Though it was still winter, we were graced with rather pleasant weather one Saturday when Zosia came. This visit was especially welcome, as I hadn’t seen her in many weeks. Under her coat she wore a simple but attractive polka dot dress. In the absence of the sentries at the little gate, I went out, and we walked down the road. By now the guards knew me as the dentist, and at worst they’d only call out to me and ask me to return. We kept on the road until we came to a small forest, which we entered.
We strolled through the forest a while, and then we stopped. I looked into her sparkling eyes, took her in my arms, and kissed her. She put her arms around me and gave in to my advances. As we kissed, she rested her head on my shoulder, and our passions rose. We couldn’t resist our desires. I lowered her onto the snow, and we made love for the first time in Gutenbrunn. Suddenly we heard voices coming toward us. I sensed trouble. I looked around and didn’t know where to hide. As we saw four men coming directly toward us, we tried to act casual. They stopped in front of us. One, the youngest, who was about my age, looked at me with a hostile expression, which told me that we were in for more trouble than I had first thought.
“What are you doing here?” he bristled.
Zosia broke in and answered, “He is my friend, and I came to visit him.”
Paying no attention to Zosia’s words, he turned back to me and barked, “We know that you’re a fucking Jew from the camp. We watched you two go into the woods. And you,” he said, pointing to Zosia, “you should be ashamed of yourself, mixing with Jews. A Polish girl whoring with a Jew is disgraceful.”
We were at their mercy. He grabbed me by my shirt and punched me in the face several times. He then shoved me into the hands of one of his comrades, who slapped me and threw me back to him. I was thrown to the ground and kicked as I tried to get up. Zosia was crying and pleading, “Why are you doing this? Why are you hurting him? He hasn’t done a thing to you.” She begged in vain, as the other two bullies grabbed her and dragged her away from me.
Each time I tried to get up, they kicked me as if I were a soccer ball. I thought they would never stop. “Why are you beating me?” I pleaded. Throughout my ordeal, I kept thinking of the consequences of being taken to the guardhouse. I thought I was finished.
Their rage and anger eventually subsided. They had had enough, and they left. My nightmare was over, and I was fortunate that they had not taken me to the guardhouse, where anything could have been done to me. My head spun, and my face burned. My clothes were bloody, the insides of my cheeks were cut, and some of my teeth felt loose. I tried to move my jaw. Though it hurt a lot, it wasn’t fractured. Zosia was aghast, seeing the cuts on my face. Though my body hurt from the pounding it had received, the deepest pain came from within, as stomach cramps doubled me over, repeating the agony I had felt after Krusche’s beating in Steineck. Zosia knew how ashamed I felt.
“They’re just a bunch of hoodlums. They don’t know what they’re doing,” she consoled me. Zosia helped me to clean off my clothes. I wanted to get back to the camp as quickly as possible. She left me my medication and a bundle she had brought with her. Draped in shame and anger, I kissed her good-bye.
At the edge of the woods I carefully scanned the road to the camp. Seeing it was safe, I walked the short distance back to the kitchen gate. Once I was in the yard, I could easily mingle with the other inmates. It was now half past two. The soup ration had long ago been distributed, but the perpetual optimists still monitored the kitchen window in case some seconds might be given out. I left the bread and medicine package under Papa’s blanket. I went to wash my face and rinse my mouth. I hoped that in time some of my wobbling teeth would tighten.
This winter didn’t turn out to be as bitterly cold as the previous one, but our clothes, now in tatters, were no match for it. The attrition rate among those handling the icy rails was considerable. Though I no longer worked for Herdecke, our detachment still had the half hour breaks, and my father was still in charge of brewing the coffee.
One day at the beginning of April, Mendele followed me as I crossed the yard. “Did you hear what is going on in Warsaw?” he asked. Mendele often told strange stories, some barely half true. But what he said sounded so terrible that I decided to listen. “The Germans are transporting men, women, and children from the ghetto to a camp called Treblinka, and there’s where they’re killing them,” he said.
“Mendele, you are spinning some tale again,” I said.
In a wild rage he repeated the story. “I swear to God, it’s the truth,” he countered. This sounded serious, so I asked him who told him in the first place. “A Pole from the underground,” he said. This was the first such mass extermination that we had heard of. Much later I learned that nearly three hundred thousand people were killed there. By inspiring a mixture of terror and reverence, the Nazis shaped us into well-disciplined slaves willing to work for them just to continue living. But when they couldn’t kill us fast enough with forced labor, they came up with ideas like Chelmno and Treblinka.
As the workers completed one section of rail, they were moved further away from the camp. This added three to five kilometers of walking per day to their toil. Because of more frequent casualties, Dr. Seidel wanted us to patrol the sites at least an hour each day for sick and injured. I was the first volunteer. With bandages, cotton, and a bottle of iodine, I went each morning to the work site.
On a Sunday in late April, when Zosia came, she had a letter from the ghetto. My premonition was right. The news was grave. Reading just the first sentence, I froze. My mother and sister had been murdered.
CHAPTER X
The Murder of My Family
When I finished reading the letter I closed my eyes and stood paralyzed. Zosia sensed that something terrible had happened in the ghetto. She asked me what it was. I could not answer her. When she asked me if it was my mother and sister, I nodded my head. She looked at me and saw that I was in no condition to talk. She left me quietly.
I felt ill with stomach cramps. Walking back to the camp I read the letter again, hoping that it wasn’t so. But over and over the words spelled out worse than we had expected:
When you receive this letter, Mama and I will no longer be alive. Though we were told that we are going to be resettled, we know where they are taking us—Chelmno—and no one has ever come back from there. We are the last in the ghetto, only two hundred of us left. It really doesn’t matter anymore. We have had enough of this shameful life. Should you ever see Josek, let him know about us. Don’t write anymore, as we will no longer be here. We hope that you, Papa, and Josek still have a chance to survive. Love to Papa and you, Berek. Pola.
Mama added two lines of good-bye to Papa and me. “Perhaps we’ll all meet in another world,” she wrote.
It was devastating. I couldn’t breathe. My legs buckled and refused to carry me. I remembered Mama and Pola on the day of Papa’s and my deportation. I remembered Mama’s forlorn look and Pola, poised and fighting back her tears. I looked at the letter, and the outrageous crime stared me in the face. Their long suffering was ended. They had endured the ghetto for more than two years for naught. I raised my eyes and looked up, transfixed, to the heavens. I asked God why, but only silver rings swirled in front of my eyes. I had been raised to revere him. Now he had failed me.
I weighed the impact the news would have on my father. Do less painful words exist to change the bitter truth? If so, I could not find them. I stuck the letter in my pocket and walked into the barracks. I knew that Papa had to be told. My father sat at the edge of his bunk. I walked over and, without saying a word, handed him the letter. As he began reading, his face turned pale, and his shoulders slumped. Wrenched with pain, he closed his eyes and put his hands on his face. When I saw him wring his hands, I knew that he was saying Kaddish. He finished and, in a mixture of pain and anguish, said, “If they can kill women and children, perhaps the whole world has gone mad.” Though our hearts were full of tears, we had forgotten how to cry.
; “Only God knows what is happening, son,” Papa said to me. He hadn’t called me son in years. We sat a long time in silence, our heads bowed. There was little we could say that would make sense. Then, as if my father could take it no longer, he walked out.
It was a Sunday afternoon, a day of rest for us, no doubt intended for the welfare of the guards and the SS men. I lay open-eyed, motionless, staring endlessly at the high ceiling of the barracks. A few rays of sunlight penetrated the dirt-clogged windows, and particles of dust danced in a never-ending pattern. It didn’t seem possible. They could not be dead. I read the letter again and feared that it was irrevocable and final. I pulled out a few old family photographs that I had kept under my pillow. By now they were yellowed and scuffed. I looked at Mama and remembered the last words she said to us when we left: “When this nightmare is over, we will all meet back here.” I felt alone. I needed to share my grief with someone. But there was no longer any intimacy. Our lives were so agonizing that each person kept things like this to himself. Everyone focused his strength on his own survival. Nor did I have the right to burden others with my pain. Didn’t each of us here have his own tragedy?
Behind our bunk someone finished a silent prayer with a loud “Amen.” Then another man next to him began to question his devotion to God. “How can you still believe in prayers? They won’t help you,” he said.
“You don’t have to believe in God. I still do. Just because you’re here doesn’t mean that you stop believing,” said the first. “What is going on is not his fault. It’s the failure of men. In the end they’ll have to pay for these inhuman acts, for their immorality.”
“Inhuman acts, immorality—leave that nonsense out. The Germans don’t believe in God and morality. They follow Hitler,” the second said.
“God does things his way. You must believe that he is the Righteous Judge. He won’t turn his back on his chosen people,” said the first.
“Chosen?” the second interrupted. “You mean we are the chosen? Chosen for what?”
“Having been chosen does not mean that we are chosen to be different from other people or better. He chose us to accept him and his teaching without question. He, the Righteous One, is always with us,” the first said insistently.
“You may be convinced of this, but I’m not. If this continues any longer, he will be left without his people to worship him. If there is solace in being one of the chosen, I don’t feel it,” he added.
I did not deny the existence of God, but I asked myself where the God was that my father taught me to believe in. I stopped relying on him the moment I lay bleeding outside the first aid room in Steineck. There I embarked on a genesis of my own, without God. To come to terms with Jewishness in the pit of this inhumane life was very difficult. I buried my head in my pillow to close myself away from this, and I fell asleep.
I woke up in a sweat from a bad dream and realized that, in effect, my nightmares and my life now were much the same. I took a spoonful of belladonna for my excruciating stomach pains, slipped down to the floor, and left the barracks. I met Papa. We stopped and looked at one another without speaking. Our hurt could not be explained. It was a long and painful day for both of us, and that night the barracks seemed like a silent morgue.
The next night I dreamed I was home. It was Friday evening, the beginning of Shabbat. My father, my brother, and I had just returned from the synagogue. Mama closed her eyes, put her hands over the burning candles, and said a prayer. Papa raised a chalice of wine and said kiddush. Grandfather blessed the challah. Wildflowers that Pola had picked were on the table. Everything seemed so convincing, so real, as if I had never left. The next morning I was back to my bitter reality, and every German I saw seemed to me to be guilty of killing Mama and Pola.
As Nazi Germany put its plan of massive extermination of Jews into action, they chose Poland for the staging area. Perhaps this was not purely an accident. When Tadek told me of new labor camps in the area, it intrigued me. “Where are they? Are they far from here?” I asked.
“Oh no! One is only about twenty kilometers from here. That one is a camp for women,” he said. I had not heard of women being forced into labor camps. Hard labor and camp conditions would not allow them to survive very long. Nonetheless, if that was so, perhaps I would find my mother and sister there. This promising thought did not give me rest. I told Grimm that I doubted that their camp would have dental care and said that, if I was allowed, I would go there to help them. Grimm liked my idea and agreed to speak with the Kommandant.
I knew that I would not be allowed to leave the camp without a guard. Since I had not implicated him in the bread debacle in Steineck, I had a good relationship with Tadek. He agreed to go with me. I knew he had a bicycle, since he rode it every day. I asked him if he could find one for me. He thought that he could.
It had been snowing for days, and more than a quarter of a meter was on the ground. When it did not snow, dark clouds covered the sky. The infirmary was filled with the sick and dying. Most prisoners survived by bare will. I hoped to escape this prison, even if for just a few hours.
Though I saw Grimm several times, he made no mention of what we had talked about. I thought he had forgotten, but one day he and the Kommandant came to the infirmary, and the subject arose. “Achtung!” Seidel yelled out when they entered. “Herr Lagerführer, sixty-five sick in bed and seven attendants. All is well.” The number of inmates changed so fast in the infirmary that, at best, he could only be guessing. Seidel knew what was important to Scharführer Köhler.
The Kommandant looked like a country farmer, a bit older than the average SS man, with hair that was turning gray. But he was not heinous, and unlike his predecessors he took an interest in his prisoners. Then Grimm turned to him and said, “Herr Lagerführer, the camp for women nearby probably doesn’t have a dental station. Our dentist says that he could go help the prisoners. Of course, a guard would be with him at all times.”
The Kommandant looked at Grimm, stared at me, and after deliberating said, “Freilich, OK.” I bit my lips to contain my exuberance.
“Thank you, Herr Lagerführer,” I said as they left. Grimm later returned to tell me that the Kommandant cautioned that my entry into that camp was up to the Kommandant there. Having gotten this far, I was cautiously optimistic.
It was late in April 1943. The sun was out, giving us a deceptive taste of spring. Wherever the sun shone, winter seemed to disappear, for surrounded by the tall buildings we lived a fortresslike existence. When I told Tadek that the Old Man, as he called the Kommandant, had given me permission to go to the camp for women, he said, “Good.” He added, “I talked with my brother-in-law. He’ll let you use his bike.”
Now I was anxious. “Tadek, when can we go?” I asked him. Wednesday was his day off, he said, and he would try to go with me then. Tadek played an important part in my life. Being a guard did not interfere with his basic good nature. In the midst of many evil guards, he was as helpful as the situation would allow. Whereas I knew that the chance of finding my sister and mother was slim, trying to find them meant a lot to me. In my heart I still had hope.
On Wednesday Tadek came to pick me up. When I was little I had watched my brother and sister on their bicycles, and riding just came to me naturally. I was too small then to reach the pedals, so I tilted the bicycle to one side and put one foot underneath the bar. Tadek’s arrival with the two bicycles reminded me of those days. As we rode away from the camp, Tadek told me to remove my yellow star. “We’d better be careful,” he said.
It was sunny but still quite cold. My heart pounded with excitement. The zest of life ran through me. Leaving the camp, unmarked, gave me an illusion of freedom. I didn’t know which camp we would be visiting, and neither did Tadek. Not too far away we passed a village. A few peasants were working, spreading dung on their fields. Tadek asked one for directions to a village I had never heard of. “Just follow the road,” the man said. Soon Tadek recognized a landmark and was certain we were going in
the right direction. A few minutes later, around a curve, we saw people working on both sides of the road. As we came close, I saw guards and a hundred men grading the embankments. We were close enough to see their yellow Stars of David. Neither of us expected this.
“Just act natural,” Tadek said. As we rode past, Tadek greeted the guards with “Heil Hitler!”
“Heil Hitler!” the guards replied. Then most heads raised up with curiosity. Though I wanted to see if I recognized anyone, I could not give myself away. I drove by them, stone-faced, as if I was completely disinterested. But suddenly one of them yelled out, “Look, it’s Bronek, Josek’s brother!” I feared their guard’s reaction and put a hand over my mouth, trying to silence him. By then they all stared at me, while I remained indifferent to what the man had said. As we rode by the long rows of inmates, I kept making the hush sign. Then I thought I saw a ghost. One man’s posture and the color of his sweater reminded me of my brother. When he looked back at me, I was sure it was Josek. He stopped digging, rested his arms on his spade, and looked even more shocked than I. It was a miracle, to find my brother so unexpectedly. Tadek knew something had stirred me. I whispered, “Over there, Tadek, in the beige sweater, it’s my brother!” We moved off the road and stopped a hundred meters from them. If the guards noticed anything, they didn’t speak.
“Tadek,” I asked, “would they let me talk to my brother, even if it’s just for a minute?”
“Wait,” he said. “I’ll go over and see.”
The whole group was looking at me, wondering how I could ride around without the mark of a Jew. As Tadek walked over to the nearest guard, I followed him with my eyes, waiting anxiously for the answer. It wasn’t long until he returned. “Those are inmates from Lenzingen, the camp we are going to. Their barracks are just a few kilometers down the road. He’ll let you see your brother for a few minutes. They are afraid that if any of the SS from the camp come by and see it, it may cost them their jobs,” he said.
The Dentist of Auschwitz Page 12