A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy (11 page)

After marching for three days, we reached Gliwice (Gleiwitz), a town some seventy kilometers from Birkenau. These three days
have become blurred in my mind, making it difficult for me to identify the specific day on which a given event occurred. For
example, I can no longer say with any degree of certainty whether it was toward the end of the first day or the second day
that the SS decided that the children’s barrack was slowing down the march. But I remember very clearly that it was just beginning
to get dark when the SS halted the march and ordered the group from the children’s barrack to the side of the road, to be
taken “to rest in a nearby convent.” At that moment, Michael, Janek, and I were not in front with our other friends from our
barrack. Instead, we were once again doing our rest-and-jog routine and had come to a stop near the middle of the column.
Despite the orders of the SS for children to come forward, we decided to stay where we were. Some men around us tried to push
us out, but we fought them off. The three of us had learned long ago not to trust the SS. “Rest in a convent” sounded too
good to be true. I was told later that our friends from the children’s barrack had all been murdered. I do not know whether
that is true, but I never saw any of them again.

A group of Russian prisoners of war was marching in formation in one part of the column. I had not seen them when we were
leaving Auschwitz and thought that they might have joined our transport at some later stop. They attracted my attention because
it was never easy to get around them when Michael, Janek, and I moved from one end of the column to the other. We were afraid
of the Russians because we thought they kept jostling us in order to grab our bread. We held on to it as tightly as we could
whenever we came close to them.

One evening the column was halted, and we were all ordered to sit down on the road. Everybody but the Russians obeyed the
order. They remained standing and began to sing what must have been a patriotic song. An SS guard blew a whistle, and more
than a dozen SS guards materialized out of nowhere and moved toward the Russians. “
Alle hinlegen!
” (“All down!”) the SS officer in charge shouted. The Russians remained standing. Then the officer shouted something, and
the SS guards opened fire. They must have killed some of the Russians, for a number of them went down. The shooting continued
until the survivors sat down. I no longer know, if I ever did, what prompted this tragic episode. What I do remember, though,
is that the standoff gave me an opportunity to rest and that I dozed off at some point, with the shooting and the screaming
still ringing in my ears.

The next morning, after we had spent what I think was the second night sleeping on the road, I noticed that more people had
died overnight and that others were too weak to continue. At that point, what was happening around me had become routine:
the SS would kill those who refused to continue and order some nearby marchers to push the dead into the closest ditch. Increasingly,
I blocked these scenes from my consciousness and no longer registered what was happening around me. I seemed to be in a trance
as I struggled to walk in order to stay alive.

In the mornings, as soon as Michael, Janek, and I were fully awake, we would encourage each other to jump around and to rub
our numb limbs. When I told them that I thought I could not feel my toes, Janek told me to wiggle them. I did, but that did
not seem to help all that much. The cold was getting unbearable. We ate our remaining bread and licked a few handfuls of snow.
That was our breakfast. Oh, what would I have given for even a few spoonfuls of that terrible Auschwitz turnip soup or, for
that matter, anything warm!

We reached Gliwice, a Silesian industrial center, on the last day of our march and entered what appeared to be an empty labor
camp. I began to fantasize that heated barracks, beds with blankets, and even warm food awaited us. But I was almost immediately
torn out of this dreamworld when we came to a stop at the edge of a run-down sports field. A group of SS officers stood in
the middle of the field, which was ringed by a large number of heavily armed SS guards and their dogs. It did not take me
long to realize that another selection awaited us: those among us who could jog to the other side of the field would live;
the rest would be eliminated. By this time, I could barely walk. Michael and Janek were not doing all that much better. We
were exhausted, hungry, and cold, but we wanted to live, and we were not going to give up now after all we had been through
on the march. As we looked out over the field, we could see people trying to make it across; some appeared to collapse along
the way or simply just sat down. Every so often the guards would run over and drag these unfortunate people to the side of
the field. When our turn came, we held hands to support each other and ran as fast as we could, which was not very fast. Dirty,
with clothes torn, we must have looked like beggar children emerging from a dark cellar. We could hear the SS officers laugh
hilariously as the three of us passed. These hated voices invigorated us and gave us the strength we did not have just minutes
before, and we made it across.

We must have stayed in Gliwice for a number of days. Here we were able to rest and recover some of our strength. The food
was no better than what we were given in Auschwitz, but at least we got some warm soup, and the bread portions seemed somewhat
larger. Just as I was beginning to believe that we would remain in Gliwice, we were ordered to march out of the camp and proceed
to a nearby railroad station. Here open rail cars, like those used for transporting coal or sand, awaited us. We were herded
into these cars with so many other prisoners that there was hardly any room to move. Michael, Janek, and I found ourselves
being pressed against the taller grown-ups and could barely breathe. Above us, at one end of the car, sat a heavily armed SS
guard in what looked like a brakeman’s cabin. Since the cars had no roof, the SS guard could see what was happening in the
car and anticipate any escape attempts. I seem to remember that, before leaving, we were each given a loaf of black bread
and a tin can that was supposed to contain meat. I never did find out what was in it since we had no can opener, knife, or
even rock that would help us open it.

Our car was so crowded at first that, despite the fact that we were riding in open cars in January, Michael, Janek, and I
were kept warm by the bodies that pressed against us. After a day or two, to avoid being trampled, we were able to work ourselves
toward a corner of the car. People were dying all around us, and when our guard was asked what to do with the bodies, he said
to throw them out. That was being done with increasing frequency as the days went by. Our car was gradually becoming less
crowded until it was no longer difficult to walk from one end to the other. The snow and wind seemed never to let up, and
we could feel the cold more now than before because there were fewer warm bodies pressing against us. Our bread was long gone,
and all we had to eat was snow. We imagined that it was ice cream, although I doubt that we remembered what ice cream tasted
like.

The nights in the car were horrendous. The hunger and cold were wearing people down not only physically but also mentally.
Some began to hallucinate. They walked into the walls of the car, making noises like wild animals. They seemed to be seeing
ghosts and monsters. They would fall over us or run into us and scream while waving their arms wildly as if trying to hit
us. We soon noticed that these men seldom survived the night.

Just when I was sure that it would only be a matter of a day or two before I too would die and be thrown out of the car, a
miracle occurred. As the train moved slowly through Czechoslovakia, making frequent stops, we began to see men, women, and
children standing on the bridges we passed under. They waved to us and shouted, and then loaves of bread began to fall into
our train. Under the first bridges, Michael was able to catch a loaf and told me to hold on to it while he and Janek readied
themselves for the next bridge. I put the bread under my legs. When they came back, the bread was gone. Somebody had managed
to steal it out from under me, and I was too numb to feel it. But we soon had more bread because the Czechs kept throwing
it at us from the bridges. Had it not been for that Czech bread, we would not have survived. I never learned how this magnificent
campaign had been mounted, but as long as I live, I will not forget these angels — to me they seemed to be angels — who provided
us bread as if from heaven.

We were fortunate that the train could not take the shorter and more direct route from Gliwice to Germany, our final destination.
By the end of January 1945, the Allies had severely damaged the German rail system, forcing our train to take the route through
Czechoslovakia. That proved to be our salvation. Of course, had the train been able to proceed directly to Germany, some of
those prisoners who died while we were traveling through Czechoslovakia might have survived.

Our train reached Germany after a trip that lasted more than ten days. The one stop in Germany that I remember most vividly
was a freight station in Berlin. Here, I believe, we remained for only a few hours before going on to Oranienburg, some forty
kilometers away, where the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, our final destination, was located. I had two experiences
at that station in Berlin that I have never forgotten. Shortly after the train had come to a stop, I heard a German woman
exclaim for all to hear, “
Es stinkt schon wieder von Juden!
” (“It stinks again of Jews!”) About an hour later, our new SS guard — they changed guards every few days — climbed off the
train and got himself a cup of coffee. He must have seen me looking longingly at his cup. Without a word, he handed me the
coffee and got himself another cup. This was my first warm drink since we left Gliwice.

Beyond being able to attribute the German woman’s outburst to a deep-seated hatred of Jews and acknowledging the action of
the SS guard as an unexpected act of compassion, I have never been able to reconcile these two events to my own satisfaction,
other than to end up with the trite conclusion that generalizations about the Holocaust, about German guilt, or about what
Germans knew or did not know do not help us understand the forces that produced one of the world’s greatest tragedies. Nor
do they help explain what it is in our nature that enables human beings to plan and commit the genocides and the many other
mass murders to which mankind has been subjected during my lifetime. Of course, even less do they answer the question of why,
in the midst of all these terrible events, some people find the strength and moral courage to oppose or, at the very least,
not commit these monstrous crimes that others perpetrate with ease.

We arrived in Oranienburg not long after leaving Berlin. Instead of going directly to Sachsenhausen, we ended up at the Heinkel
airplane factory. We spent about two weeks there, supposedly in quarantine — at least that is what we were told. Here Michael,
Janek, and I, together with others from our transport, were housed in a large hangar. The hangar was warm, and even though
we slept on the ground, it was a relief finally to be inside with a roof over our heads. My feet had already begun to hurt
on the train. But because of the cold and snow, I had been afraid to take off my shoes there. Now in the hangar, I removed
my shoes for the first time since leaving Auschwitz and noticed that my feet were swollen and discolored. But I did not let
that worry me since I convinced myself that after a few days in a warm place everything would be fine again.

Our rather comfortable life at the Heinkel factory came to an end sooner than I would have liked. One morning, we were ordered
to proceed on foot to Sachsenhausen. Michael and Janek were with me, together with other men from our Auschwitz transport.
It was becoming increasingly more difficult for me to walk, but my two friends helped me along. In order to get from Heinkel
to Sachsenhausen, which was not all that far, we had to walk through Oranienburg. Here the German townspeople stared at us
or turned their backs as we passed. Along the way, some children threw stones at us. I was relieved when I finally saw the
entrance to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen with its inscription:
Arbeit macht frei.
(Work makes you free.)

This slogan, so utterly bizarre given its context, was no more bizarre than the policies that brought us to Sachsenhausen.
In January 1945, Germany was fighting for its survival, and yet the Nazi regime was willing to use its rapidly dwindling resources
— rail facilities, fuel, and troops — to move half-starved and dying prisoners from Poland to Germany. Was it to keep us from
falling into the hands of the Allies or to maintain Germany’s slave-labor supply? The lunacy of it all is hard to fathom, unless
one thinks of it as a game concocted by the inmates of an asylum for the criminally insane.

THE BARRACKS IN SACHSENHAUSEN WERE ARRANGED
in a semicircle along the periphery of the
Appellplatz
(exercise grounds) — all within range of the machine guns mounted on the balcony of the SS administration building and the
guard towers along the camp’s wall. From the
Appellplatz,
one could see slogans painted in big white letters over the dirty walls of the barracks proclaiming,
Reden ist Silber; Schweigen ist Gold
(Talk is silver; silence is gold),
Arbeit macht frei
(Work sets you free), and
Freiheit durch Arbeit
(Freedom through work). In the middle of the
Appellplatz
stood a structure that resembled a village well. It was the camp gong or bell. Every morning, it summoned the inmates to
the
Appellplatz
where they were to be counted. The roll call meant hours and hours of waiting for the counting to end.

For those of us in the
Revier
(infirmary), where I ended up not long after arriving in Sachsenhausen, the gong did not mean standing in line for hours.
Here the orderly would simply call out our names, and if there was no answer, he would walk over to the bed from which he
expected a reply, glance quickly at the person lying there, cross out the name, and continue counting. This short interruption
in the counting process rarely produced any expressions of grief on the part of the other patients. It had become routine,
a nonevent.