Several of us younger and stronger fellows, loaded the corpses onto low-wheeled trolleys and took them to the trenches. After we dumped our fellow Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and ‘enemies of the state’ into the trenches, we ran back to the gas building and gathered up the piles of goods and took them to a central warehouse where we distributed them into the appropriate bins. We stole and hid what we could, which wasn’t much because we were guarded closely, especially in the early days. In the evenings, before we were sent back to our barracks, the guards stripped us and inspected our clothes, often beating us with clubs and short whips for no reason. It got to be routine and I hated the guards who did this. Hated them with a passion that burns in me to this day. I still bear the scars on my back and in my joints from the brutality. Not all guards were so brutal though, and towards the end of the war, youngsters replaced the older guards nearly my own age. This lessened the number of beatings as the younger guards saw us as nearly like them. I sometimes slipped a gold tooth to one particular guard. He rarely hit me. I don’t know if he shared with the other guards or with the commandant, a Major Boettcher. I suspect he didn’t, but who can say? Those were terrible times and nothing really made any sense. We worked hard. The trains kept coming, bringing more and more people until I wondered if there was anyone left in Europe. Perhaps the young guards were frightened as the war’s end approached.
But the trains grew fewer, perhaps due to increased Allied bombings, lack of fuel or a scarcity of enemies of the state. Soon they stopped altogether. Many of the other inmates died from diseases like malaria, tuberculosis, scurvy, or just wore out. As the guards, who still of fighting age, were rounded up and sent to the fronts, this left just a couple of old men, pensioners from the last war, as if there were any more pensions to collect; and finally, towards the end, some of the Hitler Youth lads. Most of these were too young to fight in regular army units, but they were the only ones left to guard the camps.
I hope you’re sitting down when you read this. Your Uncle Hans was a member of the Hitler Youth (Hitler-Jugend or HJ) and a camp guard.
I know what you’re thinking. How could that be? He was such a good Jew. He was my brother and your uncle. Yes, yes, that was what you were supposed to think. Wait, Hans wants to say something here.
***
Oy, your father simply runs on and on, doesn’t he? Now for my story, if anyone is interested. You know all the old tales about how your father and I fought in the Warsaw Ghetto together, how we were in a camp and came to America after the war? O.K., so it’s partly true, only not the part about the Warsaw Ghetto. We were in a camp and did come to America together.
Didn’t you children once ask why we had no tattoos on our forearms? Do you remember what I said? That I was a latecomer and that there was no one to run the tattoo needle on the day I came to the camp? Well, your Pop and I weren’t at Auschwitz, and that was the only camp that tattooed prisoners. But the real reason is because I wasn’t a prisoner. I was a guard.
I was born and brought up in a town near the Black Forest close by the Austrian border. I had a normal childhood. I went to school, joined the Boy Scouts, had a sister named Ilsa and a father who was a middle manager at a nearby Daimler Benz factory. My mother was sickly and died when I was eight. Ilsa and I were close, and it was she who introduced me to the Deutsches Jungvolk, the junior version of the Hitler Youth. I loved it. We went camping and I learned to shoot a gun and ride a horse. We sang songs and took part in rallies. By the time I was fourteen, I was head of my cell. I tried to enlist in the Waffen SS, but I was too young and my father, who was a good member of the party, wouldn’t lie for me. Instead, I helped the local police. We watched for saboteurs and made sure that people used their blackout curtains. To my everlasting shame, I also helped round up Jews and vandalized their shops and homes. In other words, I was a good little Nazi boy.
We all knew the war was ending and not in a good way for the German people again. So I was surprised when I got a call from our district commander. He was an older man named Strichcher, who had lost an arm and one eye in the last war. He told me to pack a bag and take a train to Kefferstadt, a camp near Dachau. I was excited. I was going to war! I bade my father and sister goodbye, and went off the next day. Shortly after that, our town was bombed, and my father and sister were killed. I didn’t find this out until much later.
And so I came to the camp known as Kefferstadt. It was a small, remote camp out in the country, almost five miles from the nearby town of Keffer. Along the front of the camp was a tall row of barbed wire stretching between two high guard towers, with a gate in the center. The barbed wire was nailed to posts set about two meters apart. In the rear was only one guard tower but it had a powerful searchlight and was always manned. Inside the gate was a long building. This contained Commandant Boettcher’s office and quarters, the guard’s barracks, and the mess hall. These buildings were made of wood, whitewashed with green trim, very neat, very German. In the compound were two stone buildings that looked like cottages and a row of six wooden buildings. These were the barracks for the prisoners. They were also made of wood, though not painted or trimmed. The roofs were corrugated tin and leaked when it rained, I learned later. Inside were rows of wooden shelving racks, three high, with no bedding. The men slept on the bare wood.
There were no provisions for women. They were gassed as soon as they arrived at the camp. I thank God I never had to witness this shameful deed. Off to the side was a smaller building that I learned was the kitchen for the prisoners. It was almost a lean to with one side open to the wind. They had no mess hall and ate their two - sometimes one meal - per day outdoors or, in the winter, in the barracks.
I was given a uniform that was too large and a rifle and told that we were to operate the camp as before and await orders. I met your father one day when we were both ordered to sort through the valuables in the storeroom. I assumed they were getting ready to ship these things to Berlin. At first I spoke harshly to him, after all, I was older and a good Nazi and he, a despised Jew.
Chapter 2 - Herschel’s Story
I have to tell you what my life was like, my beautiful children. Up until the time I was about eight, it was idyllic. We lived in town, in a big apartment behind the jewelry store. My father and grandfather would go out front each day and open the shop that had been in the family for years. My sister Miriam, my brother Isaac and I would go off to school. My mother would clean the house and make some jewelry designs for the shop. My Bubby had died while I was a baby. Miriam said she remembered her, but I think she was just referring to the picture that hung in our parlor.
The first time I remembered things not being good was a day when I was walking home from school and some boys started yelling at me. They hollered, “Jew, Jew!” and threw rocks at Isaac and me. We ran, Isaac pulling on my hand to make me run faster. When we got to the shop, my Papa, who was a big man, strode outside and shook his fist at the boys and yelled back at them.
After that day, it got worse. Over the next two years, we took a different route home from school each day until the groups of boys got larger. Soon they were waiting at all of our routes. Isaac sometimes got into fistfights, but there were too many of them. He was slight yet wiry, like my Mama, and full of fire. He beat them back lots of times, especially when he called them cowards and took them on one at a time. I tried to help him and though I was tall for my age, was slim and might have filled out like my Papa if I’d had the chance. At the time, however, I was too little to fight.
Then one night in 1938 a large group of men and boys, people we knew and had never had any problems with, came down our street in what was called the Jewish Quarter. They started throwing rocks through windows as they walked, chanting and yelling. By the time they got to our shop, they had worked themselves into an angry mob. What was even more disturbing is that they were joined by some policemen, men who were supposed to protect us.
Why were they angry with us? I spotted Mr. Bruger and his son Leny t
here. They were yelling very loudly and holding torches. Just two weeks before, Mr. Bruger had bought a pin for his wife’s birthday from Papa. My brother and Leny were in the same classes. When Papa and Grandpapa came out front and stood before the door, they each had long sticks in their hands.
Papa tried to talk to them, saying that whatever they were angry at, it wasn’t anything he had done. He pointed to Mr. Bruger and Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Westergarten and asked what they wanted. I stood in the doorway with Isaac. Mama and Miriam stood way back in the dark shop, keeping very quiet. Papa and Grandpapa had told them to do so.
Mr. Bruger yelled, “You are Jews!”
“Yes,” my Papa answered. “You’ve known that all our lives. Why does that make a difference now?” He stood erect, tapping the stout stick against his boot. My Grandpapa leaned on his, hat pulled low on his face. I thought he looked like one of those cowboys in the American movies.
In answer, Mr. Bruger threw a stone that hit my father in the chest and bounced off. To his credit, Mr. Bruger, a slim and balding fellow, looked sheepish. Then a policeman drew his pistol and shot the large front window out. It shattered into millions of pieces. Most fell inward, while some large pieces dropped and exploded into the street. Everyone was quiet for a minute not knowing what to do next.
Papa strode up to the policeman and, towering over him, asked in a loud voice, “What the hell did you do that for? You’ll pay for that glass.”
Then, to the astonishment of all, the policeman shot my father point blank into his chest. Papa stared at the hole in his shirt, the red spreading. Then he looked up and hit the policeman with his stick so hard that the side of the policeman’s face just crumpled. He fell at my Papa’s feet and then Papa fell to his knees, one hand over his chest and finally collapsed on top of the policeman.
My grandpapa ran to my father and another policeman shot him in the head. He, too, fell forward. My mother and Miriam screamed and ran out of the shop, pushing past Isaac and me. I wanted to run too, but Isaac’s grip on my shoulder was like an iron vise.
Before Mama and Miriam could get to Papa and Grandpapa, the crowd grabbed them and tore their clothes from their bodies. I turned my face into Isaac’s chest and cried. I was ten years old, and I cried like a little baby. Later Isaac, who was thirteen, told me that the men, our former friends and neighbors, had raped them repeatedly. Then they rushed into the shop. Isaac and I were dragged out and punched and kicked until we lost consciousness.
When we awoke, it was dawn. The street was clear of men, and the sun glinted on a carpet of shards of glass. I read later that this was called “Krystall Nacht” because of all the glass. We never saw Mama or Miriam again. We heard that they had been sent to a work camp called Ravensbrueck, but it turned out to be an extermination camp for women. I only knew of my Mama’s and sister’s fate from a ledger that was recovered by the Russians from the partially demolished camp. Years later they gave a copy to the British, who published the list. Until then, I never knew, and it haunted me.
Isaac and I hid in our apartment behind the shop and survived, often scuttling through the streets and alleys late at night and searching through garbage cans for food, like the rats they called us.
One night Isaac spotted Mr. Bruger, and we followed him. He had been one of the men who had cheered when my papa and grandpapa had been shot. He’d been one of the men who had torn the clothes from my mother and sister and held them while the men had raped and raped them. He had once been a friend, we thought. Isaac was crazed that night. When Mr. Bruger was opposite an alley entryway, Isaac grabbed him and pulled him in. After a brief struggle, Isaac hit Mr. Bruger on the head with a cobblestone. He hit him and hit him until there was nothing left of his pinched face.
After that we were hunted and finally we were caught. Isaac tried to stay with me, but he was sent to a camp called Gross-Rosen, in the east of Germany. I was sent to a small camp named Kefferstadt near the Swiss border. It was a sub-camp of the much larger one at Dachau, though I was never there, thanks be to God. You could smell the stench from Dachau all the way to our camp in the woods some days. There were never more than four or five hundred of us in Kefferstadt. I was now thirteen and almost two meters tall, though very thin.
The Nazis usually sent boys younger than fifteen off to be gassed but I lied and was tall so they let me live. Can you call what I did living?
Sonderkommando is what we were called. I, and a few others, would go into the gas buildings after everyone was dead and the gas had dissipated, pull the bodies out, and transport them to the trenches dug between the back fence and the wood. The clothing, valuables, shoes and even the underclothes were all taken to the counting shed. We separated the valuables and once a week a courier from Berlin would come and retrieve the best items. They weren’t interested in the clothing, so the counting house , began to fill up though mice and moths enjoyed the feasts there.
I think Kefferstadt was originally designed as a work camp. One of the older prisoners told me that early in the war there were sewing machines and they made uniform blouses for SS officers. All that was now forgotten, and that building sat unused.
We were merely a disposal camp. I’m sure that the Commandant at Dachau, who was the OberKommandant of the main camp and the dozens of sub-camps, had forgotten us. Our Major Boettcher supposedly reported to him.
Chapter 3 - Hans’ Story
I came to Kefferstadt on a cold, overcast day. I got off the train in the nearby town of Keffer, but there was no one at the station to meet me. I waited for more than an hour but still no one came. Finally I asked the stationmaster how I could get to Kefferstadt. He told me that it was down a road to the east. It was early autumn, and the weather was still warm. When the wind let up a bit, I started walking, my bag perched on my shoulder. As I walked, the fields gave way to a small forest. It was beautiful, with the leaves turning color, all golden and red. One would not know there was a war on.
After a while, a farm cart pulled by a skinny nag came along and the driver let me ride with him. He was thin and bent, wisps of gray hair peeking out from under a battered straw hat. When I told him my destination, he shook his head and muttered something I didn’t quite understand, something about an abattoir and hell.
At last we came to a fork in the road and he pointed to the left. About one-half kilometer, he said, and threw my bag down. By the time I alighted and had retrieved my bag, all I saw was the back of the cart. Then he was gone around a sharp bend.
I came to the gate in the late afternoon. There was one guard. When I showed him my papers, he let me in and directed me to the Commandant’s office. My first impression of the camp was gray. Everything was gray, nothing painted. A row of ramshackle barracks obviously for the prisoners, weathered wood with rusty corrugated metal roofing. Rows of barbed wire surrounded the camp. As I entered through the gate, to my left was the Commandant’s Office. Like the rest, it was a wooden framed building with corrugated iron roofing, similar to the prisoners’ barracks, though somewhat better constructed. At one time it may have been painted but that was long ago and only a few flakes remained. There was a narrow porch but no chairs or tables on it. It was merely meant to provide a place to stand in inclement weather while waiting for the commandant’s secretary to allow admittance.
A Major Boettcher was Commandant and took my papers. My first impression of him was that he was a professional soldier, in his fifties with a square jaw, close-cropped graying hair and a short fleshy nose. What I most remembered was his eyebrows. Thick and dark, almost obscuring his pale gray eyes. He snorted, “Kinder, all I get is kinder.” He turned to me with a sigh, “Go to your barracks and draw a uniform and weapon. It is the second building on the left as you exit. If you can’t find it, Schwartz or one of the other guards will show you.” I left him looking down at a newspaper, head in hands.
I found the barracks and a sergeant named Granski. I introduced myself and offered him my hand. He snorted and slapped it away, “So you are
here to help exterminate the rats, eh?” He was squat with greasy black hair and bristly black whiskers.
I was confused. Rats? Were we overrun with rats? I looked around at the dingy barracks room. It was dark, and the place was long overdue for paint. Three dim light bulbs glowed trying to seep into the gloom between bunk beds and lockers. The windows were coated with grime and the floor with dirt and dust. So this was my new home.
I frowned at Sgt. Granski. “Rats?”
He chuckled, “Rats. Jews. Queers. They are all the same. We keep them here until the Reich tells us to grind up another batch.” He grinned through widely gapped teeth. Then he turned on his heel and led me to a bunk with a half folded mattress. It was thin and smelled of mold.
I looked at the rows of bunk beds. “How many guards are there, Sergeant? There must be a large contingent to fill this room.”
“Only ten now, young Hans. But now we only have about one-hundred and fifty rats to guard.” He laughed again and snorted, “Guard! As if any of the rats are going anywhere. They couldn’t even if they wanted to.”
I frowned, “Why is that, Sergeant?”
He grinned. “Too weak. Too sick. Too scared.”
And so that was my introduction to the camp at Kefferstadt and one of my fellow guards. We kept the gate closed and sat in the towers or fed the guard dogs. The camp kept several large Alsatians. I was told that at one time, this camp bred the guard dogs.
Sometimes a truck would bring a couple of new prisoners but even that finally ceased. Once I saw a guard shoot a prisoner for no apparent reason, out of boredom I expect. I was not much given to abusing the rats, as the prisoners were called, though if one were slow, I was ordered to give him a rough shove.
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