By Chance Alone (14 page)

One tugboat pulled several of these barges, which were attached to each other with metal cables, and eventually I felt the movement of the waves on the Danube. We were headed upriver to the west. We were only a fraction of the prisoners from Melk—about one thousand people—and I figured that most of the inmates were being evacuated to other camps. The following day, the barges were tied up and we were ordered to get out. We found ourselves in Linz, Austria. I saw a large area full of bomb craters—possibly former factories. The SS marched us through the city of Linz, and after a full day's march, we bedded down for the night in a farmer's field near Gmunden. I dug around in the dirt of the field and managed to find a couple of small potatoes. I savoured them and then slept soundly through the starry night. We marched on, without any food or water, to the town of Wels. That evening, we again camped out in an open field. The following day, we walked through a town called Lambach. On the third
day, the road climbed to a higher elevation; it was very warm and the column began to stretch out, with many men unable to keep up. The SS gave us one hour to rest. There were pine trees on one side of us, and on the other side the road dropped off into a valley. The scenery was beautiful, and under different circumstances this might have been a wonderful outing. When the rest period was over, we marched on and followed the road ever higher. At this point, we had been without food or water for four days, and I was desperately thirsty.

Along the sides of the road, we started seeing signs that said, “
Achtung Tiefflieger
” (Beware of enemy fighter planes). Suddenly, I heard an airplane approaching. The pilot began strafing us from the rear of the column, but he stopped suddenly and veered off when he realized we were not enemy troops. He then returned to the front of the column and tilted his wings at us in what I thought was a sort of apology. Fortunately, no one in our group suffered fatal injuries. I could see the star on the airplane and knew it was an American fighter. I thought to myself that if an American airplane could fly that low without being challenged, their army could not be far away.

We came to a sharp turn in the road and I saw an amazing scene in the valley below: a beautiful lake called Ebensee with blue water and houses and trees around the shoreline. I could see several Luftwaffe soldiers in blue uniforms leisurely rowing their girlfriends in boats on the still lake. This sight was a remarkable contrast to the prisoners around me, and I wondered how these people could enjoy this peaceful vignette while we were so downtrodden. There and then, I vowed to myself that if I survived, I would one day experience the pleasure of boating on a peaceful lake. A short while later, we entered the gates of Ebensee KL.

Ebensee KL was on a plateau encircled by mountains, and it was a stark contrast to the beautiful town and the lake situated in the valley below. I had a sense that this would be the last camp for me to endure, and that liberation could not be far off. Most of the inmates in my barracks were Greek Jews, and I once again had to go through the usual process of integration among already established inmates with their hierarchies and seniorities. In my new work unit, we were detailed to mix cement and pour it into forms to produce large tiles. Thankfully, we were not pressed to work hard, and it seemed to me that we were simply putting in time while the war wound down. It was the first week of April
1945
. I was skeletal and the soles of my once-sturdy boots had large holes in them. Like most inmates, I was infested with lice. They burrowed under my skin to suck out my meagre drops of blood. They also carried the typhus bacteria from body to body. Most of the men in my barrack were sick with high fevers from typhus, and there was no medication or doctors to treat them. Many of them died in their bunks, their bodies unceremoniously carried outside and piled up in the latrine.

Around mid-April, the SS ceased distributing rations and the water system was shut down. I walked to the cistern where water was collected for extinguishing fires. It was large and had steep sides that angled down toward the bottom. Because the water level was very low, these side walls were about eight metres high. I saw several bodies floating in the cistern, and I suspected that these men had tried to get water and could not crawl back out because of the steep angle. I noticed others who had cups with a long string attached so they could retrieve some water in this way. I was surprised to see the Lichtman brothers, Gaby and Bandy, whom I knew from home. They told me that their father
had died just a week before. I was happy to see them, but I also envied the fact that they had each other while I was alone. I knew they couldn't take care of me, though. I went back to the barracks and I didn't see them at Ebensee again.

The situation was desperate and there were cadavers all over the camp. There were mountains of naked bodies piled in the main square, the clothing removed by desperate living souls. People were starving to death, and some even chewed on their leather boots to get any kind of juices into their stomachs. I grew weaker and weaker, and finally I succumbed to fever. I slept for days, consumed by fever dreams. When I awoke, I dragged myself to the cistern to try to get a drink, but by then there were so many bodies floating in the water it was impossible.

A few days later, I woke up to the smell of cooking meat, a smell that was nauseating to me in my ravaged state. Several inmates sat around a small stove and watched as a pot boiled. I could not imagine how they had acquired meat, but when I crawled to the latrine where the cadavers were stacked, I noticed that some of the bodies were missing pieces from their buttocks. I put two and two together and realized what kind of meat was being cooked in the pot. Desperate people will do desperate things to survive. I crawled back to my bunk and hoped that I would not be their next meal.

The next morning, an inmate shuffled in with his wooden clogs and made a surprising announcement. He said the SS guards were no longer in the watchtower and there was a white flag flying at the main gate. Was it possible that our liberators had finally arrived? I was very sick and weak, but I marshalled my strength and climbed over bodies on the floor, determined to get out of the barracks. In that moment, I felt that getting outside
meant life, and that if I stayed inside, where I was surrounded by death, I would surely perish. When I looked up and saw the white flag with my own eyes, I knew that my horrible ordeal was over. I felt as if a crushing weight was lifted off my body.

At that moment, the gate came crashing down and a tank with a white star barrelled through. What a sight it was! Several African American soldiers were sitting up on the turret, their
eyes wide as they gazed in horror at the scene before them and smelled the odour of thousands of decomposing bodies. Our liberators belonged to a unit called the
761
st Tank Battalion, which was attached to General George S. Patton's Third Army. Known as the Black Panthers, they had come through the Battle of the Bulge in France, but the devastation here was more horrific than any battlefield conditions they had witnessed. Had they arrived mere hours later, many more of us would have been dead.
The date was May
6
,
1945
.

Ebensee after liberation.

Survivors of Ebensee.

A
fter observing the situation in Ebensee, the tank unit left and reported back to headquarters. The war would not end for another two days, and they left to liberate other camps, such as Gunskirchen and Mauthausen. After a short while, an American jeep full of officers arrived to assess the horrendous situation in Ebensee. There were decomposing bodies piled high in the square, sick and skeletal inmates who were naked or only partially clad, a typhus epidemic and lice infestation, thousands of starving people. I heard an officer on his radio discussing the next steps. For these men from the
40
th Infantry Division, it was their first experience with a concentration camp full of walking skeletons. Their first act was to sanitize the camp and eliminate the typhus bacteria, and to accomplish this, all the barracks had to be burned to the ground.

I was content simply to watch the events as they unfolded. There were no more SS guards, no more Kapos, and no one could harm me. Many thoughts went through my head, and some memories of events with which I could barely cope. I
realized that I would need help to get back on my feet before I could deal with any other issues, such as where I would go from here, and how I would get food and shelter.

While I lay on the ground, I could hear the sound of heavy trucks slowly coming up the road. The trucks rolled through the gates, bringing dozens of soldiers with them. The soldiers' reactions were amazing to see—they wanted to help us, but they didn't want to touch us. I felt ashamed that anyone had to see me in my filthy, helpless, demeaning condition. I felt exposed and vulnerable. The officers ordered the soldiers to spread out through the camp and assess which prisoners needed to be attended to immediately. Other trucks brought female nurses, hospital tents, mobile kitchens and supplies, and canvas cots. A big water tanker arrived, and the soldiers set up showers.

A female nurse wearing a mask picked me up. She cut off my filthy shirt and sprayed me with DDT to kill my lice infestation, then started to wash me under the showers. I felt so ashamed to be attended to in this condition, and I needed much more than one washing to remove the dirt. After the shower, I was laid on a canvas cot in the hospital tent. It was heavenly, even though all my bones ached from months of lying on wooden planks. Eventually, doctors made the rounds, examined each one of us, and recorded their findings. I had a superficial exam because there were so many patients to attend to and so many issues to be addressed elsewhere in the camp.

The kitchens were set up and meals prepared. I could smell the aroma of a stew, but I knew that I wouldn't be able to eat it. I couldn't walk and I feared getting caught in a stampede of starving people. The smell of the food brought anyone who could still walk to the kitchen, and I could hear the soldiers shouting,
“Hold it! Hold it! The food is not ready!” Nobody listened. The soldiers tried to rope off the kitchen area, but this didn't help much. One soldier took out his pistol and fired into the air. I knew that even bullets would not hold back the mob. The soldiers just did not understand that they were dealing with starving people who had lost all sense of normalcy. Eventually, they began to ladle the stew into bowls and distribute it to the inmates, who wolfed it down. Soon their bellies were protruding, and within minutes some men's stomachs had ruptured and many died on the spot. There was a terrible irony in the fact that so many had survived hunger only to die now that food was finally available. The kitchen unit quickly stopped cooking hard-to-digest proteins and turned to bread and scrambled powdered eggs to feed the liberated prisoners. In the hospital tent, I received water, crackers, and powdered milk.

My first night sleeping on the cot in the tent was a restful one. When I awoke, I saw large trucks carrying big bulldozers on trailers. The soldiers used these bulldozers to dig five deep trenches. At noon, US military police brought a group of local civilians to the trenches and told them to carry the dead, with one person holding the hands and another the feet. The townspeople were all dressed up in their Sunday best. Men wore suits and ties, and women wore summer dresses. They held scarves to their noses because of the stench; in many cases, flesh came away in their hands as they touched the bodies. The people looked horrified. When they dropped the naked cadavers into the trench, they looked like rag dolls. Somebody's father. Somebody's son or brother. Thousands of nameless bodies were disposed of in these mass graves.

The townspeople could not keep up with this work for more than two days, and the Americans determined that they had to
find a faster way to complete this gruesome task. The bulldozers were then used to finish the job by pushing the corpses into the mass graves. The bodies were covered with lime and then earth. Rabbis and chaplains arrived to say prayers for all the dead.

Four days after our liberation, the doctors gave us a more thorough exam. I was taken to a civilian hospital with a few others to be checked for tuberculosis. The tests turned out to be negative, and I was brought back to the camp in my paper hospital gown. I had no clothes or shoes. My trusty boots, custom-made by Mr. Guttman from my hometown, had endured through one year of working and walking and had saved my life many times, but they'd finally fallen apart. Eventually, the army found a warehouse full of Hitler Youth shirts, breeches, and boots, and they distributed these clothes to us. How absurd it felt to wear such an outfit!

Before the camp was administered in any organized way by the American military, inmates who were still mobile were able to come and go as they pleased. Some went to forage in homes in the town of Ebensee, and they came back to the camp with civilian clothing and food. I felt quite deprived when I saw these men in normal clothes while I was in my Hitler Youth outfit. Five days after liberation, the American military closed the gates and we were no longer allowed to leave the camp.

All inmates had to go to the camp office and register with their name, birthdate, country of origin, and desired postwar destination. I worried about going home to Moldava all alone. At the time, I didn't know if it was still part of Hungary or had reverted to Czechoslovakia. Should I even try to go back? What would happen if I set out into a world that had rejected me a year before? I had troubling thoughts because I knew that even if I
got back home, my family would not be there to take care of me. I was liberated, but I didn't feel free.

A month after liberation, an announcement came over the loudspeaker that a truck was leaving the next day for Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and those who came from those two countries were to leave on this transport. Thus, the decision was made for me. When the trucks arrived, I saw one with a sign for Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and I got on with about forty others. The truck left the camp and descended through the town of Ebensee and onward. I thought how lucky I was to have survived this hellhole. Never did I want to see this place again. I looked forward to returning to Czechoslovakia.