Special Detail…
- The guard who comes on duty at noon after Marx is Andor Gutman. He's nearly the same age as Campbell—48—and remembers the war well: he was a prisoner at Auschwitz.
- Gutman was freed right before he would have been sent to a crematorium. He was a Sonderkommando, which means "special detail." At this concentration camp that was a euphemism for the job some prisoners had of herding other prisoners into the gas chambers and then carrying away their bodies after they were killed. Yeahhhh, no—just no.
- Gutman says some prisoners even volunteered for that position.
- Campbell wonders why and what even. Gutman tells him that he should write a book on that—Gutman would pay top dollar to read it.
- Campbell wants to know if Gutman has any guesses as to why other prisoners would actually volunteer for that. Nope, but we get a twist: Gutman was one of the volunteers—and he has no idea why he did it.
- Gutman walks away from Campbell after revealing this piece of information.
- Gutman comes back. He tells Campbell that they played music over the loudspeakers at Auschwitz. Beautiful music that would be interrupted with announcements.
- One such interruption was: "Corpse-carriers to the guardhouse" (2.22). This announcement was delivered in a sing-song manner.
- After a while, Gutman says, this announcement made it sound like a good job. Here's how his regret-revelation to Campbell kind of goes down:
- Campbell: I get that.
- Gutman: Seriously? Because I don't. I'm ashamed. I'll always be ashamed. It was a shameful thing I did.
- Campbell: No shame, man.
- Gutman: Nope, shame. I don't want to talk about this again.