to be reported as someone who doesn't do their job. That's dangerous here, you know that."

"Of course I know that." Werner snapped. "But do you know what the 'doctors' in Auschwitz do?" To this Nikolai just shrugged. He spooned a mouthfull of joghurt into his mouth. Werner kept staring at him in horror. Why in Gods name would Nikolai do that to him?

"If you really don't want to, you can always tell Dr. Ziegler that you've changed your mind and would rather stay where you are now." 

"No I can't. You made him go out of his way to meet me." 

"The Lagerführer said he needed assistants so I think he'll be happy to meet you."

"And then he'll want me to work from him!"

"Listen, Werner. I know that you don't want to work there either, but you cannot keep working where you do now. It's been a week since you gased the group of people and you're still incapable to work. And if you stay were you are you'll have to do that again and again." It was one of the rare moments where Nikolai wasn't smiling. That might have attracted attention from the others at the breakfast table but luckily for the two the men next to them were loudly arguing about which german actress was the best and practically everyone at the table had an opinion to voice about that. 

"Do you know what they do by the doctors?" Werner hissed. He'd never been so angry at somebody else before. He hadn't even been as angry at a doctor who'd given him the wrong medication which had resulted in a few days of puking and illusions. "They experiment on people, Werner. I heard that they operated on some people who weren't under anastesia. And you know why they did that? They wanted to see how much pain the people would feel." Werner whispered the words. He was too angry to realize that he shouldn't have said them at all, he would seem like a spy, because who else would know that unless he'd worked in such an Einheit before? Nikolai seemed genuinly surprised and horrified. He knew a lot about the concentration camps, he'd worked in two, but he'd never heard of that. He was so shocked by what he'd just learned that he didn't even wonder from where Werner knew that. 

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry." He spluttered. "If you need me to help you get out of this in any way I will." He quickly added. "Oh God. I really didn't know any of that...I thought the doctors tended to officers who were sick or maybe researched...things. I'm terribly sorry, Werner." 

***

Werner felt sick to the stomach as he waited in the hallway of a cleanly building for Dr. Ziegler. He'd been pulled out of work just after lunch and sent to the other end of Auschwitz. On this end the houses were brighter but more menacing, maybe because they weren't wooden barracks but actual cement blocks. They were properly cared for; which meant they were important. 

One of the doors opened and an officer exited, saluted Werner and marched back down the hall. Werner walked to the door and peered around the frame. 

Behind a desk sat a man with smallish glasses and a balding head. He looked up at Werner. "Kommen Sie ruhig herein! (come inside, please)." So Werner entered the doctors office, closing the door behind him. "Take a seat." Ziegler offered. Werner sat down nervously. The doctor smiled at him and folded his hands, he lay them on the table, next to a neatly stacked pile of papers. "I was told that you have experience in the medical appartement and would like to be my assistant." 

"Yes but-." 

"Well, I do really need an assistant. There's simply too much to do, especially with Wojciechowski." The second the doctor dropped Wojciechowskis name Werner had a change of heart. He'd entered the room convinced to tell the Doctor that he'd changed his mind about joining the Auschwitz doctors but if Dr. Ziegler was working with Wojciechowski then that changed everything. 

"I'd love to help. I admittidly was only ever an assistant, and only for a short period of time, so I wasn't able to do much. But I like working in the field and I'd like to become a doctor myself one day." Werner said, trying his hardest to convince his counterpart to let him work for him. He remained as honest as he could because doctors usually could detect lies. And though he'd never been an assistant, he'd learned how to inject shots, how to read charts and so on and so forth because of the many hours he'd spent in the hospital.

"Well that sounds like you're the perfect man for the job." Dr. Ziegler said with a smile. He held out his hand to shake Werners. "I expect you here in front of this office at 7 o'clock tomorrow morning. That must be late for you, but no matter what those officers say, I refuse to get up earlier than six. It's inhumane to make someone work in the early hours." He was obviously trying to make Werner smile and Werner did although he thought it inappropriate for a doctor in Auschwitz to say the word 'inhumane' while talking about resting hours. There were so many truely inhumane things happening in the KZ.