A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy (23 page)

Gerda in Trieste, 1957

My stay at the transit camp in Bremerhaven was largely uneventful. The camp was filled with refugees from all over Europe.
Among them were large numbers of peasants and laborers from eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Many of these people had
been brought to Germany as slave labor or as prisoners of war. I later learned that this group most probably also included
Nazi collaborators who had served as policemen and camp guards during the war and who now claimed to have been slave laborers
in Germany. Another group consisted of individuals who had fled after the war from various eastern European countries that
had been taken over by Communist regimes. Many of these people were professionals, including lawyers, professors, teachers,
and medical doctors.

Since I spoke German and Polish and schoolboy English, I was called from time to time to act as interpreter for the interviews
U.S. immigration examiners conducted with prospective immigrants. It did not take me long to realize that it was quite easy
for those who claimed to be peasants and laborers to pass whatever test the examiners were applying for admission to the United
States. Those refugees who had left their countries for political reasons and who were, on the whole, more educated were asked
detailed questions about their backgrounds and political views. Judging by the questions the examiners kept asking, I soon
realized that they were not really interested in finding out whether or not some of these prospective immigrants had been
Nazi collaborators. They focused instead on ascertaining whether they were communists or had leftist leanings. It was only
later that I learned that in the early 1950s, when the cold war was heating up and McCarthyism was at its zenith, the United
States had admitted thousands of immigrants from eastern Europe, among them many who had collaborated with the Nazi occupation
forces. Years later, when the U.S. government began to deport immigrants who had been found to have committed war crimes during
the Nazi period, it was discovered that some of these people had managed to enter the United States because of sloppy screening
by immigration authorities. I was not surprised.

The voyage to the United States took about ten days. I recently found among my papers a copy of the “Souvenir Edition of the
Greely News,” our ship’s mimeographed newsletter. From it I learned that there were 1,271 refugees on board the
General Greely
. They were born in twenty countries and professed ten different religions. Roman Catholics were the largest religious group
with 743 individuals, Baptists the smallest with two. There were fifty Jews on board, sixteen Buddhists, and eight Muslims;
the remaining passengers represented various other Christian denominations. In many ways the passengers on my ship mirrored
the immigration trends in the United States at that time. I had never seen people from so many different countries in one
place and took lots of photographs of individuals whose faces suggested national or ethnic origins I had not encountered before.
I was particularly fascinated by a Kalmyk family who looked Chinese to me but spoke Russian. They came from the Asian part
of the Soviet Union and were also planning to live with relatives in New Jersey. I never did manage to find out how they ended
up in Germany.

Most of our sleeping quarters were on the lower decks of the ship. We slept in single four-tiered bunks. The distance between
each of the tiers was quite small, making it very difficult to sit up in bed. As soon as we arrived on board the ship, we
were informed that we were all required to work, washing the decks, cleaning toilets, painting walls, and so on. I decided
right then and there that there had to be more interesting jobs to perform and that I should try to find myself a more exciting
assignment. As soon as I heard that frequent informational announcements were being made in different languages over the ship’s
public address system, I volunteered for that job and was hired for the German and Polish announcements. It turned out that
I could also serve as one of the German-language editors of the ship’s newsletter. With my two assignments came the right to
work on the top deck in a very pleasant set of cabins. Since the ship’s public address system was located on the bridge, I
was also allowed to enter that part of the vessel, which was off-limits to the other passengers. Once they got to know me,
the captain and the duty officers would allow me to linger on the bridge after I had made my announcements and would answer
my questions about the navigational instruments on board. On one of those visits, Captain Niels H. Olsen, the ship’s master,
told me proudly that he had come to America from Denmark as a young man without speaking a word of English and that life had
been good to him in his adoptive country. He assured me that I would be equally happy and successful in America.

I owe my introduction to American food to the chefs of the
General Greely
. Our meals were served in the mess hall on long, elevated metal tables. We ate our food standing up and had to hold on to
our trays whenever the ship tilted to one side or the other. In rough seas, the trays of inattentive passengers would end
up crashing to the other side of the hall. Our typical American breakfast consisted of ham and eggs, milk, coffee, and a small
box of cereal. The cereal presented a problem for me and many others, for we had no idea what it was or how it was to be eaten.
I finally decided that it was some sort of American dessert and carried the cereal box with me to the top deck, where I ate
it like candy. I was by no means the only one who labored under this misconception, for the decks were usually full of passengers
eating the dry cereal with their hands once breakfast was over. On one or two occasions we were given turkey for lunch or
dinner. It was usually served with what I thought were carrots. Never having eaten sweet potatoes before, I could barely swallow
my first mouthful. Not only did it not taste of carrot, my favorite vegetable, but it also reminded me of the turnips I had
promised myself never to eat again if I survived the war. In time I came to enjoy sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving and Christmastime.
On those occasions, however, they are prepared much more tastefully than the sweet potatoes the ship’s chefs served us.

Our ship docked in New York harbor during the evening of December 3, 1951. We had to remain on board until the next morning.
The New York skyline was ablaze with multicolored lights. On our way in, we passed the fully illuminated Statue of Liberty,
which to this day symbolizes for me the warm welcome with which America received me as an immigrant. Seeing New York City
at night is always a special experience, no matter how often one has had that opportunity. But seeing it for the first time
after leaving a gloomy Europe still recovering from the devastation of a world war was truly a breathtaking experience. I
will never forget that moment. As I looked out on that vast city glittering with what appeared to be millions of lights, many
thoughts and images raced through my mind. I thought of that recurrent dream I had had in Sachsenhausen that one of the Allied
bombers that flew over the camp on its way to Berlin would lower a big hook, lift up my barrack, and take me to America. That
dream had finally come true, albeit not in such a fairy-tale way. I also wondered, not without some trepidation, what life
would be like in America, when I would see Mutti again, and whether I did the right thing by leaving Göttingen. But the longer
I stood at the ship’s railing, fascinated by a sky drenched in the reflected colors of the multitude of lights that illuminated
the city, I was transported back to Auschwitz and the reddish brown smoke bellowing out of the crematorium chimneys. Suddenly,
the life I had lived — Kielce, Auschwitz, the Death March, Sachsenhausen — flashed before my eyes. Right then and there, I
knew that I would never quite liberate myself from that past and that it would forever shape my life. But I also knew that
I would not let it have a debilitating or destructive effect on the new life I was just about to begin. My past would inspire
my future and give it meaning.

IN THE SIX DECADES
since the end of the Second World War and my liberation, I have often wondered why or how I managed to survive the camps.
These reflections are not brought on by feelings of remorse that I survived while so many others did not. Rather, my focus
has been on the circumstances that allowed me to survive. If there is one word that captures the conclusion to which I always
returned, it is luck. But luck is only the shorthand expression for a combination of factors that allowed me to make it. There
was first the fact that during the ghetto and work camp periods in Kielce, I was together with my mother and father, who not
only cared for me but also engrained in me the essentials of survival. Early on in Auschwitz, after I had already been separated
from my mother, my father and I were still together. That allowed him to continue to protect me and to instruct me on ways
to avoid ending up in the gas chamber. Of course, the fact that I was able to enter Auschwitz without being subjected to the
deadly selection process on arrival was a major piece of luck. Had there been a selection, I would never have made it into
the camp, and that would have been the end of my story.

Once I was alone in Auschwitz and later on in Sachsenhausen, it helped that by then I was a little older and had become a
true child of the camps in the sense that I had learned the tricks I needed to survive. I use the phrase “child of the camps”
advisedly, because I have always felt that in many ways my survival instincts had much in common with similar traits I have
observed in the “street children” of Latin America, who daily face many dangers and deprivations. These kids are frequently
as young as I was or even younger. I point to these children when friends express surprise on learning how young I was. Children,
even relatively young children, learn to be cunning or street-smart when circumstances demand, and they are fast learners when
they have to be in order to live another day. When my own children were of the age I was during the war, I frequently wondered
whether these pampered American children or the children of my friends could have made it in circumstances similar to mine.
I am convinced that with some luck they could have, because the survival instinct in children is strong enough to allow them
to adjust to the needs of their environment. Of course, what helped me was that I had a relatively long period of survival
training. Who knows whether I would have survived had I arrived in Auschwitz from a normal middle-class environment and immediately
had to face the brutal camp conditions. It was luck again that I had a gradual immersion into hell. (As I write these words
I am not unaware of the bizarre use of the word
luck,
but that is what it was in its context.)

For my survival, I suppose it also helped that I spoke fluent, unaccented German and Polish and did not look Jewish. My German
helped me on a number of occasions, as did my Aryan features; at least, that is what I think. Maybe I reminded some of the
Nazi officers of their own children. This may have been a factor in the decision of the camp commandant of Kielce to let me
live after I told him that I could work. Being able to speak Polish also proved useful on numerous occasions. Together, these
things no doubt played a role in my survival and were entirely fortuitous.

At times I have been asked whether I ever suffered from the so-called survivor syndrome that allegedly afflicts some survivors
who torment themselves for surviving when so many others, particularly members of their families, did not. Survivor syndrome
has apparently driven some survivors to suicide and left others with serious psychological problems. I have never experienced
these feelings. I don’t know why, but if I were to speculate, I would attribute their absence to the instinctive belief of
children in their immortality and their entitlement to live. It may also be that since I attributed my survival to sheer luck,
I came to view survival and nonsurvival as a game of chance over which I had no control and was, therefore, not responsible
for the outcome. How else to explain the fact that I did not catch diphtheria, even though I slept in the same bunk as my
friend who came down with that very contagious disease? It could be argued, of course, that my reliance on luck to explain
my survival is itself a defense mechanism against the mental ravages survivor syndrome is known to visit on survivors. And
yet, it is no doubt true that luck had a great deal to do with my survival.

Thomas in Auschwitz Birkenau, fiftyfive years after the infamous death march

I have also wondered from time to time why I can speak and write very freely and, on the whole, unemotionally about my camp
experiences, while I am unable to watch movies about the Holocaust or read books that deal with it. That is not to say that
in writing this memoir, I did not have moments when I had to compose myself before going on. For example, when describing
the reunion with my mother or the killing of Ucek and Zarenka, tears welled up in my eyes. Generally, however, the story just
flowed out of me. And though before starting on this book, I was afraid that some of my Auschwitz nightmares might return
as I began to recall seemingly longforgotten episodes, that did not happen. By contrast, when my children asked my mother
to write down some of her Holocaust experiences, she started to write but had to stop after the first few pages. She told
them afterward that almost as soon as she began to write, she started to cry and could not continue. Yet she could speak quite
freely about these events. How to explain these quirks of the mind? Of course, the Holocaust robbed her of the best years
of her life, and while she lived a relatively comfortable life after the war, it certainly was not the normal happy life she
would otherwise have had or assumed she would have had. As she began to write down her war experiences for her grandchildren,
the suppressed feelings about her loss no doubt reemerged. My own past did not really affect my future to the same degree.