The next time I went to see my brother, his work group was no longer working on the road. Though Tadek tried to find out where he was, I did not see him again there. At the same time it seemed that a plot around us had been thickening. The Nazi monster, now wounded and in convulsions, hastened his game, devouring his prey as never before. Many disturbing rumors circulated about the Jews who were still in the ghettos. New names like Majdanek and Sobibór were mentioned. Newly arrived inmates told us about the heroic uprising in the Warsaw ghetto and the battle that had followed. The few Jews who never doubted their end fought thousands of heavily armed Germans, they said, and inflicted heavy casualties on the Nazis. At first it was hard to believe, but as more Jews arrived, more stories detailed the ghetto’s brave and fearless battles. They spoke of it with a pride I had never heard expressed before. We wanted to hear those stories over and over. We thought that the Jews had finally broken the long-standing myth of their being incapable of fighting back.
“The bastards are going to kill us all,” Mendele angrily said. “If I had a gun, I would kill a hundred of them before they got me.” A lot of us agreed. If we didn’t rise up to fight here, it was for many reasons. Barely alive, we had nothing to rise up with. Killing one German would have meant retaliation on hundreds of us.
It was the end of May 1943, and though I had been to the women’s camp several times, I had yet to see my cousin. Once again I asked Tadek if he could take me there on a weekend, but he again said no. When I suggested that we go there one evening, I saw him waver. He was close to saying yes. “If someone catches me,” he said, “I’ll end in Gutenbrunn, with you.” Finally, when I insisted, he agreed, and we made plans for a Monday night visit, at half past ten. “This time we have to go on foot,” he cautioned. He also warned me that no one was to know, not even my father. But first I had to find a way out of camp. I knew that Rachmiel could leave the back door of the kitchen unlocked. As I had often carried notes for him, it wasn’t difficult for me to persuade him. In the evening when I left, I told my father not to worry if I came back late. It was warm that night, though clouds blocked the moon. Yet I was shivering, perhaps from fear and excitement. When I came to the kitchen, the door was unlocked, and a small package and a note were nearby. “Come on,” Tadek said. “We have to get through this forest first.”
Past the woods we heard the sound of a rushing river. We followed the stream, and when it narrowed, we jumped across. Then we crossed a stone fence. “We have to be careful now. We are coming to a road,” he warned me. I followed him with Rachmiel’s bundle under my arm. We were suddenly startled by automobile headlights. As they got closer, they suddenly swerved and sped away from us. This crisis over, we walked to the camp.
The perimeter guard must have heard us, because he came out of his guardhouse and looked around. Tadek walked slowly to him, and I remained out of sight. My heart raced with fear and anticipation. It seemed to me that I had lost all safety in being there. In any case, it was too late to go back now. When Tadek returned, he whispered that at first the guard wouldn’t permit me to go in. Only after he had told him that I would slip into the camp while Tadek and he walked around the fence, so that he would not see me, had the guard agreed. “That way, if someone catches you, we will say that we didn’t know.” This was their condition, and I had to accept it.
As soon as they both disappeared into the dark, I sneaked inside. Except for the lights flooding some areas, which I carefully avoided, the camp was dark. As I raced to the first barracks, I felt my heart and my head pounding. How would I find my cousin at night in this mysterious place? I wished I had not come. At the barracks I slowly tested the steps, so that I would not make an unexpected noise and wake someone. I opened the door and tiptoed inside. It was dark in the room, and the air hung heavy with human sweat. The women were breathing out of rhythm. Soon my eyes got accustomed to the darkness, and I could make out a woman on a bunk. I tugged her blanket gently. She raised her head and gave me a startled look. I told her to be quiet. “Don’t be afraid,” I whispered. “I am the Jewish dentist who comes here weekly. I am looking for my cousin Balcia. I know she is here.”
The girl was still scared. She pulled her blanket up to her chin and didn’t answer me. By now I had awakened others. They moved slowly, like zombies, on their bunks. “Who is there?” I heard them ask. When they learned that I was the dentist and that I was looking for Balcia Jakubowicz, one said she knew her. “She is in Block 5,” she added.
“Which is Block 5?” I asked.
The woman slid off her bunk and said she would take me there. We moved slowly, as she led me along the aisle. Curiosity brought questions from the women about their relatives and friends. “Is Shmiel with you? Do you know Hershel Mayer?” one asked. “Do you know my brother? my father? my uncle? my cousin?” I recognized one of the names, and that woman got excited. “Oh my God! He’s alive.” I promised to tell him about her.
As we reached the end of the aisle, my guide pointed to the door. “When you go out of here, you’ll be facing another door. That’s Block 5,” she said, wanting to return to her bunk. I thanked her, turned the doorknob, stepped out, and found myself outside.
I moved in the dark and went inside the next block. There were the same piles of people, the same tired bodies, the same sweaty air. Their breathing was punctuated with occasional snoring. I remained unnoticed until I touched a woman’s leg. She opened her eyes and looked frightened. She was about to scream. “Shh,” I said, putting my finger on my mouth. When I told her who I was, she calmed down. Then I asked where Balcia was.
“Balcia? She is here somewhere,” she said. Others also woke up, eager to find out what was going on. And then I heard someone quietly saying my first name. I recognized the voice. It was Rifka, a girl from Dobra.
“Is that you, Bronek? How did you get here?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “Balcia is right there.”
When Balcia and I were kids, she was quite a tomboy. But when I saw her last, in 1938, she was fourteen and a good-humored teenager. I kneeled down to see her. Her head rose up, hitting against the bunk. Her wide, tawny eyes were sleepy. At first she didn’t recognize me, but as she fixed her eyes on me, her face lit up. “It’s you, Bronek. I had heard you were here.”
As she stood up in her nightgown, I saw that she was no longer the gawky little girl I had known. Though the hair was shaved off her head, she looked like a mature woman. When she began saying things about home, I fixed myself on every word she said. Her sister Toba and her mother were taken to Chelmno, where my mother and sister were also sent. I remembered her brother Alje, a soldier killed fighting in the first days of the war. Another brother, Mayer, who was my age, was hanged by the Germans, along with Icek Lijek, Shlomo Lczycki, Moishe Neuman, and Hamek Lewkowicz. She talked about all this in a calm voice, as if such cruelty was just commonplace now. Next she told me about what had happened to her sister Mania.
“When the war began,” Balcia continued, “Mania married her long-time friend from Lodz, and Aaron, a baby boy, was born to them. When they were all driven into the Lodz ghetto, they feared for his life. Babies were not to live in the ghetto. Her husband’s job was to gather the dead in the street and bring them to the Jewish cemetery,” she continued. “To save the baby, her husband built a tiny compartment under the seat of his cart and kept the baby there during the day. The hearse is Aaron’s crib,” she said. At the time of Balcia’s arrest, the baby had still been alive. A long silence followed. Then Balcia asked me about my father, her uncle Wigdor. I told her that Papa was with me. I also told her how I had found Josek.
It was unusual for the women to see a strange man in their room, especially in the middle of the night. They looked at me as if I weren’t real. Then I saw the familiar face of a girl in a long flannel nightgown who was listening to us. When she saw I was staring at her, she said, “Bronek, is that you?” I knew then that it was Ruzka Rosen, sweet Ruzka whom I had once been so attracted to. Sweat began to run d
own my forehead, hazing over my eyes. I saw that she was also moved. But so much had changed. I knew that neither she nor I could still feel the same about one another as we had in the old days in Kalisz.
It was past midnight. I knew that Tadek was growing impatient. I left Rachmiel’s package, said good-bye to Balcia and Ruzka, and began to trace my steps back. I found Tadek in a deep conversation with the sentry in front of the guardhouse. Gabbing was Tadek’s forte. “Let’s go,” he said when he saw me coming.
If I had had any illusions about my mother and sister escaping their terrible deaths, it was now gone. I knew then that I would never see them again. As Tadek and I approached the road on the way back to our camp, we saw a convoy of German panzers and troop vehicles coming. My heart pounded, as if they were driving straight at us. We fell to the ground, flattened ourselves, and waited, absolutely motionless. The darkness was our ally. We kept our heads on the ground until all the vehicles passed. Then we cautiously crossed the road, and returned by the same route.
A half hour later we saw the outline of Gutenbrunn. I knew then of the real danger of my undertaking. I promised myself never to dare anything like that again. Papa was still awake. He looked relieved to see that I was back. Except for Tadek, Rachmiel, and I, no one at Gutenbrunn knew what had occurred that night. I couldn’t sleep. My heart throbbed with pain. Why did they have to die? Why, oh God, such a horrible death? I had to stop thinking of it. I wanted to remember them as I had once known them.
The next day I told Papa where I had gone the previous night. When he heard what I had learned from Balcia, we both realized that all that we held dear was now lost.
Zosia now came to the camp weekly and often reminded me of her proposal. Although I had been seriously considering it, something inside me kept me from deciding. “You must not plunge yourself and your father into a worse hell than this,” a voice told me. Escaping from Gutenbrunn was still possible, but for a Jew to pass through Poznan was extremely risky, and if we succeeded in getting to the Zasinas, we had something else to fear. We knew that in spite of their good intentions, in a crisis situation they would have to turn us over to the Germans. By comparison, we were not that bad off here. Papa still had his job brewing coffee, and I enjoyed some benefits. Small as they were, they were still very important. The next Saturday Zosia came again. She looked beautiful, in her simple Polish peasant dress. As we had done before, we walked from the camp along the path that led to the forest. As soon as we were at a distance she renewed her bid, asking me if we had made a decision. “My father urged me to ask you when you are coming,” she said. The decision was a difficult one, I told her, letting her know that we had decided to stay. She showed her disappointment. When she left she asked me to reconsider.
The next time I went to the women’s camp, Tadek and I encountered difficulties. The sentries said their new Kommandant had forbidden them to let us in. A few women who were expecting me looked on while Tadek pleaded with the sentries to let me in. But we were unable to persuade them and had to leave. Though Tadek promised to make an attempt to get permission from the new Kommandant, this was the end of my travels with him.
On Saturday Rachmiel came to the infirmary and whispered, “The shiksele and someone else are at the kitchen gate.” Both Zosia and her father had come to try and change my mind about leaving the camp.
“There is little you have to fear being with us,” her father said. “No one will ever find you.” I told him that though we were humbled and grateful, we had decided that our best chance was to remain in Gutenbrunn.
In a final attempt to persuade me, Zosia said, “It’s too bad, Bronek. We have made everything ready for you.” Their warmheartedness overwhelmed me, but I was unable to imagine surviving any length of time in a cellar.
Everything had a value in camp. Bread was the most wanted, but potato peelings were the most traded commodity. As bed rest curfew began at eight, there was a rush to the barracks stove before then. The healthy peelings didn’t smell bad, but the once-frozen ones made the barracks reek like a cow barn. All essentials had an established trading value. For example, one cigarette was worth two handfuls of potato peelings.
My most frequent dental procedure was extracting loose and diseased teeth, often with little or no anesthetic. Because of a lack of nutrients, especially vitamin C, I also saw a great deal of gingivitis and periodontitis. All I could do for the inmates suffering from these diseases was to give temporary relief with tinctures of merbromin and iodine. Within weeks those people suffered more serious gum deteriorations, and most of their teeth had to be extracted. In time I became inventive enough to scrape decayed dentine from cavities with excavators and explorers and to deaden the nerve with an arsenic paste. Meanwhile, more inmates had reached the state of Mussulmen—easily detected by edema and bulging eyes—and they were dying. That was inconsequential to the Nazis, since a telephone call or a memo brought more Jews to replace the ones who died.
The newly arrived hoped to find a semblance of humane treatment, but they soon saw that they had been brought here to work in a systematic process of destruction. They lost their strength within weeks. My stomach had been raising havoc. The antacids only relieved the throb for a half hour at best. I continually wondered, Am I condemned to this for the rest of my life? Will I ever be normal again?
By now we were on our fourth or fifth Lagerführer. It seemed that Gutenbrunn was their training camp. I don’t recall this one’s name. In any case, he was one of the young Nazi breed. Strict, rigid, and unyielding, he was obsessed with Ordnung (neatness). He, and only he, ran the camp. If Grimm was not at the gate in the morning to salute the new Kommandant, he was seriously reprimanded. The Kommandant showed his anger with his whip. Everything had to be just so, his way, the German way. Surely, he would have never allowed me to go out to another camp. His orders were always preceded by the cynical SS epithets Faulenzer (malingerer) and Drückeberger (shirker).
There was anger in the Kommandant’s face as he and Grimm entered the infirmary one day. “Scheiße,” he yelled. “Where is the doctor? Why did he leave that saboteur in the camp? He should be out working with the others.”
Dr. Seidel got scared. At first he tried to explain to the Nazi the medical problems of the sick inmates. But seeing that this did not quiet him down, Seidel told the Kommandant that he acted in the best interest of the camp. “As his wounds heal, the inmate will become productive again.” Normally this would have made sense, but it didn’t to this man. The Kommandant said that he wouldn’t tolerate inmates whom he thought could be working being idle in the camp. As a result of this, Dr. Seidel had to send many inmates to work whom he might have otherwise exempted.
Although we had heard of the Final Solution and its significance, it was hard to accept this new hard line that threatened the life of everyone. It had become the camp’s main concern. Our days in Gutenbrunn were even more troubled. A sense of catastrophe hung in the air. In more than two years of being in labor camps, I had not seen such anguish. Soon we noticed significant changes. We were told that the Russians were racing through Poland. The guards watched us like hawks. It went on like this until the beginning of August 1943, and our deportation was announced.
One day Rachmiel informed me that Zosia was outside the kitchen window waiting to talk to me. It was no longer possible for me to leave the camp grounds. I went through the kitchen, over to the iron-barred window. When she heard of the plans for our immediate deportation, she reminded me of her family’s standing offer. Could I still find a way to leave Gutenbrunn? she asked. “We begged you,” she said. I too had been thinking about it. Had I known earlier that we would be deported, my father and I would probably have left. Zosia and I took one last look at each other and said a final good-bye. Her parting words were “I’ll find you and come to see you, wherever you are.”
That day was the last time that we saw one another. I remember Zosia as a kind, loving human being. She had always been ready to help us, regardless of t
he hardships she had to endure or the risks she had to take. In a world of terror, in a world littered with hatred, she still regarded us as human beings. All my attempts to find her after the war were fruitless. I was told that she had died in an Allied bombardment somewhere in Germany, where she was working as a forced laborer.
A few days after Zosia’s last visit, the camp leaders stopped sending us out to work, and Grimm told us that we would be leaving within a couple of days. When I went to the infirmary for the last time, I saw a few sick inmates staring at me. I knew they were being left behind. They knew that their fate had been already decided. As I gathered my instruments, I couldn’t say good-bye. It would have been too painful.
I joined Papa on his bunk. It was a long, silent night. Just an occasional sigh was heard. The thought of what lay ahead gnawed at all of us. The uncertainty even overshadowed my stomach pain. I listened to my father’s heartbeat and remembered when, as a young boy, I sat on his lap, feeling warm and protected. We could do little for one another here, but having someone close meant sharing traumas that the others had to endure alone.
CHAPTER XI
On Cattle Cars to Auschwitz
It was early morning. I had barely fallen asleep when I heard the police shouting, “Get up! We are moving out.” Our freedom was slipping further away. Instantly everyone was in motion. A half hour later the twenty-six hundred “good workers” stood in rows of fives. Papa was at my right, my instrument box was on my left, and the ubiquitous soup utensil, the menashka,dangled in front of me.
As the main gates opened, I had hoped to see Tadek, but our guards were gone. In their place stood an echelon of tall, stern-faced Croats wearing Waffen SS uniforms. Their green jackets were buttoned up to their chins, and heavy carbines hung over their shoulders. The black-uniformed German SS men held German shepherds on leashes. We were ordered to march.
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