Authors: Henry Orenstein
I Shall Live
HALL
L
IVE
Surviving the Holocaust Against All Odds
HENRY ORENSTEIN
Foreword by
Claude Lanzmann, creator of
Shoah
Copyright © 1987 by Henry Orenstein
First Beaufort Books paperback edition 1997
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Orenstein, Henry, 1923-
I shall live : surviving the Holocaust against all odds / Henry Orenstein.
  p. cm.
“revised and updated edition”.
ISBN 978-0-8253-0597-9 (alk. paper)
1. Orenstein, Henry, 1923-2. JewsâPolandâHrubieszówâBiography.
3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)âPolandâHrubieszów--Personal narratives.
4. Hrubieszów (Poland)âBiography. I. Title.
DS134.72.O74A3 2010
940.53'18092--dc22
[B]
                                                  2009046948
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To the members of my family
murdered by the Nazis
and
to my beloved wife, Susie,
without whose urging and inspiration
this book would not have been written
Special thanks to Dr. Lucjan Dobroszycki,
Professor of History at YIVO and Yeshiva University,
and editor of
The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto,
for his invaluable help in the search
for documents and verification
Introduction by Malcolm Hoenlein
Hrubieszów: Before World War II
The Germans Attack the Soviet Union
Throughout the years I spent in the preparation and making of
Shoah
, one question emerged as central for me, a question that neither the many firsthand accounts and scholarly works I read nor the testimony from survivors ever really and completely answered: How did the Jews of the villages and small ghetto towns of Eastern Europe (Poland, the Baltic countries, Byelorussia, the Ukraine) live from one day to the next during the periods of remission that followed the liquidationsâor “actions,” as the Nazis labeled themâin which their families and friends were brutally slaughtered on the spot by specialized teams of killers or sent off to the gas chambers of the death camps? Although the frequency and pace of extermination varied considerably according to the time and place, one general principle nevertheless prevailed: In order to deceive and lull the victims, and also because Jewish manpower was needed, the SS never “cleaned up” a ghetto in one fell swoop. Between one “action” and the next, life went on for those initially
spared, days filled with anguish and terror, dominated by the anticipation and certainty of an inescapable end, yet permeated with dreams and hopes more tenacious than death, and without which their doomed existence would have been impossible.
Henry Orenstein is the extraordinary painter of this anguish, conveying a picture whose truth and sensitivity are to my mind exemplary. He makes us experienceâand this is what is most profoundly unique in his storyâthe
passage of time
, the passing of days, weeks, and months, the deceptive calm before and after the savagery of the “actions” and executions. Quite simply, he recreates for us the
sense of duration
in the extermination of the Jews. He does so with perfect economy of means, in a spare style, without overstatement. His intellectual rigor and honesty, his accurate memory, and his keen skill for description enable us to relive each moment of this relentless martyrdom as if we ourselves belonged to the Orenstein family.
This book is above all the saga of a wonderfully united and closely knit family in which each member is prepared to give his life to save the others. Lejb, the father, Golda, the mother, the four sonsâFred, Sam, Felek, and Henryâand lastly, Hanka, the little sister, all obey the same law of loveâpaternal, maternal, filial, and sibling loveâwhich bids them always to risk their own safety in order to keep the family together or to find each other again despite enforced separations, even at the price of the ultimate sacrifice. The most poignant episode in the book is undoubtedly the surrender to the Nazis on October 28, 1942, of the entire family, together for one last time in their home town of Hrubieszów, after having miraculously survived for three years. By the very austerity of its narration, the book here attains a tragic grandeur. We are witness to the final “action,” the ultimate liquidation of the ghetto, the shipment of thousands of Hrubieszów Jews to the gas chambers of Sobibór. While the SS were outside with their dogs and with Ukrainian mercenaries, flushing out, house by
house, the Jews who had failed to appear at roll call, the Orensteins remained hidden in a
skrytka
, a narrow concealed place behind a false wall. For eight days and eight nightsâthe duration of the “action”âthey waited. Henry, the youngest son (who was nineteen years old in 1942), escaped implacable reality by devouring a Polish translation of
Gone with the Wind
with its last twenty pages missing. “I shall never know the end of the story,” he thinks, indicating thus his sense of impending death. Dirty, starving, with their strength and hope exhausted, the Orensteins decide to make an end of it and surrender to the murderers. Golda and Lejb are taken to the cemetery and killed with a bullet in the neck. The mother, before being dragged away from her family, cries out to her oldest son the four piercing words which express the most absolute gift of self: “Fred, save the children!”
For the five children, the hell of the camps would now begin. Until now, we have been reading a meticulous account of a manhunt, rich with fresh insights into relations between Jews and Poles, the habitual anti-Semitism of the Polish population, but also the simple heroism of a handful of men and women who risked their lives to help the victims (Mrs. Lipi
Å
ska remains unforgettable); we learn, too, about everyday life in this part of Poland, occupied by the USSR between 1939 and 1941, during which period anti-Jewish discrimination was banned, and lastly about the solitude and the unbelievable feeling of abandonment experienced by Jews desperately trying to survive in a totally hostile environment, a desert bereft of all humanity.
But then the tenor of the book suddenly alters, and in trailing the path of Henry Orenstein, we plunge into the most harrowing of adventure stories. An adventure of horror to be sure, as lived hour after hour for thirty interminable months, but at the same time, one that is almost novelesque in the extraordinary succession of miracles which enable the young man to remain among the living so as
to eventually tell his story forty years later, with Voltairesque ferocity and often with sheer and invigorating joy. From one ordeal to another, outwitting death time after time, Henry Orenstein, an intelligent, soberly pessimistic Candide, is possessed by a will to live so prodigious that he seems able to maintain his spirit while overcoming the most improbable odds. One of the most hazardous of these was his enrollment in an ultra-secret
Kommando
of phony chemists, engineers, and mathematicians, whose task was to employ Jewish intelligence for the purpose of inventing a unique gas that would save the Third Reich from disaster by paralyzing the engines of enemy tanks, aircraft, and all other motorized vehicles. Readers will have to discover for themselves this truly delusionary scheme, a sheer product of the Nazi phantasmagoria. As a member of a
Chemiker Kommando
, our hero was sheltered to some extent in each of the five camps to which he was deported: Budzy'
n
, Majdanek, and PÅaszów in Poland; Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen in Germany. The news from the front, Hitler's defeats, the advance of Soviet troops (he rightly considers the battle of Moscow in the winter of 1941â1942 to be the decisive turning point of the war), together with the Allied landings helped sustain Henry Orenstein during his worst moments: The reader must imagine the horrible torture in Ptaszów of being confined in the
Stehbunker
(a tiny, foul, coffin-like cell with barely room to stand), waiting his turn to be hanged, escaping in his imagination into the realm of military strategy, identifying with the generals of the victorious armiesâZhukov and Eisenhower, Montgomery and Rokossovskyâcorrecting and perfecting their battle plans, but also maintaining his equilibrium when on the brink of death by visualizing Hitler's suffering on seeing his world crumble.
The end of the book is admirable. In a series of hallucinatory scenes which would lend themselves to cinematic treatment, the
author has us relive the death march of the prisoners from Sachsenhausen during the last days of the war. At that point, impelled by an overwhelming need to tell, Orenstein attains such perfect mastery that his work achieves the rank of literature.
CLAUDE LANZMANN
Translated from the French by Toby Talbot
I am writing this introduction to add another dimension to the masterful foreword by Claude Lanzmann. This renowned artist and author has captured the special significance of this book and it cannot be improved upon.
I have been privileged to know many of the most outstanding personalities of our time, from world leaders to renowned religious figures and cultural icons. None has had a greater impact or more profound impression on my life as did Henry Orenstein. Beyond my deep affection and admiration for Henry and Susie, I have come to rely on his incisive and substantive command of world events. Henry is a keen observer, largely self-educated, with remarkable insight sharpened by his life experience. His remarkable story is movingly recounted in
I Shall Live
, but it offers only part of the full account of this unique and special man.
His resourcefulness, creativity, and intellect are evident in his ability to survive against the greatest odds. Only those who had
firsthand experience with the unfathomable evil of that period can fully appreciate the miraculous nature of his survival.
I Shall Live
is much more then another personal account of that terrible era. Rather, it is the inspiring story of the remarkable triumph of an individual who by virtue of extraordinary will and courage was able to overcome incredible challenges that would have doomed a lesser person. He repeatedly faced almost certain death, yet by his wit, courage, and determination he confounded the plans of his Nazi tormentors. Not given to despair or self-pity, despite his incredible experiences, which might have deterred those lacking his zeal for life, he went on to establish a family, successful businesses and engage in significant philanthropic endeavors. These qualities enabled him as well to overcome reversals of fortune, from which he emerged stronger and went on to even greater accomplishments. His creativity and imagination continue to produce new inventions and innovations up to the present time.