by Leon Leyson
A week or so later, I had learned enough about the layout of the camp to guess where my mother was. Płaszów was frequently chaotic as construction continued and new prisoners arrived daily. One afternoon I took advantage of the pandemonium to sneak into the women’s section to find my mother. I was so small and thin, and my hair was so shaggy, I could pass for a girl; I knew I would be severely punished if I were discovered. Yet the danger was worth it if I could find my mother. I admit on that day I was just plain lucky. Without too many wrong turns, I found her barracks. She was lying on her wooden shelf. When she saw me, she couldn’t believe her eyes; to my disappointment, she seemed more startled than happy.
“How did you get here?” she asked. Before I could answer and tell her that I had found my father and brother, she told me, “You can’t stay. You have to go.” She could not hold back the tears as she uttered the words that would send me away from her. At the very last moment she reached into the pile of rags on the shelf where she slept and pulled out a walnut-size piece of dry bread. It was all in the world my mother had to give me, the best she could do. I’m sure it was the only food she had. She embraced me for a few priceless seconds, pressed the bread into my hand, and pushed me out the door. It broke my heart to leave her, and it broke hers to send me away.
If I had known at that moment I would not see her again all that year, I probably wouldn’t have left her. Had I stayed, both of us, and perhaps others in her barracks, could have paid with our lives.
It was terrible to be alone without my parents, not knowing where Tsalig and Hershel were, or even if they were still alive. Especially at night I tried to remember their faces. I told myself they were thinking of me even as I was thinking of them; in our minds and hearts we were together. But that thought wasn’t enough to comfort or sustain me. All I could do was hold on and hope that my father would somehow find a way for me to be with him. Meanwhile, I did as I was told. Some days I hauled lumber or stones; other times I pounded rocks into gravel or dug up cemetery markers that the Nazis then used to pave the roads. It was exhausting, hazardous work, and a single misstep could mean death.
One day, while carrying a large rock, I slipped on a broken headstone and badly gashed my leg. I had to go to the camp infirmary to have the cut bandaged. I learned later the commandant of Płaszów, SS Hauptsturmführer Amon Goeth, had entered the infirmary shortly after I had left and shot all the patients, just shot every single one of them for no reason except that he felt like it. Had I remained just a few minutes longer, I would have been executed with the others. When I heard what had happened, I promised myself no matter what, I would never go to the infirmary again.
Avoiding the infirmary didn’t mean escaping the net of cruelty Amon Goeth cast over the camp. When my work detail passed men in other groups, I would hear the whispers being exchanged as they kept tally of the casualties by Goeth and his henchmen as if they were soccer scores.
“What’s the total today?” someone might ask. “Jews twelve, Nazis zero.” It was always a zero for the Nazi dead.
As the winter of 1943 began, Goeth’s wrath intensified. I had been ordered to shovel snow with a group of men. With no winter clothes, I was so frozen, I could hardly hold the shovel. Suddenly Hauptsturmführer Goeth showed up and on a whim demanded that the guards lash each of us twenty-five times with their savage leather whips. None of us could figure out the provocation, but that did not matter. As commandant, Goeth could do whatever he wanted, with or without a reason. He seemed to thrive on inflicting agony on the helpless. He watched the spectacle for a while, then decided that the whippings were going too slow, so he had guards set up long tables and lined us up in rows, four across. With three men twice my age and stature, I went up to receive my punishment. The whips had little ball bearings at the end, intensifying the pain and damage. We were ordered to count the lashes as we were whipped. If we were overcome by the pain and missed a number, the guards started over at number one.
I leaned over the table and awaited the first lash. When it came, it felt like someone was cutting me open with a knife. “One,” I cried out as the whip cracked. My instinctive reaction was to cover my backside before the next stroke could hit, so the second crack of the whip fell across my hands. “Two,” I managed to get out. “Three. Four.” Although I was numb from the cold, the pain seared through me each time, like being branded by a poker.
“Twelve, thirteen, fourteen.” Would this torture never end? I knew I had to hold on and not falter or it would start all over again. I knew I couldn’t survive another round. After twenty-five blows I staggered away, delirious with pain. Somehow I managed to stumble back with the others to our work detail. My legs and buttocks throbbed. They were black and blue for months and sitting was torture.
Driven by pain and desolation, that evening I risked additional beatings or worse by sneaking over to my father’s barracks. I simply had to see him and tell him what had happened. Before I could get the words out, I began to cry. Trying to hold it together, not yet fifteen years old, I had finally cracked. I desperately needed his sympathy, but he offered none. He showed not a flicker of emotion when I arrived or when I finally blurted out my story. Instead, he remained silent, his face hardened and his jaw clenched. Perhaps what he felt was relief that no matter how bad it had been for me, I had survived Goeth’s brutality. Maybe his anger and sadness were so great that he feared breaking down if he tried to console me. Whatever he felt, he didn’t share it. Forlorn, feeling totally abandoned, I returned to my barracks. As I lay on my shelf, I listened as the men reviewed the day’s score: Jews 20, Nazis 0. Despondently, I picked a few lice off my sweater but gave up trying to get them all. I just didn’t care. The lice crawled through my hair and my clothes as I finally drifted off to sleep.
The horrific days came to follow a routine. We were stunned awake before dawn by the sound of crashing doors and shouted orders. We assembled in groups according to our barracks’ number and were counted and recounted while short-tempered, cruel guards harassed us. Then we were assigned to groups for the day’s labor. Sometimes we left camp to chop ice, shovel snow, or work on roads. We never got anything to eat until the workday ended. Then a big pot was brought out as we raced to retrieve our indispensable spoons and bowls. That one meal never varied: hot water with a little salt or pepper, and if we were lucky, bits of potato skin and slivers of other vegetables. The men ladling the soup were prisoners too, and sometimes one of them would take pity on me, stir the bottom of the pot, and put a real piece of potato into my bowl. That made the day exceptional. After the meal we lay on our shelves, trying to gather strength for the next day.
Through the barbed-wire fences surrounding the camp, I could look out and sometimes see the children of the German officers strutting back and forth, wearing their Hitler Youth uniforms and singing songs praising the Führer, Adolf Hitler. They were so exuberant, so full of life, while just a few yards away from them I was exhausted and depressed, struggling to survive another day. Only the thickness of the barbed wire separated my life in hell from their lives of freedom, but we might as well have been on separate planets. I couldn’t begin to understand the injustice of it all.
As the months dragged on, I despaired. I didn’t dare risk trying to see my father or mother again, not because I feared for myself, but because I feared the punishment that would come to them if I were discovered in their barracks. My first reaction to Płaszów, that I would never leave alive, was reinforced every day. Any day, I thought, my luck would run out and I’d be killed, either by Goeth or by one of his accomplices. I’d be a number in that day’s score. Goeth was a stout man with an arrogant sneer and a bully’s swagger. His chilling stare haunted me and filled not only my waking hours but my nightmares. Even when he was nowhere in sight, I felt his eyes on me.
During the day from time to time, I would see my brother or father at a distance, heading from one job to another, and the brief sighting would give me a sliver of hope. All too soon that hope wo
uld drain away.
Although Schindler had not hired me, I did have a bit of good luck. The brush factory where I had worked in the ghetto had been relocated to Płaszów, and I was assigned to the twelve-hour night shift. I was relieved to have a steady job and an official place to go. Being idle or waiting for random work assignments only invited trouble.
Working in the brush factory also meant I could be inside, where it was warmer, instead of outside chopping ice or shoveling snow. Yet the brush factory too had its horrors. One time while I was at work, a guard singled me out. I had been promoted from gluing on the bristles to fastening the wooden halves of a brush together with brads. It was meticulous and demanding work, but I had a knack for it. The guard watched me work and then pointed a gun at my head. “If the next brad is crooked, I’ll shoot you,” he said. I didn’t pause or look up. I just kept working and fastened the halves together with the brad. Cautiously I moved the finished product toward him to inspect. It was straight. He walked away, and I continued working as if nothing had happened. Somehow, I don’t know how, I kept my emotions under control.
A few nights later Amon Goeth stomped into the factory with his two dogs, Ralf and Rolf, and a squad of his flunkies. Bored and probably drunk, he pulled his pistol out of its holster and shot our foreman—simply shot him, at point-blank range, for absolutely no reason. As the foreman crumpled to the floor, blood pooling under his head, Goeth turned his attention to us.
Waving the gun, he yelled an order at his men, who divided us into two groups. Somehow I knew this separation was not a good thing. Sure enough, I found myself on the wrong side once again, assigned to a group of children and older workers. In other words, assigned to the group deemed expendable. Goeth and his men marched back and forth, debating something, I couldn’t hear what. When their backs were turned, I held my breath and sneaked over to the other group, the one made up of stronger workers. If Goeth had seen me, he surely would have shot me or ended my life in an even worse way. Soon it didn’t matter which group I was in. After a few minutes, Goeth lost interest. He holstered his gun, and as abruptly as he had entered the factory, he left, his two dogs trailing him out the door. We stood in our groups for another half an hour, too terrified to move. Finally one of the guards told us to go to our barracks. Once there, many of the men broke down, sobbing, realizing how close we had come to death. This time I didn’t cry. I had grown numb to what might happen to me, to whatever my fate might be.
In late 1943, Schindler cajoled and bribed Goeth and other SS leaders for permission to build a sub-camp on the property adjacent to Emalia. He argued that it would be far more efficient if workers were a few steps from the factory instead of wasting precious time marching the two and a half miles between Emalia and the camp. The hours lost in forming lines and walking back and forth between the factory and Płaszów could be better spent producing goods and making a profit. The Schindler sub-camp was built, and in the spring of 1944, my father and David moved there. I learned through the camp network that Pesza had also been assigned to a similar sub-camp on the property of the electrical factory where she worked. My mother and I were alone once again, as we had been in the ghetto, but this was much worse—partly because I was separated from her, partly because this was such a terrible, dangerous place. I sank into deeper despair.
When word passed through the camp that Schindler planned to add thirty Jews to his workforce, I didn’t think anything about it. However, a few days later I learned that a list had been created, and my name was on it, along with my mother’s. I couldn’t believe it. It seemed too good to be true. After a year of trying, had my father finally succeeded in getting us into Schindler’s factory?
I counted off the days until we were to leave. Finally able to see a way out of the Płaszów inferno, I felt stronger in spirit if not in body. Luckily, my spirit willed my body to keep on going. The day before our scheduled transfer came a crushing blow. My supervisor at the brush factory told me my name had been crossed off the transfer list. I was to stay at my current job in Płaszów. No words can express the absolute terror I felt. Having been given a little ray of hope, the loss of it was worse than not having had it at all. I knew I wouldn’t survive the next month in Płaszów, let alone the next year. I was starving. I lived in constant fear. I found myself cowering at the slightest sound or movement. What could I do? How could I go on?
The day the new “Schindler Jews” were to leave for the sub-camp, I sneaked away from my job at the brush factory to see my mother off. It was a miracle that nobody stopped me as I walked across the camp toward the gates where those who were going to the sub-camp had assembled. I moved closer, telling myself I had to act. I couldn’t let this last opportunity disappear. I had no future in Płaszów. I might as well die attempting to be with my mother. My last few steps put me in front of the German officer in charge of the transfer. My eyes were on a level with his enormous belt buckle adorned with a large Nazi swastika. I am sure this man was one of the ones who roamed the camp shooting people, either following Goeth’s orders or just for his own perverse entertainment. I gulped and made my case to him in German. “I am on the list,” I told him, “but somebody crossed my name off.” The man didn’t respond.
In an effort to strengthen my case, I said, “My mother’s on the list.”
What gave me the audacity to speak to him as if he were a person capable of seeing reason, I’ll never know.
As if that wasn’t enough, I added, “My father and brother are already there.”
I couldn’t have put my life at greater risk.
I waited. Agonizing second followed agonizing second as the officer seemed to ponder what to do with me. I was lucky he thought at all and didn’t just pull out his gun and shoot me, resolving in a second the dilemma presented to him by this little Jewish boy. He motioned for his assistant to bring over the list. I pointed to my crossed-out name. “That’s my name right there,” I told him. The officer peered down at me, grunted, and signaled for me to join the group of workers leaving for Schindler’s sub-camp.
For some mysterious reason, he responded as if he saw me as a regular human being who had made a reasonable request. Did he take pity on me, a boy separated from his family? Did he see one of his own children in me? Was he simply being a bureaucrat who didn’t like the fact that a name had been crossed out without his official permission? There’s no way of knowing. People like him could do whatever they wanted, show mercy or its opposite.
My legs quaking, I quickly made my way into the group and found my mother. She had been standing near the front, staring straight ahead as commanded, completely unaware of what was causing the delay at the back of the group. She could hardly contain her joy as I quietly appeared beside her and slid my hand into hers. We somehow managed to stand silently, scarcely breathing, not wanting to draw attention to ourselves. We waited for what seemed like an eternity until the gate opened. Finally our group started to move, and I dared to think my time in hell might at last be coming to an end.
ONCE AGAIN I WALKED THROUGH Kraków in a daze, this time unable to believe my good fortune. Had I really escaped Płaszów? Was I really standing beside my mother? Would we really be reunited with my father and brother? All these questions and a dozen others raced through my mind as our group of thirty approached the Emalia factory. I kept my head down, my eyes focused on the pavement. I was petrified that when we finally arrived at the Emalia sub-camp, Goeth would somehow be there and send me back to Płaszów. I convinced myself that if I didn’t look at anyone, no would look at me, no one would notice me. I knew from experience that invisibility was the closest I could get to safety. As my mother and I walked together, I could imagine my gentile friends nearby, still going to school, still playing the streetcar game, but I did not lift my eyes even for a quick peek.
I saw Schindler’s factory ahead of us. As we drew closer, I tensed and squeezed my mother’s hand hard. What I saw was not the nondescript factory building it had been when my father fir
st worked there. Encircled by an electric fence with imposing metal gates, Emalia now had a sinister look. SS guards, as frightening as the officer who had recently grunted me into the Schindler group, stood sentry at the entrance. For a few moments I feared that my life might not be any different here than in Płaszów.
But once we passed through the entrance, my spirits rose. The outside of the factory was a façade to placate the Nazis. Inside, the atmosphere was very different. As in Płaszów, men and women were housed in separate barracks, but unlike Płaszów, we were allowed to visit each other. SS guards were not permitted to enter any barracks without Schindler’s permission. There was slightly better food—at midday, a bowl of real soup, perhaps a slice of vegetable, and at the end of the night shift, bread with oleo. By no means were those two scant meals enough to satisfy my hunger, but they were more than I had ever been given in Płaszów, more than I’d had at one time in nearly two years.
Soon after entering the camp, David and my father found my mother and me. We rushed to hug each other. At that moment, in my father’s eyes, I saw a hint of his old pride. He had succeeded in reuniting five of us and keeping us alive, at least for now. “You’ll work with David and me,” he informed me with authority. I stared at my brother, whom I had glimpsed only a few times in two years. He was now sixteen and had grown to be almost as tall as my father, but his cheeks were hollow and his clothes hung loosely on his bony frame. “You’ll be fine,” David reassured me.
At long last, my mother and father could again talk with each other one on one. Their hushed conversations were brief but reassuring. Father shared his best news with me, too. Pesza was alive. Father had exchanged messages with her through a contact at the electrical works, but there was still nothing about Hershel or our other relatives in Narewka. Nor was there any news of Tsalig. “He could be out there,” I once said to my father, my voice trailing off as the unlikelihood of this sank in. My father said nothing in reply.