I Shall Live (26 page)

I went back to the barracks, where no one seemed to know for sure what had happened. We got our morning rations of bread, ersatz coffee, and marmalade, and went outside for the Appel, which took much longer than usual, more than two hours. The guards ran back and forth from the latrine, lining up the bodies to be counted along with us.

Again it was announced that no one would be leaving the camp that day, and we were warned that if anyone else tried to escape, all the prisoners from his barracks would be killed—which seemed a pointless threat, since obviously the entire camp was about to
be liquidated in any case. We were then ordered to go back to the barracks, and I learned that the two Herbst brothers were indeed among the dead. I felt bad for the brave boys, but perhaps their quick death was preferable to what was awaiting us.

Tension in the camp was running very high, and the guards were walking around in groups, which was unusual. Prisoners were standing around, discussing the situation and speculating about what was happening. Some thought that this was the end, that the SS was preparing for the kill. Others saw hope in the fact that this was the second day we were confined to the camp, and yet nothing had happened so far. If the Germans intended to kill us, they reasoned, why should they wait? It was nothing to them to exterminate three thousand people—look at what they'd done at Majdanek and the other big camps.

Evening came at last, and again I couldn't sleep. I talked for a while with Richie, who was philosophical about it all, which calmed me down a little. Finally I closed my eyes and slept restlessly for a couple of hours.

In the morning they chased us outside again for the Appel. It occurred to me that perhaps their plan was to shoot us while we were conveniently lined up on the Appelplatz. I looked around for any ominous new signs, such as extra machine-gun emplacements, but everything seemed the same as always. This time the Appel didn't take long, and after it was over they told us that again no one would be going out to work that day. All prisoners were to return to barracks.

It was crazy; the third day with no work, and still they kept us alive. Speculations ran wild, and as the day wore on many of the prisoners grew more optimistic: “If they wanted to kill us, why would they wait so long?” I felt a little more optimistic myself, and so weary from anxiety and all the arguments and discussions that
when night came I lay down on my bunk and fell into a heavy sleep, awakened only by the morning call. Again we got our rations and went out for the Appel. Something had to happen soon, I felt; this could not go on indefinitely.

After the Appel they told us to form work commandos. A great sigh of relief swept through the ranks of prisoners. It was going to be okay; they weren't planning to kill us just yet. A few thought it was a trick, and that they just wanted to get us outside and kill us there. But somehow I sensed that, for the moment, everything was returning to normal. The routine had been restored; the SS and the Ukrainians were acting as they had before the crisis. We were almost lighthearted as we marched out of the camp. A crazy game of “now you live, now you die” was being played with our lives, but for now it was “you live.” This time the Ukrainians didn't have to force us to sing; we broke into song spontaneously, and it felt good.

In the ensuing days, information started to seep through to us about what had happened. It seemed that orders had come from Gestapo headquarters in Lublin to liquidate Budzy'n, like all the other camps in the Lublin area. But the German management of the Heinkel plant pleaded with the Gestapo to spare Budzy'n for the time being: the plant was about to start production of the airplane wings that were vital to the war effort. Their pleas had no effect, until finally the head of Heinkel aircraft reached someone at the very top of the Gestapo hierarchy in Berlin, and the Lublin Gestapo received orders from higher up countermanding their orders to kill us. The factory was too important—or perhaps someone up there owed the Heinkel people a favor. In any case, Budzy'n was the only camp in the whole area to be spared.

A key reason for Heinkel to fight so hard to save the camp, I feel sure, was the fear that if the Budzy
ń
factory were to be shut down, the German civilians themselves would be inducted at once into the
Wehrmacht. The Russians were beating the hell out of the Germans, whose greatest fear now was being sent to fight on the Russian front, particularly in the cruel Russian winter. Hitler had lost three hundred thousand of his best troops in Stalingrad alone, and he was expecting the Allies to soon open a second front in the West. In consequence, there was a tremendous shortage of manpower. Students were being drafted, and the only civilians to escape military service were those who were directly involved in arms production. As the fortunes of war shifted, so did the patriotism of many Germans. The
Vaterland
suddenly looked a lot less important to them than saving their own skins. It was interesting to see the change in the attitude of the Germans toward Hitler himself. Those who had originally been opposed to him before the war were basically decent people, who used to make fun of him and deplored the excesses of his Nazi henchmen. But when he had reached the peak of his triumphs, when he was master of virtually the whole continent of Europe, they were convinced that this was their man of destiny. They chose not to see what was going on before their eyes, or listen to what was told them by eyewitnesses to the unprecedented slaughter of innocent men, women, and children. Now, when it was becoming obvious that Germany was going to lose the war, and the “Master Race” was not destined to rule the world after all, their old doubts about Hitler returned. Most were still afraid to criticize their Führer, but some, like the managers of the Heinkel plant who had become friendly with some of their Jewish workers, were beginning to complain about him in private.

That winter was very severe, and many of the prisoners who worked outside suffered from frostbite. This often meant death, since those who couldn't work were entirely expendable. Our indoor jobs were a blessing during the day, but they didn't save us from SS sadism within the camp. Just before the end of 1943 our
barracks had another Entlausung, and this time the SS decided to have some fun. Before we took hot showers we took off our clothes in an adjoining room. Usually after the shower we went back in that room to get dressed again. That day, after our showers, with the temperature about 10 degrees Fahrenheit and snow on the ground, when we tried to get back into the room where we had left our clothes we found the door locked. There were about four hundred of us, and the guards chased us outside into the snow and ordered us to get back into the room through a single small window, which only one man at a time could climb through. We were standing in the snow naked, wet, and shivering. An incredible melee followed as most prisoners tried to get through the window at once. There was so much fighting, pulling, and shoving that it took almost a half hour before all of us were inside. The SS and the Ukrainians stood about having fun, hitting some of the naked men as they fought to get inside. I was frozen stiff.

When we got back to our barracks, my brothers and I massaged each other to get warm and drank some hot tea Fred was able to get for us from the hospital. Many of the prisoners caught pneumonia from this little exercise, and a number of them died. Luckily the four of us had no ill effects. It seemed miraculous; before the war I had frequently caught colds. But this sort of thing was not unusual in the camp; we discussed it often, and came to the conclusion that under unusual stress the human body sometimes develops unique defenses that are not normally there.

Once more life became routine. Hanka was sent out with a girls' commando. She had a good, strong voice, and became the “soloist” of the group as they marched out to work. Sometimes when I had returned from work in the evening before her, I could hear her beautiful voice rising over the rest as they approached the camp. She and Dunek Jakubowski, a curly-haired blond doctor from Warsaw, fell
in love, and in spite of all the hardships she was aglow with happiness. They were not permitted to visit each other's barracks, and could meet only for a few minutes a day outside the barracks.

January 1, 1944, arrived, and the plight of the prisoners who had no source of extra food became more and more desperate; the rations were so meager that they were wasting away. Those who had no more strength to work were sent to the camp hospital, where they died almost at once. We stretched our own extra rations as far as possible, not knowing how long our few remaining gold coins would have to last.

After the advances of 1943, action on the war fronts seemed to have slowed down. The Russians and the Western Allies were preparing for their next offensives. After their triumphs in the second half of 1943, it was clear that the Russians had mastered the art of mobile warfare, and now had a clear superiority in men and matériel. We expected their winter offensive to start anytime. Although the German war communiqués kept boasting of their “victories” in sinking Allied convoys on the way to Russia, we knew that many were getting through.

Everyone was full of admiration for the Russians. With so many millions of their soldiers killed or taken prisoner and 75 percent of their industrial capacity lost, with Hitler's armies occupying most of their industrial centers, they had nevertheless managed to evacuate, reorganize, and reassemble some of their factories deep inside Russia, to learn from the enemy the art of Blitzkrieg, even improving on it, and to begin dealing body blows to the invader. At first intimidated by the legendary German war machine, they had since learned how to handle modern weapons more efficiently, and with ever-increasing confidence discovered that they were more than a match for the Germans. And the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Russian prisoners of war, the inhuman treatment of the
populations in the conquered territories, and the daily spectacle of hangings and shooting transformed the stolid average Russian into a ferocious fighter, a defender to the death of his motherland. It was a great joy to us to hear that these “subhumans” were beating the hell out of Hitler's elite divisions.

The Allies seemed to be making slow progress in Italy, but they were expected to open the second front sometime in the spring of 1944. Every night I tried to guess where that second front would come. I didn't think it would be in the Mediterranean; the supply lines from the main Allied base in England would be too long. Northern Europe seemed the likeliest place.

The Germans repeatedly used the expression “Festung [Bastion] Europa”. I loved it—here was clear proof of how the whole German mentality had changed. Before, they had been the conquerors, their armies driving across Europe, capturing city after city, country after country. Now, like a pack of cornered rats, they were desperately trying to hold back the Allied and Russian armies. There was despair in the souls of the Germans because they well knew what crimes they had committed. Now they were trembling in anticipation of the coming punishment.

Still, all our excitement and pleasure at the great news from the fighting fronts was overshadowed by the knowledge that our own outlook was very bleak. For the moment we were relatively safe, working on the start-up of a new and essential plant. But what would happen to us with the launching of a new Russian offensive, when the Germans were forced to retreat from Poland? Victory for our liberators could mean our death warrant. Lying on my bunk at night I examined the possibilities. They might evacuate the plant, and us with it. But it was not yet in full production, and evacuation would be more trouble than it was worth. In that case, they would probably kill us, as they had the Jews in the other nearby camps.
Or they might ship us to camps farther west. But why bother? They didn't really need us. Liquidation seemed the only sensible solution, from their point of view. Rationally, we had very little hope. But the will to live was strong, and I felt, against all the odds, that we had a chance to survive. Now, with the good news from all the fighting fronts, the desire to witness Hitler's end, to taste victory, to have a good life, good food, freedom, was so strong that the thought of being killed was hard to bear.

One day in January, just after returning from work, I was outside the barracks when I heard the following announcement: “All Jewish scientists, engineers, inventors, chemists, and mathematicians must register immediately.” It was repeated several times, and had an immediate and tremendous impact on me. I sensed that it could be of the greatest importance to us, perhaps decisive for our survival. But what would it mean? Why would they want such highly trained specialists? Had they decided in fact to liquidate the camp and evacuate only certain technicians whom they might need later? This was not the customary list of “intelligentsia” they had used to select educated Jews for “special treatment” in the ghetto. And if they did intend to evacuate only those on this list, was there any way we could become part of such a specialized group? Not one of us belonged to any of those professions. Fred was a doctor, Sam an attorney, Felek had studied medicine for a couple of years, I hadn't even finished high school, and Hanka had been only thirteen when the war started.

My mind was in turmoil. Perhaps the reason they had repeated the announcement so many times was that everyone else was to be immediately liquidated. If so, being in that group could save our lives. On the other hand, what would they do to us when they discovered our deception? I didn't know where any of my brothers were at the moment, and I was afraid we might miss getting on the
list. I was torn between the advantages and disadvantages of registering. Finally I decided that being in this group couldn't represent any immediate danger. The Germans were losing the war, so why not gamble on living now, and worry later about the consequences of having lied? When in danger, I always felt that almost any action was preferable to inaction.