By Chance Alone (13 page)

We continued marching through Mauthausen, passing the vertical rise of a granite cliff. I saw inmates in striped garments hammering with chisels at the stone. This sent shivers of fear through me because I knew that I could not endure this kind of gruelling work. When we arrived at the top of the road, I saw the fortress-like entrance to KL Mauthausen concentration camp. This entrance had a large gate with tall guard towers on each side. It was a foreboding sight.

Inside the camp, we were directed to a barracks with showers. Mauthausen was overflowing with inmates who, like us, had been brought from other camps in occupied Poland. We stood outside in the freezing floodlit square for hours until several Kapos took charge of the crowd, ordering us to undress but to keep our shoes. We waited naked in the cold while groups of one hundred men at a time were sent through the showers. When it was finally my turn, it was a small pleasure to feel the warm water wash away the dirt and stench from my body. But it was over too
quickly, and I was pushed naked back out into the freezing cold. It was clear this shower was not for our benefit, but to avoid transmitting disease to the SS guards.

The steam from the heat of the shower rose from our bodies, and I knew that we would soon have hypothermia. I felt the chill creeping deep inside me, and I began vigorously flailing my arms, hitting my upper body to keep my circulation going. I did this through the night without stopping. Many of the inmates around me dropped to the ground and froze to death. Finally, the next morning, those of us who were still alive were directed to a barracks. Inside, I saw several rows of people sitting on the floor with their legs spread apart. Each new person was directed to sit between someone else's outstretched legs, and then the next person would sit between his outstretched legs and so on. To feel bodies in front of and behind you was both frightening and demeaning. The entire floor was filled with this sea of humanity, and I estimated that there were at least a thousand people in this room.

I was furious—of all the hardships I had endured, this latest abomination was the most insulting. We were packed like sardines in a can. It's true that we weren't freezing cold anymore, but everyone was dead tired. If a prisoner fell asleep, his head would drop on the person in front of him and he could expect a jab in his ribs, jarring him awake. Urine and diarrhea seeped onto the floor under our buttocks, and the stench was unbearable. We weren't allowed to stand and we couldn't go outside to relieve ourselves. Just hours before, we had been given a shower to wash off the dirt that had accumulated on our bodies, and now I was sitting in urine and feces. I tried to disengage my mind and go to a place where I could ignore what was
happening around me. I lost track of time. I lost control of my bodily functions. I believe that I sat in this way for two days, and then suddenly the Kapos shouted at us to get up and out of the barracks. We disentangled ourselves as quickly as possible and were again outside in the bitter cold, naked and smeared practically from head to toe in feces.

We had to form up in a single line to receive our garments: striped pants, a top, and a cap. I could tell from the odour on the garments that they had recently been disinfected with Zyklon B, the same chemical used to gas Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau. We were told that we were going to another camp. I was happy to leave this hellhole and hoped I'd never see it again. It had been ten days since we left Auschwitz and I'd still had nothing to eat or drink. I realized that getting food and water would be the final factor in my survival.

We were marched out the gates of Mauthausen, across the treacherous bridge, and down to the railway station, where we were crammed back into boxcars. The locomotive started up and we were on the move again. A few hours later, the train slowed and eventually came to a stop. The guards opened the doors of the cattle cars and shouted “
Raus! Raus!
” A sign told me that I was in a railway station in a town called Melk, right beside the Danube River.

O
ur transport arrived at Melk on the afternoon of February
1
or
2
,
1945
. The railway lines and the highway were both parallel to the Danube River, which was full of ice, just as it had been at Mauthausen. The highway was busy with routine military and civilian traffic. Our transport consisted of approximately one thousand slave labourers. The guards took up position on either side of us and forced us to march uphill, through the town, and into a camp called Melk KL. This was an old First World War cavalry barracks on a hilltop offering a view of the rooftops of the town. Another hill, opposite the camp, had a long and very impressive building that I later learned was the largest Franciscan monastery in Europe.

After lengthy discussions between the SS guards and the Kapos, they divided us into groups and assigned us to various barracks. I was directed to a barracks that was already home to a number of Russian prisoners of war. I managed to communicate with them using a mix of Russian, Slovak, and German. They wanted to know which camp I came from and where I was born.
They also asked me if I knew how the war was progressing. The only news I could give them was that when we left Auschwitz I on January
18
, I'd heard the sound of heavy artillery coming from the Eastern Front and assumed that the Red Army was not far away. These Russian prisoners were trained military men with large physiques, but they looked quite haggard. However, they knew how to protect themselves and each other, and they were a close-knit unit. I noticed that the Kapos dared not abuse them the way they abused us.

I thought to myself, Here I am in another camp, all alone again. I wondered how difficult it would be to adjust to the new conditions. What kind of work would I have to do, and would I be exposed to the elements? I told myself that if I could just survive the months of February and March, spring would arrive and the Red Army would emerge from the east to end this ordeal. But there were so many things to worry about, and I needed to be ready to face all challenges.

My mattress was full of powder and so filthy that I chose to sleep directly on the wooden bed planks instead. I had a dirty blanket to cover me. While it might sound strange to miss a place like Auschwitz I, I was consumed by memories of the upstairs ward in barrack
21
, where I had a clean bunk, a clean blanket, and my busy daily routines. In the hospital, I felt I was part of a group of professionals who were helping our fellow prisoners, and I also had privileges that allowed me to survive. Melk, in contrast, was going to be a very dangerous and demeaning experience.

That evening, I received my first sustenance after ten days without any food—a piece of bread and a cup of ersatz coffee. This ration tasted very good to me, but it did not fill my stomach.
I was beginning to wonder how I'd managed to survive for this length of time.

The next morning we were woken up at
5
a.m. and given a cup of tea in our barracks. Inmates were organized into three equal eight-hour shifts. I was in the morning shift with fifteen hundred fellow prisoners. We lined up in the square and then were marched down to the railway station and put into boxcars with the doors locked. We travelled for about an hour and then disembarked. I found myself in a large fenced-in area with many sheds that stored machinery. I could see six large bomb-proof railway tunnels that were built into a mountainside, and a locomotive pushing fifteen to twenty boxcars into one of them. This place was a hive of activity. I learned that four of these tunnels were already in full production making aircraft parts; the other two tunnels were still being built.

The SS divided us into groups, and a man in a black cap and black overalls led my group to an area where the stone was being drilled for the last tunnel. I was handed a large air drill that I could hardly lift, and the man directed me to start drilling by pushing the handle. The vibrations of the drill shook my body, and the sound of it hitting the rock was deafening. We were drilling a stairway to the top of the tunnel in order to shape the contours of the ceiling. I felt that I had no strength to drill the rock above my head. As the rocks above were loosened, we were at constant risk of being crushed.

I later learned that the man in the black cap and overalls was from a civilian organization that was building this infrastructure for the Luftwaffe. The inmates worked here in three eight-hour shifts; when one shift was finished, the next was marched into the tunnel. After two days of this work, I told our foreman that
I could no longer lift the drill and asked him to place me on another job. He told me to retrieve all the broken drills that had accumulated in the tunnel and take them to the blacksmith's workshop for welding. This new job once again saved my life. It was cozy and warm inside the blacksmith's shop, and there was a red-hot fire burning in the forge. The blacksmith was a Russian prisoner of war named Misha.

It was approximately half a kilometre from the tunnel to the blacksmith's shop, and a conveyor belt carrying loose stone ran the full distance. I learned to jump on the conveyor belt, and that made my journey easier. The only trick was jumping off before the belt continued into a crusher, which would have meant my demise. Once I got to know Misha better, I asked him if he could make me a rig to carry a number of drills so I didn't have to hold them in my arms. He obliged by making a holder that allowed me to carry six drills at a time. Even though it was heavy, it made my job easier. I also figured out how to pace myself so there were always enough replacements for broken drills. That allowed me to spend more time in the warm blacksmith's shop. Misha also helped me when he gave me a pot and told me to fill it with clean snow, which he melted on the fire for the two of us to drink. This daily work routine continued until the end of March.

There was one building with showers and a laundry facility in Melk KL. Like Auschwitz, Melk also had a crematorium, but no gas chambers. I always gave the crematorium a wide berth because it reminded me of Birkenau. In the middle of the camp, there was a small hill where we walked on Sundays, when we did not work. In mid-March, when the weather got warmer, we all gathered on the hill, removed our jackets, and searched for lice. I was disgusted to discover thousands of tiny eggs embedded in
the fabric of my jacket, which explained why I was constantly scratching myself. We spent many hours crushing the eggs between our thumbnails, like monkeys grooming themselves. Unfortunately, my efforts didn't make a dent in my lice infestation, which became worse as the warmer days made me sweat more. I hadn't been allowed to shower since my arrival in Melk, but when the camp administration became aware of the infestation, they took action to prevent a spread to their own personnel.

On the next Sunday morning, the Kapos ordered us to give up our jackets and pants so they could be disinfected, and in the afternoon, the entire camp was given a shower. Thousands of us gathered in front of the entrance to the shower. The door was only a few feet wide, and I knew from experience that there was going to be mayhem when it opened. The waiting prisoners would all try to get in at the same time. Anyone who fell on the ground would certainly be crushed by the mob. I asked myself if a shower was worth putting my life in danger, and then tried to determine where I should position myself so that I would be safe. But as soon as the door opened, I was sucked into a whirlpool of bodies. I fought with all my strength not to lose my footing or be trampled. Suddenly, I felt myself pushed up over the top of people's heads, and then I was passed toward the edge of the mob, where I fell to the ground, uninjured. Some people were not so lucky and were trampled to death under the feet of their fellow prisoners. I missed my opportunity to shower, but I was thankful to have made it out alive. A few days later, on March
15
, I turned sixteen years old. Would I make it to seventeen?

***

As we neared the end of March
1945
, the weather became increasingly warmer. I could hear sounds of bombing coming from the east, from the direction of Vienna, and I felt encouraged that the end of the war was coming closer. My thoughts turned to my home life back in Moldava, where we would have been celebrating the holiday of Purim, which commemorates the salvation of the Persian Jews from the murderous tyrant Haman. On Purim, it was our custom to share goodies with our friends and neighbours to celebrate our freedom from oppression. Our home would be filled with the enticing aroma of baked goods and delicious cooking. My mother would make chicken paprikash with all the trimmings. How long ago it seemed, and now it was only a memory for my mind to savour.

One morning after wake-up call, I felt very sick. I had stomach cramps, diarrhea, fever, and dizziness. How was I going to cope today? I simply wanted to curl up into a ball and pay the consequences. But my bunkmates hauled me out of bed and pushed me into a line to receive our breakfast tea, which I couldn't even drink. I barely managed to march from the camp to the train that took us to work. When I arrived on the site, I started to collect the broken drills from the night shift and take them to the blacksmith for welding. I told him that I was very sick, that I had diarrhea and couldn't keep anything in my stomach. He gave me a piece of charcoal to chew and swallow with a bit of water. He said it would take a few days to kill the germs in my stomach, and he told me to crawl under a bench in the shop and sleep it off in the meantime. I ate charcoal for three days and became very dehydrated. I gave my meagre rations to my bunkmates, because anything I put into my stomach would not stay there. I was so weak, I felt that I was at the tipping point.

On the third day of the sickness, while I was marching from the train to the camp after our shift, I got severe cramps in my stomach, and my bowels suddenly evacuated. In this moment, I released the poison from my body and instantly felt better. I knew that Misha's home remedy had saved me. Without his charcoal, I would not have survived this illness, and I was grateful for his help. However, my pants were a new problem to deal with. I had to walk back to camp, smelling putrid, and quickly wash the pants with cold water and no soap. The next day I wore wet pants to work, which was extremely uncomfortable.

The next day, when our shift ended and we were lining up to be counted, the civilian foreman came running up to the officer in charge and reported that someone had sabotaged the conveyor belt by cutting out two pieces to use as soles for their shoes. This was a very serious violation. The Kommandant announced that the person who had done this had one minute to step forward, but no one did. The Kommandant then ordered the SS guards to pick out every tenth person from the line and bring them forward. They skipped over me by only two people, and I breathed a giant sigh of relief. They marched the men a short distance away and then the Kommandant gave the order to fire. Ten men were murdered to set an example for the rest of us.

***

At the end of March
1945
, I saw large groups of civilians from the direction of Vienna fleeing west by boat on the Danube. I also saw overloaded trains with people sitting on top and hanging off the sides. From the top of the hill in the camp, I saw military and civilian vehicles, buggies loaded with furniture, and
people on foot pulling handcarts full of goods—all of them fleeing the advancing Red Army and heading toward the Americans in the west. Clearly Austrians were not accustomed to travelling in this style.

If everyone was running away, what would happen to us slave labourers? I hoped that our guards would simply go away and leave us alone, but that is not what happened. The next morning, we were marched down to the railway station to work as if it were just another ordinary day. I collected drills and carried them to the blacksmith's shop. Misha told me that there was no need to work quickly because the Red Army would soon be here. “Go and sleep under the bench,” he said. Soon after, I was awakened by the sound of shooting. I jumped up, and Misha and I looked out the window to see a fighter plane circling around our yard at a very low altitude, shooting at anything that moved. A locomotive pulling boxcars full of aircraft parts emerged from the tunnel, unaware of the fighter plane. The pilot banked around and fired a stream of bullets into the locomotive, which exploded, creating chaos everywhere. Misha shouted over the noise that it was a Russian Yak fighter plane. It felt wonderful to have a front seat for the pandemonium that a single airplane had caused.

When the coast was clear, I took my drills and went back into the tunnel, where no one yet knew of the strafing by the airplane in the yard. I had a feeling that the end was very near. When our shift ended, the SS lined us up to be counted as usual, but the evening shift did not arrive. We climbed into the boxcars and went back to the camp, where there was a buzz about the pause in operations. I thought that if the SS made us take another death march, at least I would not have to worry about freezing weather this time.

The next day's wake-up call came earlier than usual, and this time the entire camp was assembled in the square. We stood for some time and then were ordered to line up in rows of five, after which we were divided into several groups. My group was taken in the direction of the railway. I took a last glimpse of the Franciscan monastery, thinking that I would never see it again, and then followed the other inmates in my group down to the banks of the Danube, where there were many barges tied to the shore. The SS crammed us into one carrying metal railway tracks. Once the barge was fully loaded with people, its openings were secured with metal covers and padlocked so we could not escape. I thought to myself, If this barge sinks, we're all doomed. Then I wondered if they intended to drown us by deliberately sinking the barges.