MEMOIRS OF SHERESHEV

By MOISHE KANTOROWITZ

Chapter 11.B

The wagon is full with thick and heavy boards.  We harness ourselves onto the wagon, others take up positions around the wagon and, with encouragement from the foreman’s stick, the wagon begins to move slowly forward.  The wagon is so heavy and I can see the others straining with their last ounce of strength and the stick keeps on falling.  We reach a piece of road where the ground is a bit firmer and the wagon moves easier.  The foreman disappears for a moment and is back with a long stick.  He shoves the stick in between the spikes of the front wheels and the wagon comes to a stop.  The foreman in an uncontrollable rage starts hitting blindly and indiscriminately over heads, shoulders and backs.  He stops in front of a young man now a caricature of a former young man and starts hitting him mercilessly.  I see that the young man is trying hard to stay on his feet and I wonder why, maybe if he would fall down the foreman would leave him alone.  The heavy blows are too much for that exhausted soul to withstand and he falls down.  The foreman delivers a few more blows to his head to immobilize him.  With his boot he delivers a few kicks to turn him around, face up.  We watch in horror as the foreman puts his stick across the poor young man’s throat, steps with one foot on one end of the stick and brings the other foot on the other end.  The skinny neck does not resist the weight of the well fed foreman, the German criminal with the green triangle who is actually a “Silesian” who spoke German and Polish but considered himself German.  We look with sympathy and fear as his tortured soul expires before our eyes.  The foreman knows only too well when one is dead.  He picks up his stick and without missing a beat starts swinging it at us.  He pulls out the long stick from between the wheels spikes and the wagon moves again.

We stop in front of another group of workers.  Their foreman is a tall man with his left arm completely missing.  He has a red triangle with the letter “P’ (Pole).  In front of him is a little stand on which there are some papers.  The men under his command are measuring and stacking up the planks and timber according to size while he, the foreman, writes them down.  I look at those workers with envy and feel sorry for myself.  We unload the wagon and go for another load.  Again the pummeling, the beating, the back breaking under the heavy timber and I wonder how long can I survive in here.  The mid day whistle comes as if the Messiah.  On the way to lining up, I notice a red camp bowl stuck among the timber pile.  I pick it up and go to line up for the soup.  During the midday break, I strike up a conversation with my co workers a sorry lot of beaten, broken young Jews. They tell me that the group I work with is called commando “Holtz-Platz” (lumber yard), it is a straff-kommando (penal company) an that here are being sent all those that commit any transgression in this factory.  The group consists of some fifty to sixty men.  It depends on the mortality rate which is on the average ten percent per day.  The foreman’s name, whose acquaintance I had the misfortune to make that morning, was Pilarek.  That Pilarek has an assistant, a Polish prisoner who is not much better than himself.  There is a capo, a German prisoner with a green triangle (professional criminal) who leaves it up to Pilarek to do the grizzly work and there is of course a schreiber. (registrar).

After the break the same hell.  I think to myself:  What crime have I committed that I should deserve such an end and Pilarek keeps on hitting.  We carry boards.  They are thick and heavy and we carry two at a time.  One is unable to put them on his shoulder so somebody lifts up one end and you put you shoulder under it, a second man carried the other end.  We carry them in a long line with Pilarek at our side hitting constantly.  He concentrates in particular on the legs between the knee and the ankle.  We can hear as the stick lands on the bony legs of the unfortunate who, under the heavy weight of the boards and the fear of dropping them, can not even make the attempts to avoid them.  Pilarek finds his victims; an unfortunate young boy falls with the boards.  He does not get a chance to get up.  Pilarek’s heavy sticks keep on falling over him without a stop.  At the beginning the boy coves himself with his hands and arms but soon he can not move them fast enough.  Then they cease moving and the boy lies helpless under Pilarek’s blows.  With a few more blows of Pilarek’s heavy stick, the boy lies motionless and Pilarek is placing his stick across his throat. .I look with horror at the macabre scene and see myself under his stick.  I feel grief for not leaving the ghetto together with my family.  I could have spent with them two more days in the train and gone together into the gas chamber.  What for did I have to suffer the past two months?  The hunger, the cold, the beating, the anguish, the agony, the pain, what for…?  With such disheartening and dark thoughts my first day on the “Holtz-Platz.” passed  At six o’clock the whistle blows and we run to line up in our hundred. A capo supervises to make sure we are five in a row, twenty rows to the hundred.  The hundred is divided in ten groups, two rows to a group, one of the ten is appointed and in charge of every ten.  He has the numbers of the ten under his charge and makes sure they are all present.  The man in charge of our ten is a Pole of about thirty five and unlike the others in my group, who are all Poles and seem to have good and assured positions in D.A.W., he behaves himself humbly and speaks to me, the only Jew, decently.  The others ignore me as if I was not there, which suits me fine.  What happened to the killed ones I do not know until I turn around and see at the end of the last hundred a covered wagon is being pulled by prisoners and until then, I did not know what is in it. 

After the appell, when I sit on my bunk and take off the soggy shoes which I received coming to Auschwitz from Birkenau, I notice that my feet are swollen and I wonder what they will look like tomorrow after work if I will survive the day.   I am totally exhausted and morally broken.  I stretch out on my bunk asking G-D why I deserve it.  With dark thoughts on my mind, I fall asleep.  When I am awakened by the gong, I ask G-D why he has not taken me to him.  Why he is exposing me to another day like yesterday.  How well it would have been to fall asleep and not to get up.  I am again in my formation of hundred and the entire commando of twelve hundred with me from D.A.W. starts out.  Again after getting to the factory, we hear the command; Commando Eintreten, everyone runs to his group.  Yesterday morning I was running to fall in with Halley number three, but now I have to go to the Penal Commando (column).  I feel that today is my last day on earth, but what is worse is the way I have to part with the world, by the murderous beatings and being throttled by the murderer Pilarek.  We fall in.  The schreiber (registrar) checks all the numbers.  A few are missing and we all know that their tortured souls expired over night in the block.

The group that measures and stacks the planks is separated from us and led away by their one armed Pole.  We, the remaining, are being divided into two groups.  One is under the supervision of Pilarek and the other under the supervision of his Polish assistant.  The work is the same and the Polish foreman yells and hits too, but not as much as Pilarek.  He hits and beats if we do not move fast enough or if one tries to pick up a lighter plank or log instead of the closes one to him. We strain with all the strength we have left, but at least the Polish foreman does not stop the wagon wheels from turning.  The two Poles that joined us yesterday for whatever sin they committed are not with us today.  I ask my co workers how come?  They were in better shape than we.  I am told that Poles or even Russians do not remain to work on the Holtz Platz; they are being taken into other places to work.  It is only Jews when brought here to this commando are condemned to remain here and to end their short life in suffering.  Even though the beating under the Polish assistant was less than under Pilarek, the work was not.  With a sigh of relief we welcomed the noon whistle.  I find the red bowl that I hid yesterday, stay in line and get my soup.  I eat fast for I was told that the capo took some men to “Canada”.  (the name given to the group that worked at sorting the belongings of Jews brought to Auschwitz).  The prisoners working in “Canada” often left their soup and our capo arranged to bring it and distribute it among us.  It was not for our benefit that he made this arrangement.  He used it as a pretext to enter that fenced off place for his own benefit.  As our capo was escorting the soup carriers out of that fenced up and guarded place, he succeeded to become friends with the capo of the group working inside and I am sure befriended a few SS men who used to search the soup carriers on their way out, even put a stick into the soup containers mixing it around to make sure there is nothing in it, except the soup.  Still my capo, a German with a green triangle (professional criminal), knew how to fool the SS men too and succeeded during those trips to smuggle out a fortune.

Thus it was that right after I finished my soup, we, the workers of the timber yard lined up among the piles of timber and received a bit additional soup.  This time I ate slowly and savored every spoonful.  I barely swallowed half a dozen spoonfuls when we hear the whistle that signals the end of the mid-day break.  Before I have a chance to take another spoonful, the foreman is near me and with his large hand grabs the bowl saying “Daj me tego” (give it to me.)  I still want to salvage another spoonful and he thunders “Zostaw lyzke,” (leave the spoon).  He takes the bowl, spoon and the bit of precious soup from me and hands it to a passing by Polish inmate.  The loss of the bowl was a loss but not as great as the bit of soup.  The spoon too was a loss for spoons were not supplied in the camp.  That very same afternoon I overheard my Polish foreman saying to a couple passing by Polish inmates; I do not like to supervise Poles.  I cannot beat them and yelling at them does not work.  But I do not mind beating Jews.  Still I have to admit that the second day was easier than the first and under the Poles supervision there were no dead casualties.  That day after the appell, entering the stube, I was called over by a French Jew of the forty two thousand who said to me; I saw you working under the supervision of Pilarek.  I too work on the “Holtz-Platz” but under the supervision of the tall Pole with the one arm.  I want to give you one advice.  If you want to live a bit longer, do not attempt to bribe Pilarek.  Tomorrow is when they distribute the “Tzulage”, the extra half a loaf of bread and a piece of sausage.  He, Pilarek, will expect you to bribe him with it so he shall go easier on you.  Give him nothing, for if you will, he will expect it every time and without this extra food, you will not last more than a few days even if he will not hit you.  I took his advice seriously. The next day I had Pilarek for my foreman and it was as bad as the first day.  The only short escape I discovered was the outdoors toilet.  It was exactly as those in Birkenau, a long box with several holes in it.  Except that it was smaller, consisting of about a dozen holes.  That little building served as a short refuge where we used to run in to catch our breath and lick our wounds.  The only problem was that there was a sort of supervisor appointed by Pilarek whose job it was to make sure that nobody over-stays or rather oversits his allowed couple minutes.  That man fulfilled his duty to the letter.  Otherwise he would have become Pilarek’s victim.

That third day I barely survived.  Returning to camp right after the appell, we received the “Tzulage”, the additional half a loaf of bread and the piece of sausage.  The piece of sausage I exchanged with a Pole for a quarter loaf of bread.  Most of the Poles had enough bread and craved sausage.  For me, the piece of bread was more filling.  For a small piece of bread, I bought a little cloth pouch in which I put one quarter (ration) of bread for the next day and the remaining half a loaf I ate but still remained hungry.  The following day I came to work with the remaining piece of bread in my pouch dangling on my belt for all to see including Pilarek.  I will admit there were others like me.      I expected a rough day, but not as rough as it turned out to be.  It made the previous day seem like child’s play.  I could not understand where that beast got the strength to hit so much without a break.  He did not forget me either.   As two of us were carrying two heavy boards, I in front and another man on the back end, Pilarek got a hold of me.  After a few blows on the back he started hitting me on my legs as his usual style was.  Now I really understood how that young man felt on my first day under Pilarek.  I no longer felt the blows, for the part of my leg between the knee and ankle was one unbearable pain.  Just as suddenly, he let go of me and started on someone else.  How I survived that day, I do not know, but I managed to get back on my bunk.  My legs were covered with bruises, one on top of the other, of all conceivable colors, and swollen to four times the normal size. I took off my shoes that were oozing mud from all day walking in mud and puddles of water created by the constant rain.  Taking off my jacket and shirt, I entered the wash room and stacked my legs under the constantly running cold water.  After a while my feet began to feel better, or maybe stopped having any feeling.  To the touch,they felt like ice.  In this condition, I stretched out on my bunk.  The total exhaustion put me to sleep in minutes.

Still I went to work the next day.  That morning we were bringing in planks into the main factory building, the four story stone building.  On the way out,  I asked an inmate for directions to the toilet.  He directed me to the basement.  I sneaked away from my group and made my way there.  The toilets there were individual in a tiled and heated room.  To my surprise I found there the man responsible for half a score in my hundred, the decent, in a sense, humble Pole, who held the job of looking after the toilet room and making sure the inmates do not overstay and do not make a hang out there.  I asked him if I am permitted to use the toilet, and he nodded with his head.  I did not feel like leaving that warm place under a roof and not fearing a blow from a stick.  Yet I did not want to take advantage of his “Hospitality” or to impose on him, so I thanked him and left. That day after work when we lined up in hundreds on the factory lot to go back to camp, he asked me where I work.  When I told him on the “Holtz-Platz”, he said you can come whenever you want.  I tried and learned to avoid working under Pilarek ‘s supervision as much as possible and preferred to work under the Poles.  From him I can get beaten up but not death.   A couple more days pass and it is Sunday again.  And again they are rounding up “volunteers” to go unload train loads of bricks, stones, sand, cement, logs and train rails.  I look for a way to get out of it.  The recruiters are already in the stube (room) and are driving Jews out.  There is no place to hide.  I look around quickly and see they are too busy pushing and hitting. I slid under the bunks.  It is a tight place, barely enough room for my head to squeeze under.  There is no problem with my body.  I lie quietly and hope that nobody noticed me.  From my position on the floor I can see many shoes passing by me.  I know to whom they belong.  The shiny boots to the SS men, the polished almost new leather shoes to the Blockaltester, capos, and their assistants and the worn out or with the wooden soles to us dejected, exhausted, hungry, hopeless Jews.  No, nobody noticed me sliding under the bunk.  They are not looking for me.  In the stube it is quiet now.  I slide out and look around.  Nobody even noticed me getting up.  I look at the faces that remained in the stube.  Like the Stubendienst Kazik (Cazmir), his assistant Wladek Schultzk who despite his German name is through and through a Pole and an raving anti-semite who never misses a chance to tell how he and his classmates before the war in  Poland used to break the Jewish store windows.  I see the capo of the first alley, Janek G. with half a dozen of his foremen among them the man who sleeps on the bunk over me the number eight hundred and five, even their personal attendant, a Pole by the name of Zygmund W.  Well let it be so, I think to myself. They are big shots, but I see ordinary Poles who work along side the many Jews in D.A.W.   Why have they been left alone while every Jew in the stube was taken?

I can understand that they have left a German by the name of Lawrence, a red (political) triangle.  He was a man over fifty with a very presentable personality that evokes respect from his appearance and much more from conversation.   He must have been some high official or politician in pre Nazi Germany.  He would not be taken to such work even though he had no rank or position in camp.  A few Poles look at me smiling mildly as if to say; you managed to wiggle out of it, but there was no malice in their faces.  I feel uncomfortable by myself, the only Jew in the stube. The Poles stretch out on their bunks for a nap, but I am uneasy.  They might come again for more.  Nobody comes.  There is an unreal silence in stube. No Jews to yell at or beat up.  The Stubendienst does not yell at Poles.  There is a moment of tranquility in hell. Noon is approaching. The stubendienst (room elder) orders me to take the red bowls from the cupboards and place them on the table.  Some prisoners bring in a large wooden barrel with hot soup.  It will stay hot until the “volunteers” return when it will be distributed.  I am told to sweep the passages between the bunks and throw the bit of dirt in the tile stove that warms our room.  I finish my job just before the volunteers return.      They come in dirty and covered with dust.  Many beaten up and injured from the sharp objects they handled.  I can see they had a hard morning.  They scrape off their clothes as much dirt as possible and line up for their liter of soup.  The Stubendienst Kazik dishes out everybody’s soup and orders me to collect the empty bowls.  After stacking them on the table, he tells me to take them to the wash room and have them washed.  After I washed them and put them back in the cupboards he handed me a bowl with soup.  If, dear reader, you think that extra liter soup calmed my hunger, you are grossly mistaken.  If you find it difficult to understand you know not what hunger is.

At work the following week was no different than the previous one.  One might be amazed as to how much a person can take, particularly when one is in good health and at the age of twenty.  Besides, I think that Pilarek realized that he will not get anything from me and eased up on me.  Not that the work was any easier, it is just that I learned something.  I started to go daily and more than once to the toilet where the time keeper was the Pole that was in charge of our unit of ten.  There I could sit for ten or even fifteen minutes at a time.  It happened once when that time keeper told a young Pole to get off and out. the young man turned to him and said; Why do you let that Jew sit here, he was here when I came in.  To which the time keeper answered; He works on the Holtz Platz the entire day in the cold and in the rain.  You however, work under a roof where it is warm.  Besides you do not overwork yourself anyway.  It was then that I realized how noble a man he is and how high the standard of his morality is.

Our capos greed was for us a blessing and a curse.  His access to the yard of “Canada” which bordered with the yard of D.A.W. and was separated by a wire mesh guarded by SS men, supposedly to get the soup that was left, was not for our benefit but for his.  Under the pretext of the soup, during his visits he used to hide on him Jewish belongings of money and jewelry that was being assorted, collected there and whose owners were jut being burned in the crematorium.  I will admit that the extra bit of soup had to a small degree helped me to endure the ever present hunger pangs and maybe extended the life span of some of the victims by a few days, but the negative side of it was that the mixture or combination of by then already cold soup with the weakened digestive system of the inmates that had no resistance after a twelve hour work day in early April exposed to constant rain at times freezing, used to cause the soup to go through the body shortly after swallowing it.  In short, dysentery in our state, as a rule, spelled death.  This sickness without medical attention can exhaust a healthy and well nourished person in a matter of days, but a hungry emaciated exhausted body, it can kill within the same length of time and it did.  Among our group those that Pilarek did not finish off, perished this way.  The only known and available at the time medicine were charcoal pills.  The instructions to follow were such; not to eat or drink anything for forty eight hours and take two of those pills three times daily. Not to follow those instructions to the letter meant that the entire effort would be in vain. If it was difficult to resist hunger, it was more so the thirst.  Some were strong enough in character to resist the temptation others could not resist taking just one sip of water that spelled death.  Not always were those charcoal pills available, so as a substitute some gnawed on a piece of partly burnt wood that could be easily found around. If chewing the pills used to blacken the teeth, mouth and lips, the piece of wood used to blacken the face and hand that held it to the mouth.  In our group of the fifty-sixty men almost half always had blackened faces.  They were candidates to end their lives within the next four-five days.

I too could not remain immune to dysentery and one day was stricken with it. I made many trips to the toilet but just before the work day was over on my way to the toilet I was unable to get there in time and dirtied my underpants.  Something I have never done, and in panic, did not know what to do.  Coming into the stube after the appell, I asked the French inmate, the one that advised me not to bribe Pilarek, where can I get a pair of underpants.  For a ration (a quarter) of bread, I will get it, he replied.  I had my morning ration as I was not eating trying to cure my dysentery on my own, so I gave it to him, wondering at the same time where will he get a pair of drawers. He sticks his hand in his straw sack on which he sleeps and after rummaging in it for a little while, he pulled out a pair of well worn drawers covered with chips of straw.  I think to myself;  Learn boy, learn.  The man arrived into this camp six months before you, look how much he learned for that time, even to have foresight to provide a pair of drawers for any contingency.  Taking the pair of drawers, I went into the almost empty washroom where I undressed and washed in the ice cold water, I pulled on my “newly bought” underpants leaving the dirty ones behind.  As I laid on my bunk, washed and in a clean pair of underpants, without fear of being caught with dirty ones, I suddenly realized the blunder I just committed.  I just gave away on entire ration of bread, a days worth of bread.  The worth of a human life, (for I have seen men killed for less than this) for a pair of drawers which I have just left behind in the washroom.  I could have washed my own dirty ones and still have the ration of bread.  To be honest I did not know that I could wash out a pair of drawers in the washroom or anything else for that matter, especially dirty underpants, what was the hurry?  The drawers would have dried out on me and besides, it was only colored liquid that stained them to begin with.  One is a hero when one is successful.  It could have happened that the Blockaltester could have come in and if in a bad mood, he would have left me dead.

Still I have learned something from that event. In the last two weeks working in the timber yard, I had the opportunity to see many so called “Muselmanner” (prisoners reminiscent of walking dead or walking skeletons).  Especially with the coal blackened teeth and lips which signified that at any moment, they will collapse if Pilarek will not get them first.  I also knew that if I want to live a bit longer in no way am I to touch any food or drink for the prescribed forty eight hours, by it cheating death.  From carrying the heavy boards, my bony shoulders first become red turning later into blisters which used to crack and turn into sores that would not heal.  I started putting my cap on my shoulder under the jacket to cushion the pressure, it helped but not enough.  So I picked up some dirty old rags for cushioning.  After another week, I became an old timer on the lumber yard.  Pilarek eased up on me a bit.  He stopped hitting with the intention of killing me outright but only so as not to be left out of the gang.  The Polish foreman was even speaking to me from time to time, never the less continued hitting me, apparently to remind me who he is and who I am.  I used to think that I have no more weight to lose, still Sunday when we used to get shaved, face and head, sitting on the wooden stool, I could feel as if my bare bones are touching the seat.  With each passing Sunday, it was getting worse until I no longer could sit on the stool.  Still the worst part was the constant nagging hunger which would not leave for a second.  The most trying time was coming back from work right after the appell when we had an hour before the searching for lice in our shirts. I used to spend that time walking all over the camp looking for something to eat, knowing that I will not find anything.  The hunger drove me too unreal thoughts like wishing too have teeth of steel so I could bite into the brick walls of the blocks.  After the hour of looking and searching, I used to come back to the stube more tired than before and hungrier than before if it was at all possible.  Taking off my shirt, I used to start looking for lice which to my surprise I used to find.

The Stubendienst used to inspect our shirts.  At random he used to pick out half a dozen or so of us and himself look at our shirts.  Of course he used to find some lice. As luck would have it, one evening he picked me for inspection.  Understandably he found one.  The following evening after the appell, the Stubendienst took four of us to the bath house for disinfection and shower.  My Stubendienst wanted to have his fun so he asked the Polish prisoner that worked there to aim a powerful hose at us. The water was ice cold and knocked us down and pushed us along the slippery boards up to the wall.  Changing the direction of the hose the water pushed us to the opposite wall.  The Pole with the hose was not particular where he aimed the water, be it body, head of face.  When he finished I could not catch my breath due to the water he was aiming in my face.  Now the bundles of bruised bones had to pick themselves up and stand under the deliberately boiling water of the shower.  If we suffered from the plague of lice it was nothing in comparison to the swarms of fleas that inhabited the entire camp and from whom there was no hiding place.  As a result when we used to get up in the morning, our bodies were covered with countless tiny red dots from their bites.  Not having a mirror, I could only see the faces of others and imagined what I looked like.  Against the fleas, shower or individual disinfection did not work.  They were everywhere. They were in our bunks, in the cracks in the wood, in the straw sacks we slept on, in the blankets we used to cover with and on the floor.  Against them, the camp administration proclaimed war about which I will write later.

Surprisingly, time did not stay still and what is more, I was still alive, which must have been a great surprise to my overseers and even a greater surprise to me.  I felt, however, that my strength is ebbing and my time is running out.  There is nothing of me left but skin and bones.  I could collapse at any moment, if not from Pilarek’s beating, it will be from hunger, which of the two will come first I did not want to know.  It was going on three months me being here.  Even according to Nazi admittance, an inmate could not survive more than three months in camp unless he got extra food.  This extra food privilege excluded Jews who were not permitted to correspond with the outside nor did they have with whom.  Their families and relatives came with them or separately to Auschwitz and went right away into the gas chambers.  All others except Russians could and did correspond with their families and received food parcels from home.  Here again I like to point out that there were inmates who worked at jobs where they could procure food or other things which could be exchanged for food.  All those better jobs or positions even ranks were taken up by German and Polish prisoners which led to a constant struggle between the inmates of those two nationalities over the control of those choice positions.  Not only did that struggle go on between those two groups for good jobs, but over ranks, too.  If and when a Blockaltester or capo left Auschwitz (not voluntarily) what was referred to as to go on a “transport” to another camp in Germany, both of those groups attempted to replace that man with one of their own.  In any case, inmates from other nationalities were not in such dire need of food as we Jews, nor were they being forced to do the heavy work that we Jews were doing.  Thus they lived in relative safety and waiting for the war to end.  We Jews that were the majority in Auschwitz and in almost exclusive Jewish Birkenau were relegated to do the most exerting work under the most inhumane conditions and were falling by the drove.  Is it then a wonder that I felt that I am on my last leg.  I like to mention that during that time I had a second bout with dysentery that almost killed me.

In early May 1943 I felt that my end is near.  At that time I had three hellish months of Auschwitz experience behind me and knew exactly where I stand.  I did not think that I will last through the week.  A couple days later on Sunday evening, as I stayed near the bunk with my turned out shirts in my hands looking for lice, the Pole Leon Kulowski, the inmate number eight zero five, who was sleeping on the bunk above me, was making his way through the congested hallway to his bunk.  Apparently, I was in his way for he asked me to let him pass.  As a rule he used to spend the hour or hour and a half between the evening appell and lights out with the other prominent inmates around the front table where no Jew dared to sit down.  He only used to find himself among us on his way to the bunk.  This time he noticed me and asked; Where do you work?  On the Holtz-Platz I answered. Under whose supervision?  Under Pilarek’s I said.  How long have you been working there?  Six weeks, I replied.  You survived there under Pilarek six weeks? He asked with astonishment.  Without a word, he turned to capo Janek G. who was by the way his capo, his supervisor but also his friend and with a loud voice so as the capo should hear it over the noise in the stube, he said; Janek, take him to you in the halle.  Here I would like to point out that the capo Janek G. was the capo over halle number one, a carpenter shop where one hundred and fifty prisoners worked.  It was part of D.A.W. complex where twelve hundred men worked, more than half of them carpenters.  The capo answered him with the same loud voice, “ You know Leon that I can not take him from there without his capos permission.”  I never expected that someone will ever intervene on my behalf in this hell.  Suddenly I saw a tiny spark of hope.  I grabbed the opportunity and said; my capo said that he has no more use of me and I can leave whenever I want.  If such is the case, said the capo, tomorrow (Monday) morning when we all get to the factory and you hear the command, “commandos fall in”, you line up with my people.

Next morning as we got to the yard of D.A.W. and I have heard the sound of “commandos fall in”, instead of running to my former group, I ran to the group of Halle number one.  Before going into the halle to work, the halle schreiber (registrar) goes by with a list and checks off every worker from his list.  He gets to me and says: What are you doing here? With apprehension I answer: ask the capo. The registrar turns to the capo who is some twenty meters away and yells: Mr. Capo, what about him pointing to me.  The capo looks at me and says; write him down.  The entire group enters the halle.  Everybody goes to his place and I remain standing.  The capo leads me to a work bench at which a French Jew works. He is from the forty two thousand transport by the name Itzik.  The capo says to him; “Here is your helper.”  The man is so busy at his work that he does not even look at me.  As soon as the capo walks away, that Itzik says to me: Do you see what I am doing   While staying near him two minutes, I have noticed that he managed to fit in four “L” shaped metal brackets in each of the two halves of the window’s wooden corners and attach the two half windows to the window frame with the help of four hinges, thus making them ready to be put into the window sill.  In my life I have not seen a craftsman working with such speed.  To his question, I nodded with my head not understanding his hurry.  Here I can work by myself, he said, you will just be in my way. Do you see the line of people over there, he continued, pointing at a few men staying in line near a wall.  You stay in that line and when an unfinished wooden window is ready, bring it to me.  I do not exactly understand what he means and he does not attempt to explain.  I go over to that line.  There are about six or eight men ahead of me, each waiting for a wooden window that is being glued together in front of us from prefabricated pieces.  As soon as one is ready, the first in line takes it to his master craftsman.  It is obvious to me that I will have to wait in line for a window some ten minutes and I utilize the time in looking around and striking up a conversation with the ones in line.  They tell me that there is no beating in the halle.  The capo carries no stick, but the inmates work hard on their own initiative. The capo used a carrot instead of a stick.  As reward for producing the greatest amount of work in each department, the capo gives that inmate an additional liter of soup.  It is for that liter of soup that those craftsmen work harder than they have ever worked in their lives.

How lucky I am, I think to myself.  That I am here instead of the “Holtz-Platz”, spending there the twelve hour work day out-doors, exposed constantly to the freezing rain or wet snow under  Pilarek’s constant beating with the knowledge that within a matter of a few more days, I will succumb to Pilarek’s stick.  Here, under a roof in comparative warmth, without the beatings, I simply do not believe my good fortune.  I am next in line. I grab the window and run to my boss.  As soon as I put it on the work bench, he says to me; Run for another one.  The distance to the line is some twenty five meters.  I cover it in a couple of seconds and I am back in line waiting for ten-fifteen minutes to get a window.  I wonder if it is a sweet dream in the middle of a nightmare. I look around and see a couple more young men from Shershev.  They are older than I and they are carpenters by trade.  I see the two brothers Shepsl and Itzl POMERANIETZ.  Shepsl is ten years older than I.  Itzl is two years his junior.  He participated in the Polish German campaign, was taken prisoner and remained in Nazi occupied Poland until the German attack on the Soviet Union when he made his way to Pruzany where he found his parents, brother and sister Drezl who married during the Bolshevic era to a Shershev young man Berl TENENBAUM, a carpenter too who works there.  I am delighted to find some men from Shershev.  The morning goes by quickly.  The whistle tells us that it is noon and we get the bowl of soup. I enter the halle with my soup and eat sitting with my townspeople under a roof where it is warm.  I just finished my soup when I see my boss-master, the French Jew passing by.  He says to me, “come.”  Without a question,  I follow him up to the door of the office.  Near the door I see a small barrel with soup.  Around it I see the capo, a couple foremen, the halle registrar and the Pole who attends the capo and the foremen. He is also the one who dishes out the soup.  The schreiber (registrar) calls out the numbers of those who produced the most in every part of the chain production like who made the largest number of window parts, who glued them together, who  put in them the largest amount of brackets and hinges and so on.  I look on as every well performing, fastest worker approaches and gets a liter of soup.  I see my boss walks over and gets his.  He looks around and notices me at a distance and says in a loud and indignant voice: Nu?, what are you waiting for.  I walk over slowly, hesitatingly, wondering if I will get the liter of soup or a blow with the dipper over the head.  The fellow pours me a ladle full of soup and I do not believe my eyes.  Am I dreaming?

After the break, everybody goes back to his job.  A short while later, as I am putting down a  window on the work bench which was not far from the side door through which all planks and timber used to be brought in, the wide door opens up and in come my former co workers from the lumber yard with heavy boards on their shoulders.  Leading them is the murderous Pilarek.  He immediately noticed me.  Approaching me, he said:  What are you doing here?  Out of sheer fear, I could not open my mouth.  Not that I had something to tell him.  Pilarek knew that in the factory he had no authority.  As soon as his men dumped the loads, they all left.  It did not take more than ten minutes, when I see my former capo, the capo from the “Holtz-Platz” marching into the halley and going straight to the door of the office of my new capo Janek G.  I knew immediately that it is a bad omen. 

By rule capos in D.A.W. did not visit departments under the authority of other capos.  Therefore when this capo entered, he was noticed by everyone in the halley.  A couple minutes after he entered the office I was called in there.  As soon as I closed the door behind me, my new capo says to me; you lied to me.  You told me that you have his permission to change jobs.  He is here to take you back and points at my former capo.  True I did lie to him, but did I commit such a big crime by telling a little white lie in order to save my life if even temporarily?  I know whom I am facing.  The better one of the two capos, Janek G, who took me into his part of the factory, did it because of the intervention of his friend Leon KULOWSKI.  He, himself, does not owe me anything nor do I mean anything to him.  I am just another Jew one of thousands that die in this kingdom of death daily.  He will not jeopardize his friendship, or even acquaintance with another capo, especially a German capo, for the sake of a Jew.  The second, my former capo, the German with the green triangle (professional criminal) under whose supervision half a dozen Jews die daily due to hard work and beatings and whose authority is now being challenged by a half dead Jew whom he now came to claim in order to show an example to others.  If I had something to say in my defense, I do not remember, but I remember that before I had a chance to open my mouth, my new capo gave me a slap in the face.  I do not remember feeling the slap but I remember noticing the floor coming towards me and suddenly I realized that I am lying on the floor and hearing my new capo saying to me:  Pick yourself up and get out of here.  Getting up I think to myself: It was too good to last.  Was it worth while to taste a couple hours of rest in order to be beaten to death by Pilarek?  As if going to my own funeral, I am going out the office with the intention to walk through the halley door to the outside where Pilarek is waiting to finish me with his stick or be throttled by it.  I barely manage to walk two or three steps from the office when I am confronted by Leon KULOWSKI, the one who got me the new job to begin with.  He, just as everybody else in the halley, noticed the capo of the lumber yard walking through and entering the capo’s office.  When he saw me being called into the office, he immediately guessed what it is all about and knew how it will end.  By the time he got to me, it was all over.  He grabbed me by my shoulders, pushed me to the wall of the office next to the door saying; Stay here, do not move from here.  He stepped into the office.  Within six or seven minutes, he was out giving me a friendly slap on the back he said, “go back to your job.”  How I felt at that moment, now over fifty years later, is difficult to describe.  It will suffice to say that I knew then only too well that he just saved my life.  (Thank you Uncle Leon!!!)  Today, fifty plus years later, that episode is still vivid in my memory and before my eyes.  Through all those years, my gratitude towards that man, my benefactor, did not diminish nor did it lessen by an iota.

When the production of windows was finished, we started making barrack walls.  The very same as those in Birkenau in which we spent our first six weeks.  Those were standard size barracks which used to be bolted together from parts that we were making, the so called “Pferdestall-Barracken, Typ - OKH  No. 260/9”  (prefab stable huts 40x9.5 m. 2.65 m in height).  If those particular barracks were destined for Birkenau which was continuously expanding or other camps I did not know. I know however, that the building of those parts went on for a very long time.  As building the barrack parts required several men, the competition for speedy production could not be implemented and I stopped getting the extra liter of soup.  The gnawing hunger did not let up for a moment and of course the worst time was between the evening appell and lice appell (lice searching).  Here I want to mention that the battle against the lice was won not later than six weeks after one was found on my shirt and the special treatment in the bath house.  At that time just about everybody in our stube or in the entire block or even in the entire cap had lice.  It was only thanks to the perseverance of the camp administration that we got rid of them.  Each block was being taken to the bath house once a week, leaving our dirty underwear on a pile in the stube.  After a hot shower, we run back naked to the stube where we used to get clean underwear.  Interesting to mention that no one got sick or a cold running from under a hot shower to the block naked, be it summer or winter.  Since the moment the Pole Leon KULOWSKI intervened on my behalf and by it I consider it saving my life, I kept on looking for a way to reciprocate for his deed.  But how?  The only tangible item in camp was food, but here the shoe was on the other foot.  I was the hungry, the starving one, not him.  He was the big shot, the foreman under the protection of a powerful capo who was his close friend. How could I reciprocate?  All the big shot inmates had enough food and wore brand new clothing that fitted them as if made to measure.  Their footwear was the best that Bata of Czechoslovakia could make and it came to Auschwitz on the feet of Czech Jews.  The Jews went straight to the gas chambers, leaving their footwear and clothing for others to wear.  Even those big shots underwear used to be the best which was not thrown on the pile with the others before a shower.  Their attendant, the young Pole Zygmund W. used to find somebody to do their washing and shoe polishing.

It occurred to me to ask my benefactor Leon Kulowski if I could polish his shoes.  He agreed.   After several evenings of polishing his shoes, I was approached by their attendant Zygmund asking me to do the shoes of the other big shots.  I accepted his proposition gladly.  Firstly, I wanted to be on their good side secondly, I did not hold anything against the capo for the slap on the face in his office.  I knew that he could not act any other way and thirdly, the most important reason was that I hoped for some reward.  It came on Sunday when we received our soup in the stube.  They, the prominent inmates rarely ate the soup.  They used to take a couple of spoonfuls, turned up the noses and leave it.  Their attendant Zygmund W. used to look for and, as a rule, find a hungry Pole and give the soup to him.  That Sunday, however, he did not look for anyone but gave it to me.  If anybody thinks that with a couple extra bowls of soup one can fill up a hungry stomach that was empty for continuous three months, is grossly mistaken.  In any case, not the kind of hunger we knew in Auschwitz.  Never the less, that Sunday was a good day for me.  I do not know if at that moment I realized how low morally I sunk that a couple bowls of soup could bring the heavens down to me.  But then again who can understand Auschwitz except the ones who were there.  Shortly after becoming their shoe polisher, I also started to wash their laundry.  Their shoes had to be polished almost every day as the grounds of the factory used to turn muddy after the frequent rains.  In the beginning their attendant used to give me a piece of soap to wash their laundry, for the small piece of soap we used to receive once a month did not produce suds.  One could never wash a shirt with it and hope to make it look white or clean.  The piece of soap we used to get was the size of a match box.  On either side of it were imprinted three letters R.J.F. which gave credence to the rumors circulating in camp that it is made from the fat of Jewish bodies that were being burned in the crematoriums. We, inmates, had good reason to believe those rumors.  Those three letters only substantiated our belief as the three letters R.J.F. stood for “Rain Juden Fets” (pure Jewish fat).  That the Nazis were capable of doing it we knew only too well.  We also suspected that they were deliberately imprinting those three letters on the soap to add insult to injury.  To laugh in our faces so to speak, by showing us how lawless their world can be and how wanton, immoral and merciless they themselves are.  Not to mention the fact that they were showing us how abandoned we were by the indifferent and uncaring world.  However, the soap that Zygmund used to give me, he used to get through negotiations that used to take place in camp.  The soap found its way in camp from the continuous train loads of Jews that were being brought to Auschwitz from Nazi occupied Europe.  The newly arriving Jews were being led straight to the gas chambers and their belongings were being assorted to be shipped to Germany, but the inmates working at it used to manage to sneak some of it into the camp. True, they risked their life by doing it, but some did it to help a relative or friend.

It should be emphasized that those working at assorting the luggage of the constantly arriving  Jews were in an ironic way considered to be the better off in camp.  If any Jew would dare to hope of surviving the camp, it had to be them.  Still they did risk carrying something from their work place into camp in order to help somebody else.  Like a piece of soap or a box of shoe polish that could fetch a daily portion of bread.  I am writing it as a testament to the measure of devotion that some had to relatives or friends and the price they were willing to pay for it.  A couple weeks later the attendant Zygmund tells me that he has no more soap.  Handing me half a loaf of bread, he tells me to go and buy somewhere some soap.  Fortunately I knew a man in our stube that seeing me once washing their laundry asked if I need soap.  This time I approached him and bought from him a piece for half a loaf of bread.  It is worth while mentioning that during the entire year that I did their laundry and was buying soap, I never succeeded in profiting even one bite of bread through the soap transaction, nor did I ever get rewarded with a piece of bread.  Those big shots used to pay me up with the soup that they seldom ate anyway, while the nagging hunger kept on gnawing at my insides without respite.  The end of April and the month of May were very difficult.  It seemed that there is no way to satisfy my hunger.  All my thoughts were taken up with thoughts of food.  How I used to regret the times when my mother used to put food in front of me and I refused to eat.  Those thoughts used to alternate with thoughts of my family that perished in that very place and I used to reprove and chastise myself for having thoughts about food.  The only day that common sense would dictate that I should have been full was Sunday. It was on Sunday that besides my liter of soup I used to get one for collecting and washing the bowls of our stube.  Add to that a couple of liters that the attendant Zygmund used to give me for doing the laundry and polishing the shoes.  Still I never felt full.  True, the soup was 95% water, but it went into my stomach.  Yet I never felt even a temporary fullness.  Once marching to work we bypassed a line of empty freight cars which apparently have been unloaded the day before.  They must have contained raw turnips, for there were tiny turnips scattered nearby.  They were no more than two centimeters across.  They were shriveled, pitiful things not even fit for camp consumption.  The cars were no more than ten meters from us, but to get out of line was prohibited.  To try and grab a couple tiny turnips and get caught meant at least a good beating or worse.  I could not stand the temptation.  I ran out and grabbed a few little turnips.  Luck was with me.  None of the capos or SS men noticed.

A few days later passing by the same way, I noticed tiny beets.  Again I run out and grabbed a few without being seen.  The following morning urinating, I noticed that the urine was red, but a day later it returned to normal.  I understood that it must have been from the beets.  The many train loads of Jews from across Nazi occupied Europe did not only bring with them the valuables and attire, they also took with them provision for the trip.  Many did not finish all their food or taking in consideration the mood, state of mind they were in, did not eat at all and arrived with their provisions intact.  There, upon arrival, the food and anything else they brought with them was of no more use to them as they were taken straight to the gas chambers and eternal rest, leaving all they brought for the living.  Because of the large diversity (assortment) of baked stuff, it could not be used as a daily ration for the inmates.  The administration decided to make a soup from it which was called “Khlebuvka” from the Polish word “Khleb” (bread). This soup used to contain at times pieces and crumbs of cake which gave it a sweet taste. There was not enough soup to go around the entire camp, so every evening a different block used to receive it.  The evening when we used to get the soup I used to get some from my superiors whose laundry I used to do.  A few times happened that I had what I thought morally to be enough and wanted to share some of the soup with a less fortunate than I.   Above us on the upper level in Block 18A, slept a young man from Shershev by the name of Moishe Eli SHOCHERMAN, some 3-4 years older than I. He was a carpenter by trade, a very likable young man with a good disposition.  He worked in the next alley to us in D.A.W.  Whenever we used to see each other during the noon break, he always had a joke, a smile or a cheerful word.     Several times I took up to him some bread-soup.  Not that I could not eat it myself, I just wanted to share my temporary good fortune with a friend. 

Behind the last row of blocks, that is behind  the blocks no. 1 to no. 11 was a long walkway.  It was cobblestone paved unlike the rest of the camp which was asphalted.  Part of that walkway had young birch trees on either side.  That walkway served as a gathering place for many inmates, especially Jews, on Sunday mornings.  One could hear there many European languages, like French, Flemish, German, Polish, Czech, Slovac and Greek, all coming out of Jewish mouths.  But the prevalent language was Yiddish.   It happened in the early lean Sunday mornings that I met there a friend from my childhood days, Herschl SHNEIDER.  We were both delighted to see each other indeed like long lost friends.  Although my stomach growled from hunger and I am sure so was his, we did not want to part and walked around for a couple of hours oblivious of the mob around.         We met a couple consecutive Sundays and then our meetings stopped.  Why we stopped meeting, I do not remember.  It could be that I started to do the laundry for my superiors, or maybe had to wait for their soup, my reward for my labor.  After all, the extra Sunday’s soup sustained me to a certain degree till the next Sunday.  It is possible that Herschl SHNEIDER stopped coming for whatever reason.  In any case he was my only childhood friend that I saw in Auschwitz and spent few hours with, talking about home and family.  How dear those hours were.  I do not even know how, when and in what circumstances he perished.  From my later day friends, I was the only one that ended up in Auschwitz.  The others, like Itzik MALETZKY was shot after escaping from the ghetto, Kalman KALBKOIF hid in a hiding place in the ghetto, was found and shot, Meir KALBKOIF perished in Drohychyn and the brothers Laizer and Litek ROTENBERG perished in Chomsk.

A few weeks after losing contact with Herschl SHNEIDERL, I met Yankl FEINBIR.  A man  some twelve years my senior, that is a man of thirty two when I saw him in Auschwitz.  He looked as emaciated as we all, which surprised me for in Shershev he was considered to be a resourceful young man and I expected him to be able to fend for himself even in Auschwitz.  Speaking to him I had an urge to remind him of his foolish act he committed by leaving the land of Israel, then Palestine, in the late thirties, after spending there six months and returned to Shershev.  How happy he could have been now.  So he returned to Shershev to end up in Auschwitz.  Of course I said nothing.  I did not have to.  The constant arrival of train loads of Jews brought about the distribution of bread soup twice a week.  While eating or sipping the soup, I could not drive out of my mind the thought that I am sipping Jewish life blood.  They, the Jews who brought the bread are being burned now in the crematorium and I am eating their bread.  The same thought I am sure occurred to the hundreds and thousands of other Jewish inmates while eating that soup.  Yet I looked forward to the days when we used to get the soup at night.  If there is a moral justification for our eating the soup, if placing it side by side with our thoughts, I can not say now, but I do believe that only the one that was there and tried to extend his miserable existence for an extra few days has a right to give an answer.  Not being a carpenter I worked as an assistant, thus being forced to work at different jobs and places.  Still I did some work and even learned to use carpenter tools.  I like to point out again that the great majority of tradesmen and artisans in eastern Poland were Jews and it is no wonder that of the hundred and fifty carpenters in our halley, one hundred and twenty five were Jews. Of them were some twenty five from the ghetto Pruzany alone.  Among them some half a dozen were from Shershev.  Others were from Grodno, Wolkowisk, Bialistok, Mlawa and others.

At the end of May or beginning of June, the capo’s attendant, Zygmund, called me into the office and gave me a tin of canned meat to bring into camp.  To say that I was happy with that  mission would be a big lie, for quite often the SS used to conduct searches at the entrance of the camp and woe to him who was found with something illegal.  A man from my stube was caught with a tin of shoe polish.  He was taken to the “bunker” (a punishment block) and was never seen again.

But what choice did I have?  To refuse would mean not only the bit of soup that I used to get from him, but also expulsion from the halley back to the “Holtz Platz”.  Fortunately, there were no searches that day and I passed safely. From then on I seldom used to return from work without carrying something illegal.  To my daily problem of trying to procure a bit of extra soup, was added the fear of being caught entering the camp with something forbidden.  Usually it used to be a small item like a tin of sardines, fish or meat that would go into a pocket, but I used to put it into my pouch in which I used to carry the extra piece of bread from the “Tzulage” (additional ration) to eat at work.  On the way back, the pouch used to be empty, so I used to put that tin in it.  Tying the cords of the pouch to my belt, I used to slide the pouch inside my pants letting it dangle between my legs.         With such masses of inmates marching in from work, searches could not be thorough and on a hungry emaciated, literally starving inmate, one could not likely find something of value.  So the searcher used to be satisfied by feeling the pockets and protruding lumps of the loosely hanging jackets on the inmate’s skinny bodies.  Once a searcher found on me my pocket knife, he must have liked it, for he put it in his pocket and let me go.  I considered myself lucky.

To make the searches more thorough, the SS men discontinue the searches at the gate as it  used to delay the counting and ordered the marchers to continue into the camp and line up on the appell-zlatz in front of the kitchen.  The surrounded inmates were then searched more thoroughly.

During that time Zygmund called me in the office and gave me a round thin with fish or meat to take into the camp.  It must have weighed a kilogram.  I put it into the pouch and tied it to the belt as any other time.  I looked down to below my stomach and realized the immense bulge that even a blind person could notice.  I knew that if there will be a search it will spell my end.  I wanted to say no, that I can not take it but I did not dare.  My only hope was that today they will not search, but even without a search, it was very noticeable and I could be stopped at the gate.  We march to the camp.  The gate gets closer and my fear more intense.  We pass the gate and are in the camp.  I am ready to start breathing easier when suddenly we are encircled by SS men and Blockaltesters and led to the appell platz to be searched.  Now, I think to myself I will pay for everything.  We stand in rows of five and being searched by five men. They stand in front of us and we approach them five at a time.  I know that as soon as the line of five in front of me will be through, the searcher will immediately notice the bulge under my stomach.  I put my legs apart putting my hand deep into my pocket, I push the can deep behind me and bring my legs together.  The bulge disappears, but what it looks from the back, I do not know.  The SS men and Blockaltester might see it but I can not help it.  I approach the SS man keeping my feet close together.  He slides his hands over my pockets and around my waist and says “go”.  With my first normal step, the heavy tin in the pouch swings forwards and it is back in the previous place where it can not be seen from the back.  With fast steps, I go to the block.  After the appell, when I gave the tin to Zygmond W, he was not only surprised but astonished.  How did you do it?  He asked.  I just shrugged my shoulders.  What could I have said?  That deep in my heart, I still believe in miracles or that in a deep and hidden corner of my heart I believe that my mother’s soul watches over me.  And where?  Of all places, in Auschwitz?  With time I became the regular transporter or smuggler for my superiors. It got to the point where I was seldom coming into camp from work without having anything on me that could send me to my death  

Among the few prominent inmates in my stube, were two “Vorarbeiter” (foremen) with black  triangles (asocial or so called saboteurs), a rarity among Polish prisoners.  They were both in the middle twenties.  One was a well fed man by the name of Lutek.  He indeed was a professional criminal.  Mostly a petty thief and like many in his profession, he was mischievous yet fraternal who sympathized with the underdog and oppressed which included Jews.  No wonder he was liked among the Jewish workers in halley.  With his reputation as a criminal, he was respected among his own Poles.  Quite often in the evenings the big shots used to sit around the table telling stories about life before the war.  I recall as that Lutek told a story about his town “Krakow” and how he in his early career used to break into Jewish homes on “Kol Nidre” night (prayer recited on Yom Kipper eve) knowing that there is no Jew at home as they were in synagogues that night.  He even knew how long that prayer took and at what time the worshippers got back home.  Still I never heard him utter a contemptuous word about Jews.  I have the feeling that he yearned for the Jewish Krakow which he knew is no more.   Apparently his acquired profession took the better of him, for seeing the riches that are arriving daily with the thousands of Jews, he decided to take advantage and try to benefit from it.  He managed to reach to the higher ups in the camp administration to be transferred to Birkenau, as it was closer to the arriving trains and the source of the valuables.  When Lutek left our stube, his bunk that was in a honorable place, right near the table around which all the big shots slept, and a Jew would not be allowed to sleep there, was given to Leon KULOWSKI, my benefactor.  Leon’s bunk was taken over by a newly arrived Pole of somewhere between fifty and sixty years old.  I doubt if there was an older inmate in camp.   The man by the name of Szewczyk due to his age was patronized by the much younger Poles who provided him with an easy job.  This man thanks to the many and ample parcels that he used to get from home, managed to survive at least until we parted in 1944.  It was thanks to those parcels that opened doors for him.  Even the well fed Stubendienst who assigned him the bunk on the third tier used to look up to him like a dog waiting for something to be thrown to him, while the old man used to sit on his bunk opening his just arrived parcel.  There was usually something for the Stubendienst, as a rule a piece of cake or some other sweets.  That Mr. Szewczyk kept to himself.  Firstly because of his age, he was twice as old as the older men in our stube, and three times as old as many of us, including myself.  Secondly, he used to receive more and better parcels from home than the other Poles in our stube which no doubt caused envy among the Polish inmates that they skillfully concealed.

We, the Jewish inmates considered him an angle and no wonder.  While most non Jewish  inmates looked upon us Jews with scorn, he acted towards us Jews in our stube  with compassion, demonstrating it by action.  As I mentioned earlier, he used to receive parcels regularly, besides everything else, each parcel used to contain two loaves of bread. When he was through with putting everything away, he used to spread his jacket on the bunk and cut up the two loaves in pieces.  Handing me the jacket full of bread, he used to climb down from his bunk taking the jacket from me, he used to say, “you do not need it so badly as those poor souls,” motioning with his hand in the direction of the other Jews in the stube, he used to start handing out a piece of bread to every Jew, making sure that every Jew got a piece.  The only one that did not was I, and G-d only knew that I could use it, but that did not diminish my respect nor lessened my difference for that saintly man who proved to me in that hell called Auschwitz that there are still people with morals and principles who can rise above the multitude to give hope and yes life, for bread was life, to the hopeless.  Sometime in June the camp bakery needed some carpenter work to be done.  The SS chief of the bakery asked my capo to send some men.  Among the half a dozen men was a man from ghetto Pruzany named Hershl MORAWSKY, a top notch carpenter whom the capo used to send to many outside places where something could be acquired on the quiet for him.  Understandably everybody would have liked to work in the bakery where regardless of the many watching eyes, one could swipe some bread and eat it on the quiet, even hide a piece on oneself.  The bakery used to bake the so called regular camp bread for the camp and a special white bread for the prominent sick inmates for whom the doctors used to prescribe that bread.  It was that white bread that my capo and his buddies craved.  Hershl MORAWSKI used to find a way to get this bread and bring it safely to the factory.  But it was up to me to get it into the camp.  Everyday before leaving the factory, I used to go to the office where that attendant Zygmund used to give me a white loaf of bread which I used to stick behind the belt of my pants.  Wearing the buttoned up jacket, it could not be detected.  During the frequent searches, I used to push out my chest and pull in the stomach, if one could call it stomach, so the formed cavity could have hidden two loaves.  Right after entering the camp, we had to fall in for the appell.  After the appell, we were permitted to enter the stube.  I had to pull the bread out from under my jacket and be careful not to be seen by anybody.  Of course the French Jew that slept below me and the saintly elderly Pole, Szewczyk could not help but see it,.  A couple of times, he warned me saying, “You should not do it for them, for you will pay with your life for it”.  How could that elderly worthy of veneration Pole understand that by my daily risking my life so that they, the big shot inmates could have it in camp better than the people outside.  That they are paying me off with the couple liters of soup a week, that they would not eat.  Not to mention the doing their laundry and polishing their shoes.  Yet I still admit that without that extra soup at that time, I would not have survived and would not live to write about it.

Up to now I have depicted most Poles in a negative way even with scorn, with very few  exceptions, like the Polish bath room attendant that used to permit me to spend extra ten or fifteen minutes under a roof and in the warmth every time I had the chance to disappear from the murderous blows of Pilarek’s stick.  That Pole did not owe me anything nor did he know me except for my number among ten that he was to check up on his list on the way to and from work.  He did not know my name even, nor did I know his.  Or the Pole Leon KULOWSKY who got me the job in the carpenter shop and protected me from being thrown out when my former capo came to claim me back, which in a sense would have spelled my doom, or the elderly Pole Szewczyk who used to divide some seventy slices of bread among the seventy Jews in my stube, in a time when hundreds or rather thousands of starving Jews paid with their lives trying to procure a mouthful of bread or a couple potatoes.  Whether that piece of bread saved a life is difficult to say, but in a place and at a time where one hour could be decisive not to mention a whole day during which one’s life could turn upside down and very often did and if that piece of bread helped that particular inmate to survive that day, then who knows if that piece of bread did not contribute to the survival of someone, or more than one Jew.  I have already mentioned my benefactor, Leon KULOWSKI, yet I would like to add that even when he was moved to a more prestigious bunk next to the table, he kept on protesting to the Stubendienst about his assistant, by the name of Wladek SHULTZ (a Pole) constantly beating the Jews for absolutely no reason what so ever.  If there were such decent Poles in the other stubes, I would not know for all the Jews on my block were in my stube.  In fact a Jew would not dare walk into another stube.  Even after Leon KULOWSKI was moved further, he was still bringing over his soup to me on Sundays and once or twice a week in the evening when we used to get the bread soup. 

It was in the middle of June 1943 after coming from work to the camp, right after the appell,  we passed a very strict selection during which several young Jewish boys from my stube were marked down.  They were young men, rather no more than boys, my age and younger from Holland and Belgium.  They were fine and intelligent young men who were brought to Auschwitz three months before me and by June were completely exhausted, literally skin and bones, the proverbial “Muselmann.”  In them I saw the reflection of myself and wondered how long will it be to my being in their place.  The process by which the selection of the Jewish inmates used to take place was as follows. (Selections were conducted only on Jews.) When the evening appell was over, all Jews were ordered to remain in place while all other inmates were told to go into the blocks and were locked in.  The Jews were then ordered to get completely undressed taking the bundles of clothes under one arm, we were marched five abreast block by block to the front of the kitchen where among a group of SS men stood the infamous angel of death doctor Mengele.  There surrounded by SS men, Blockaltster and other trustees, we lined up in a single file to march by the dreaded Dr. Mengele.  Before approaching him, many used to put out the chest taking in as much air as possible to expand the stomach in order to appear a bit heftier than in reality.  With an ardent prayer in our hearts, we confronted our destiny.  It was then that our prayer was most sincere. With the thought that only G -D can help, we passed by him. Unfortunately, not every prayer was answered.  All it took was the pointing of the finger or the slight motion of his hand to send you to your death. The moment you were pointed out, a Blockaltester or capo immediately wrote down your number and sent you to your block.  The next morning as we got up,the block schreiber (registrar) use to come into our stube reading out the numbers of those unfortunates that were marked down, collecting them, he would lead them out to the appell where they stood separate as if they were already dead.  After all others went to work, the poor souls were gathered from all the other blocks and led on foot the three kilometers to Birkenau gas chambers

If I expressed myself by saying that it was a strict selection, I want to substantiate it with  figures.  Taking in consideration that there were seventy Jews in my stube and six or seven were marked down, this constituted ten percent.  The same percentage was applicable to every block in Auschwitz.  Considering that in Auschwitz proper there were eighteen thousand inmates of which seventy five percent were Jews, one has to conclude that somewhere between twelve and fifteen hundred Jewish inmates were taken from Auschwitz alone. As Birkenau numbered twenty two thousand and ninety percent of them were Jewish, the number taken from there in that selection was much larger than in Auschwitz proper.  In general the selections in Birkenau were conducted with much greater severity than in Auschwitz.  I shudder to think about the twenty seven thousand Jewish women that were interned in Birkenau that represented ninety five percent of the total female inmate population.  Here we are speaking about a time when selections for the gas chambers among the Jewish inmate population was not an exception but the rule, the working principle of Auschwitz in summer of 1943.As soon as the arriving of train loads of Jews eased up a bit, when a day or two that the gas chambers stood empty and the ovens of the crematoriums began to cool, the Nazis started to select the weaker, the exhausted souls in the camp and replace them with the new arriving healthy men that kept on coming continuously.  I started to write about that particular selection to point out the uniqueness or singularity and special character of that Pole Leon KULOWSKY.  When after the above mentioned selection was over and we were all back in the stube, the depressing mood was so heavy that it reflected on some of the non Jewish faces.  It just happened that as we came into the stube we saw a barrel with bread soup.  As a rule the sight of some food used to improve our mood.  But after the cruelty of the selection, with those marked down, among us, the prospect of a bit of soup failed to cheer us up,  As I stood near my bunk which was above the bottom one and at the height of my arms, with my elbows resting on the bunk supporting my chin with the palms of my hands trying to recover or shake out from the experience of the last hour, I was approached by Leon KULOWSKY, with a worrisome quiet voice he asked;  Did they mark you down?  Just as quietly I answered “No.”  He turns around, walks back to the place at the table where he just sat, picks up his bowl of soup, brings it over to me and says, Here, try to put some weight on.

At that time I was well acquainted with the outlay of the camp.  I knew which commandos  (working groups) are in which block.  From block number one where the bath house was up to block number 28 which was the “Krankenbau” (camp hospital).  Block 24 whose main floor contained a display and collection of Jewish religious articles and the floor above was a brothel frequented by privileged non Jewish inmates.  Block 25, the canteen, next to it, a wooden barrack that was called the “Packettenstalle” where parcels for the inmates used to arrive and be inspected.  Block 11 where the Nazis kept four hundred young Jewish women on whom they used to perform all kinds of terrible operations and experiments.  As a rule they were kept inside the block and no inmate was allowed in, but from time to time they used to be escorted by SS men on a walk around the camp.  We used to see them sometimes on a Sunday walking in slow steps like at a funeral which in a sense it was their own.  The mortality among them was immense, but those that died or were killed were easily replaced by constantly new arriving Jews in Auschwitz.  The Nazis had an inexhaustible source of guinea pigs which came unfortunately in the purest human form.  Next to block eleven was block ten which was better known by its fearsome name the “Bunker”.  It was famous for its so called “Stehzelle” (stand cells) where inmates used to be crammed in individual or in groups of four with no room to sit down and after standing all night, go to a twelve hour work day for a certain length of days or weeks.  Of course many succumbed.  For a lesser crime an inmate used to receive 25 or 50 lashes.  Not many survived fifty. There was a stone wall between block ten and eleven, in front of which many were executed.  Poles especially feared the bunker.  Some individual Poles were brought from jails, others straight from homes or streets arrested for imaginary or real crimes.  Many were accused of anti German activities. They were kept in camp and after some weeks or months real offenders were taken to the bunker and shot but the great majority were kept in the camp.  Jews feared less the bunker as our fate was anyway to die. For us Jews there was no hope of getting out alive, while all others had a time to serve.  Besides, gas chambers and selections were reserved for Jews only.  Still for any transgression in camp many Jews were sent to the bunker.  Some got out after a few days others not at all.  In my stube was a young man from Pruzany, his first name was Yankl.  (I forgot his family name.)  He was caught at a gate search with a small tin of shoe polish and was taken to the bunker and we never heard of him again. 

The SS man in charge of the bunker was a tall and husky red head who carried an animosity towards Russians or Russian inmates.  Whenever he walked through the camp on his way to the bunker, he never missed the opportunity to kick the Russian prisoners that came his way.  At such a time and place it was strange to see him kicking non Jews while there were so many Jews around.         Shortly before I left Auschwitz for Sosnowitz, that SS man ceased to be seen. There were rumors that he had an affair with one of the Jewish girls in the experimental block and supposedly tried to get her out.  He was caught and sent to the Russian front.  How much truth there is to that story, I can not say.  However, this is the rumor that was circulating.  The above described SS man had a couple subordinates in the bunker, a Pole and a Jew.  Who the Pole was, I did not know nor do I know now, but the Jew was known to me.  In fact he was known to most Polish Jews.  He was one of a handful of Jewish strongmen that traveled the hundreds of shtetls in pre war Poland to show off their strength.  One like him I saw in my childhood in Shershev it was Gustav (Gershon) BREIDBORD, the youngest brother of the most renown strongmen in Poland in the twenties Zygmut (Zusie) BREIDBORD.  A couple years before the start of the war, such a strong man came to Pruzany.  His name was Jakob KOZELTZYK (KOZELCZYK).  There was talk that he hailed from the nearby shtetl “Krynek” (Krynky).  I did not see his performance but I remember the talk that was going on about his strength many months after.  Apparently, he impressed the Nazis too with his physical strength for upon his arrival in Auschwitz, they appointed him to work in the bunker. 

It was in late June or beginning of July 1943 as we stayed block by block in front of the kitchen to receive our extra half a loaf of bread and sausage, I noticed at a distance two men approaching in our direction.  They had to pass by us as we were blocking their way.  One of them was the tall red head SS man in charge of the bunker. The other was dressed in camp attire but hefty built and taller than the SS man.  I am yet to see in Auschwitz a tall and well built and well fed prisoner.  As they got closer my astonishment became greater for I noticed by his triangle that he was a Jew.  As they pass us, the big inmate puts out his hand in which he carried a whole loaf of bread and two pieces of sausage.  Handing it to me, he said, “Here, have it and share it with your comrades.”  It took me several seconds to realize what happened. A total stranger just handed me whole bread.  From great excitement, I cut it into four pieces and gave three quarters of the loaf to three nearby inmates.  After I had done it, the other inmates around poked fun at me saying, “You fool.  You had whole bread in your hands and gave it away.”  Other inmates around asked me if I knew that man.  Receiving a negative answer, they told me that it was Jacob KOZELCZYK. I found out that summer that from time to time that Jacob KOZELCZYK entertains the SS and even the prominent inmates of the camp by showing off his extraordinary strength.  In fact I heard it from the big shots in my stube when they used to come back from his performance which they were permitted to attend.  How they marvelled  and admired his strength.  That summer the camp management organized a few Sunday afternoon entertainments for the entire camp.  The main organizers were the block altesters and capos.  This was the contradiction or ambiguity of Auschwitz.  For those big shots it was the best place to spend the war year while for others, there was not even a place for burial, so they were burned and their ashes were being thrown into the vistula or scattered over the surrounding fields.  They used to erect a temporary arena on the Appell Platz where wrestling or boxing competitions used to take place.  Of course the participants were not Jews.  For, what Jew had enough energy to waste?  I recall a clown act performed by two German inmates.  They were both professional entertainers and at the same time professional criminals.  They must have been good in both professions.  For their performances were excellent, still they were lifers. 

In time a loose circle was created among the inmates from ghetto Pruzany that worked in our halley. During the noon break when we used to receive our soup we used to go down in the cellar of the halley which was never used except for “under the counter” dealings conducted by the privileged inmates.  Like the inmate from Grodno that was by trade a shoe maker, yet he worked as a carpenter.  True, there were others that were not carpenters including myself, but that man, MARGOLIS, was kept in that factory as a shoe maker in stead of a carpenter to sit in that cellar and on the quiet make and repair shoes for the convenience of those big shots who preferred to wear made to measure shoes instead of the ones available in camp for the inmates.  That shoe maker, MARGOLIS was especially busy that spring and summer making sandals for those influential folks.  Because of it, I got myself into trouble and could have lost my “distinguished” job as a shoe polisher and laundry man.  Not to mention being kicked out to the Holtz-Platz.  It happened on a July day when we were coming back from work and under my jacket I was carrying a pair of sandals made by Margolis, for the capo or his assistants.  As we approached the gate, we were stopped because other commandos (working groups) were ahead of us that were held back at the gate.  A rumor spread in our ranks that a very strict search is taking place and the other groups are waiting their next to be let in and searched.  I knew that a real thorough search would not pass without detecting a pair of leather sandals under my jacket.  I did not want to throw them away and did not dare to keep it on me.  As we were still a distance from the gate and in between the rows of the pig sties that looked more like stables, where they raised pigs for the SS and there were plenty of heaps of garbage, building material, tools, and other stuff, I stuck it into a pile of garbage.  I knew that the inmates working there are on the way to camp or inside already and that tomorrow morning we will pass that place before they will be there.  Some five minutes later we resumed our march into the camp.  Past the gate and were dismissed to fall in for the appell.  Apparently somebody higher up was satisfied with a partial search.  As soon as I entered the stube, I told Zygmund what I have done and assured him that it is in a safe place and be able to retrieve it tomorrow.  I could easily see the resentment in his face.  As if in spite, we had bread soup that evening, but theirs I did not get.       The next morning as we marched out to work and passing by the place where I had hidden the sandals, I run out the column, grabbing the sandals, I stuck them under the belt.  I brought them back to Zygmund in the office.  Within a couple of days, thanks to the intervention of Leon KULOWSKI, we made up and things returned to the way they were.  By the way, I will mention that the shoe maker, Margolis, a man of about forty, tried to live by the rules of the Jewish dietary law to the extent that he would not eat the piece of sausage that we used to get twice a week, but exchanged it for bread.  He went further than this.  If once in a blue moon he used to find a grain sized piece of meat in his soup, he used to throw it out.  For the reader’s curiosity, I will say that in a boiler in which a thousand liters of soup used to be cooked, one kilogram of ground meat was added.  As that cellar was used only by that shoe maker, we, the group from ghetto Pruzany used to gather there during the midday break which lasted an hour, discussing politics.  Quite often listening to a young man from Gaynuvka, by the name of DIESATNIK, also from our ghetto, who had a pleasant voice singing Russian sentimental songs, of which he had a large repertoire.  Whoever is familiar with the wealth of old Russian folk songs will understand what I mean. 

Sometime in July 1943, the camp administration decided to rid the camp of the plague of  fleas.  Block by block after the evening appell, we were led to the bath house leaving our clothes and underwear in the stubes.  While we were being disinfected and showered in the bath house, special disinfection commandos (groups) used to seal the block hermetically and fumigate it.  Returning from the bath house, we had to stay outside in the nude for hours while the building was being aired to make it safe for us to come in.  After a couple treatments we finally got rid of the fleas.  In one of those summer Sundays, I happened to meet Shloime PASMANIK, a friend of my  uncle Eli.  He told me that several months earlier he was sent to an affiliated camp “Shventochlovitz” where he worked in the coal mines.  He took sick and was sent back to Auschwitz into the Krankenbau (camp hospital).  Fortunately he got better after a couple of days and was discharged, thus avoiding the SS doctor’s weekly selection in the hospital where as a rule the sick were taken to Birkenau gas chambers.  That was the only time I saw him in Auschwitz and it seems that nobody of our towns people that survived knows where and how he perished. 

      In places where capos could not stand with sticks over the inmates-trades-men in their charge like in our factory, the camp administration thought of another incentive to make trades-men produce more.  They came up with awarding the inmates camp marks for those that produced more.  A certain amount of marks was given to each capo to distribute them amongst his men as he sees fit.  It was entirely up to the capo’s discretion.  For those camp marks, one could buy when available a few cigarettes, half a liter sour kraut or half a liter snails marinated in mustard.  Those two above mentioned food items had no value, for what good is half a liter mustard with a few snails in it when the stomach is crying out for a piece of bread or potatoes.  The only good item was cigarettes.  It could be exchanged for a piece of bread or a few potatoes.  As soon as it became known in camp that there are cigarettes available in the canteen, those that had marks went to buy them.  The canteen like the parcel post, the slaughter house and other good camp positions, were taken up by Polish inmates and a member of another nationality had no chance of working there, even German inmates could not get in there.  That evening the place was mobbed.  I finally make my way through the mob, get to the counter and hand my five marks to a young ambitious server.  The young man glances at me and sees a Jew.  “You are here for the second time tonight”, he yelled at me.  He runs out from behind the counter grabbing me by my lapels, he starts shaking me and yelling, “You are here for the second time this evening.  Admit it.”  Scared and confused, not knowing what is gong on nor what crime I have committed, I answer “No".  I have not been here before.”  Within a blink of an eye, there are half a dozen Polish workers around me while my accuser now holding me with one hand keeps on sticking his index finger of his second hand in my chest yelling “I caught him.  He is here the second time this evening.”  One of them positions himself opposite me and asks me “Is it true?”  I answer with a desperate, “No, it is not true.”  He gives me a punch in the face and I notice that the ceiling is going in circles while the floor seems to come towards me.  I notice suddenly that I am lying on the floor surrounded by the same group of Poles.  They look at each other as if deciding what to do with me further.  From somewhere appeared another Pole, of medium height and age, slender in build, dressed in a nice inmate’s uniform with a very distinguished and aristocrat face. “What is happening here?”, he asks.  Before anyone of them had a chance to say anything, he continued.  “You do not do those things.”  One of them protests; but he is here for the second time this evening.  The man answered with the same calm voice.  “You do not act like this.  Let him go.” He turns around and walks away.  The others disperse too.  But that young Pole who originally accused me of having been there before takes his revenge.  He still has in his hand my five marks.   He walks over to the counter and stamps them.  I read the stamped marks. It says “Not valid for cigarettes.”  I leave the canteen hurt for being falsely accused and what is more deprived of the few cigarettes that could have fetched me a piece of bread but thankful to G-D for sending that nice Pole in time.

Sometime in August, our capo somehow arranged to send a group of carpenters from our halley to the women’s Krankenbau (hospital) in Birkenau.  At that time we did not understand the reason for it.  True the women’s Krankenbau barracks needed repairs, but it was not so urgent to have to send carpenters from D.A.W. There were other carpenter commandos in Auschwitz smaller and less specialized that could do the job.  Besides there were carpenters in Birkenau proper who could do the job.  It was obvious that it was in our capos interest to send men from D.A.W. especially from our halley.  He never failed to send along Hershl MORAWSKY, his best craftsman and confident along with a few other good carpenters and their assistants who were being changed every few days.  A few times I was sent there as an assistant carpenter.  On one of my “outings” there I watched the treatment of a group of women prisoners that were being supervised by a woman capo who tried to find favor in the eyes of the SS around.  The group numbered some thirty women who were harnessed to a huge roller two meters high as it was lying on the ground and four meters long.  It was steered by a large wagon shaft which the poor unfortunate women were pulling over a piece of road covered with crushed stones.  They kept on pulling it back and forth.  The women capo with a green triangle identifying herself as a professional criminal and prostitute kept on beating them at the same time heaping at them all kinds of abusive names, curses, swears that even the SS men could have taken lessons from her.  When they stopped at noon, they got their soup and I moved closer.  To my surprise, I recognized among them a girl from Shershev by the name of Feigl K.  She told me that it is a penal group in which she was sent for some camp transgression.       Surprisingly this girl survived Auschwitz, one of the half a dozen Shershev girls.  Her hard life in her  poor home before the war had conditioned her to the rigor and harshness of camp.

Between the work in the halley and some outside work, the summer of 1943 came to an end.   In a sunny early fall day, I was again in the hospital section of the women’s camp in Birkenau.  As we worked independently without supervision of the SS men or foreman, whenever there were no SS men or local capos around, some of us used to leave work to wander around the women’s hospital barracks in the hope of finding something to eat. For me that dream never materialized.  As I passed a row of barracks, I notice that in front of three of them with wide open doors, stands a well fed woman with a stick in her hand.  Each of the three women has the unmistakable green triangle of the German prostitute-criminal.  I deliberately walk by slowly and look in.  But because of the bright sun, I see nothing.  It seems to me as if someone deliberately has darkened the windows running along the top skylights on both sides of the roof top.  I walk by again and look in with more intensity but still see nothing.  That there is something inside prohibitive I am sure, possibly food maybe.  One overseer notices my curiosity and says; “You can go in.”  I stop perplexed.  If one is permitted to go in why is she guarding it?  What has she in mind?  She can hit me anytime.  She needs no excuse.  Yet she does not look threatening and says again. “Go, go in.  I will not hit you.”  I walk through the gate like door.  It takes me several seconds to get used to the darkness but slowly start to appear before me a picture that takes away the rest of my breath that the smell did not as I came in.  I manage to make out the familiar three tier Birkenau bunks.  Slowly I begin to see spread out on the bunks naked bodies, some motionless, some half sitting, some sitting.  The sitting ones move very slowly with no purpose.   What are they?  I think to myself.  They must be human but not of this world.  Around them or on them are leaning others, some leaning against each other.  Some are squatting, some are quiet others gesticulate strangely.  Some sit on the edges of the bunks immobile as if frozen.  The narrow space between the bunks is crowded with the same creatures who barely seem to move.  Even the long flue running all the length of the barrack is covered with bodies.  They sit, toppled over.  Others are trying to sit them down again but have no strength to lift them and they remain on the barrack’s muddy earthen floor.  At first glance, I take those creatures to be men for their upper parts of the bodies gave no indication of anything else but I soon realize that those were once women.  I was used to having seen men “muselmaner”  but could never imagine what women “muselmaner” might look like.  How can one imagine.  We were in Birkenau in such a barrack three hundred men.  Here I was looking at the same size barrack that held at least twice as many women condemned to death.  How long they were there I could not tell nor did I ask.  They were kept without food or water most of them already in delirium waiting for the SS to take them to the gas chamber.  Everything seemed unreal as if I would be looking at an old faded slow moving film.  One small creature reminiscing a skeleton, no more than three meters from me, started to mutter to me incoherently and tried to drag herself closer.  As soon as she freed herself from the mass of wretched souls around her, she started to shuffle towards me.  Now I could see her fully and jumped back as I noticed part of her innards were hanging and reaching to the ground from between what was supposed to be her legs now finger thin bones covered with gray skin.  The sight was so frightening that I ran out of the barrack.  At that time I was long enough in Auschwitz-Birkenau to have seen many unbelievable things  there, but the picture or scene I have just seen surpassed the most horrible thing I have ever seen in my life.  It was everything; frightening, terrible, revolting, heart rending and incomprehensible.  It was something from another world that comes only in a nightmare.

In the late afternoon when we got together to return to the D.A.W. factory, we were told by a  couple of our men that dared venture deeper into the camp, that a very intense and concentrated selection took place in both men’s and women’s camps in Birkenau.  The result or part of the women’s selection I had seen an hour earlier.

The return trip to the factory passed without anybody uttering a word.  We were all thinking  about the selection conducted in Birkenau and about the thousands of young lives that were picked out to be taken to the gas chambers after months of slave labor, torture, and pain, trying to survive in inhumane conditions with the misleading hope that maybe , maybe.  After returning to camp as soon as the appell was over, we Jews were lined up for a selection which was, as far as I know, the most intense and severe in the camp for my time and apparently the history of the camp.  The next morning I found out that it is Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement).   The Nazis, may they fry in hell, knew how to make our Holy Days, and Days of Awe unforgettable.  Although newspapers or radios were not permitted into the camp, still a trickle of news used to filter through from time to time.  I do not know how but a piece of a page from a German newspaper suddenly appeared in our stube and started to circulate from one to another.  Everyone was eager to read it.  I too.  On that small piece of paper, no more than a dozen lines, I read:  “In the last few days, the Soviet command has awarded ten thousand Jewish generals and officers of the Red Army medals for bravery.  Let the German people and army take note of it and keep it well in mind to make sure that no Soviet soldier ever sets foot on German soil.”  For us Jews in our stube, there could not have been any better news except the news of liberation, but I noticed that the Poles in our stube were not at all happy with the news.  In fact, they tried to belittle it by saying that there are not as many Jewish officers in the Red Army, or that the Germans deliberately wrote it in order to motivate and add incentive for their soldiers to fight harder.

     A couple weeks later on a Sunday afternoon, a rumor spread in camp that in an hour or two all Jews of Auschwitz #1 will be taken to Birkenau meaning to the gas chambers.  If there ever were Jewish inmates in Auschwitz-Birkenau that mentioned the word surviving the war, it was no more than wishful thinking that will never be realized. We knew only too well that the Germans can not and will not let live any witnesses to the horrible crime and mass murder they are committing here..