MEMOIRS
OF SHERESHEV
By MOISHE KANTOROWITZ
In mid April, French, Belgian, Dutch and Danish inmates are collected, but not of the Jewish fate, and are taken away. Rumor had it that they were being sent to Switzerland. With that lot, went one French Jewish young inmate that was with me in the same stube (room) in Auschwitz. He was with me in Sosnowiec and came with me to Mauthausen and finally to Gusen. How he managed to get in that group is a mystery to me. We start realizing that slowly the non Jewish inmates are being treated differently than the Jews, particularly those from western Europe. What remained in camp were some German criminals, the majority of whom were being trained as soldiers. The others were Poles, Russians and Jews. A few days after the departure of the western European inmates, right after the morning appell (roll call), as we were getting ready to go to work, we Jewish inmates are told to go back into the barrack as we will not be working today. Immediately the question arose, “Is it what the Blockaltester mentioned some days earlier about taking us to the bath house to be gassed”? When all the work columns left the camp for the factory, our Blockaltester comes in and announces that we Jews will soon be going to the camp canteen for parcels from the international Red Cross. He tells us to pair up and that one in each pair shall take with him a soup bowl. We listen in astonishment. What new trick is this? He already told us that we will be gassed. We were ready then and ready now. What for is this kind of deceit? Will the red camp bowl calm us? Behind the window we see Blockaltesters, capos, foreman and other kinds of over seers are gathering on mass, each with a heavy club in his hand. Now we know that they will lead us to the bath house, but why all this tumult, this agitation. We Jews know how to go to the gas chambers.
About eight o’clock walks in the Blockaltester. We stay in twos as ordered. He tells us to follow him. As we start coming out of the barrack we expected the clubs to start fall on us, but no. The Blockaltester walks calmly and we follow with the overseers all around us. They do not act hostile toward us as their usual style is. We are going in the direction of the canteen. At the entrance to the canteen stand two overseers. They tell one of the first two men to take off his jacket and they let the two men in. A minute later the two appear at the door with beaming faces. One is holding the red camp bowl which is now almost full with some kind of meat. The other has his arms around his bulging jacket which he is carefully carrying. We start going in two at a time coming out with so to speak loaded arms and lining up two in a row. My partner is Leibl WASZKIEWICZ. We walk into a large room. Half way across the room is a counter behind which stand a few overseers and some SS men. One inmate brings out from behind a wall a tin. Opening it with a can opener, he dumps the contents into the red bowl. I see solid chunks of meat. The other with a knife opens a sealed carton and dumps its contents onto my jacket which is spread out on the counter. I do not believe my eyes. In front of me is a heap of biscuits, marmalade in plastic bags, cubes of sugar, a couple tins, packages with cigarettes, tins of sardines and even chocolate bars. The SS men grab from the top of the heap the chocolate, sardines, cigarettes but do not bother to look for it inside. One of the SS men says get going. I grab the jacket and ran out. Outside we joined the others who are staying in pairs. One is holding the red camp bowl with the meat, the other a jacket full of goodies. All the trustees that have accompanied us from the barracks are still around us with their clubs in hand very alert as if ready for action. We cannot make sense of it all. Are they going to lead us to be gassed and those parcels are only to mislead us?
It does not take long and we are back all together. In pairs we are following our Blockaltester and our escort is all around us. We are just passing by the first barrack after the canteen when a dozen or so Russian inmates run out from behind that barrack throwing themselves on a few of us knocking their jackets out of their hands with the goodies that scatter all over the paved ground. The Russians are throwing themselves on it like starving animals. (Who knows better than us what hunger is?) Our escort starts clobbering them indiscriminately. The few wronged inmates pick up whatever the Russians did not succeed in grabbing and we continue going. The same thing happens as we pass the next block and the next all the way to our barrack. Now I understand why the camp administration sent with us such a feared escort. If not for them we would have returned to the barrack with nothing. The whole thing seems strange. Our escort consists of Blockaltesters and capos. The very same that until now have beaten us, tortured us, and killed us are now walking along with us to protect us. We are still inside the camp. Jews condemned to die, and they, the hardened German criminals with their arm bands and heavy clubs. It is just as easy for them to deliver a blow to a Jewish head as they are now doing to a Russian head. What is happening here? We reach our barrack no. 15. Not the hospital for gassing. Our escort remains outside and disperses. We get onto our bunks to divide our just acquired treasure.
My partner, Leibl Waszkiewicz and I get on my bunk. (my bunk partner CZESIELSKI has another closer friend with whom he shares his loot on his friend’s bunk.) We open my jacket and find items I have forgotten existed. Besides the biscuits, we have sugar cubes, marmalade, a can of condensed sweet milk sugar and four packages with twenty cigarettes in each. We each take two packages of cigarettes, a cigarette is worth a liter of soup, even if it is only boiled water and a few dried tiny pieces of turnips swimming in it. We eat everything and look around as everybody else is eating. At three o’clock the first shift will come from work. If they will not try to take whatever we have left right away, they will try it at night. In whichever camp we are, we are always the down trodden and everybody’s bullies us. After drinking the thick sweet milk we start the bully-beef. After it came the biscuits, marmalade and ovalmaltin. We do not leave anything. The safest place is in your stomach. One is surprised how much a stomach can hold. All I have left are a few cubes of sugar which I keep in one pocket and the two packs of cigarettes in the other. Those parcels gave us encouragement to go on living; something that in reality we did not dare to do. In the morning we noticed the price we paid for those parcels. If not half of us at least a third could not get out of their bunks. They were afraid to leave any food and finished it all. With sadness and indeed with pain, we, the younger and healthier, watched as those whose stomachs and intestines ruined by years of hunger, starvation and lack of proper nutrition, succumbed to normal food. Unable to cope anymore with what is considered decent food, within three days, they all expired. I do not want here to minimize the importance of those parcels. Without question, they sustained the lives of many of us. Maybe even mine. They gave us the impetus to hold onto life at the most difficult time in camp. It was the first time since we have been confronted with Nazism, that we saw a sign that someone or some people, somewhere, care about us or even think about us.
The work in the factory went on despite the shortages of material and the critical situation on the front. The shortage of food in Germany was reflected in the camp where they started to divide a loaf of bread between twenty inmates. still we continued to run to the shelter when allied planes used to fly by. When air raid warnings used to take place in the camp, there was nowhere to run. As of recently, the allied flyers became so daring that they flew low enough that we could see their faces. One day the allied planes shot and killed many horses on a road parallel to the camp a couple kilometers away. The butchers from the nearby villages cut the bony parts like the lower legs nobody wanted, so they gave it to the camp. There was no meat on the bones, so they chopped the bone up and used it in the soup. As the Blockaltester was dishing out the soup, it was my good fortune to get not much soup, instead an entire horse’s knee. True, the knee took up the entire dipper. As I said, there hardly was any soup and of course no meat but there was a yellow jelly like substances between the joint that to me the starving skeleton tasted delicious. Right there and then I made myself a promise that should I get out alive, I will cook myself a horse’s leg. The next day we went back to the usual boiled water with a few tiny pieces of dried turnip floating in it that was called soup. Still I succeeded in finding a barrack in which some Russian inmates used to manage to steal a barrel of soup everyday and sell it for cigarettes. The going price was two cigarettes for a liter of soup. True, there was not much to the soup.
Despite the obvious signs that the war is drawing to an end, the camp discipline did not slacken by one iota. It was strict as if the Germans were the victors. It was still imposed by the SS and their accomplices, the overseers like the Blockaltesters, capos and their cronies. This fact enraged the inmates who felt that in the final days of the war and certain defeat of Germany, those criminals should have tried to atone for their conduct up to now. I am not sure if it was the first or second of May, about three in the afternoon, we had just received the bowl of boiled water that they tried to pass for soup, when a couple of SS men walk into the barrack. Without even looking at us, they go over to the wall on which a blackboard was nailed on. The blackboard was covered with all kinds of warnings concerning the behavior of the inmates. All those warnings ended with those words “Will be shot.” The two SS men tore off all those warnings, stuffed them in a bag and left. Their action created a topic for conversation and assumptions. It also sneaked into us a spark of hope that we might, just might live to see the liberation. Thursday, May the 3rd, we worked, but the work proceeded sluggishly. The next day, Friday, May 4th, we went to work as usual six in the morning. But it became clear at the outset that it is not an ordinary day. The motors and lathes were running, but we walked among them talking to one another. The capos pretended not to see. Somewhere between ten and eleven before noon, I leave my lathe and go out to have a look outside. I lean on the barrack wall next to the door in case an SS man appears, I would be able to sneak back in. It is a sunny beautiful day and the warm sun warms the emaciated body. I relax for a moment and let my guard down. Suddenly I notice two SS men passing by me. It is too late for me to get back into the factory barrack. They look at me and smile as they go by. They are so close I can touch them. They wear no caps and their dark blond hair is messed up by the wind. I note that their jackets have no epaulets and the collars are missing the SS insignias. Never the less, it was obvious that they were missing, as the color of the cloth where the insignias were, was fresh. That was the first time that I saw an SS man smiling to a Jew without the mocking expression. Even to me the pessimist, the German defeat is obvious. Will they let us see it?
At two o’clock we line up and go to the camp. We find in our barrack the second shift which was supposed to be at work already. They did not go. The barrack is full with rumors. After the appell, nobody goes back to the barrack. We are going to others. Maybe they know more. Behind the camp is a grass and shrub overgrown hill. two, or three hundred meters high. We look as soldiers are digging in a cannon and shortly after they start shooting over the hill to the farther side. At eight thirty we are back in our barrack and go to sleep, but sleep does not come easy. The cannons shoot continuously, but what is more, the mood is tense. About ten at night, the door suddenly opens and in come several well dressed and well fed inmates. They tell us to wake each other up. They are Poles and Germans all with red triangles, political internees. They tell us that the war is coming to an end, but so far we are under German jurisdiction. We are to pick a few strong men to stay on guard all night. Should an SS man come into the barrack, we should throw him out. Should he try to shoot, we should kill him. In any case, we shall resist. Did I ever dream to hear such words in camp? I can not even visualize that we should be able to hit back at an SS man. I can not even grasp such a moment. Still I hear such words from the mouths of prominent inmates. By their attire, they were themselves overseers of sorts. They leave us making sure that we appointed guards have something in their hands to defend themselves, like a club, an ax, a hammer, even a stone, anything.
It is quiet in the barrack but the shooting goes on. Shortly after midnight we hear a powerful explosion. We run to the windows and see that on the spot where the cannon was, a huge fire is burning. The experienced among us say apparently the Germans themselves blew up the cannon and now the ammunition is burning. The fire burned a long time but the shooting stopped. The gong woke us the usual time, four thirty in the morning. We fall in for the appell to be counted. It is five o’clock but nobody mentions the word work. We receive a thin slice of bread, our daily bread ration and hang out around the barrack for a while. Slowly we start drifting further away. The camp is full of inmates. Everyone is excited but tense. People keep on asking one another if he heard something. The others do not know more than you, but there is no shortage of assumptions, conjecturers or plain guessing. With some friends we take a walk over the camp. Here is the bath house to which we were led a couple of times, where we stood under the showers and our anti Semetic Stubendienst that Ukrainian “Stasiek” kept on yelling and hitting us while we were in there. It was here after the shower not having towels to dry ourselves, we had to put on our dirty underwear which we have just taken off. A short distance away is the “Krankenbau” (camp hospital) in which six hundred men have recently been gassed. The windows are still boarded up since that time but the doors are ajar. We do not want to go in there. A few steps further is the crematorium where a couple hundred bodies were burned daily. We pass barracks in which a Jew would not dare enter. They housed the prominent inmates, the big shots, Interestingly they are not visible now. They, that were everywhere, those well fed faces with the sticks in their hands. Now the camp is full of muselmanner and half muselmanner, the prisoners, reminiscent of skeletons, emaciated, exhausted, dejected caricatures of human beings. I look around and see many Jews but also many Russian prisoners. We Jews look much worse than they. I am not surprised. We Jews have just gone through an ordeal that for some started when leaving Auschwitz and was still going on. The Russians, however, have not known any other camp but this one and many found their niche in its system. True this camp was no summer camp, but they had it better than the Jews. The Polish inmates in general looked much better than we or the Russian prisoners.
No SS man is seen in the camp. The only Germans in camp are the inmates, former Blockaltester, capos and Vorarbeiter (foremen) who are now walking around in their African corps uniforms and are very much visible among us. In mid afternoon we hear screams. I look around and see a group of prisoners on a roof of one of our camp barracks. They scream and point in the direction of Gusin “Two” or “B”. I knew of Gusin Two which had a reputation as being worse than Gusin One, if such a thing was possible. The inmates start climbing on the roofs of the barracks. When I got there, all I could see was the camp itself about a kilometer away. Apparently the first group on the roof saw a column of tanks near Gusin “Two” and came to the conclusion that they were American. At about five in the afternoon, the Blockaltester starts getting us ready for the appell. Somehow it takes him longer today. The first two lines are in place but the couple lines behind are restless and do not stay properly. The Blockaltester and his Stubendiensts yell commands and they almost get us all in line. Suddenly those closest to the exit from between our and the next block start breaking lines and all lines fall apart. The closest to the exit start running. Others follow them and before anything, we are all running. I run with the crowd not knowing where and why. People run from every barrack in the direction of the “Appell Platz”, the main reveille square which is right in front of the wide gate, the entry into the camp. The square is filling up fast with inmates. The gate is wide open. In front of the gate on the outside stands a small open vehicle. (Later to be known to me as a jeep.) Two soldiers are standing in it and two nearby. Their uniforms are unfamiliar to me. One of them is a black man. (the first I have ever seen in my life) and I come to the conclusion that those are Americans. It is so crowded that I can not get closer. So I try to get back. I realize that I can see from a distance better than from up close.
With unbelieving eyes I see the guards on the watch towers that are right behind the electrified fence are climbing down taking with them their machine guns or rifles. They do not carry them like soldiers but pulling them or dragging them by the straps on the ground. I see an SS man dragging his machine gun by a strap making sure that the barrel points to the back. We see him and he sees us looking at him. He smiles to us but it seems to me that I detect behind his smile, hidden fear. The Nazis are coming down from the watch towers but many more are coming out from their nearby barracks just outside the gate. They are prepared and ready. They come with knapsacks on their backs and almost all of them with a suitcase in each hand. They come over to the jeep throwing their rifles on the ground. They unbuckle their military belts on which there hangs a bayonet, a revolver and a couple leather cartridge holders with bullets and are throwing it all down. Those that come off the watch tower are throwing first their weapon at the feet of the Americans, then they go into their barrack and come right out with knapsacks and suitcases. I realize that their belongings were already packed earlier and all they were waiting for were the representatives of the allies. Yet they guarded us to the very last moment. I look around and notice my Blockaltester. He has a red mark as if he has a cut across his cheek. I figure that he fell running to see the excitement but I notice that his face had a worrisome look. As soon as our former guards got rid of their weapons, they lined themselves up three abreast without any command and remained standing waiting for an order. When finally the last of them came out, I would estimate that they numbered close to three hundred men. So far the inmates stood inside the gate, blocking the others the exit. Suddenly the mob of inmates run out of the gate and started taking away the guards’ suitcases and knapsacks. I look on with astonishment as the heroic SS men who only half an hour earlier had full control over our lives and deaths, stood there motionless, letting themselves be relieved of their possessions without a word of protest to the Polish and especially the Russian, the just freed inmates. I do not see among the grabbers any Jews, none among them or among the joyous and jubilant non Jewish former inmates. We Jews stand singly or in small groups looking on like uninvited guests at a celebration.
We, the permanent dwellers of the bottom, the obscure, the destitute, the lowest in the abyss, the remnants of entire families, entire towns, cities and camps have nothing to celebrate about. It reflects in our eyes, in our faces and in our conduct. I stand by myself and look at the event that is taking place before my eyes as if I would be looking at a film without sense. I feel that I am not there. Only my atrophied invisible ghost floats around here. I talk to myself: Moishe, do you see and realize what is taking place here? Do you know that you are free? You survived Hitler and lived to see the defeat of Germany. You went through so much suffering. All in order to see this moment and you lived to see it. Rejoice. Be happy. In a blink of an eye the events of the last four years run through my mind; the expulsion from Shershev, Chomsk, Pruzany, Auschwitz, Sosnowiec, Mauthausen and Gusin. Yes, I am alive, but whom have I got left? No father, or mother. No sisters or brother. No grandparents, no uncles or aunts. Not even one cousin left of my family in Europe. What have I got to celebrate about?
Our former guards, having recovered from their sudden loss of their belongings, received an order to march. They set out to an unknown to me direction followed by an American jeep with its four men crew. I hear loud noises. I turn my head and see a large group of people running from a far corner, our corner of the camp. Those are the German inmates. The hardened criminals, the former big shots, the former trustees, Blockaltesters, capos and foremen, who recently volunteered to join the German army. They are still wearing the African corps uniforms and are very noticeable in the crowd. Their reputation as SS collaborators and cruel supervisors is well known among us and the mass of inmates throws itself in rage at them. The accumulated months and years of wrath spilled over and the crowd did not let up until they were all dead. Although the greatest number of their victims were Jews, the only ones that did not participate in that grisly slaughter were the Jews. Having satisfying their thirst for revenge, the mass of former inmates began to disperse to the barracks. As I walked into our barrack I saw a couple of men eating soup. To my question as to where they got it, they told me in the next barrack where the future German soldiers were quartered. I grabbed my bowl and ran. Although their barrack No. 16 was next to ours, by the time I got there, the barrel of soup was empty. I among dozens of others started looking around hoping to find something to eat. Unfortunately I was too late. What I did find was a pair of mans socks which I immediately put on, my first pair of socks since I arrived in Auschwitz.
The hunger did not let up. Since we are free now to move about after dark, we start wandering to other barracks. Maybe we will find something to eat. I remember walking into a barrack where close to the door stood a small cast iron stove. Next to the stove stood a young Russian holding in his hand a freshly skinned rabbit hide. He sticks an end of the hide into the fire, waits a moment for the hide to singe and as soon as the hair is gone, he bites into the raw skin. He holds the end of the skin tightly with his teeth and pulls with all his might to tear off a piece. He succeeds and chews that piece a long time. Finally he swallows it, I suspect unchewed. I realized that in that barrack, I will not find any food. Exhausted and hungry, I return to my barrack to sleep.
There is no gong to wake us but we get up the same time anyway. We start forming groups, friends and acquaintances from the same former camp. Nobody wants to be alone; we had to form a group. Besides me, there is CZESIELSKY, my partner in the bunk, WASZKIEWICZ from the town of Lomza, a fellow by the name of Szloime, one JABLONOWICZ from around Grodno, and Heniek, from upper Silesia whose family name I do not remember. What I remember is what he told me while we were still in Sosnowiec. He was a few years older than the rest of us and got married while still in his shtetl’s ghetto, shortly after he lost part of his index finger. When and how he came to Auschwitz I do not remember. We walk around the camp looking for something to eat. Many are leaving the camp and my comrades suggest that we do the same. I insist that I will not leave the camp on an empty stomach. As we get to the center of the camp, we see a mob of former prisoners besieging the camp magazine. They are trying to get in through the barred windows as the door is impregnable. They succeed finally to break the metal bars of a window. The window is a good meter and a half off the ground and everybody wants to get in. Once you are in how does one get out when the mob is pushing to get in? Eventually we realize that we have to let those inside out before others can get in. The first from inside appear on the window sill with a large unopened case of margarine. The moment he jumps down with the case in his arms the crowd throws itself on him. In less than a minute the heavy cardboard case is torn apart and the half kilogram packages of margarine snatched by those who got close to them. The same thing happens to everyone who comes out through the window. We decide to work our way to the window, send one of us in there and as soon as he jump down the window sill, we will throw ourselves at him, of course with everyone else nearby.
Sure enough, we manage after a struggle to get to the window. One of us gets in and appears soon with a case of margarine. After the ensued struggle we manage to hold on to six packages of margarine. We stop to think what to do with it. We decide to continue looking. After a while we find a few acquaintances. They somehow managed too get some potatoes which they are right now boiling in a pail over an open fire between the barracks. For two cubes of margarine we buy a partnership in the potatoes and wait for it to boil. In such cases, as if in spite, it does not boil. After a long wait we notice bubbles around the rim of the pail and we think that the potatoes are cooked. We pour out the just starting to boil water and grab the potatoes. They are still raw. For two cubes (packages) of margarine we buy two packages of half a kilogram dried and pressed onion. We join the exodus from the camp. My desire not to leave the camp hungry did not materialize. All I have on me is the camp uniform and I carry my blanket. The march from Sosnowiec to Mauthausen taught me not to part with it. My friend and I pass through the wide open camp gate. Not understanding and not realizing the importance of that moment in our lives. Hungry, exhausted and dejected we are placing our first steps into a new and strange world leaving behind a world capable of unimaginable cruelty which we knew so well. A world that succeeded in depriving us of everybody and everything we had. Just like newcomers into the world, we do not know what this world is like and what the future holds for us. We do not think like what is conceived now-a-days as normal people. The camp is still in every part of us, in every fiber of our bodies. The first instinct of the primitive man is food. Everyone around us is looking for it and we join the mass, the flood of humanity. We go in search of food but also to distance ourselves from the camp, away from this place, the farther the better. We are now part of the mass of people. It seems that we are taking up the whole road. As far as my eyes can see in front of me and behind, there are people like me.
A short time later we reach a main road which is just as crowded as ours. To our question as where they are coming from, they answer Mauthausen. Ah, yes, I remember Mauthausen. Where to are you going now? Some shrug their shoulders. They do not know where, just following the crowd. Others say Linz. I have heard of Linz. When I was in Mauthausen, they used to take people daily to clear the streets of Linz after air raids. Now on a wider and straighter road after joining with the people from Mauthausen, one can only guess the amount of prisoners held in Nazi Germany. To think that on a short five kilometer stretch of road there were the three camps of Mauthausen with its fifteen thousand inmates, Gusin “A” with twelve thousand and Gusin “B” with as many. There is no traffic on the road. The whole road is ours. There are no American vehicles, no German nor civilian. On both sides of the road every couple hundred meters, are single farmsteads. It occurs to us to try a farmhouse for food, but no matter where we try, others have beaten us to it. We see a side road leading to a village some two kilometers away. Nobody wants to leave the main road but the hunger does not let up and we go. A middle aged woman answers the door. We give her the two packages of margarine and the two dried and pressed onion and ask her if she can give us something to eat for it. She tells us to sit at the table saying she will be back shortly. She disappears behind a door. We sit on chairs and look around not daring to say anything. It is a small brick house. The furniture is well used. We get the impression that it is not a rich home. A good quarter of an hour passes and she is not back yet. Did she go for the Germans? The fear of Germans did not disappear overnight. Another few minutes pass by and she walks in with a large frying pan in hand. The pan is full with potatoes fried in margarine and onions. It fills the room with the most pleasant aroma. Needless to say that it was the tastiest meal in years. True we could have used more. We thanked her nicely and left to join the others on the road.
We started to encounter groups of German soldiers. They carried no weapons, at least as far as we could see. Whenever they found themselves in the midst of us and someone frowned on them, they kept on saying: We are not Germans. We are Austrian. As if it was then a difference in them from their or our point of view. A couple hours later when our hunger which was not satisfied earlier awakened again, we started looking for out of the way places. We knocked on a door and an elderly woman answered. Not having what to barter with, we simply asked her for something to eat. She started to tell us that she is a poor woman and that her sons pay is a small one. One of us asked her what does her son do. To which she said: He is only a guard in Mauthausen. We shuddered. Here we felt we have the right to take whatever we felt like, but in front of us stands an elderly woman. We turned away in disdain. On the way back to the main road we reproof each other for letting her off so easy. Joining the crowd on the road we pointed out the house to a group of Russians. From a distance, we saw them leading a goat from that yard. Their conscience did not bother them. At that very moment I was thinking about us Jews; We with our scruples and ethics. Is it then a wonder that we are being taken advantage of by anyone and everyone?
With the approaching night we started looking for some shelter. To go into a German house we did not dare so we decided to sneak into a barn when it will be dark. We sat by the roadside a long while and finally found our way inside a large barn. It must have been a large farm for it had several farm buildings. In one of them we found a huge bin full of dry corn kernels. We spread over it a couple of blankets and went to sleep. In the middle of the night a couple men came in. Seeing us sleeping on the corn kernels, they started laughing. From their conversation I gathered that they are farm hands on this farm. We could not fall asleep expecting the German owner at any minute to evict us. During the night one of us mentioned that corn kernels are edible. To me it was something new, so we started to plan how to take some with us. Before day break, we filled a small bag with kernels and quietly sneaked out of the barn. Half an hours walk down the main road, we found a tin can. Filling it up with kernels and water, we started to cook it. We cooked it for hours and they were still not soft. Too hungry to wait any longer we started to eat them. We spent the entire morning cooking the kernels. It was almost midday when we started out on our way to Linz. A couple hours later, we could almost make out the city in the distance. I started feeling bad and developed a terrible pain in my stomach. I could not continue further. I stretched out on the young grass, knowing that something was wrong with me. I told the others to go on. I did not want them to watch me expire. The boys would not hear of it. After lying for a while I had to muster all my strength in order to get up and we slowly continued on. To be precise, none of us felt good. We came to the conclusion that it was due to the uncooked corn kernels that started to expand in our stomachs.
At about five in the afternoon we made it to Linz. It was part of Linz that was called Auhoff which lay on the east side of the Danube. To us small town folks, everything in Linz seemed large. The large three, four and five story buildings stretched from one to the next corner of the street. The tenement houses formed quadrangles which had large gates in the middle that served as entry to the yard. It was in the yards that all the entrances to the apartments were. We walked around in the streets that looked almost deserted. Here and there one could see a figure that disappeared quickly in one of the gates. We meet an American soldier. He is slim but close to two meters tall. He speaks to us but we do not understand him and we follow him to a nearby gate. We enter a large yard and first thing I notice are children playing. Children, children that I have not seen in so long except for those being driven into the yard of the crematorium number three that was so close to our barracks in Birkenau. These children are playing games, running, laughing. Unconcerned and ignorant of the world we are coming from. How beautiful their world looked in my eyes. With lightening speed appear to me the visions of my little brother, Liowa and my two little sisters, Sonia and Liba who were so cruelly, so mercilessly taken away from this world. I am brought to reality by the laughter and chatter of the children in their “soothing” for me, language. The pain in my chest swells and the ever present question arises. WHY???
I turn my head not to look at them and notice groups of women sitting comfortably on chairs and benches conducting “Gemutlich” relaxing conversations. Many of them are knitting at the same time. Those not so deep engrossed in conversation notice us intruders and start giving us annoying and suspicious glances. We follow the American soldier who is leading us to one of the doors. The door is locked. The soldier moves back a couple steps and with momentum, he throws himself forwards kicking in the door with his foot. The slam of the door startles the women in the yard who look now with obvious fear towards the open door. The soldier waves with his hands signaling we should go in but he stays outside. I think to myself. Why don’t you lead us in. We do not dare go into a German house by ourselves. But the soldier does not move. He just waves his hands for us to go in. After several minutes waving his hands, the soldier waves one more time in a gesture of disgust and walks away. The completely closed in and surrounding yard reminds us of the camp and we get out of there. We start wandering aimlessly around the empty street and alleys. We see from a distance a military truck and assume that it is an American. It will soon be dark and we do not want to have to spend the night in the street. We start looking for any place, a hole to spend the night in. We come to a wooden fence beyond which we see stocks of boards of all sizes. We climb over the fence and indeed it is a large lumber yard. Almost in the middle is a wooden shed which turns out to be the watchman’s quarters. In a part of the shed is a small room with a hammered together bed made of boards. The so called bed is almost two meters wide. The “bed” contains a straw sack, a sheet and a blanket. There is also a cast iron stove, and a few utensils. Everything looks like it had been left in a hurry. Not waiting for an invitation, we pile into the bed. To our surprise, the two meter wide bed is wide enough for the six of us.
****** THIS IS THE END OF PAGE 875********
(THE WAR IS OVER.)