I Shall Live

by Henry Orenstein

  How was our professor ever going to find us here? He would never be able to cut through this superstructure to reach us. We went back to our barracks in a profound depression, too despondent even to talk. I went directly to my bunk and tried to fall asleep, but the images of Sachsenhausen kept crowding my mind. Every hour or two I would wake up, as though in shock at finding myself there.

  Next morning it was bitterly cold. I shivered for almost two hours on the Appelplatz in my thin uniform. In Ravensbrück I hadn’t much minded the Appel, knowing that soon after it was over I would be back in our nice warm barracks. Not here. Things looked bad for us; we knew no one, had no connections, no money, no way of getting extra food. It was obvious that many prisoners didn’t live on camp rations alone. The young Norwegians, for instance, all looked healthy and well fed—strapping specimens of the Nordic type Hitler so admired—and in fact we learned that they and some of the others regularly received food parcels from their families. No wonder they looked so good! We, on the other hand, were the starving pariahs, reduced to skin and bones, on the way to becoming Musulmen.

  We were assigned to an outdoor commando and spent the day loading and unloading trucks in subzero temperatures. The SS guards were especially rough, beating us for no reason at all. If something didn’t happen soon, we would die. What kept us alive for the moment was the knowledge that the Russian army was on the Oder River, only thirty-five kilometers away. It was only a matter of weeks now, maybe no more than days, before they began their final assault on Germany.

  The days dragged slowly. We always worked outdoors, at a different place almost every day, but wherever we were it was bitterly cold. We no longer had the strength to do the jobs we were given, and the guards were always beating us up. Hunger was constant. Only the certainty that both the Western Allies and the Russians would soon be launching their final offensives, that the war would be over and the matter of our survival decided one way or the other, kept us from total despair. We had little hope that our special commando would ever resume its activities; its existence could no longer be justified by any stretch of imagination. There was a strong feeling in the air that time was running out for Hitler.

  Some of the other prisoners told us stories about Sachsenhausen. One, a Russian prisoner of war, had worked for over a year as a cleaner in a barracks where a group of more than a hundred Jewish printers were busy producing high-quality counterfeit British pound notes. They had recently succeeded in breaking the code for producing the special paper used by the United States Treasury, but were not quite ready yet to do the actual printing. The Jews in this printers’ commando were treated well, he told us. The whole group had been shipped out of Sachsenhausen only two or three days after we arrived. Here was another special commando, except that they were the real thing; what they were doing was genuinely useful to the German war effort—a fact that dampened our spirits still further. If the SS had found it necessary to evacuate the forgers’ commando, it was highly unlikely that they would let the Chemiker Kommando resume its “work” so close to the front.

  A number of well-known political prisoners were incarcerated in Sachsenhausen, among them the former Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg, and Hans Luther, the former head of the German Foreign Office. They were kept in an isolated barracks and we never saw them. A neighbor of mine, a German political prisoner who had been in Sachsenhausen for more than five years, told me that Jews and homosexuals were treated with particular cruelty. He estimated that ten thousand or more German homosexuals had been killed by the SS in Sachsenhausen since he had arrived in the camp. He told us too that sometime in 1942 the SS had locked a group of Jews in a barracks before shipping them to Auschwitz. Learning of this, a few German Jewish prisoners formed a clandestine resistance group, which broke ranks during an evening Appel and actually started to push and shove the SS guards, demanding that they free the Jews in the barracks. The other prisoners looked on in astonishment at this collective act of desperate—and futile—courage. To everyone’s amazement, these rebels were not executed immediately, but a few weeks later they were shipped to Auschwitz with the others.

  My German neighbor was outspoken in his criticism of the Nazis, and of Hitler in particular. He never referred to him by name, always as Der Hund (the dog). “The time is coming soon, the dog will pay,” he used to say to me. Sam warned me against becoming too friendly with this man, lest one of the other prisoners denounce him to the SS, which might endanger my life too, by association.

  One great help in this difficult time was a contact I had established with a prisoner who was well informed on what was happening on the war fronts. He worked outside the camp in a shoe factory, where he had become friendly with the owner, who had a shortwave radio and listened regularly to the BBC. In the West, I learned, the Allies had begun their offensive and were advancing inside Germany. A massive new Russian offensive was expected any day. The BBC was predicting that the war would end in a matter of weeks, which increased our tension to an almost unbearable pitch. The moment of decision was at hand. Hold on! Hold on!

  One day late in February we were at the morning Appel, which seemed to go on forever in the bitter cold. As it ended, I heard an announcement which I couldn’t quite make out. My German neighbor, who was standing next to me, said, “You’re a mathematician, aren’t you? They’re looking for you.” Sam was standing on my other side, and he too thought he had heard them say “mathematicians.” My heart leapt. Could it possibly be true? Had our professor actually managed to find us again? We ran like mad to our Stubenälteste, who grudgingly admitted that the SS were trying to locate a special group of mathematicians, and told us to go to the main office of the camp. We ran there, and the clerk confirmed that a professor from Berlin had been given special permission to set up our Kommando again. He told us to wait. After about an hour we saw the professor coming toward us. Stark was speechless from excitement; I couldn’t believe my eyes. Once again, just when we needed him the most, our professor had appeared out of the blue to come to our rescue, like some mythical magician. It was really too good to be true. The mere thought of not having to work outdoors, half frozen, day after day, filled my heart with happiness. The professor greeted us, arranged with the camp officials for a table and benches to be set up in our barracks, gave Stark an envelope with new sheets, said goodbye, and went away.

  We spent the rest of the day taking it easy, chatting and speculating about how long this new stage of our Kommando would last. With the Russians almost upon us and Germany so near collapse, how was our professor able to keep his “sting” going? Stark was full of admiration. “You’ve got to hand it to him. He must have powerful connections.” For the first time since our arrival in Sachsenhausen, I enjoyed a good night’s sleep.

  In the morning even the cold didn’t bother me, since I knew that as soon as the Appel was over we would be back in our barracks. Even if the war went on for several more weeks, our chances of surviving had vastly improved.

  When we returned to the barracks we found that our Stubenälteste didn’t at all relish the thought of eight Jews hanging around his barracks all day, and was loudly giving vent to his doubts about us and our Kommando. He attacked men like our professor, who shirked their duty to fight when Germany’s very life was threatened and fifteen-year-old boys and old men were being sent to the front. We were careful not to say anything that might anger him further, and waited patiently until he was finished with his tirade. He then ordered his assistant to set up the table and benches, and left the barracks in disgust.

  In no time there I was, back at my machine, banging away at the keys. This was just what the doctor ordered—rest. Our spirits rose. Our only worry was our conspicuousness, even in a camp as large as Sachsenhausen. There were too many SS officers roaming around, and any one of them might take it into his head to question the need for our Kommando at a time when Germany was so near to collapse.

  In the days that followed, work in the math Kommando was a respi
te, a balm to our nerves, which had been frayed by physical abuse and hard labor—too hard for our starving bodies. Yet the tension was becoming harder to bear every day. The clock of our destiny was ticking away relentlessly; we knew that we were at five minutes to noon, when, after all we had endured, all the incredible luck that had brought us through this far, our fate would be decided in one brief moment—either a life of freedom, with all its joys, or brutal death. Every fiber of my body ached to survive, if only to know the excruciating pleasure of witnessing the downfall of Hitler and the SS, cornered like rats, fleeing the sword of justice but ferreted out one by one and made to pay for the bestialities they had inflicted on their fellow human beings. I wanted to be free to go where I pleased, not to be denied life just because I was a Jew. I wanted to meet and embrace those brave men who were fighting to liberate us and restore sanity to a world gone mad. I wanted to find my brothers and sister, hug and kiss them, and together shed tears of sorrow for our parents, who had been forced to lie down naked, to be killed in cold blood. I wanted to shed tears of happiness for them, that their children had survived and would continue the family line. The thought of the decisive days at hand dominated my every waking moment, to the exclusion of everything else.

  Meanwhile, we went on with our work. The professor visited us once a week, bringing with him new sheets of meaningless numbers, but his visits were becoming shorter. We could sense his discomfort; he became especially uneasy whenever the Stubenälteste was watching us from a distance.

  It was the end of March when we began hearing the first sporadic exchanges of artillery. Although we knew that we were within reach of the Russian long-range cannon, the fact that we could hear them actually in action caused wild excitement in the camp. Our Kommando was confined to our barracks, which meant we had no direct contact with the outside world and were dependent on our neighbors to bring news in to us. But even without them, we would have sensed that something was afoot, for things were changing within the camp. Some of the guards who were known for their cruelty began treating the prisoners a little less harshly; the German civilians in the factories where some of the prisoners were working suddenly became much more friendly, even sympathetic, and openly criticized Hitler and the Nazis. Clearly they were trying to accumulate witnesses who would testify to their “humanity” on the rapidly approaching day of judgment.

  On the Western front, the Allied armies crossed the Rhine at points along virtually its entire length, and were thrusting deep into Germany. The end of the war was very near now. Hitler, almost totally paranoid, was buying himself time measured in days, and ruthlessly sacrificing the German people. Old men and children were drafted into the army and forced to fight in a hopeless cause.

  In the first days of April the tension continued to rise among prisoners and guards alike. But through it all our professor continued his visits, regularly bringing new work for us. Word came that the Allies were approaching the Elbe River in the middle of Germany, and the final Russian drive to Berlin was expected any hour.

  I was now sure that we were in the last days of the war, and tried to envision all the possible variations in the basic scenario of what would happen to us. My main concern was a possible order to separate the Jews from the other prisoners, which would have been a clear signal that they meant to kill us; I didn’t think they would try to kill over forty thousand prisoners, of whom only a few thousand were Jewish. Anticipating this possibility, I went carefully through the entire camp looking for some place, any small hole, where Sam and I could hide out for the last few days of the war. I wasn’t worried about food; we could last seven to ten days without it. The main problem was water, and I was able to get some containers that would hold enough water for that length of time. One evening after the Appel, I walked for several hours all over the camp looking for a pile of wood, a hole under a barracks where we could squeeze in, anything. But the whole camp was so standardized that I couldn’t find a single place where we might hide.

  The next day the loudspeakers began to blast a message, the same words over and over: “Der Hund ist Tod.” (The dog is dead.) This was their way of announcing President Roosevelt’s death. In their frenzy and fear of the imminent defeat, Goebbels and his propaganda machine tried to exploit the President’s death as somehow signaling a reversal of the inexorable Allied advance. These murderers of millions were so terrified of the day of judgment that they managed to persuade themselves that, with Roosevelt, their archenemy, gone, perhaps they might be able to form an alliance with the West against Russia. What they couldn’t accept was the fact that the entire civilized world was united against them. I was sorry that President Roosevelt would not be alive when victory came, but for the moment I was too preoccupied with our own survival to mourn him. What we needed was to find some way to avoid getting killed just as the war was ending.

  One day, while we were working away at our numbers, a messenger came in with a note for our Stubenälteste. Told that he was out, the messenger went into the small room where the Stubenälteste worked and slept, and came out again empty-handed. I was so apprehensive of an order, which might come at any time, to kill all the Jewish prisoners that I decided to take a great risk and get a look at that note. I glanced out the door to make sure no one was approaching the barracks, then ran quickly into the Stubenälteste’s room. The note was lying on top of his small table. I picked it up, read it, and felt faint. The top line read, in italics: Re: Jewish Prisoners. Underneath, in smaller type, was a list of instructions, and the first instruction was to compile a roster of all the Jewish prisoners in the barracks.

  I was overwhelmed by a sinking feeling of fear, frustration, and desperation. I ran out and told the terrible news to Sam and the other mathematicians. Gloom fell upon us; no one could do any more work. Arno suggested that perhaps the directive had a different purpose, but we all knew that was unlikely. I was terribly depressed and couldn’t sleep all night.

  The next day, after the morning Appel, the SS announced that none of the outside commandos were to leave the camp that day; prisoners who were employed inside the camp were to continue on the job. When nothing was said about Jews I breathed again, but was fearful that at any moment I would hear the dreaded words, “All Jewish prisoners—step out.”

  When we returned to our barracks after the Appel, to our surprise the professor came in. For the first time since he had appeared in Sachsenhausen the barracks was full of people who hadn’t gone out that day, and some of them openly jeered at the professor and his “Kommando.” One made a crack about him and his Jews being Hitler’s secret weapon. The professor ignored these remarks. He collected the completed sheets from Stark and gave him a new batch. Then he took some paper labels from his briefcase, gave them to Stark, and told him that “in view of the situation” (he didn’t elaborate), he wanted to make sure the machines would be returned to their “rightful owners.” He asked Stark to attach the labels to our machines, said good-bye to us, and left. We looked at the labels. Each was typed “Property of the University of Kraków” (Poland). Despite our anxiety, we burst out laughing. Here was Germany collapsing, and the professor was worried about the rightful ownership of a bunch of obsolete old machines! He must have been making sure that after the war no one could accuse him of having stolen them.

  The other prisoners were so noisy that it was impossible to work, but we continued to sit at our table the rest of the day. Now Jews and Gentiles alike were apprehensive and nervous. My German neighbor did nothing to relieve the tension; he kept repeating, “The dog [Hitler] is going to kill us all. He knows he will die, and he’s going to take us all with him.” That night too I couldn’t sleep.

  We spent the next day again at our tables, even though we couldn’t concentrate enough to do any work. The Stubenälteste came over to us and shook his head. “You’re still going on with that crap!” Stark told him that we had to follow orders. He only laughed and walked away. I had to admit we were a ridiculous sight. No one else in the entire
camp was working except the people in the kitchen and a few cleaners, the Russian artillery was booming within earshot, but there the eight of us were, still diligent at our tables. The atmosphere was charged with electricity. The other prisoners were milling around aimlessly; arguments and fights were frequent. I began to feel a little better about the order I had seen in the Stubenälteste’s office. If they were going to separate the Jews in order to kill them, it would have happened in the last two days.

  That night I was so exhausted from lack of sleep that I conked out as soon as I hit the bunk. Very late I was awakened by the noise of another artillery barrage. It went on nonstop for hours, so intense and continuous that there was no mistaking it—this was the long-awaited final Russian assault on Berlin. Fatigue forgotten, I was seized with an enormous excitement. This was it!

  Over the following four days nothing changed in the camp. There were no Appels. The barrage of artillery from the east continued on and off, and it was growing louder. The Russians had broken through and were coming closer. Ludicrous as it was under the circumstances, we kept plugging away at our numbers, afraid to take any chances that might give anyone an excuse to accuse us of disobeying orders. From time to time I went outside to see what was happening. The prisoners kept milling about in the yard, and rumors were running like wildfire. The Allies were approaching from the west. Hitler had ordered a “scorched earth” policy before the oncoming enemy. There was to be no retreat; the Germans had been ordered to fight to the last man.