I asked one of the prisoners about the other meals. “What other meals? All you get here is a slice of bread and coffee in the morning, and once every few days a bit of margarine. If you want to eat anything during the day, you save a piece of the bread. Make sure it lasts you until supper.”
Those of us from Hrubieszów had brought bread from Jatkowa, so we had some of it for supper. But it would last only for a couple of days. We had to find a way to get extra food, or we would soon become Musulmen ourselves.
My brothers and I discussed ways of exchanging our money for food. We had to be extremely careful; some of the prisoners were thieves and informers. But before long several prisoners who were “dealers” in bread and other commodities discreetly approached us; it was known that many of the survivors from the small towns had brought valuables with them. The way this worked was that every morning each Stubenälteste received one loaf of bread for every ten prisoners in his barracks, and he simply cut the bread into eleven pieces instead of ten, which gave him four extra loaves of bread. These were sold by the “dealers” for gold or other valuables. Some of the Ukrainian guards also sold food and other commodities to the prisoners.
It was a relief to know this trade existed; we realized how lucky we were to have that package of gold and money. Now we had to find a way to hide it. Thieves were especially active during the night, when the prisoners were sleeping, exhausted by beatings and hunger. We decided the safest way was to divide the money among ourselves and sew it inside our jackets and pants.
Soon they would lock the barracks door for the night, so I went to use the latrine next to it. It was a big room with two long ditches, each about four feet wide, that were filled with feces almost to the level of the floor. The prisoners had to squat down on a thin wooden plank thrown across the ditch and empty their bowels into it. But there were feces everywhere, all over the planks and the floor as well as in the ditch. Many of the prisoners couldn’t control their bowels from diarrhea, and had to relieve themselves before they could reach the planks; others were just too sick to care. Beatings from the latrine supervisor had no effect.
I tried to step around the feces, but it was impossible. When I finally reached a plank I was so unnerved that my bowels clamped shut. I was about to leave when a prisoner from Warsaw who was next to me said, “Better give it another chance; you can’t leave the barracks at night, and you don’t want to walk around tomorrow with your pants full of shit.” I tried for a few more minutes, but it was no good; I was too tense. I was afraid that one of the Musulmen nearby might lose his balance and drag me down with him into the ditch. After leaving the latrine, I rubbed my shoes in the dirt to clean them off as best I could. The visit to the latrine left me very depressed.
Before going to sleep, my brothers and I talked about our impressions of our first day in Budzyń. Things were very bad here, but we were still alive. We had some money, so at least we wouldn’t starve for a while. And time was marching on. We had heard during the day that the teacher’s report of the Allied landings in Sicily was true. And there was always the chance of an unexpected German collapse at the front; Hitler could be assassinated; who knew what might happen?
Many of the prisoners were being trained to work at a Heinkel factory about four kilometers from the camp. Heinkel was an airplane manufacturer, and the Budzyń plant had been set up to make wings for the planes. It looked as if this was a productive labor camp, and to that extent it was a safer place than Jatkowa, where we were living on borrowed time. Here at least our work was really needed. If we could only hang on, maybe—just maybe—we had a chance.
The barracks door was locked, the big central light put out, and I climbed up to my bunk. The remaining lights were very dim. Making sure nobody was looking, I carefully sewed two or three gold coins and a twenty-dollar bill into my jacket and pants and promptly fell asleep.
I was awakened by a sharp whistle. At first I couldn’t remember where I was, then I opened my eyes and saw the bunks and prisoners. Budzyń. I put on my pants and got down from the bunk. Men were standing in a line to use two washbasins at the side of the barracks. I was near the end of the line. There was a long wait, even though many, especially the Musulmen, didn’t bother to wash. Finally my turn came, and I washed my hands and face with a little piece of smelly dark soap. Then began the customary pushing and shoving to get in line for the distribution of bread and “coffee.” Most prisoners wanted to be at the head of the line, fearing that there might not be enough bread for everybody. The Stubenälteste and a couple of helpers stood behind a table on which were placed about three dozen loaves of dark, presliced bread. Next to the table was a large kettle of coffee. Each prisoner was handed a slice of bread and a ladleful of the coffee. Some of the Musulmen would grab their portion of bread and devour it all at once in quick, agitated gulps, leaving themselves with nothing to eat for the rest of the day except for the evening soup. It was very depressing to be near them. For one thing, they smelled terrible, from a combination of feces, sores, and sweat. Many had a feverish look in their eyes; they seemed to see through you, without seeing you. Most were so weak they couldn’t lift their feet off the ground, and walked in a shuffle. I noticed that subconsciously I was avoiding them, and that made me feel embarrassed.
At about five-thirty we started forming for the morning Appel. I made a point of getting into the center of the block in order not to attract the attention of the SS man in charge. This morning, though, he seemed in a somewhat better mood. Aside from a few random blows with his truncheon, he left us alone.
The Appel count went smoothly, and after it was finished the various work commandos started to form at the gate. I was assigned to a group that was working at a construction site, building a warehouse for the Heinkel factory.
As we marched through the gate we were counted again by two SS men. There were ten “blacks” (Ukrainian police in black uniforms) guarding us. We marched in rhythm to a black calling out, “Eins, zwei, drei, vier [one, two, three, four] links, links [left, left]. Eins, zwei, drei, vier.” It was funny, the way these henchmen of the SS tried so hard to emulate their masters, even in the language, which they distorted ludicrously. They were for the most part a brutal, illiterate lot who in normal times would be the dregs of society. They were happy to do the SS’s dirty work for them even though the Germans were openly contemptuous of this riffraff, whom they considered, like all Slavs, as Untermenschen (subhumans). Yet we were wholly at their mercy; they could kill any one of us at any time without reason, at the slightest whim and with complete impunity. Almost all of them were big, strong, sadistic bullies who enjoyed beating and kicking us.
After we’d been marching for a while, the leader of the blacks shouted, “Juden—singen!” (Jews—sing!) Only a few prisoners responded, but without any coordination, not even being sure what to sing. The Ukrainian became furious and again screamed, “Juden—singen!” To make his point, he started striking prisoners at random with his rifle butt. Finally one of us had the sense to call out the name of a popular Polish song, and at first thinly, with a few scattered voices, then more strongly, with many more joining in, we sang. This time it sounded much better, and the Ukrainian smiled broadly. “You see, you can sing; all you Jews need is a few good blows to the head.” Some of the prisoners lagged behind the column, unable to keep pace, and the guards beat them mercilessly. Others who were in better physical shape tried to help the weak ones.
At last we arrived at the work site, and a German army engineer divided us into groups and told us what to do. Felek and Sam were with me, and so were Bencio Fink and Richie Krakowski. (Fred had been told to stay in camp and work in the hospital.) My job was to unload bags filled with cement and stack them in piles. They weighed about a hundred pounds each, but I was twenty years old and still in good physical condition, and didn’t have any difficulty doing it. The German engineer was a nice fellow and didn’t bother us much, but a few of the blacks “encouraged” us from time to time by hitting
those they thought were moving too slowly.
Then it was lunchtime. I gave a piece of my bread to Bencio, and we sat down to eat it. Many of the prisoners had no bread left, and watched with hungry eyes those of us who were eating. After fifteen minutes or so the guards ordered us back to work. Time dragged. My back started to hurt, but soon I had finished unloading the cement. I spent the rest of the day doing odds and ends.
At the end of the day the Ukrainians ordered us to form a column, and we started marching back to the camp. This time they didn’t make us sing, and I wished they had; it was easier to march to a tune. When we arrived back at the camp, they counted us again at the gate. Other work details were arriving from the other sites, and we all lined up again on the Appelplatz.
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 Budzyń. 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 fairl
y 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.
I Shall Live Page 17