I Shall Live (2 page)

While
I Shall Live
is largely Henry's story, he places the events in an historical context, enhancing the reader's experience and education. The lessons of Henry's life are particularly important for the younger generations. The increased visibility and vociferousness of Holocaust deniers underscores the importance of his work. Similarly, the mood of our time makes his real-life demonstration of the indomitable spirit so vital.

The word chosen to symbolize the Holocaust was “
zachor
,” remembrance. In our tradition, remembrance is also about the future, because only those who learn the lessons of the past are able to meet the challenges of the future.
I Shall Live
sounds an alarm for this generation so that the pledge of “Never again!” will be fulfilled.

I hope—I urge—that young people of every faith, ethnicity, and national origin, in and outside of the classroom, will be encouraged to read and benefit from
I Shall Live
. I have no doubt it will
inspire, sensitize, and instruct them as they draw lessons for their own lives.

Henry's caring for so many individuals from every walk of life, his devotion to Israel and the Jewish people, his love for and commitment to the United States and the vitality of our society, cannot be adequately recounted in this volume. Perhaps it is best left for others to recount. Henry never sought recognition, thought it was rightly earned. In fact, he shunned the limelight, preferring to have his deeds speak for themselves.

We are indebted to Henry for sharing his life story and for enabling us to be, directly or indirectly, part of it. May he and Susie be blessed with many more years of health, happiness, and good deeds.

MALCOLM HOENLEIN

Executive Vice Chairman,
Conference of Presidents of
Major American Jewish Organizations
April 2009

I
Shall Live
was originally published in 1987 to great critical acclaim. Henry Orenstein's extraordinary account of the way he and his family struggled to survive the atrocities perpetrated on European Jews by the Nazis has resonated with readers ever since. The narrative opens on Henry's domestic life with his family in Poland prior to its invasion by the Germans and the Russians in 1939. His words portray in brutal detail the nightmare that descended upon Poland and the rest of Europe.

Throughout his book he sets his personal struggle against the larger backdrop of war-torn Europe, giving readers a better perspective on the war as he and his siblings are moved from one concentration camp to another.

Since the original publication of
I Shall Live
, more information has come to light about a specific aspect of his story. When the Nazis ordered all scientists to sign up for a special assignment, Henry, his brothers, as well as a number of other Jewish prisoners who were not scientists, signed up anyway. They gambled their lives hoping
that the war would end before the SS found out that they were not who they claimed to be.

The idea of creating the scientists “Kommando” was originated by a number of German professors who worried that they would be drafted into the German Army and sent to the Russian front. After the professors interviewed the Jewish prisoners who enlisted in the “Kommando,” they realized that these were not real scientists. They were so anxious to avoid fighting the Russians that they decided to gamble themselves and give the prisoners make believe “scientific” work.

After the war Henry Orenstein engaged two German historians, Dr.Gotz and Dr. Strebel, to conduct a search in the German archives to try to find documents relating to the phony “Kommando.” The enclosed letters show how far-reaching the deception was. In one of them, the head of SS in Poland, Wilhelm Koppe, writes to Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, asking him for permission to move the “Kommando” to Germany, and telling him how important its work is to the German war effort. In another, Himmler, apparently very impressed, writes to Pohl, a key SS leader in Berlin, and asking him to set up an advisory committee to supervise the “Kommando.”

I Shall Live
puts a very human face on those who survived the camps and those who were not fortunate enough to make it. At its root, it is a story of a bright young man who grows into adulthood in the most unimaginable circumstances, but somehow becomes a good and decent man who puts the love of his family above all else.

Beaufort believes it is important to keep alive this unique story of strength and survival. For this new edition we have kept the original introduction by Claude Lanzmann, creator of “Shoah,” and included a brand new introduction by Malcolm Hoenlein.

ERIC KAMPMANN

President, Beaufort Books

I wrote this book primarily from my own experiences, which for the most part are etched in my memory with unusual clarity. Some of the people and events from more than forty years ago are more vivid to me today than are those of only yesterday.

At times I was aware, while they were happening, that I was a witness to extraordinary events, and I tried to remember them as fully and as accurately as possible, with the conscious intent of recording them, should I be fortunate enough to survive the war. Such an event, for example, was Dr. Blanke's “selection” in Płaszów.

A few events were so terrible and were buried so deep in my memory that only when someone who had shared the experience reminded me of them would the whole scene suddenly flash before me, intact in every detail and as fresh as though it were happening at that moment.

In many cases I verified my recollection by conversation with other survivors who had been with me during the extermination
actions and in the concentration camps. These included Adam Folman and Clara Herman, now living in Israel, both members of the
Chemiker Kommando.

I describe my personal experiences against the background of events on the fighting fronts during various stages of the war, because of their crucial importance to our chances for survival and because the gigantic struggle between Hitler and the coalition of western countries and Soviet Russia became almost an obsession with me.

The following pronunciation guide will help English-speaking readers to pronounce the names of Polish locales that figure prominently in the story:

I shall not die
I shall live
I shall tell the story …

When they met for the first time, my father, Lejb, took one look at my mother, Golda, and promptly fell in love. And no wonder: Golda was a beautiful young girl with a sweet face, perfect features, big brown eyes, brown hair, and a peach-like complexion.

Lejb was an aggressive, impatient young man who didn't believe in the customary matchmaking; he decided on the spot that Golda was the girl he would marry. Since he was on a business trip from Łęczna, where he lived, to Hrubieszów, where Golda lived, he couldn't stay long that first time, but as soon as he returned home he began writing her love letters every day. Unfortunately he could write only in Yiddish, and not very well at that. His youngest brother, Moshe, remembered Lejb sitting for hours writing letter after letter, tearing each one up and starting again. Moshe, a mischievous and inquisitive boy of six, would later collect the torn bits, and with the help of his older brother,
Hejnach, try to decipher the language of their brother's ardor, but they never succeeded.

It took a couple of years, but at last Golda succumbed to Lejb's persistent courtship. They were married in 1908, when both were twenty-six. Golda's one condition was that they make their home in Hrubieszów, to which Lejb agreed.

Lejb's father, Jankel, and his mother, Sarah (Surcia), were money lenders and dealers in grain; they also held an exclusive license from the Russian government to sell salt in Łęczna. Jankel and Sarah were unhappy with Lejb's decision to move to Hrubieszów, which was fifty miles away, but they knew that once he had made up his mind, no amount of persuasion would change it. Of their seven children—Usher, the eldest, Lejb's younger brothers, Bucio, Hejnach, and Moshe, and the younger sisters, Golda and Ryfka—it was Lejb who showed the greatest promise as a businessman.

The Strum family had been in Hrubieszów for many generations; Golda, her parents, Mordche Hersh and Sarah, and her brother Abraham (Abu
ś
) were all born in Hrubieszów, and the family had lived there from as far back as anyone could remember.

At the turn of the century Hrubieszów was a sleepy town, built around a central square where the important stores and the best apartments were located. The rest of the town, consisting mostly of small one-and two-story houses and shops, fanned out from the square. Only a few streets were paved, and most of those were of cobblestone, over which horse-drawn carriages clippity-clopped. On rainy days in the spring and fall the mud in the unpaved streets was so deep that wagons often got stuck and had to be pulled out.

Jews had been living in Hrubieszów since the Middle Ages, the first Jews having arrived there not long after the village was granted the status of a town by the king of Poland in 1400. The first historical reference to a Jewish settlement in Hrubieszów dates back to the
year 1444. Mention is made of a Hrubieszów Jew, Eliaser (Elias) who in 1445 made a trip to Kiev to obtain merchandise from the East. He and the other Jews in Poland were part of a Jewish migration from Western Europe to the East which began in the eleventh century and continued for hundreds of years, under the pressure of massacres by the Crusaders and of many other religious persecutions.

Polish Jews and Gentiles alike suffered the depredations of successive waves of invaders—Tartars, Cossacks, Turks. But the Jews had always lived almost totally separated from the Gentile population, as was the case in most of the towns and villages of Poland and Russia. Many Jews did not speak Polish at all, or at best only broken Polish. At home they spoke Yiddish, and their customs and culture were different, too, as was their appearance: most of them wore beards and long earlocks, yarmulkes on their heads, and black caftans.

Their religion was the key to their existence, and precluded any assimilation; life on earth was secondary in importance to the one hereafter. Because they had caused them so much misery, Christianity and Christians were viewed with deep suspicion. Although Jews had lived in Poland for centuries, it was still to them a foreign land. Many civil rights, privileges, and sources of income were denied them; to earn a living they had to depend on crafts and trade. They were the tailors, the shoemakers, the candlemakers, the money lenders, the tradesmen, and the storekeepers. By 1897, Jews constituted about half the population of Hrubieszów, more than 5,000 out of 10,500.

Life was hard in Hrubieszów, as there was virtually no industry. The Polish peasants were poor, and opportunities for Jews were limited. There were a few well-to-do families, but most lived in poverty. The daily diet consisted of bread, potatoes, herring, and soup; the more fortunate families had chicken and fish on Saturdays, but
for hundreds there wasn't even enough bread, and many Jewish children were undernourished, pale and hollow-cheeked.

These conditions and many restrictions caused a few of the Jews to resort to questionable business practices. This gave the anti-Semitic Poles a reason to brand all Jews as dishonest. Most Poles viewed the Jews with suspicion; to them they were a strange people, a foreign body thrust into the midst of Polish society. They couldn't understand why Jews held to their traditions and religious beliefs with such fanatic dedication, and they resented them for it. Danger was everywhere: Polish hooligans threatened pogroms and Catholic priests spread anti-Jewish propaganda, poisonous lies, even telling their congregations that Jews killed Polish children and used the blood to make matzohs for Passover.

But later, when some Jews tried to become assimilated into Polish society, the Poles resented that too. Jews were thus faced with a dilemma: If they kept to their traditional language and culture, they were hated and mocked for being different; when they tried to behave like Poles, they were laughed at and rejected.

The relationship between Jews and Poles had become a vicious cycle. Each had good reason to mistrust the other, but it was the Jews who bore the brunt of the abuse because they were the minority. And the centuries of invasions, destruction, and mass killings in this part of Europe had hardened the local population to bloodshed, which was an all-too-common sight. It didn't take much to start a fresh outbreak of violence against the Jews.

This, then, was the town Lejb came to settle in. Golda's family was poor and could do little to help the young couple. Her mother, Sarah, had borne sixteen children, but in such primitive conditions that only Golda and Abu
ś
had survived, the others having died either at birth or as infants. Golda's father, Mordche Hersh Strum, was a likable and respected man, but he never made much money; he dealt in grain, occasionally selling it to the army, but that wasn't
enough business to support a family. He was also an
eytse geber
(adviser) to people with problems, and although he didn't charge for his services, neither did he protest when a client discreetly left some eggs, a chicken, or a loaf of bread with Sarah; after all, a man had to feed his family. And he was a specialist in repairing hernias, at which the townspeople believed him to be more expert than any doctor.