My mind was in turmoil. Perhaps the reason they had repeated the announcement so many times was that everyone else was to be immediately liquidated. If so, being in that group could save our lives. On the other hand, what would they do to us when they discovered our deception? I didn’t know where any of my brothers were at the moment, and I was afraid we might miss getting on the list. I was torn between the advantages and disadvantages of registering. Finally I decided that being in this group couldn’t represent any immediate danger. The Germans were losing the war, so why not gamble on living now, and worry later about the consequences of having lied? When in danger, I always felt that almost any action was preferable to inaction.
I went into the barracks where the Lagerälteste (the prisoner in charge of camp administration) had his office, and with fear in my heart registered all five of us: Fred, Felek, and Hanka as chemists, and Sam and me as mathematicians. Then I thought of Bencio Fink, and added him to the list as well. If questioned, I was prepared with the names of certain Polish universities where we supposedly had been educated. Since Hanka would only be eighteen in February and I was only twenty, I was going to tell them that we hadn’t yet graduated, but were still students. Fortunately, all the clerk wanted then was our names, prisoner numbers, and professions.
Afterward I had qualms about what I had done, being all too conscious of the enormity of the risk I had taken with the lives of my brothers, my sister, and Bencio. Had I the right to do this? Ought I to have waited until I had at least talked it over with them? But was there time to do that? I knew that I had acted too quickly, on impulse, but my intuition had told me it was now or never.
I was wandering around in a daze when I finally found my brothers and told them what I had done. They were terribly upset, as I had feared. What right did I have to register them without their permission? And Hanka—not even eighteen! I tried to explain that this might be our only chance, but it did no good. Their anger was all the greater since it was now too late to do anything about it; had they tried to get off the list, I would almost certainly have been killed for lying. Bencio was more philosophical about it and tried to defend me. In any case, the die was cast. Over the next few days we found out that while a number of legitimate engineers and a couple of mathematicians had registered, about forty or so others had also registered without being qualified.
In the following days and weeks, nothing further happened about the registration. My intuition that the camp was to be liquidated immediately had been wrong, and that registration now loomed as a potential time bomb. Had the Germans questioned any of us in detail, we all would have been in mortal danger. But surely the Germans were too methodical to take the trouble to register such specialized professionals without some definite purpose; I could only hope that I had not doomed us prematurely.
At the end of January we were told that we were to be moved to a new camp near the Heinkel plant. This didn’t seem to be an SS trick; we knew that the Germans were building a new camp, with guard towers. We had seen the site. The German civilians in the Heinkel plant knew about it too. This new camp was supposed to be an “official” concentration camp, like the ones in Germany. While no concentration camp could be worse than ours, there was still a great deal of anxiety among the prisoners over this new development. For one thing, we heard rumors that only the prisoners in good physical condition would be selected to go to the new camp; the weak and sick would be killed.
Someone got the idea to put on a show for the whole camp before the move. To our surprise, Stockman was able to get approval from the commandant. Hanka was one of the performers, and she and a number of other talented prisoners treated us to a show in Yiddish, featuring songs and humorous skits. The writers had the challenging task of producing material that truthfully depicted Jewish life in the ghettos and camps, yet did not offend the Germans—and somehow they pulled it off. A number of the skits were funny, and despite everything we were able to laugh and have a good time. Hanka sang a very sad song that had come out during the war and made many of us cry. She sang it beautifully, and we were very proud of her.
A few days later, there was an announcement ordering the prisoners who had registered as specialists to assemble in the Lagerälteste’s barracks after the evening Appel. So the moment of truth had arrived. We all rehearsed the claims I had made about our education and experience, and even tried to memorize the answers to some elementary technical questions they might ask. After the Appel we lined up in front of the Lagerälteste’s office. I was shaking with fear. What would happen when they found out we were frauds?
When my turn came and I was brought into the office, I saw two German civilians sitting behind the table. I was so nervous that I don’t remember what they asked me, except that it was very easy. They were very polite and friendly, and asked little more than to confirm verbally what I had written down on the questionnaire. The whole thing took only a couple of minutes.
On my way out I felt enormously relieved, and also very puzzled. What was going on? I had just turned twenty in October. They had seen the form I filled out, a tissue of lies about my “mathematical education.” How could they have believed it? My head was spinning.
Suddenly an extraordinary thought struck me. Could it be that these civilians were creating a phony commando? That somehow they themselves were covering up for us? But why, and for what purpose? Was it possible that they were part of some group that might be trying to help save a few Jews? But why would they do that? To protect themselves, perhaps; to give themselves an alibi to use after the war, as proof that they had not been Nazis. Or was it that they were organizing a commando of phony scientists to save themselves from being drafted into the army? By that time, many Germans would go to almost any lengths to avoid being sent to fight on the Russian front. This made more sense than any “humanitarian” theory. Still, to organize such a fraud would require a conspiracy on a large scale, involving a great many people, including receiving authorization from the highest echelon of the SS. Or perhaps the whole thing was legitimate after all, the people who interviewed us only low-level functionaries, and at some later time we would be interrogated by experts.
We discussed this business endlessly and futilely—everyone was completely confused. When nothing further happened, we shifted our attention elsewhere. We had plenty of more immediate things to worry about.
Early in February most of us were moved to the new camp, but hundreds of sick and very weak prisoners were left behind. (Later we heard that they were sent to the gas chambers.) The new camp was on the whole much better than the old, the most important improvement, much to our surprise, being our food rations. We hadn’t expected it, but we got a larger piece of bread with a pat of margarine every day, and the soup was thicker, with a couple of pieces of potato in it. These increased rations still weren’t nearly enough to sustain life, but they prolonged the lives of many, increasing their chances of survival.
The barracks and the latrine were much cleaner too, which made me happy. On the other hand, the SS distributed to each of us a pair of striped pants, a jacket, and a coat, all made of very thin material, and not nearly so warm as our old clothes had been. Sometimes, when the Appel lasted longer than usual, we would arrive at the plant half frozen, especially if the temperature was low and the wind was blowing hard. Those of us who worked inside the plant were very lucky; the ones with outside jobs suffered severely. Our new camp was only a few hundred yards from the plant, and that too was a help; its proximity gave our Ukrainian guards less opportunity to beat and kick us.
The Heinkel plant had actually begun the assembly of three airplane wings, and seemed about to go into full production. Then one morning in March after the Appel came the bombshell: prisoners on the specialist list were ordered to remain in the camp. Only a few—including Hanka—were excluded. (Hanka was just eighteen, obviously too young to be a chemist.)
So it had come. Were we going to be sent to another camp? Perhaps in Germany? Now my rash decisi
on to register us would prove critical, but in which direction? Again, I agonized over what I had done. Apparently the new Budzyń camp was going to be too useful for the Germans to liquidate; my earlier judgment had proven wrong. But if they did take us to Germany, we might still have a better chance of surviving than we would in Budzyń, because sometime in the near future the Germans were going to have to evacuate the Budzyń camp, and its prisoners would once again be endangered.
To give my brothers their due, despite their alarm, which was at least as great as mine, they did not reproach me anymore for what I had done. In any case, we scarcely had time to do more than kiss Hanka a tearful good-bye.
If we were being sent to another concentration camp, upon arrival we would have to undress before taking a shower and would not have access again to our old clothes, in which our money was sewn. We still had two gold coins and some paper money left. We didn’t have much time, so we quickly rolled up the paper money into little tubes, wrapped them in cigarette paper, and pushed them up into our rectums. Gold presented more of a problem, but we got hold of a piece of tape and I taped the coins to the bottom of my right foot.
Within minutes after this was done our new commando was ordered to assemble at the gate, where a large truck was waiting. There were about forty of us, including only one woman, Hela Fürst. Quite a few people from Warsaw were in the group, and a few German Jews. The guards ordered us to get in the truck, the doors were closed, and it drove off. A number of SS and Ukrainian guards followed in a smaller truck.
We had no idea whatsoever where we were going, but we knew it wasn’t far, because the truck didn’t stop at the railroad station. The only camp nearby was Majdanek, but it was supposed to be empty; it had been liquidated the previous November. Besides, why would such a specialized commando be going to Majdanek? After a couple of hours the truck stopped. The guards opened the doors and told us to get out. There was a big gate, with the familiar Arbeit Macht Frei sign over it. We were in the infamous Majdanek concentration camp.
Majdanek
The guards led us through the gates, then ordered us to stop. We were standing between rows of electrified barbed wire. An SS officer came over with a list of our names, which he read out, then waited for each prisoner to answer, “Here.” When his name was called, Felek didn’t respond immediately, and Fred, afraid he might be punished, answered for him. Then when Fred’s own name was called, he again responded, “Here.” Noticing that Fred had spoken up twice, the SS officer walked over to him and said, “Didn’t you answer before?” Fred tried to explain, but the German punched him in the face before he could speak. His nose started bleeding heavily, but we were standing at attention and he was afraid even to try to stop the bleeding, so blood dripped over the whole front of his jacket. We had to stand facing straight ahead, but I looked at Fred out of the corner of my eye, and my heart was crying.
“What the devil are you Jews doing here anyway?” the officer screamed at us. “We are finished with you here.” A man in the front row said, “We all belong to the chemical commando.” “What commando?” The man tried to explain, but the officer waved his hand in dismissal. “Sie sind alle verrückt.” (You’re all crazy.) He barked out an order to an SS Oberscharführer, “Take them to Field Three. Make sure they go to Entlausung first.”
We were led by the Oberscharführer and a few guards to the reception barracks. What were we doing in Majdanek? Why didn’t the SS officer even know who we were? Evidently they hadn’t expected us. I was very unhappy at having got my brothers into this mess.
Soon we arrived at the delousing room, where they ordered us to strip and place all our clothing to one side. There were relatively few of us, and I had to be very careful with the gold coins taped to the bottom of my foot. I was less worried about the paper money in my rectum, although in Budzyń I had heard that in some concentration camps they X-rayed all the prisoners on arrival.
I was at the end of the line and could see what the guards were doing with the men ahead of me. They were checking everyone’s hands, armpits, and genitals, looking for hidden valuables. Sometimes they looked under their feet, or made them bend over and examined their rectums. I decided to play it safe and get rid of the gold. We were standing on two-inch wooden slats on top of a cement floor. The wood was wet, and so were my feet. There were only a few people ahead of me to be searched; I had only a few seconds left. With difficulty, using the big toe of my other foot, I managed to detach the tape holding the coins in place, just before the guard got to me. I pushed the gold down through the opening between the wooden slats. I doubt if anyone had ever been so happy to get rid of gold as I was at that moment.
After the search we went into the adjoining room, where we took hot showers. They gave each of us a new set of striped outfits with a number, a red triangle, and a yellow triangle sewn on the jacket. The red triangle meant that we were political prisoners (all Jews were considered Communists), and the yellow triangle signified that we were Jewish.
Then we were assigned to a barracks. The camp was divided into six sections, called “fields.” Fields One to Five contained many barracks; the sixth field was almost empty. The fields were very large, each one as large as or larger than the entire Budzyń camp. Like Budzyń, the whole of Majdanek was surrounded by fences of electrified barbed wire, and the guards in the towers bore machine guns.
None of the other prisoners we met were Jewish, a new experience for us; in Budzyń, everyone had been Jewish. Our Stubenälteste, a Russian prisoner of war, was surprised to see us. He had thought all the Jews in the Lublin region had been killed, and couldn’t understand why we had been brought to Majdanek. This Stubenälteste seemed to be quite well read. I discovered that like me he was fond of Gogol, Dostoyevski, and other nineteenth-century Russian authors, and I hoped that we would become acquainted. Perhaps he might be able to help us. Our new barracks were not very different from the one in Budzyń; the bunks were full of the usual lice and fleas. We felt lost; nothing made sense. Why were we here?
The evening Appel was called, and we lined up on the Appelplatz of Field Three. A separate Appel was held on each field; on ours, we were the only Jews, the others being mostly Poles and Russian prisoners of war. During the Appel the SS man doing the count noticed our yellow triangles. He stopped in surprise and asked the SS man in charge of our block about us. Our guard shook his head; he didn’t know what we were doing there either. After the Appel we went back to our barracks and they brought the container with the evening soup. As in Budzyń, it was practically nothing but water.
The latrine was filthy too, as it had been in Budzyń. On my first visit there I had to be careful not to lose the tube with the paper money in my rectum. Crouching, I felt every bit of feces with my fingers, searching for the tube. I had to be very careful not to arouse suspicion, and yet make sure not to miss it. Finally I found it—a happy moment. That money could well mean the difference between life and death. I cleaned the tube off and put it in my pocket. Later I was able to borrow a needle and thread and sew it into my uniform.
I lay down on my bunk that night with a heavy heart. It was very cold, but I managed a few hours of fitful sleep. They got us out of our bunks at four in the morning, even earlier than in Budzyń. The morning bread ration was small, with a little marmalade and some ersatz coffee. After the Appel they kept our group on Field Three and gave us clean-up work to do. Having become used to working indoors in Budzyń, it was tough working outside all day in the sub-zero cold, with a wind that penetrated to our bones, which by now were covered with little more than the thin fabric of our striped uniforms.
Fred was sent to work in the camp hospital. Most of the beds were empty after the November massacre, but the temperature charts were still attached to the beds. Many of them showed fevers as high as a hundred and five, and Fred was sure there were a great many cases of typhus in Majdanek. With such heavy infestations of lice everywhere in the camp, it was inevitable that typhus would spread among us, which cou
ld mean death to our whole commando.
The days that followed brought little change. We were very hungry, but afraid to try to buy bread with the paper money we had left, being unable yet to trust anyone in Majdanek. The bitter cold continued, and our group suffered severely. We all regretted having registered for this chemical commando. Work in the Heinkel factory in Budzyń had been comparatively light, and even though we had been in constant danger, there was still enough spirit for an occasional joke or reminiscing about the past. Here everything was gray and hopeless.
Most of our group changed markedly in their appearance and attitude. Fred in particular became depressed over the typhus. Within a few days he began to look like a Musulman, walking around in a stupor, his head hanging low and tilted to one side. He even stopped shaving. This was particularly upsetting to my brothers and me, because Fred had always kept himself neat and clean, and had usually been optimistic. We tried hard to cheer him up, but without success.
One evening I asked the Russian Stubenälteste to tell me about the massacre of the Jews in November. He shook his head. “You don’t want to know.” But I persisted. He had been in Majdanek for about a year. The hunger was so bad, the beatings so severe, and shootings so continuous that the life span of a new arrival averaged only about three months. Over one hundred thousand people, most of them Jews, had died in Majdanek even before the November massacre.
Then, in the first two days of November 1943, there were signs of increased SS activity, with hundreds of new guards and dogs arriving. On November 3 there were eighteen thousand Jews in Majdanek, including a couple of thousand in two small satellite camps. Most were Polish, but there were a number of Slovakian and Dutch Jews, and a few hundred German Jews. After the morning Appel that day, instead of the usual “Arbeit Kommandos formieren” (Work commandos, assemble), the SS ordered the Jews to be separated from the Gentiles. The latter from Field Five were taken to Field Four, and the Jews from Fields One through Four were ordered to run to Field Five. On the way they were beaten and kicked by hundreds of the SS special commandos, who used trained dogs to attack the prisoners who weren’t moving quickly enough.
I Shall Live Page 19