When we got together, Josek and I hugged, two brothers who had never thought to see one another again. Then we sat down on a patch of grass that was free of snow. I saw that Josek hadn’t changed, except that he looked thinner. I had so many questions to ask him that I found it hard to begin. I knew I had to share with him what I knew about Mama and Pola. But first I asked him how he got here, and what went on in Dobra before he was arrested.
“It was inevitable,” my brother said. “The situation was ominous.” Seeing that he was prepared for the worst, I told him about Mama and Pola. “Pola had chances to escape, and as for Mama, I knew it was the end,” he said. “Someone had offered Pola an Aryan document, but she refused to leave Mama.”
We saw the guards’ impatience. When I told Josek that we were going to his camp, he said, “Don’t go there. If Krusche sees you, he will kill you.”
He amazed me. How could he know Krusche, and my troubles with him? I had never written home about Krusche. Krusche, he said, was their Kommandant, and when he heard that Josek’s name was Jakubowicz, he asked him if he was my brother. Hearing that he was, Krusche got angry. “I hope to find your brother and see him dead someday,” Krusche said. Conditions at their camp were much like ours. Most of them were working on the same railroad.
Before we parted, Josek asked me if I could come back someday. “From twelve to one we are off,” he said. I promised to try to be back there very soon. I returned to Tadek. He was still scanning the road for any signs of danger. I told him that we couldn’t go to the camp and why. He agreed. He wasn’t anxious to see Krusche either.
It was past two by now. We had no time left to ride anywhere else, and we returned to Gutenbrunn. I told Tadek what the Old Man had told Grimm. It did not surprise him. He knew that Köhler couldn’t speak for another camp’s Kommandant. “Even being on the road wasn’t risk-free,” he said. Anyone who wanted to could cause us trouble.
Papa was returning from work as we entered the camp. I told him I had found Josek, and he could hardly believe it. Later I had to share every detail. When I told the unemotional Seidel that I had found my brother, he mumbled, “That’s good.”
Grimm, however, shared my joy in my good fortune. “Be careful,” he cautioned. “You are on your own out there.” In spite of the danger, I looked forward, blissfully, to my next day out. Grimm and I had a good relationship. He confided in me how difficult it was to minimize the harsh Nazi directives often given him and how hard it was to retain his self-respect. Working in the first aid room gave me a purpose. I could do something useful. Despite their misfortunes, some inmates here, eminently wise, affirmed their spiritual respect for life. This mitigated their sense of hopelessness.
The next Wednesday, with a few snowflakes falling, I went to the main gate and sneaked out. The young guard knew me. By now most of the guards knew me.
Then Tadek and I rode off. “It’s too early to go to your brother. Let’s try the women’s camp first. It is only an hour away,” Tadek said. With the miracle of finding Josek to boost my spirits, I had hopes of finding Pola and my mother. However remote hope is, sometimes it’s stronger than logic. No matter how hard I pedaled the old bike, though, I couldn’t keep up with Tadek’s faster pace. Having served its usual time, my bike preferred to be in retirement.
We turned onto an unpaved road, where we saw many women working in a field. One kilometer further on was a cluster of barracks. “That,” Tadek said, pointing, “is their camp.” The barracks were typical single-story buildings all in rows. A fence topped with barbed wire surrounded the camp. We stopped. “Put on your patch,” Tadek said. “The Kommandant here might not like seeing a camp inmate not wearing one.” He left me holding the bicycles some hundred and fifty meters from the entrance, and he went alone to the gatehouse. The barracks were built of unfinished pine. It all looked like a hastily constructed job. Although I couldn’t hear Tadek’s conversation with the sentry, I followed their gestures. After a third joined in, I saw Tadek nodding his head. I suspected that they had reached some understanding. “The Lagerführer is not here, but they’ll let you go in. However, only a few women are in the camp,” Tadek said.
We leaned our bicycles against the guardhouse and entered the camp. The two Polish sentries gave us inquisitive stares and expressed particular interest in my little box. I assured them that it held only my dental tools. They looked at me with strange adulation and let me in. I followed Tadek. An eerie silence hung over the camp. So far I had not seen a single woman. My pulse raced. I didn’t know what to expect. One door seemed an entrance to a kitchen. Surely someone must be there. We opened the door and saw two women in their early twenties peeling potatoes. Though I expected girls’ faces, I was not prepared for their bizarre look: without hair, they looked more like young boys. Until we explained who we were and why we had come, they too were stunned. Then everything began to unfold. One of them was tall and slim, the other short and plump with a husky voice and a heavy Yiddish accent. The short one was the quicker to reply, very much the spokeswoman. They were dressed in their clothes from home and wore yellow stars. The tall one had a pleasant face, wide-open eyes, and a good figure. She wore a dark skirt and a light-colored flowered blouse. Once these clothes were fashionable, but now they were nearly rags. Had it not been for her bare head, she would have been very attractive. I asked them how long they had been here and where they were from. We found they had arrived only three weeks before. So far they had not buried any inmates. Of course, the term Mussulman—or, rather, Mussulwoman—meant nothing to them. There was not a doctor, a dentist, or even a first aid facility in their camp.
“I am Malka Rosen,” the spokeswoman said in her colorless voice. “I am from Kalisz.”
“Is Ruzka your sister?” I hastened to ask.
“Yes,” she said. “Do you know Ruzka?”
“Did your father run a soda water business?”
“Yes,” she answered.
I remembered Ruzka vividly. “Where is your sister?” I asked.
“She is here. She is now at work.” I couldn’t believe it! Beautiful Ruzka, here in this labor camp? We had gone to the same school, the Jewish gymnasium. I recalled a custom long forgotten. We used to promenade on the Boulevard in Kalisz for hours in the evening. Ruzka was always the most affable of company. When I calmed my surprise, I asked if anyone from Dobra was there.
“I am Chana Cimerman from Koo, not far from Dobra. I know a few girls from Dobra here,” said the tall one.
“Do you know Pola Jakubowicz?”
They looked at each other, and then the spokeswoman said, “There is a Balcia Jakubowicz, from Uniejów.” Balcia was my cousin, Uncle Chaim’s youngest daughter. She should know more about what happened in the last days in Dobra, I thought. I knew I had to see her. I told Malka that we would be back the next Wednesday. Tadek added, “We will try to be here between ten and twelve.”
“Tell my cousin about it,” I added.
“I think it would be best if you came Saturday or Sunday,” Malka replied. “Then all the girls will be here.” I looked at Tadek, who shook his head no.
The door opened, and a broad-shouldered woman wearing a police armband came in, looking very surprised. Malka explained to her who we were. Satisfied that our visit wasn’t her business, she left. Tadek reminded me that if we didn’t go now, we might not get to see Josek.
It was half past twelve when we saw my brother. He and the others sat on the side of the road, resting against trees towering twelve to fifteen meters high. Tadek got off his bike and approached the same guard who had allowed me to see my brother the week before. By Josek’s piercing look, I could see that he had been waiting. Since the guard had already given him permission, he came to me while the other one stared at us. The guard had told him that he could separate from his group but should remain in sight. We walked off on a path leading to some trees, about eight hundred meters away, and stopped there. We had so many things to ask one another. First he wanted to know if
Papa was well. He was curious to know where he worked and what he did. Then he asked me how I found Zosia and where I got to see her. I told him in detail the miracle of our meeting. He also wondered where I had gotten the bike. Later I showed him the last letter we received from Mama and Pola and said that we had just been at a camp nearby that the Nazis had opened for Jewish women, and though many were from our area, I found neither Pola nor Mama there. After he had finished reading the letter, he shook his head and said that it had been obvious to him that the end of the ghetto was near. I also told him that I hoped to see our cousin Balcia and thought she might shed more light on the fate of our mother and sister.
I wanted to know about my friends from Dobra. “Sadly,” he said, “most are in camps or dead.”
When Josek had been drafted into the Polish cavalry and I had seen him dressed in his elegant uniform, I had wished I was him. When he clicked the spurs on his shiny high boots, he seemed to me the bravest man in our village. But I most liked his high-domed hat. Though it was three sizes too large for me, when I tried it on I felt like a grown-up hero. But now our six-year age difference vanished. Before we returned to the work detail, Josek asked me if I could bring Papa along with me to visit. As I left Josek and his fellow inmates, I felt embarrassed that, although we shared the same fate, I was free to go around and visit while all the others were confined to the rigorous life of hard labor.
When the inmates in Gutenbrunn heard about the women’s camp, they swamped me with questions, and soon I found myself carrying notes back and forth between the camps.
One Thursday morning six inmates were brought to the camp in a now familiar scene. The SS and Gestapo henchmen had lots of experience, and the hangings seemed almost a joke to them. As the inmates returned from work, they were told to line up around the gallows. Out came the condemned, their wrists tied behind them, their flesh bulging, and their skin a grisly blue. They blinked at the bright daylight. They were led onto chairs, and their legs were tied together. After the Gestapo read their sentence, one of the condemned men raised his voice and yelled, “You will pay for this! Someday the world will take revenge for these crimes, you wretched murderers!”
A Jew’s making such a threat stunned them. They probably had never heard anything like it before. “Keep your mouth shut!” a Gestapo man yelled. But the condemned man, having nothing to lose, continued to shout: “Murderers! Murderers!” We looked at one another, startled. We could see how embarrassed the Nazis were, and after a few more unsuccessful attempts to shut the man up, one scar-faced member of the Gestapo gave a signal to the hangman, and the ropes tightened. A demonic silence hung in the air. There were no more speeches, not even the reminder that this was to serve as a lesson. The six men were dead, and the hangman quickly left. Though this incident had been of no help to the condemned, their defiance was a brave act that burned itself deeply into my mind. After Dr. Seidel pronounced the men dead, the infirmary workers had the dreadful job of removing the corpses. As we carried their bodies, the echo of “Damn you, you wretched murderers!” hung in the air. Carrying our brothers’ dead bodies was not easy. We didn’t believe in martyrdom and looked upon every life lost as a penalty for being Jewish. That evening the turnip soup was difficult to swallow.
The following Wednesday, when Tadek and I again left the camp, I asked him if he knew of any other camps. “Yes,” he said. “But they are too far away for us to go to.” When we came to the women’s camp, their Kommandant was away. We were told that he was only there in the afternoon. My cousin Balcia also wasn’t there. One girl that needed my help, though, was glad that she had waited for me. She was in pain. I extracted one of her diseased molars. Her gums bled badly, so I brushed tincture of iodine on them and injected her with an ampoule of two cc’s of vitamin C. We again passed my brother’s work detail and stopped. This time I had letters from Gutenbrunn for inmates in Josek’s camp. Our time quickly passed, as we spent it remembering the past.
Whereas the executioners usually came late in the afternoon, one Thursday an ambulance, followed by Gestapo and SS men, came early. Before the drama began around the gallows, our Kommandant led the visitors on an inspection. They marched through our rows, looking at us and making snide remarks. As they came slowly toward me, I saw that one, a man carrying a briefcase, was of high rank. He was a colonel, an SS Sturmbannführer. When he passed us, I was struck by his Semitic features. I turned to my right and unwisely remarked to some other inmates that he looked Jewish. The man following the colonel heard my comment, and he hit me in the face with his gloves, shouting, “Shut your mouth! You swine! Don’t you know who this is? He is Sturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann!”
I wished I hadn’t said it, but it was too late. Then the slim, tall Colonel Eichmann turned back, paused, looked at me, and grinned. Then, as if in an afterthought, he snapped open a thick oversized briefcase that he carried. “Look,” he said. “Do you know what those are?”
That scared me. I saw rope tied neatly in four nooses. I couldn’t say “nooses,” for fear that the word would not pass through my lips. I didn’t know what to do. Finally I said, “Herr Sturmbannführer, those are ropes.”
“No, no. Those are zizith,” he said gleefully, whereupon the whole entourage burst into laughter.
Though I had heard Eichmann’s name mentioned, at that time I knew only that he was a Nazi bigwig. But that he knew what zizith were puzzled me. Soon afterward I heard that he also spoke some Hebrew. From then on, whenever I heard Eichmann’s name, I was reminded of this bizarre encounter. In the end eight more Jews lost their lives that day in Gutenbrunn.
Hunger and hard labor were chipping away at our numbers bit by bit. Even the strong were now calling on their last reserves of energy. The monster had been devouring its prey with a ferocious appetite. “Organizing” had become more dangerous. Never a science, it now required connections and keen judgment. The squallor of our living conditions is hard to describe. Some claimed to have seen inmates inflicting wounds on themselves just to stay away from the unendurable work. In the infirmary I saw wounds and cuts on inmates that couldn’t possibly have been accidental.
Mendele was our best source of news in those days. When he came one day to tell me what he had heard, he looked broken. “They are liquidating all the ghettos,” he said. “They are gassing, burning, or machine gunning all the Jews.” It was so startling, so unbelievable, that I had to stop listening to him. But when he swore by God, I believed him. I realized that we could be next. Zosia had visited only rarely, and when she came we hardly moved from the gate.
One Saturday an inmate told me that Zosia was waiting at the kitchen gate. As in times past, with no sentry near, we walked slowly toward our rendezvous place. This was unmistakably the nicest day that spring. Robins, swallows, and sparrows crisscrossed our path, chirping away. Their song was the only sound we heard. Fallen branches and trees toppled by the winter lay on the ground. Where sunshine hadn’t reached, the young ferns seemed very pale. After a while we came to a clearing, and the bright sunshine invited us to sit down. We hadn’t made love for some time, and sitting close to her I knew what I wanted. As I drew close, I saw that she felt the same, and soon we succumbed.
As we lay on the sun-warmed moss, she said, “We heard about the dreadful things the Germans are doing now to Jewish people. My family thought that you ought to come and stay at our house until the war is over. You’ll be safe there.” Then she added that the Allies had successfully landed on the Greek island of Crete, and that many Italians had turned to fight the Germans, and that the Russians were chasing the Nazis out of their land. “We have enough room for you and your father in the cellar. You’ll both be comfortable there,” she said.
She caught me speechless. I was overwhelmed. I realized that her family must have planned this for some time. Surely they must understand the danger to them. “Do you know what it might cost you if we were found staying in your house?” I answered. “You may not know, but harboring Jews is punished by d
eath now.”
“We live on a small street, and Germans rarely come there. You will be safe with us,” she assured me.
The idea that they were ready to risk their lives for us was remarkable by itself. I thanked her and promised to discuss it with my father. She gave me bread and some more antacids for my ulcer. “Bronek,” she said, “the war can’t last much longer. Please think seriously about escaping from here.”
Then we parted, leaving in different directions. When I came out of the forest, I saw two peasants crossing a field. I waited until they were out of sight, and then I returned to the camp. Rachmiel knew of Zosia, and when I passed him, he grinned. Inmates were waiting for the kitchen window to open so they could quickly grab some soup to still their hunger. Seeing this, I thought of Zosia’s prediction. “The war won’t last much longer.” But for many, I thought, the end might come too late. I was bothered by guilt over my relationship with Zosia, but not because we had sex. It wasn’t lust, I had rationalized. I really loved Zosia very much. I was not sure how long I would survive the camp. Still, comparing my life with those of my fellow inmates, I was the lucky one.
I walked to our block. A lone unburned log lay beside the stove. Bright rays of sunlight covered the wood floor. I began to mull over Zosia’s proposal. I was in a terrible predicament. I felt that living in a cellar wasn’t a good trade-off for what our life was like now. My father was still the coffee man in the Herdecke Kommando, and being the dentist made my day-to-day life bearable. Survival at this camp wasn’t our foremost concern. Yet the offer Zosia put forward was simply too good not to deserve serious attention. When Papa heard about it, he was stunned. It was also the first time I mentioned Zosia’s name to him. Reaching the right decision was not easy. I had my misgivings, and I was sure Papa had his. We carefully weighed everything we could think of, and in the end, Papa said it was up to me to decide. I knew that our roles had reversed. “Whatever you decide,” he said, “will be all right with me.” Still I was torn with uncertainties, and our dilemma remained unresolved.
The Dentist of Auschwitz Page 13