The Dentist of Auschwitz

by Benjamin Jacobs

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll bring you back all the gasoline you want.” What a wonderful coincidence, we thought. We won’t need to worry about gasoline in the morning. There were enough sofas and beds for everyone, and we had a sense of leisure that was hard to comprehend. To lie down in a real bed under a soft, downy comforter was an unexpected luxury.

  The following morning we made two cardboard signs that read “Concentration Camp Inmates” to affix to our automobiles. But the sergeant was not there, and we began to worry. One of his squad quietly assured us that he would be back soon. “He is probably at his Fräulein’s,” the soldier said. The sergeant eventually arrived and signaled that the gasoline was in the trunk. He asked us not to fill our cars there, since that would get him in trouble. We checked, and indeed the cans were full. On the road to Lüdenscheid, we unscrewed one can and began pouring into the tank what we thought was gasoline. It lacked the plop, the odor, and the flow of gasoline. It was ordinary water. We could not believe that a friendly American would swindle us that way.

  We were on a busy road in wartime, with some water in the tank, unable to move. For the next hour we tried to stop a passing vehicle until finally a jeep halted with army officers aboard. They gave us a canister of real gasoline. At the same time we learned that Germany had just surrendered. It was May 8. The war in Europe was over.

  The engine of our Fiat sputtered and coughed but after a while began to idle. As we drove on toward Lüdenscheid, we once again returned to the British Zone. We arrived at the home of the Happes around midnight. Mr. Happe was stunned to see Hermann and even more so the ten of us with him. In spite of the late hour Frau Happe and served us food, a full meal. We were vigilant and still distrustful of all German people, but the Happes’ hospitality was genuine. There must have been more like them. Where were they? Why were they just bystanders?

  Lüdenscheid was a picturesque small town untouched by the ravages of the bitter conflict. It was nestled in a region called Sauerland, with lush green meadows and bountiful soil. A small river, the Volme, wound along the main road to the county seat of Hagen. Not a single house there bore the scars of war. With great fanfare, Mr. Happe introduced us to the town elders, the mayor, and the police chief. Lüdenscheid had had a small number of Jews before the war. Only one survived. The mayor, a former Nazi, made every effort to show that he had liked Jews. He said they missed the Jews who had once lived there and urged us to stay. He also promised to help find us housing and jobs. They all showed great respect for Mr. Happe’s new friends.

  Being the first concentration camp survivors in town made us celebrities. My brother and Srulek still wore their striped suits. I had on the navy uniform from the depot at Neustadt. The mayor offered, and we accepted, a complete set of clothing, furnishings, and an apartment. The cinemas in town issued us free passes for life, as did the dramatic theater. Suddenly everyone was our friend. No one, it seemed, had any role in our persecutions, and they all disclaimed their complicity in the Nazi regime. I could not believe that they had come full circle to see us as human again in just a few days.

  Seven of our friends left to return to Poland. My brother and Srulek wanted to stay in Lüdenscheid. I was not yet ready to settle there. Hermann wanted to return to Ahlberg, in Bavaria, to his wife and children. When he asked if I would like to come, I accepted his invitation.

  Chapter XX

  Postwar Germany

  Leaving with Hermann helped me to ease the pain of the last five years, and to begin to adapt a new reality. When we left Lüdenscheid most roads were still impassible, especially in the larger cities in Germany. Hermann stopped in Giessen to see some of his prewar colleagues of the SPD, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland, in which he had once been active. In some cities the Americans wanted us to speak to the German functionaries about our ordeal. As if in a conspiracy of silence, they claimed to a man not to have known about any concentration camp or death camp. Hermann and I talked a lot about that. I got to know Germany’s peculiarities and its diversities. He knew the country well—and knew when not to believe the Germans.

  When we came to his family in Ahlberg, I witnessed true happiness. His wife sobbed with joy when she saw him. The children would not let go of him the whole day. Soon his German SPD friends came, glad that he had survived. They were to rebuild the Gewerkschaften, the labor unions, which were outlawed by the Third Reich. I went with Hermann to a few of their meetings. I soon felt that it was time for me to leave. But where would I go? America always was the country of my dreams. I still wanted to reach France, from which I thought to have a better chance of getting to the United States.

  Hermann and I had only the one car, but we solved that problem. The American army Major, in charge of Núremberg called the depot where confiscated automobiles were housed and ordered the men there to give us any car we chose. I saw a 1936 Adler cabriolet. Hermann Josef agreed to keep the Fiat, and I took the Adler. An automobile registration was still unavailable, so I tied the sign to identify me as a former KZ-nick to the front grill of the Adler. The next day I began my journey to France. It was the middle of June and very warm. Mrs. Josef packed some food, and I took a few German marks with me. The real currency in Germany then, however, was nylon stockings, chocolate, and American cigarettes. The road south wound through the rolling hills of Bavaria. Driving with the top of the Adler down, I could smell the pristine country air. Along the road, set wide apart, were spacious homes, draped with wide verandas. None bore any scars of war.

  Then I saw two boys on the road waving their arms. Their colorful clothes reminded me of circus clowns. Coming closer, I saw Stars of David on their shirts. I stopped and asked them who they were. At first I frightened them. They didn’t know if I was a friend or a foe. But when I told them who I was, they relaxed. Akiva was from Budapest, and his companion, Yaakow, who had a slightly swollen cheek, was from Iai, Romania. They were both sixteen and had recently been freed from Dachau. I asked them if they had relatives. To this they twirled their index fingers unemotionally up to the sky, showing that their families had been killed at the chimneys. They feared being sent back to their countries and were not sure where else to go. They had strayed around for a month, living on what the GIs gave them and sleeping in the forests. I asked them if they would want to come with me to France, and they readily agreed.

  For the next few days we lived like vagabonds, roving, rambling, not knowing where our next meal would come from. We stopped at ponds and streams and washed up amid the blossoming lily pads that covered them. On hot days we swam in the clear waters. We halted at American army depots, where we watched, fascinated, as soldiers tossed a little white ball with stitched seams while others caught it in strange-looking, big brown gloves. On some evenings we sat among them and listened to their portable radios playing the Big Band sound. All this was new to us. On cool nights we would stop at a church, a rectory, or a monastery, where we were allowed to sleep. After several days we arrived at the northern tip of Lake Constance, or the Bodensee, as the locals call it. To the south, amid green, gently rolling hills and breathtaking snowcapped mountains, were colorful chalets. In time Akiva and Yaakow felt as if I were their older brother, and to me they were “my boys.”

  Yaakow’s cheek kept on swelling. He needed help. I only had a few marks, not enough to pay for a dentist’s service. At the edge of the Black Forest we came to a town called Tuttlingen. We stopped at the first dentist’s office. When the dentist learned who we were, he did the procedure free, extracting Yaakow’s bicuspid. He used a brand of equipment called Simmons, which reminded me of the equipment of Fürstengrube.

  The next day we were on a road in the Alps, leading to the Alsace-Lorraine region of France. It wound around the mountains like a roller coaster. Suddenly we saw two men in French army uniforms with bundles on their backs. I asked them where they were going, and they said they had been prisoners of war in Germany and were now returning home. I offered to take them with us, and they readi
ly accepted. They were pleased not to have to struggle up the road, and we hoped that having them with us would be of benefit at the border. In the next two days we shared food, and we became good friends. I also managed to improve my French.

  At the border, French soldiers stopped us, and we were escorted to their headquarters, in a magnificent mansion. We followed them into the driveway, and the five of us were led to an office. We passed a hallway lined with light-colored mosaic marble. On the floor lay Oriental rugs. A circular staircase led to large mahogany doors. There some army officers, including women, gathered around us, curious to know who we were. Our two French companions acted as if they were at home.

  We were celebrities and were invited to dine with them and, of course, to stay the night. At dinnertime we were led into a large Louis XV-style dining room, where twenty chairs sat around a heavy mahogany table covered with a snow-white damask tablecloth. A large crystal chandelier hung over the table from a nine-meter-high ceiling. Fine china and crystal dazzled our eyes, and carafes of red wine stood spaced in the middle of the table. Soon the room filled with decorated French officers. Then a statuesque-looking gentleman entered. He was the commanding officer of the army division stationed in Alsace-Lorraine, a lieutenant general.

  As he sat down at the head of the table, everyone else also assumed places. Our two new friends translated his questions and comments into German for us. Now and then someone raised a toast, and though we didn’t comprehend why, we lifted our glasses and drank the wine with everyone else. I felt nothing strange until it was too late. Even before the first dish was served, Yaakow and Akiva’s heads slumped on the table. I tried to force myself to keep my eyes open, but everything around me began spinning as if I were sitting on a fast carousel. I passed out. When I awoke it was morning. I lay in a large building on straw, covered with army blankets. Next to me were my boys. We shared the quarters with several sleeping French soldiers.

  I walked out of the building and stopped a passing soldier, asking him where our interpreter friends, the two Frenchmen, were. He didn’t seem to know. I looked everywhere but could not find them. It seemed as if the two former prisoners of war had disappeared. Then I asked where my car was, but no one seemed to know that either. Finally I went to the office. One soldier made a few telephone calls, and what he told me sounded incredible. “The two ex-prisoners collaborated with the Germans during their internment,” he said. “They are under arrest.” We were not allowed even to say adieu.

  It took over an hour for us to find our car, which now had a nearly empty tank. “You have to return to the American Zone and apply for a visa there before you can go to France,” a soldier said. I appealed to him, begging him to let us at least go to Strasbourg and apply there. “There aren’t any French consulates in Germany,” I said. This we could not do either, he said. He made it unequivocally clear that we had to go back, and so we did.

  I had to change my plans. I drove back on the same road that we had arrived on. Once more we were in the majestic Alps. I began to worry about the boys’ future. They needed a home and an education, neither of which I could offer them. When I first talked to them about it, they didn’t want to listen, for they preferred the gypsy life. Traveling with me was all they wanted. In Munich I heard about a Jewish American organization called HIAS, for Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, whose offices were in Frankfurt-am-Main. On the road to Frankfurt, when we stopped, I tried to reason with them. They left me and walked off into the forest. When I found them, Yaakow confessed that they were praying that I would change my mind.

  In Frankfurt the survivors had a new name, DPs (displaced persons), and were housed in the Olympia Hotel in a part of town close to the main railroad station. Allied bombs had severely damaged the Olympia, and only the two lower levels could be used. The staircase was rubble. We found room in a corner on the second floor and settled there. The next day, Isidor Cohen, a New York rabbi and U.S. Army chaplain came to the hotel.

  Rabbi Cohen was stout with gray hair. He was a warm and compassionate man. He saw the boys, and he asked me to bring them to him at the airport. When we came to his office the next day, another captain, also a chaplain, was with him. They spoke a strange-sounding American Yiddish, sprinkled with English words that I did not understand. We were joined by a middle-aged woman wearing a green army uniform with a patch on one sleeve that said “UNRRA.” The three discussed the fate of the boys. Then the woman turned to me and said firmly, “Leave the boys. They will go to the States as soon as we can arrange visas for them.”

  Though I realized that this course of action was in the boys’ best interests, it was difficult for me to think of losing them. I had gotten so used to them that we had grown into a family. Akiva and Yaakow looked at me as if to accuse me of abandoning them. The rabbi read how the boys’ feelings translated in my mind. “You don’t have to worry. They will be well cared for here,” he said. I asked the rabbi if I could also come. He said no. At my age I had to be sponsored and was advised to register with UNRRA, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Knowing that I had a car, in fact the only one at the Olympia Hotel, the rabbi proposed that I come to the army kitchen every day to pick up food for the DPs in the hotel. My Adler convertible soon carried a barrel of food to the hotel every day, and I could visit with my two boys. One day, however, I was told that they had been sent to America. That was the last I saw of Akiva and Yaakow.

  More DPs arrived at the hotel, and it was soon nicknamed the Refugee Hotel. The Olympia was in fact the central meeting place for refugees arriving in Frankfurt. Many names were scribbled on the walls as people sought friends and relatives. Some succeeded in finding one another. Slowly people from partisan groups began to emerge from their hiding places. The girls began to dress in neater clothes, and the boys began to woo them. Some even learned how to smile, to frolic, and to be light again, and soon some married. Committees formed, and leaders emerged. More survivors began to arrive from the east, and the Olympia was bulging with people. We cleared the rubble from two additional floors, cleaned the rooms, and still did not have enough room. People were sleeping in the corridors and stairways. And yet more were comming.

  On one day Rabbi Cohen, accompanied by a high-ranking American army officer, announced that we had to vacate the Olympia. The hotel would be renovated for American army personnel, and we would be moved forty kilometers from Frankfurt, to Salzheim. We had not heard of Salzheim before. When a few of us went there to see it, we found a camp with identical little huts neatly set in lines, which reminded me of concentration camp barracks. When we returned to the Olympia, I picked up my few things and left.

  It was a nice summer afternoon. I was driving along the Mainzerlandstraße, having made no decision what to do, when two girls stopped me and asked if I would take them to their hotel. I agreed. They were both Russian, about my age, and very pretty. Since they had been working in German households, they spoke German well. When they heard that I had no place to stay, they offered me a sofa in their hotel room. I accepted an overnight invitation, but my stay turned into more than just a brief visit with them. I buried my loneliness in romance. One day two Soviet secret policemen came to force them to return home to Russia. That was the beginning of a general repatriation of all Russians from Germany. I decided then to go back to Lüdenscheid.

  Srulek Lipschitz, helped by an electrical appliance manufacturer, had opened an electrical retail store. My brother also had a business selling beauty aids, perfumes, and cosmetics. The Westphalia Dental Association and the German Medical Association granted me temporary permission to practice dentistry in Germany, and I began to practice in Menden, Westphalia, in a Polish DP camp. When the camp closed, I founded the Westfälische Zahnwaren Grosshandlung, a dental supply house that thrived even after I left Germany.

  Finding Zosia was my constant thought. Short of going back to Poznan, I did everything to find her, but it was all in vain. Her last known whereabouts, I learned, was somewhere in Germ
any, where she worked as a forced laborer, a Zwangsarbeiter. She had not return to Poznan.

  One day I heard the name Harry Spitz mentioned on Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, the first German radio station broadcasting in Hamburg after the war. When I called him, he invited me to come to see him in Hamburg. The station offices, on the Oberstraße, were in good condition for that street. On the building’s facade was a menorah. Inside, a Star of David over the staircase. Unusual, I thought, for a German radio station.

  I gave the receptionist my name and told her whom I had come to see. “Do you have an appointment with the music director?” she asked. I said no but requested that she give Herr Spitz my name. “Herr Spitz, a man by the name of Bronek Jakubowicz is here to see you.”

  Harry came dashing down the stairs and fell into my arms. Over and over again he kept repeating, “This young man saved my life in Auschwitz.” Then he took me through the building. It had been built at the beginning of the eighteenth century and indeed had been a synagogue. It had several large studios, one the size of an amphitheater. It survived all the Allies’ heavy bombing. We spent twenty-four hours together reminiscing.

  Germany was a puzzle. In a sense the Germans were less anti-Semitic than the rest of the Europeans. Where did Hitler find the criminals to perpetrate those insane crimes on the Jews?

  For the Germans life was slowly returning to normal. But we were too traumatized to live peacefully among them. In Germany we had to walk the same streets, eat the same food, and breathe the same air as they did. The sinners were suddenly saints, the guilty just bystanders. For reasons not hard to understand, even the best-known Nazis denied their complicity in the Holocaust. We had to be careful what we said and whom to trust. This posed an unexplainable question. Yet we had to maintain civility and often had to bite our tongues to avoid saying how we really felt. For me the four years I lived in Germany after the war offered many lessons, about both the good and the bad in humankind. In those four years I was in and out of German hospitals seeking help for the ulcer pains that still plagued me.