by Leon Leyson
None of us knew.
All of us began to think the worst.
As our time in Gross-Rosen stretched on, we seemed more and more like the walking dead.
Mysteriously, one afternoon we were herded onto another boxcar. The doors slammed shut and we were off into the night, the destination still uncertain. In the morning, when the doors were slid open, we saw that we had at last made it to Brünnlitz in the Sudetenland. We trudged from the train station to Schindler’s relocated labor camp. This time the camp was to produce munitions for the war. Like other camps, it had a commandant and guards, but Schindler’s presence made the critical difference. The camp consisted of a half-completed, two-story brick building. The factory was not yet ready to start producing ammunition. There weren’t any bunks for us, so we slept on straw on the second floor. After Gross-Rosen, not one of us had any complaints about our accommodations.
The fact that the factory wasn’t ready wasn’t the biggest surprise or the worst one by far. Once at Brünnlitz, we learned the women had not arrived from Kraków.
Their train had been diverted to Auschwitz.
When my father heard the news, the color drained from his face. I had never seen him so distressed. We were told that Schindler was already on his way to Auschwitz to get the women, but it was hard to believe that even he could pull this off.
Somehow Oskar Schindler did achieve the seemingly impossible. He handed out massive bribes to the Nazis in command of Auschwitz, all the while arguing that the women were “experts,” “highly trained,” and “irreplaceable.” Incredibly, his efforts succeeded, and the women were loaded on a train, this one heading for Brünnlitz.
Rumors reached us that the women had been saved and would be arriving soon. On the day they were due, my heart raced as I stood at the factory window on the second floor, waiting for the women to appear. At last they filed into the camp. Like us, their heads were shaved and they were skin and bones. It was difficult to tell one from the other. Then I spied them. Mother! Pesza! I didn’t care how my mother and sister looked. They were alive, and that was all that mattered. I felt a rare moment of total joy.
Pesza told us that as soon as the women arrived in Auschwitz, there was a selection by the SS officers. Those whom the Nazis judged healthy and capable of work were sent to the right; those they judged to be infirm or weak were sent to the left. At eighteen, Pesza was sent to the right with the younger, stronger women. My mother, in her early forties, was classified as useless and sent to the left, shunted to a barracks for the old and sick, the ones the Nazis didn’t bother to feed, the ones destined for the gas chamber. In the midst of this misery Schindler had performed his magic. Had Schindler arrived just a little later, it would have been too late to save not only my mother but all the women in his company who had been sent to the left.
We spent the next eight months of the war at Schindler’s munitions factory. Senior Nazis came through periodically and inspected our work. Even Amon Goeth came to visit his friend Schindler. Somehow Schindler succeeded in convincing the Nazis that we were useful and productive, even though during those eight months we were in the Brünnlitz camp, we produced almost no usable ammunition.
Though Schindler was doing all he could to provide for us, we barely survived. With the Germans losing the war on both fronts, food became even more scarce. Our soup thinned to almost hot water. The rations of bread were smaller. I scrounged for food every day. When I found a few potato peels, I would dry them on steam pipes running through the factory and share them with David. The terrible circumstances in which we were now existing brought the two of us closer together. We tried to care for each other, and we both looked out for our father.
I also got us a bit of food from the kitchen staff. They were political prisoners who formed the camp’s underground resistance. Because they were from the city of Budzy’n, near my hometown of Narewka, they spoke Yiddish with the same dialect I did. When I had the chance, I liked to hang around and talk with them, and we became friendly. They cooked the daily soup in big kettles. To wash the kettles, they swished water around inside them and then dumped it out. The workers agreed to let me collect the leftover water in a can. I set the can on a steam pipe until the water evaporated, leaving bits of solid food in the bottom. Somehow I could always be inventive when it came to getting a little extra to eat.
David and I worked in the tool and die room with our father. My skills had improved under my father’s tutelage, and I could now perform the tasks of a more experienced craftsman. Schindler kept to his usual schedule, entertaining until the early morning hours and then making his rounds in the factory. Sometimes he would ask me to come up to his office. The first time I climbed those stairs, my whole body was shaking. What could he possibly want with me? I tried and tried to think of what I had done wrong. By the time I reached Schindler’s office, I was so afraid I scarcely heard him as he attempted to calm me with small talk. Then he handed me a piece of bread and I knew I would be all right. Schindler did not invite me upstairs often; but when he did, I always split the “bounty” with my father and brother.
One time, after Schindler had paused to talk to me at my workstation, he ordered the person who drew up the work schedule to transfer me to the day shift. That change probably saved my life. The day shift was far easier mentally and physically. I wonder if Schindler realized the gift he had given me. Not surprisingly, not all my fellow prisoners were pleased about this special treatment, though my father and David were genuinely happy for me.
Schindler told us about movements on the eastern front. Early in 1945, we knew that the Soviet army had liberated Auschwitz and Kraków. The more geographically knowledgeable of the prisoners sketched maps in the dirt, charting the Soviet army’s advance. Their maps made the progress seem more real. It wouldn’t be long, they said, before the army would reach us.
With the outcome all but decided, in those last months of the war it might have seemed that we would have felt a sense of optimism, but by spring of 1945, we were completely exhausted, totally depleted of any reserve of energy; our spirits were shattered, our bodies barely alive. My father could no longer stand at his machine for his twelve-hour shift. He had to squat down when no one was looking. David developed sores on his legs that wouldn’t heal. I began to have double vision. I had to read measuring markings on my machine, and sometimes I simply couldn’t; the fine lines on the instruments looked like tiny wiggly worms.
I don’t know why, perhaps simply because the six years of stress and suffering had finally caught up with me, but I couldn’t let go of the thought that obsessed me, that I would be shot with the last bullet of the war. I played out the nightmare over and over in my mind—the last day, the last hour, the last minute, liberation so close, then my luck would run out.
Really, my fears were not so far-fetched. It’s good that I didn’t know until later that in April 1945, the SS was ordered to murder all the Jewish workers at the factory, but Schindler managed to thwart the plan and get the SS officer in charge transferred out of the area before he could carry out the instructions. By that time German officers and soldiers were fleeing, doing their utmost to avoid capture by the rapidly approaching Soviet army. In the midst of the chaos Schindler again seized an opportunity to act on our behalf. He went to one of the abandoned Nazi warehouses and brought back hundreds of bolts of navy-blue cloth and hundreds of bottles of vodka.
With the danger of capture by the Soviets imminent, Schindler knew he had to flee. First, he made it clear to the guards that they would have a better chance of survival if they left on their own. They needed no further encouragement. The soldiers fled without a word, but Schindler remained. He could not bring himself to leave without saying good-bye and gathered his Jews together one last time. After so many years of constant fear, I struggled to believe what he was saying could really be true.
“You are free,” he told us.
Free!
We were speechless. What was there to say? What wor
ds could possibly express the tumult of emotions we were feeling? Freedom seemed like an impossible fantasy. Before he left, Schindler asked that we not take revenge on the people in the nearby town, since they had helped him to keep us alive. He gave each of us a bolt of cloth and a bottle of vodka, goods he knew we could barter for food, shelter, and clothes. I didn’t have a chance personally to say good-bye to Schindler, but I joined with all the other workers in presenting him with a ring, made from a prisoner’s gold tooth, which bore an inscription in Hebrew from the Talmud: “He who saves a life saves the world entire.”
Just after midnight, Oskar Schindler sped off in his car. His goal was to reach the American lines, which he did. Had the Soviets captured him, they would have seen him only as a Nazi and would have killed him.
We waited in limbo after Schindler’s departure for the arrival of the Soviets. Our guards had not hesitated to abandon their posts; we could have left, and yet we didn’t. We had no news, no place to go, and no idea what would await us outside the camp. It was strangely quiet, like being in the eye of the storm. Some young people took up the weapons abandoned by the guards and performed sentry duty. Night fell with none of us knowing what our next move should be.
On May 8, 1945, the answer came. A lone Russian soldier rode up to the gates. He asked who we were; we answered we were Jews from Poland. He said we were free and told us to tear the numbers and triangles off our uniforms. As I think back to that moment, it seems like we ripped them off in unison, an affirmation of our solidarity and victory.
Despite impossible odds, we had made it. Miraculously, Oskar Schindler, this complex man of many contradictions—Nazi opportunist, schemer, courageous maverick, rescuer, hero—had saved nearly 1,200 Jews from almost certain death.
AFTER THE SOLDIER LEFT, THE gates swung open. I was in shock. We all were. We had gone from years of imprisonment to freedom. I felt confused, weak, and ecstatic all at once.
Disoriented and uncertain, we continued to drift around the Brünnlitz camp for two days. I couldn’t absorb the fact that we were now liberated, even as our enemies, the vanquished German soldiers, streamed past us by the hundreds. I stood and watched them, the once confident troops now dejected prisoners of the Soviets. Hour after hour, they trudged by, their heads down, their expressions sullen. Some of the Jewish workers contemplated revenge. A few grabbed the soldiers’ boots and tossed their own wooden clogs at them in exchange. I didn’t join in. There was no way to “even the score” with the Nazis, no matter what I did. All I wanted was to remember those hours forever, remember the sight of the once proud soldiers straggling past us in abject defeat.
Eventually the Czech authorities provided free transport by trains for those of us who decided to return to Poland. My mother longed to go all the way to Narewka to find Hershel and her family, but my father said it was still too dangerous to travel that far east. Instead, he decided that the five of us would return to Kraków. Of course, we all nurtured the secret hope that somehow Tsalig had escaped and would be there waiting for us.
This time the cattle cars had bunks and the sliding doors remained open. We could breathe in the smells of springtime and watch the passing countryside. From my spot, I surveyed the scenery and noticed few signs of the war that had decimated our lives. Trees sprouted new leaves; wildflowers were blooming. The scars from the war, which I felt so deeply, weren’t visible in the passing landscape. It was almost as if these terrible years of suffering had never happened, but I only had to look at the worn and weary faces of my parents to know otherwise.
As the train rumbled eastward, I allowed myself to do something I hadn’t done in years: to think about the future. For the past six years, thinking about the future had meant only thinking about how to survive the next hour, how to find the next scrap of food, how to escape the next brush with death. Now the future meant much more. I might be able to return to school. I might be able to have a home, adequate food, security. One day I might feel safe again.
The train stopped frequently to let passengers off at points near where they had come from. Each time, passengers climbed down and quickly left, without looking back or saying good-bye. There was no reason to prolong the ordeal a moment longer. I watched my former coworkers scatter across Poland, one by one, family by family. All of us prayed that our suffering was over, that we could go back to our lives, to the families from whom we had been separated for so long.
Sadly, in Kraków, I soon realized the suffering wasn’t over. My parents, David, Pesza, and I arrived still wearing our striped prison uniforms. We clutched our only possessions—the bolts of cloth and bottles of vodka that Schindler had secured for us—and walked tentatively through the city toward our old neighborhood. We were greeted by curious stares and an indifference that completely unsettled me. We found Wojek, the kind gentile who had sold my father’s suits, and we connected with a former neighbor on Przemyslowa Street. He let us stay in his apartment a few nights and decided to throw a little party for my father. Over shots of vodka from one of our precious bottles, he confessed he was surprised that we had survived.
It became clear that many others in the city shared his surprise. To some, the Jews’ unexpected return was not welcome. They wondered what we would expect from them. They had suffered their own hardships and losses during the war and weren’t interested in ours. Some were antisemitic and had been pleased to see us out of what they considered to be their country, despite the fact that Jews had lived there for over one thousand years. Now we were back, causing them anxiety though we were simply trying to adjust to freedom and begin rebuilding our lives.
My mother found a tailor who sewed a pair of pants for me from my bolt of cloth—my first new trousers in nearly six years. His payment was the fabric remaining on the bolt. My father was able to get his old job back at the glass factory. We urgently needed a place of our own. We found lodging in a student dormitory that had become a receiving center for refugees. That’s what we were now, I realized. Refugees. Outsiders, ironically, in a country where Jews had a long history. At the end of the war, of Kraków’s prewar Jewish population of about 60,000, only a few thousand remained.
The dormitory housed other returning homeless as well. As in the ghetto, we divided the room into sections, using ropes with blankets draped over them. Soon there were more and more people looking for space as Jews returned to the city to search for their families and try to reclaim their homes and their prewar lives. Many of them came from Soviet-occupied areas in the east. One day my mother found a young woman and her mother sleeping in the hallway. My mother insisted that they share our space. Gradually each of the four corners filled with a different family.
That summer the backlash in Kraków against returning Jews intensified. A Jewish woman was falsely accused of kidnapping a gentile boy. Rumors circulated that emaciated Jews returning from the camps were using gentile children’s blood for transfusions, a revival of the ancient accusation known as blood libel. The accusation, in the past and the present, was false and ridiculous, but it nonetheless put the city on edge. A mob gathered at one of the remaining synagogues, shouting slurs, and then came to our building to throw rocks at the windows. After an hour or so, the hoodlums left, but the violence revived old fears; once again I longed to be invisible. My father went to work every day, while the rest of us spent most of our time inside our makeshift home, afraid to venture out. Was this to be our future? Had we survived the war, the ghetto and camps, only to continue to live in dread?
On August 11, 1945, rioting broke out when a gentile boy claimed that Jews were trying to kill him. Hooligans attacked our building, again pelting the windows with rocks, pulling people from the first floor to beat them with their bare hands. We scrambled from our room to the safety of a higher floor. Elsewhere in the city, rioters looted a synagogue and burned the Torah scrolls. There were reports that Jews beaten in the streets had been hospitalized only to be beaten again. At the factory my father had been warned not to leave after wor
k; the streets were too dangerous, so he stayed overnight, in relative safety. My mother, my siblings, and I faced a long night on our own.
The next day, after my father returned from the factory, we told him what had happened the night before. He remained silent.
“We can’t stay here,” David said to my father.
“If we could get back to Narewka . . . ,” my mother offered. She often said this after the war. She had never felt at home in the city and certainly had no reason to alter that feeling now, but the real reason for her longing to return to Narewka was the thread of hope that at least some of our family, and especially my oldest brother, Hershel, had survived.
“We can’t go back yet,” responded my father. “Maybe never.”
My father related his devastating news. My mother listened horror-struck as he told us what he had learned from his factory contacts originally from Narewka. Some had managed to go back to look for family. What they reported was terrifying. Following the invading German army, mobile killing squads of the SS, called Einsatzgruppen, had swept through the villages of eastern Poland with the sole purpose of murdering Jews. They reached Narewka in August 1941. There they took all the Jewish men in the village, some five hundred, to a meadow near the forest, machine-gunned them down, and buried them in a mass grave. The SS took the women and children to a nearby barn, where they were held for a day, and then they, too, were executed. In one blow, all of our extended family in Narewka, some one hundred relatives—my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins—had been murdered. It was beyond belief. As she thought of her parents, my mother could only whisper, “I hope they died before the Einsatzgruppen arrived.”
All at once the full impact of what we had been told hit us.
We had never heard from Hershel in those six long years we had been separated. We had assumed he had made it to Narewka, which in 1939 was under Soviet control and had seemed a safer place for him than Kraków. Now we learned that Hershel had indeed made it back to Narewka, only to be taken prisoner and murdered by the SS assassins on that terrible day in August. My mother collapsed as the rest of us stood, stunned by the atrocity.