I Shall Live (25 page)

This time, when they finished counting us they were one short. They began the count again from scratch, block by block, and at the end there was still one missing. By now we had been standing in our ranks for an hour and a half. The SS men and the Ukrainians fanned out, searching the whole camp. Finally word came that they had found a prisoner dead in the hospital latrine, and they let us go.

I was tired and didn't want that terrible soup anyway, so I went to the barracks and lay down on my bunk. Fred came in and told us that he had been able to arrange a deal with a prisoner who worked in the hospital: We were to get a few loaves of bread and a piece of lard in exchange for a gold coin, the bread to be delivered over a period of several weeks. Fred had brought the first loaf with him, and we divided it into five pieces. (Hanka was in the women's barracks, but we were still in contact with her; at that time the men and the women were not totally separated.) We were worried about whether the man would actually deliver the bread after he got the gold, but we had to trust him. At any rate, we felt a little more secure now.

Before going to sleep, I went to the latrine, again without success. Not only was it filthy, but one was in constant danger of falling into the ditch full of feces. Prisoners who had lost control of their bowels rushed in, often unable to make it to the plank in time, and a stream of liquid feces would shoot out of their bowels with force, splashing the people near them. Every visit to the latrine was so upsetting that even with the help of a laxative Fred got for me from the hospital, it was almost a week before I could empty my bowels.

Soon we became used to the camp routine. Danger was everywhere, but so far we had been luckier than most. Bencio Fink had no money, so each time we divided our extra bread I asked my brothers to cut a piece for him. We all liked Bencio and didn't have the heart to see him turn into a Musulman, although we were worried about what would happen when our money ran out. Much later,
Richie Krakowski told me that Bencio would often share with him the bread he received from us.

Richie too was liked by everyone. I never saw him lose his composure or become unpleasant or even irritable. He came from a town near Warsaw, from a very well-off and assimilated family; they wanted to be considered Poles rather than Jews. All of them spoke perfect Polish and no longer even understood Yiddish. When the Germans occupied Poland, they began moving Jews from the smaller towns into large ghettos in the cities. Richie and his family were forced to move to the Warsaw Ghetto, where they remained almost to the end, to the final uprising.

Richie's father had bought cyanide tablets for the whole family before they were taken to the Umschlagplatz, where the SS was loading Jews into cattle cars. When it became certain that the train was going to the gas chambers of Treblinka, and with his father and dozens of others lying dead from suffocation in the cattle car, Richie decided to take his cyanide pill. He found that he couldn't do it with a dry mouth, so he urinated into his cupped hand and used that to swallow the pill with. And nothing happened. Apparently some of the Warsaw Jews, desperate for money, were selling phony cyanide pills.

When the train finally arrived at Treblinka and those Jews still alive were ordered out of the cattle cars, an SS officer asked mechanics and other people with technical training to step forward. Seventy or eighty people did, Richie among them. They were loaded into another cattle car and shipped to Budzy
ń
. All the rest, including Richie's mother and sister, were killed in the gas chambers. Treblinka was solely an extermination camp; that was the first time any Jews had arrived there and not not been killed, but had been shipped out.

After a few weeks, Felek, Sam, and I were assigned to work in
the Heinkel factory. This was a stroke of luck; working in the plant would offer some protection from a selection or an evacuation.

Occasionally we were able to get hold of German or local Polish newspapers, and it was now obvious that Hitler was losing the war. Things were going badly for him on all fronts. In previous years the summer, with its warm weather and dry ground, had favored the Germans. In the summer of 1941 they had smashed the Russians, taken millions of prisoners, pushed deep into Soviet territory, and had brought the Red Army close to collapse. In the summer of 1942, even though Hitler was apparently running short of men and matériel, he still managed to push on to Stalingrad and into the Caucasus Mountains. But now, in 1943, the summer battles did not start until the first week in July. The Germans massed their best troops and tank units near Kursk, hoping to open a great hole in the center of the Russian front with one tremendous blow, pour thousands of tanks through the breach, and envelop the Russian armies to the north and south. But this time the Russians were prepared for them, with thousands of their own tanks ready to do battle. In fact, the greatest tank battle of World War II was fought at Kursk. German war communiqués told of tremendous tank engagements near that city. In the first few days they spoke of progress on the Kursk front, then only of “heavy battles,” without mentioning any progress, and finally, about two weeks later, they started referring to the “heavy defensive battles.” “Heavy defensive battles” were mentioned too as occurring at Orel and a few other places.

I had learned by then how to interpret German communiqués. “Defensive battles” was the euphemism for retreat, in this case on a wide front between Orel and Kursk. And this in the summer! What would the Russians do to them in wintertime! Meanwhile, the Allies were advancing rapidly in Sicily. I was delirious with happiness. Words cannot describe the feeling of triumph, of joy with which I
read these scraps of newspapers that reached us sporadically. Oh, how sweet was the feeling of revenge, to know how Hitler must be suffering from these blows. I would lie awake on my bunk at night visualizing and relishing the agony that this cruel, maniacal murderer was enduring every day, every minute. Now there was no more hope for him. We were very realistic about our own situation; we knew that our lives were not worth much, that we would need a miracle to survive. So for us it was a strange mixture of feelings, exuberance and sadness, knowing that our chances of actually tasting the final fruits of victory and living in freedom were slim indeed.

Meanwhile, at the Heinkel factory, we were learning how to produce metal parts for the assembly of airplane wings. The plant was under civilian management, and a number of technicians were brought in from Heinkel's plants in Germany to teach us. My
Meister
(master), as we used to call him, was on the short side and bald, and always carried a big ruler. We were given metal parts to fabricate as a test of our skill. Our training took a couple of weeks, and whenever my humorless Meister was dissatisfied with my work, he would hit my hands with his ruler. This reminded me so much of my early school years that it was sometimes hard to keep from laughing.

One day they asked whether there were any draftsmen among us, and I decided to take a chance and volunteer. I was no draftsman, but I had always been good at geometry. I was given a drawing to do, and with a little help from a prisoner who really was a draftsman, I passed the test. I was put at a drawing board in a small room next to the workshops. Some of the work was complicated, but luckily I had a graduate engineer working next to me, and whenever I ran into difficulty he would help me out.

I was very happy with this new job; the plant was clean, we were supervised by civilians, and most of us were still in fairly good health. It was a lot better than lugging cement, and, after spending
the day in a decent, orderly plant, under working conditions that were almost normal, it felt like reentering a nightmare to go back at night to that filthy camp and all its brutality.

One day in August, after we had returned to the camp and the Appel was finished, the guards selected about five hundred prisoners and lined them up in two rows three feet apart. I was one of them, scared and confused and not knowing what to expect. The Ukrainian guards positioned themselves behind us, and we were told that a prisoner would be running between the two rows and that we must slap him as he passed. Anyone who didn't slap him hard enough would be killed. There was a general hubbub and nobody could make out what was going on, except that one of our supervisors, a Jewish prisoner of war, told us money had been found on the man.

The Ukrainians brought him to the head of the line and made him run the gauntlet, the prisoners slapping his face as he passed between the two rows. Some of us, afraid of being shot, hit him pretty hard. The guards kicked and beat the prisoners who they thought weren't slapping the man hard enough. The lines were close together, and the man stumbled and fell several times. Right behind me was a Ukrainian and I wanted to make sure he didn't shoot me, so I took a big swing as the man ran past, but checked it just before my hand made contact with his face. The Ukrainian didn't notice it—at least he didn't react. Past me the line curved slightly, and I couldn't see what happened to the man. Later I heard that he had collapsed before the end of the run, and been hanged.

More and more of the prisoners were dying from malnutrition, from the beatings, and from disease. We were all covered with lice. At first this drove me crazy, but later I got used to it and, like everyone else, became an expert at finding and killing the little beasts—which didn't help much, because no matter how many you killed
there were always more. Occasionally there was an
Entlausung
(delousing) when they sprayed the bunks, but that didn't help much either. The camp hospital was always overflowing; increasing numbers of us were becoming Musulmen. More and more my brothers and sister and I appreciated our great good fortune in being able to buy extra food for ourselves and a few friends.

September came, and then October, and the good news from the fighting fronts continued to arrive in a steady stream. Early in September Italy surrendered. The Russian armies were rolling westward, occupying such key cities as Kharkov, Kiev, and Smolensk. There was a smell of victory in the air. The invincible Master Race was being brought to its knees by the “subhuman” Russians, whom they had planned to exterminate on a gigantic scale.

The mood of the camp lightened somewhat; those of us who were still fairly healthy even indulged in a few pranks. We heard increasing talk of evacuation. The Russians were still hundreds of miles away, but they were pushing the Germans steadily westward, and the German army seemed unable to stop them. The big question for us of course was, what would they do with us when the Russians were approaching?

Early in November came spine-chilling reports that large Jewish labor camps not far from us were being totally liquidated, the inmates killed en masse. Our Ukrainian guards cheerfully informed us that twenty thousand Jews in the Majdanek concentration camp, less than two hours away, had been herded into a field and mowed down by machine guns. The Trawniki and Poniatowa labor camps, which made German army uniforms, had been liquidated as well, the Jewish workers either killed on the spot or shipped to the Sobibór and Treblinka gas chambers.

The mood of the camp blackened. Everyone was depressed. So our turn would come any day now. To have survived so much, and
yet be killed in the end! But it came as no real surprise; we had always known it would be senseless for Hitler and his SS killers to leave any Jews alive as witnesses. Some optimists among us thought they might spare us, at least for the time being, because we were working at the Heinkel plant, but that seemed doubtful because the plant wasn't yet in full production, and the front was moving closer every day. Rumors flew wildly. Then one day late in November we heard that the extermination crew had arrived from Majdanek to “take care of us,” that cattle cars were waiting on a nearby railroad track to take us to Treblinka.

The next day we were told after the Appel to go back to barracks; no one was going to work that day. So this was it. Our turn had finally come. Once again the deathwatch had begun.

I looked at my brothers, my sister, my friends, and my heart silently wept. So it had all been in vain! The running, the hiding, the suffering. We tried to face our approaching end bravely, but a terrible sadness descended on us. The old fear of dying a brutal death returned to me in full force. Some of the other prisoners were discussing the possibility of escape or a mass breakout, but we were surrounded by three rows of high-voltage barbed wire with machine guns mounted on top of the guard towers.

Herbst, a tall young fellow from Hrubieszów, took me aside during the day, swore me to secrecy, and told me that he, his younger brother, and a few others were planning to make a break for it that night. They had stolen a pair of heavy shears from the factory and were going to cut the wires near the latrine. Their chances, I knew, were just about zero. Besides, I had my brothers and sister to consider. Herbst tried to persuade me to join them, but I refused even to think of it.

When it got dark my brothers and I embraced each other farewell, in case the liquidation should start before daybreak. Just before the
doors were locked for the night, we heard the clatter of machine and hand guns outside the barracks. Guards came running and blocked the door, and we heard Germans and Ukrainians shouting outside. We couldn't tell what was going on, and everyone was very frightened. But it didn't seem to be an organized liquidation of the camp; the guards were running around aimlessly, unsure themselves of what to do. Then I remembered Herbst.

The guards bolted the door, and we spent the night in sleepless anxiety. There was a lot of traffic back and forth from the urine can as everyone tried to catch the latest rumors. The Stubenälteste, himself unnerved, began hitting people with his strap and screaming, “Go back to your bunks, you Musulmen!”

When the morning whistle sounded, we went outside to see what had happened. Dead prisoners were lying outside the barracks, with a trail of bodies leading to the latrine. There were fifteen or twenty bodies in the latrine itself. It was still dark and very cold, only about 10 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the bodies was still sitting crouched, and I was surprised that it hadn't tipped over. Perhaps it had frozen there during the night. There were also three or four bodies lying near the barbed wire. It was impossible to see their faces, and I wondered whether the Herbst brothers were among them.