My Train to Freedom

by Ivan A. Backer

  A German troop transport goes by. Germany is still not finished. But we speculate that the end of the war will come between the middle of April and May. We set the terminal date at May 13, since we count the months from our arrests on October 13. After three days on the train without a drop of water, and no food or sleep, we alight. There are about eight hundred of us, and the SS are swearing and swinging their rifles. It is snowing, and the ruins of a castle are visible on the horizon as we are ordered to march. The road is uphill, and I am carrying my suitcase, but I feel weak from the journey and am getting short of breath. A strong fellow prisoner helps to carry my suitcase. God reward him if he still lives, and if he does not, may he rest in peace and be forever praised. At last we reach our goal, the concentration camp.

  Flossenbürg

  Our whole transport stands in front of the building that houses the disinfectant facilities and warm showers. Marched inside where it is warm from the steam of showers, the Nazis take a roll call to make sure that no one is missing. Already we see the everyday sight of shadows that pass for people, dressed in striped prisoner garb, as with unsteady steps they carry stretchers from the barracks. On them lie the remains of what used to be human bodies, covered with yellow skin marked by black blotches from the wounds of the guards. Their heads are covered with a dirty blanket. Thus ends the earthly pilgrimage for about 150 people every day.

  Following the roll call we are marched into another building, where we have to strip. I can’t believe my eyes. Those who came before us are completely naked and barefoot and are forced to run outside across the snow. Shaken by this sight and surprised by the horror, we wonder what this means. But there is no time for explanations because it is my turn. The vile guards are shouting at everyone and a few feet ahead I see an older, blond SS officer waving and striking with his whip to make us undress quicker. We can keep only those personal items that will fit into the palm of one hand. All our clothing, underwear, and shoes go in one pile. Money, jewelry, and anything else of value are to be surrendered separately. There is no time to think as the belts and whips descend. I throw away my hat, my suitcase, and undress as fast as possible. I remove my watch from my trousers, but what should I save? Quickly I take a photo of Mila and me and put it into the glasses case. I also take two pieces of soap since that is most important in prison, next to bread. I am standing on a cement floor, naked and barefoot, in an unheated room with the window wide open. Shivering, my mind wanders to Mila and all my dear ones, amid the uncertainty of what these devils have in store for us. My anger grows at this cruelty and humiliation. If my mother saw me now her old heart could not stand it.

  Then I am forced to run to the baths like Adam through the snow and frost. I am holding all my worldly goods—my glasses, toothbrush, and two pieces of soap—one of which a Polish guard steals. We are pressed in like a herd of cattle, prodded along by young Polish and Russian boys who are also prisoners but do the bidding of the Germans with whips of rope and belts having braided split ends. They also steal our food and extract other things. They are as cruel and hateful as the Germans. Perhaps the explanation lies in their long incarceration in the concentration camp. Among the Russians there is now and then a decent person, but not among the Poles.

  Now they cut our hair, more like plucking them from our bodies because their scissors are so dull. Bales of hair are then carried out. We are in line to receive clothing, nothing more than rough rags that itch, and these we put on our wet bodies. I receive ladies panties instead of men’s, a short-sleeved undershirt that reaches to the middle of my stomach, old patched overalls that reach to the middle of my calves, and a summer coat that might fit a fifteen-year-old boy. That is our entire wardrobe—nothing for the neck or head—no handkerchief or towel.

  After the warm shower we stand outside again in a freezing wind. I feel a blow on the back of my head as a seventeen-year-old Pole asserts his authority. At last, in the late afternoon, they take us to Building 20, and we are shown our places. The building is filled with tri-level beds with narrow passageways between them. Bochan and I share a bunk, along with an engineer, Uher, from Brno. The bunks are about 72 centimeters (29 inches) wide, shared by three people. In some there are four and sometimes even five people. Those not on the top bunk endure the dirt dropping from the straw above, and sometimes the bunks collapse and people are hurt. It happened to me twice.

  Shortly after that we are again chased outside for another roll call. We have been here since the morning and still have had nothing to eat or drink. There are eight hundred of us lined up, hardly able to stand on our feet. We look like scarecrows in the rags we are wearing. It is freezing, and the wind is sharp as the first stars appear. Still we wait, shivering with cold, hungry, standing on one foot then the other so as not to freeze. We are suffering from the cold, from hunger, from sleep deprivation, from the haircut and warm shower, dressed in rags. There is still no sight of the commanding officer to end the roll call. I concentrate all my strength not to fall; looking at the stars I plead: “God, punish these Germans. Even if I have to die in this great conflict that I find myself in, hear my plea, O God!” When the roll call ends we get some lukewarm tea, but nothing to eat. So ends our first day in Flossenbürg.

  After three days we finally get something to eat. Then we are instructed that in the evening no one can leave the barrack. For a minor infraction we can get twenty-five or fifty lashes of the whip, and for more serious offences, death. If someone has to use the latrine during the night, they must first report to the guard on duty so that he can alert the guards outside, since they have orders to shoot anyone on sight that does not have permission. And if someone has an accident before reaching the latrine he will get fifty lashes. I fall asleep amidst worries about the future here and concern for my loved ones.

  The first days in the concentration camp have a similar routine: roll call, medical classification, a very quick shower, constantly speeded up by the guards, and then a medical exam by one doctor for eight hundred prisoners. He looks superficially to see that we have a head and every limb and wrote a classification in red. Bochan receives a one (the highest ranking) and I [receive] a two. At least four times a day we are driven outside to stand in the cold. At night in small groups we gossip about the day’s events. Once in a while someone smuggles in a newspaper.

  In the morning the whip augments the alarm clock to move us faster. We are getting used to the dirt and cold. Whenever possible we get into bed to keep warmer. Our barrack is under the charge of a man who killed his parents and was sentenced to life imprisonment. On the whole he is fair, but he can wield the whip. The first whipping I witnessed was of two boys, for whose misdeeds eight hundred of us had to stand in the freezing cold for a half hour before roll call. After the third blow, one fell and screamed like an animal. After a while a person gets used to such sights. During the next two months every morning I see blood flow and people beaten to death. One walks among the dead without interest, because one sees, so to speak, one’s own grave. A box of matches has more value than a human life.

  The second day after our arrival one of the more curious prisoners makes a discovery. With a terrified look he tells us that behind the fence near the latrine there is a heap of bodies. I was never curious about such unforgettable sights, and I was not in a spiritual condition to yearn to see it, but in the end I have to convince myself that the sight is real, and I look through a hole in the fence. At the edge of the forest, about three feet in front of me, there is a heap of bodies, partially covered by snow. The majority are naked; here and there an arm or leg protrudes. The suffering and terror of dying is all too evident on their faces. I quickly turn away; it is difficult to look at the glassy stares.

  This is happening to people in the twentieth century, in Europe, the cradle of Christian civilization. They end up as a heap of logs. I meander back to the barrack. These are people who not long ago lived normal lives, like I did; who loved and were loved; who earned their daily bread and enjoyed li
fe’s joys. “O God, grant that I may not end up this way, but your will be done!” If this lasts much longer more of us will find ourselves on this heap. Already many are going to the latrine frequently and returning with a sick expression.

  At the roll call the next day a thick smoke coming from the vicinity of the latrine chokes us. The stench is from the rags and bones of the heap of corpses being burned. It becomes an everyday occurrence about which we complain that it should not stink so much. People are becoming accustomed to the horror that ends lives.

  The latrine is visited more often, and we don’t dare to admit how many times we have been there. Bochan has a fever and angina pains. When he begins to recover the same thing hits me. Whenever possible I am lying down and giving my food to a young man in the next bed whom I helped in 1940 to cross over into Hungary.

  The first transport for a work assignment is being organized, but it is impossible to find out details. Bochan is called and thus ends our being together. This happens one Sunday in the middle of February, when those chosen are lined up for a shower and issued the striped prison uniform. We say good-bye in case we do not meet again. I still have a fever and angina pains. Bochan has now recovered and is quiet but on the whole optimistic. “After all it can’t be worse than in the camp.” How naive! Those criminals are not concerned about maintaining people in a condition to be able to work. They only want to get the maximum out of you until you collapse. But we both believe that the war can’t last much longer. The Russian offensive is proceeding well, and we hope for our return and to be free of this place surrounded by barbed wire. The thought that we are being separated for a long time does not enter our heads. The end has to come within two months and surely we can bear it for that long.

  The Monday morning after our good-bye our barrack has its first death. He was an older man who could not withstand the dysentery. No one takes much notice. But the stench in the barrack increases and now even the younger ones are catching it. It is freezing at the latrines, and the outside spigots for washing have ice underneath them. When one has to go to the latrine and sit several times a night, one worsens, especially since being sick already began by catching a cold on the journey from Brno.

  In the afternoon they begin to divide us according to the alphabet to take us to other barracks. Barrack 20 has to be emptied to make room for a new transport. But under the ‘Ks’ my name is omitted. What does it mean? When I report it I am told that they did not forget about me, and I am included in the last section. We leave our barrack in the late afternoon and are joined by prisoners from another building. First come the sick ones and they make a moving picture: most are bent to the ground with pain, supporting each other as they drag themselves forward slowly. A seriously sick prisoner is in our group. He is so weak from the dysentery that he cannot control himself. He is terribly dirty since he can no longer drag himself to the latrine. First they drag him, but then they conclude that it makes no sense as he is going to die any minute anyway, and they put him back into his stinking bunk.

  We ascend a steep hill to Barrack 9. I don’t know a soul, and that is a great loss. Living in 9 is the worst time for me at Flossenbürg. In 20, we had assigned bunks, but here you don’t know where you are going to put your head or whether you are going to be able to sleep. And sleep in the concentration camp is as important as food. The whip was used only to move us along in 20, but here it rains down all the time, and one never knows from which direction to expect the next blow.

  The conditions in Barrack 9 are terrible. I had a serious case of bronchitis and a cold from the freezing conditions to which we were exposed. The food is awful and sleep almost nonexistent. If one cannot find a place on a bunk, one has to sit all night in the little alleys between bunks, pressed together like sardines. And the whip is used constantly, along with punches and kicks. Shortly afterward, I have an opportunity to speak to Bochan, through barbed wire. He is in Barrack 17, dressed in his prisoner uniform, and awaiting a transport. He seems to be in good condition, both physically and spiritually, but in comparison I am a beggar. I am exhausted from lack of sleep. We discuss our situation and he is glad to be leaving the camp hoping that conditions outside will improve, and with his usual smile he adds, “I can stand as much as the others, and this can’t last much longer.”

  He left shortly after that. We were such good friends and I mourn his end very much. We were looking forward so much to returning to our native land, and I still don’t want to believe that he is not coming back. But the prisoners’ work was making people fall like flies, and it overcame even strong, healthy men. He caught pneumonia and that was the end.

  After Bochan’s departure my turn comes. About twenty-five hundred men form new work forces. I am in the first contingent of about five hundred men. On February 20, we march out of the yellow gates of Flossenbürg in our striped prisoner rags. For good luck I make sure that I step out on my right foot. In my pocket I have saved a piece of bread, and I have my glasses, soap, and toothbrush—all my worldly possessions. They even make us surrender our old rags when they issue the prison uniforms. In place of the undershirt I had, they give me a piece of rough cloth with a hole cut out for the head and arms. I have one pair of socks.

  It is about five o’clock in the afternoon, the February sun is shining, and it is not so cold in our “new” clothing. We leave the camp and the barbed wire fence that I hope to God that I will never see again. We march through the little Flossenbürg village to the station. At the church I see a crucifix, and I pray: “Lord Jesus Christ, who art the Son of God, have mercy on me.”

  Open fields surround the station, appearing gray with almost no snow left on them. But I catch a glimpse of the first snowdrop—the first sign of spring. I am glad to be outside of the fence and away from Barrack 9, where there is an outbreak of typhus. After waiting a while we climb into the cattle cars, and in the process someone steals my bread. I hope that I will withstand the hunger. But the main thing is that I can no longer see the guard towers with their mounted machine guns.

  We get the order to sit on the floor just as we were instructed on the trip from Brno. But now I am among strangers who do not give way, so people fight for a little space. We are now only half human—eat or be eaten. We seek permission to stand for a while to help our circulation. It is denied and we spend a miserable night with aching legs. Snow falls during the night. The next morning we are at the station in Plattling. At noon we are given bread and cheese, but nothing to drink. Everything disappears quickly since we have not eaten for twenty-four hours. We are glad when we finally leave the train late in the afternoon and march into town. On the square the German women laugh at us. I think, You girls are spiritually prostituted by Hitler, but your time is coming soon. Your comeuppance will make you cowards and you will be brought low.

  We are marching through melting snow and mud. Going through a neat little Bavarian town, passing the church, we turn toward a school. In front of it there is a roll call, after which they send us inside in small groups. The classrooms have beds, again in tri-levels, but there is fresh straw and blankets. And only two of us will share each bunk. At last I will have a good sleep. I am to share my bunk with Mr. Weiner from Bratislava. But a little later others are assigned to our room and I gain another bedmate, a dental technician from Krakow. He offers me some raw beets that I accept gingerly and chew very thoroughly, hoping not to get diarrhea from them. It is the first vegetable in four months, and I accept them gratefully. We are again given bread with margarine, and after my previous experiences I have learned to eat it at once before it is stolen. As the saying goes in the camps, “Don’t save for tomorrow what you can eat today, before it is stolen.”

  The majority in our work unit are Jews: more than two hundred from Poland, eighty-four from Czechoslovakia, and the rest from all over Europe. For supper we get hot vegetable soup. We also receive our own metal cup, and that is a major improvement since in Flossenbürg there were few utensils, and when the first people were
finished they had to give up their plate, which probably was an old rusty metal thing, and the next person would then eat from it. It goes without saying that it was not washed. I fall asleep with a good feeling.

  When the camp’s supervisor learns that I was an attorney he indicates that he will make me a “reporting clerk,” a position that in concentration camps can be of some importance, depending on circumstances. Keeping his promise, my fellow Czech prisoners have very long faces when they see me the next day working at his table. They generally consider me a stupid man, since I have not succumbed to the camp’s immorality and have remained a decent person. By this assignment I am saved from heavy labor and daily beatings. I get my own bed, outside the common area. I receive a little more food, and although I am still hungry at times, most of the time it is enough. I begin to regain some of my weight, and my cold finally goes away by the beginning of April. I would not have believed how much pus a runny nose could produce in a person!

  The conditions in Plattling are very difficult. Although the food is a little tastier than in Flossenbürg, there still is not enough of it, especially for the heavy labor. We are awakened at 4:00 a.m. summer saving time, and at 5:00 during the winter. At each morning roll call for work assignments, blood flows, and people die daily. One kapo, imprisoned for murder, kills two people in a single afternoon, and boasts that he has killed 140 people altogether. I am unable to prevent any brutality, since the SS commander of our unit endorses these incidents. In the camp the rule of might and terror prevails. I am able to disarm the kapos by being respectful and quiet, and they do not bother me. They are also aware that through my duties I am in daily contact with the SS chief and his deputy, and the kapos themselves might be in jeopardy for any physical harm to me. That condition of course does not exist for other prisoners.