I Shall Live (31 page)

A young German professor led the eight of us “mathematicians” to a table in the corner of the barracks. He was a slender man of about thirty, of medium height, with straight dark blond hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. He appointed Stark, who had taught mathematics, to be our leader. On the table were seven machines that looked like old-fashioned cash registers, with rows of keys for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Around the table
were benches for us to sit on. The professor, who didn't introduce himself, spoke to Stark for a few minutes, handed him a thick manila envelope, said good-bye to us, and left. We all gathered around Stark as he opened the envelope. Inside were hundreds of sheets covered with columns of typed numbers, for example: 3146.45 × 260.13 =; 52354.05 ÷ 1.263 =; and so forth. A few were addition or subtraction, but most were multiplication and division: elementary school arithmetic. I picked up the manila envelope. It was stamped
Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine
(Supreme Command of the German Navy). On the bottom was another stamp,
Geheime Reichssache
(Highest State Secrets). Stark saw me looking at the envelope and with annoyance asked me to hand it over. Already he was behaving like a boss. I made a crack about this “top secret” work that any kid could do, and he didn't like that either. He was full of his new importance, and pulled rank on us as the only legitimate mathematician in the group. Stark was close to forty, and with his bald head looked a bit like Mussolini. Every few minutes he would suck in air through his teeth, a mannerism that drove me crazy.

The others in the group besides Sam and me were Zysman and Wortman, who were real engineers but had registered as mathematicians; Arno Kronheim, a young German Jew who was a student from Berlin; and Eisenstadt, a teacher. Zysman was rather tall and thin, with a long nose and sad eyes. He was a living encyclopedia, very intelligent and with an analytical mind, and was the only one among us whom Stark really respected. Wortman was in his fifties, a pleasant, civilized man with graying hair. He was a compulsive smoker and used to trade some of his bread rations for cigarettes, although he knew he was shortening his life by doing so. He was a pessimist, and didn't think we would live long enough anyway for it to matter. Eisenstadt was a very level-headed, even-tempered, agreeable man of about forty-five. His hair was completely silver-gray, an
odd contrast with his smooth pink cheeks. Arno was an exceptionally nice young man, perhaps a year older than I, with dark, slightly wavy hair, brown eyes, and a roundish face. He knew no Polish, which all the rest of us spoke. Although he generally kept to himself, he was scrupulously polite to everyone. I liked Arno and tried to strike up a friendship with him, but he didn't respond, so I left him alone. Perhaps he, like many other German Jews, was uncomfortable with the more outgoing manners of the Polish Jews. Finally there was Warshawski, a pale-faced man, in very poor physical condition, who was close to becoming a Musalman. His health improved markedly after he joined our group.

Sam and I needed to learn how to work the machine, and Zysman volunteered to help us. I started multiplying and dividing the numbers and writing down the answers. This was heaven. We got to sit at the table all day, and there was no one around to supervise us. After a while I went over to visit Felek and Fred. The “chemists” were all sitting at tables too, and what they were doing was translating Polish textbooks on insects into German. I could scarcely believe my eyes. This was what they had brought us here for? Felek said that their professor had given them the books to translate because, he said, to do their real, supposedly vital work they needed material that had not yet arrived. He appointed Bencio Fink, who couldn't read or write German, to be the librarian for these Polish insect books.

Incredulous, I went to have a look at what the “engineers and inventors” were up to. There it was total chaos. Their professor had told them that they would be working on a vitally important scientific invention, a gas that would have the capacity to bring all motors to a standstill. This gas was intended to be used primarily against planes, tanks, and trucks, effectively immobilizing the opposing army. Their professor too had explained to them that
unfortunately the materials they needed had not yet arrived. In the meantime, he had brought them an automobile engine to get started on, together with some fuel. They spent the whole day turning the engine on and off.

The whole business was mind-boggling. Those who had said from the very beginning that this commando was some kind of cover-up for the professors were obviously right. It was a fake, a fraud! I went back to our table unable to contain my hilarity. Stark gave me a baleful look, and even Sam took me aside to warn me, “You have to be careful. Someone might inform on you, and we'll all be in trouble.” Of course he was right, and I promised him I would stop. But after the evening Appel, all we could talk about was our new situation. We weren't complaining, of course; our new commando might well save our lives. And obviously there was a big difference between hard labor in an ordinary camp commando—which in itself could kill, on our starvation diet, not to mention the violence routinely inflicted on us—and the peaceful, even agreeable atmosphere in our Chemiker barracks.

Next morning I could scarcely wait for the Appel to be over so I could get to our new workplace. An SS guard was stationed outside the barracks, but he seldom came inside. The SS were well aware that our commando was unusual, to say the least. Some of them were suspicious, and occasionally would pass a remark expressing doubt that our work could have any value, and displeasure that Jews should have it so easy, but they had to follow orders, and they left us alone.

As the weeks passed, our life in the Chemiker Kommando became fairly routine. Once a week or so our professor would stop by, collect the finished work from Stark, and give him more sheets. It was boring, but that was the worst you could say about it. I was still losing weight, but not so fast as when I was doing hard labor. All
of us were more relaxed, and sometimes told jokes and teased each other. One of the chemical group, Jurek Topaz, a young fellow about my age, was especially full of life and loved to play practical jokes on his fellow “chemists.”

We “mathematicians” soon got to know each other well, sitting together at the same table day after day, and we found various ways of diverting ourselves from our utterly boring work. Someone challenged Stark with a very difficult riddle in logic, and Stark, Zysman, and I occupied ourselves for several days trying to solve it. Stark was the first to come up with a solution, but no one could understand it. Zysman was next, and his explanation was easy to understand. I didn't like Stark, and enjoyed his tortuous attempts to prove the validity of his own solution, which Zysman didn't agree with, nor did anyone else.

Stark wasn't crazy about me either, and often dropped sarcastic remarks about my interest in analyzing the situation on the war fronts. Once I overheard him telling Zysman that it had become an obsession with me, adding, “I wonder, if we should happen to get lucky and survive, what he will do with himself after the war, without any more battles to follow.” This made me ask myself whether Stark wasn't right; perhaps never again would anything capture my interest to such an extent. Then it occurred to me that business was another big game, much like war. Maybe I'd go to America and become a big businessman. That made me feel better. One day, unexpectedly, another “mathematician” was added to our group—a woman from the women's barracks. So now there were nine of us.
*

From day to day in the meantime I literally lived for news from the battlefield. I had always enjoyed competition, and the struggle between the Russians and the Western Allies on one side and the monstrous Third Reich on the other could be seen as a gigantic contest between the forces of good and evil. For the moment it didn't matter that Stalin was something less than a saint, that he had killed millions of his own people. What was important was the Russian people themselves, their epic struggle and their heroic ability to rise from almost total defeat to great victories, giving lessons in modern warfare to their erstwhile invaders and torturers. My heart went out to the dauntless English, who, abandoned to their fate, fought on alone, their backs to the wall, to defend their freedom against the odds. I was overflowing with gratitude to the gum-chewing, wisecracking Yanks who had come to the rescue from across the ocean. My head was spinning with joy the day one of the “chemists” brought news from the BBC that America was now producing hundreds of thousands of tanks and planes to fight Hitler. We all shook our heads in amazement. “Only in America.”

The news from the fronts was exhilarating. The Russians had started their summer offensive and broken through the German lines on the central front. Early in July they captured Minsk, and a few days later Kovno and Grodno. Clearly the Germans were in a rout; in July we heard the names, one after the other, of the newly liberated Polish cities: Lwów, Przemy
ś
l, Stanisławów.

The news from the West made us no less jubilant. About the middle of July, after a prolonged buildup of forces, the Americans broke through in Normandy, and the Germans were in full retreat across France. I could scarcely believe this uninterrupted string of victories. And why were the stupid Germans continuing to resist? It was now certain that they had no chance whatsoever. These were
no temporary setbacks; everything was going irreversibly against them. Not only were their armies in full retreat, their factories were being destroyed by incessant bombing, relentless pounding by day and night, and there was no possible way of rebuilding them—while America, the arsenal of the free world, was gearing up to an unprecedented scale of production. The soldiers of the Wehrmacht were getting slaughtered by the tens of thousands, and losing their will to continue the fight. They all knew the war was lost. All that kept Germany in the war was the Nazis' terror and the ingrained German habit of unquestioning obedience.

None of this, of course, altered the fact that there was a sword dangling over us Jews. For us the question was: What kind of scenario would it take to rescue us?

The question was almost answered on July 20. When we got back to camp that evening, we heard that an attempt had been made on Hitler's life. Many conflicting stories were making the rounds: Hitler was dead. … Hitler was alive, but dying. …Hitler had survived, and addressed the Germans over the radio. … Hitler was really dead, but to gain time the Gestapo had someone impersonating him.

We were in a daze. We realized immediately that if it was true that Hitler was dead, the now leaderless SS might be afraid to continue mass killings of Jews, at least until it became clear who was in charge. Perhaps the Wehrmacht might seize power and ask for a cease-fire. There was even a possibility that the German soldiers would simply throw down their weapons and return home. If the assassination had really taken place, it probably was for us the gift of life. The pessimists, of course, had their say as well: “With that son of a bitch's luck, nothing could happen to him.”

Unfortunately, they were proven right. After an almost sleepless night, we learned in the morning that there had indeed been an attempt on Hitler's life, but that he had miraculously survived. In
a radio speech to the German people, he promised to wreak vengeance on the “traitors.” The SS guards themselves were eager to inform us of the good news. During the brief march to our Chemiker Kommando barracks that morning they taunted us, “So you damned Jews thought the Führer was dead, eh? Don't worry, he'll kill the lot of you before anything happens to him.”

As more details of the assassination attempt became known over the next few days, we realized how close we had been to an answer to our prayers. So near, and yet so far—it was very depressing. Now the bastard was going to be so furious, he might just give an order to kill all the Jews that were left. I was worried that this might well happen, and felt relieved every time they shouted
“Arbeit Kommandos formieren!”
(work commandos, assemble) after the Appel. Even the continuing good news from the fighting fronts failed to provide the usual lift to our spirits. At the end of July we heard that the Russians had reached the Vistula River and established a bridgehead across this largest and most important of all Polish rivers. So the Russians were now deep inside Poland. They had not only retaken most of the territory conquered by the Germans, they were pushing far beyond it, apparently hell-bent on utterly destroying the enemy.

Tension among us increased. We knew that had the rapid advance of the Russians continued, they would soon have been approaching Płaszów, and the question loomed: What would they do with us? Evacuate us? Liquidate the camp, killing all the inmates as they had done around Lublin, in Majdanek and the others? I felt somewhat hopeful that this would not happen; our German professors probably needed us now more than ever. Where would they be without us? Hitler was running short of cannon fodder, and even middle-aged men were being drafted. Surely our professors didn't want to fight Hitler's war, especially now, when things were going so badly for him. I only hoped that whatever pull they had with the
Gestapo or the German War Production Office was strong enough to keep us going.

News came of the Warsaw uprising. The Polish leaders of the underground
Armia Krajowa
(Home Army), apparently believing that the Russians, who were only a few miles away on the other side of the Vistula, would enter Warsaw in a matter of days, ordered a general uprising. Hitler, fearing that a successful rebellion in Warsaw might lead to a general revolt throughout Poland, and worried about his lines of communications, ordered an attack on Warsaw with tanks and planes, which destroyed everything that remained of the city after five years of bombardments and the burning of the Ghetto. There was justice in this, I felt: the Poles, with a few rare exceptions, had cheered the destruction of Warsaw Jewry, and now they were getting a taste of the same medicine. The victorious Russian army, however, needing time to move supplies up to the front and prepare for their next push, halted their advance in the middle of Poland. For the time being this put an end to talk of any immediate evacuation of Płaszów.