Chap­ter 2 intro­duces Andor Gut­man, a guard who replaces Arnold Marx every noon. Both are rough­ly the same age, around forty-eight, and Gut­man, an Eston­ian Jew, car­ries a deeply unset­tling his­to­ry from his time at Auschwitz. His life was near­ly cut short when he was assigned to the Son­derkom­man­do, a noto­ri­ous group tasked with guid­ing con­demned pris­on­ers to the gas cham­bers and lat­er remov­ing their bod­ies. His fate was dra­mat­i­cal­ly changed when Himm­ler issued the order to shut down the cre­ma­to­ri­um ovens, spar­ing him from an inevitable death that befell many of his fel­low Son­derkom­man­do mem­bers. This life-alter­ing deci­sion reveals a haunt­ing irony—while the camp func­tioned to exter­mi­nate mil­lions, cer­tain indi­vid­u­als, like Gut­man, were momen­tar­i­ly spared through sheer chance or admin­is­tra­tive deci­sions that remain beyond their con­trol. The rev­e­la­tion of his sur­vival amidst such hor­ror sets the stage for Gutman’s psy­cho­log­i­cal com­plex­i­ty, illus­trat­ing how his expe­ri­ences would for­ev­er haunt his sense of iden­ti­ty and moral­i­ty.

The term “Son­derkom­man­do” itself is chill­ing, trans­lat­ing to “spe­cial detail,” which evokes the unimag­in­able respon­si­bil­i­ties thrust upon these pris­on­ers. Those select­ed for this role were giv­en a brief respite from exe­cu­tion, but their own lives were for­feit after they had served their pur­pose. Inter­est­ing­ly, Gut­man reveals that some men vol­un­teered for this role, which rais­es dif­fi­cult, unan­swered ques­tions about the human psy­che in extreme con­di­tions. In response to the ques­tion of why these men might have vol­un­teered, Gut­man con­fess­es that com­pre­hend­ing their rea­sons would require an in-depth explo­ration far beyond his cur­rent understanding—something he believes could fill an entire book. Despite hav­ing been one of those vol­un­teers, he con­fess­es to being unable to grasp the rea­sons for such a choice, sug­gest­ing the com­plex­i­ty of human deci­sion-mak­ing under life-or-death cir­cum­stances. The idea that any­one would will­ing­ly embrace such a fate in exchange for tem­po­rary sur­vival rais­es ques­tions that remain elu­sive, reflect­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal com­plex­i­ty of those who lived through the camps.

Gutman’s rec­ol­lec­tions of Auschwitz are marked by the ever-present loud­speak­ers that echoed through­out the camp, broad­cast­ing a mix of music and announce­ments. The music, often of high qual­i­ty, was odd­ly devoid of any Jew­ish com­posers, who were banned from con­tribut­ing their works under Nazi rule. This musi­cal selec­tion serves as a strange, unset­tling con­trast to the grim real­i­ty of the camp, where loud­speak­ers also deliv­ered fre­quent and bru­tal announce­ments. The recur­ring calls for the Son­derkom­man­do to report to the guard­house, “Leichen­träger zu Wache” (Corpse-car­ri­ers to the guard­house), sym­bol­ize the grotesque pur­pose of the unit and rein­force the inescapable nature of their hor­rif­ic duties. The com­bi­na­tion of music and grim announce­ments cre­ates a psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly charged atmos­phere in the camp, where the dis­so­nance between melody and duty reflects the twist­ed real­i­ty the pris­on­ers were forced to endure. This stark con­trast between cul­ture and death echoes the hor­ror of their exis­tence, where the beau­ty of music could not mask the bru­tal­i­ty of the camp’s oper­a­tions.

Ini­tial­ly, Gut­man saw his posi­tion in the Son­derkom­man­do as a sur­vival tac­tic, con­sid­er­ing it prefer­able to being sub­ject­ed to the relent­less vio­lence of the Nazi machin­ery. How­ev­er, as time passed, the weight of this deci­sion became unbear­able, and he began to reflect on the moral com­pro­mis­es that sur­vival in such con­di­tions demand­ed. His shame over his role as a corpse-carrier—exploiting the suf­fer­ing of oth­ers to extend his own life—haunts him deeply, illus­trat­ing the moral land­scape of sur­vival in Auschwitz. Despite the pres­sure to sim­ply sur­vive, Gutman’s inter­nal con­flict under­scores the pro­found emo­tion­al toll that col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Nazis, even in this lim­it­ed capac­i­ty, exact­ed on those forced into these posi­tions. His reluc­tance to revis­it the sub­ject in con­ver­sa­tion sig­nals the over­whelm­ing bur­den of these mem­o­ries and sug­gests that the trau­ma from his actions may be too heavy to con­front. This chap­ter cap­tures the last­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal scars that linger long after the phys­i­cal hor­rors have end­ed, expos­ing the com­plex­i­ties of sur­vival, guilt, and the emo­tion­al cost of liv­ing with choic­es made under duress. It chal­lenges the read­er to con­sid­er the human cost of sur­vival in one of history’s most moral­ly com­pli­cat­ed con­texts, ask­ing whether such indi­vid­u­als can ever rec­on­cile their actions with their human­i­ty.