I Shall Live (33 page)

Suddenly I heard the door to the bunker open. Two SS guards came in talking loudly. Then I heard a key turn in the lock to my door.
“Raus!”
the guard yelled. I tried to walk, but my legs were so stiff I could hardly move. They let Fred out too, and when he emerged he had to lean against the wall of the corridor. The guards gave us a few seconds to straighten our legs, then pushed us out through the barracks door. The daylight blinded me at first, and I kept blinking, trying to adjust to it. As we stumbled along I took a look at Fred's face. It was awful, swollen and covered with purple bruises and dried blood. I saw that they were taking us back to the SS office. “Here comes another beating,” I thought. I reminded Fred of our decision to stick to our story no matter what.

When we arrived at the SS headquarters, Müller and another officer were standing outside. When Müller saw us, he said to the other,
“Diese sind die zwei Verbrecher.”
(These are the two criminals.)

To us he said, “You better tell me right now where that money is, or you're going back to the bunker.” We told him again that we didn't have any money. Müller looked at Fred and said to his companion, “Look at this Jew. He would like to kill me right now; I can see it in his eyes.” He then kicked Fred in the shin as hard as he could and said to us, “You can be sure that both of you will be hanged as soon as I get approval from Berlin.” He turned to the guards and ordered: “Take these two to the
Strafkommando
[the penalty commando].”

As the guards marched us off, I felt confused and relieved. Müller hadn't beaten us up again, but what had he meant about approval from Berlin? Why couldn't he just hang us right away? It was unheard of, the SS needing authorization from higher up to kill Jews. Was it because we belonged to the Chemiker Kommando? That seemed unlikely. And how long would it take for him to get “approval”?

We arrived at the quarry where the Strafkommando was working and joined the fifty or so other prisoners on the detail. On the run we had to pick up and carry big stones to a waiting truck. Compared to the Stehbunker, this was a picnic; even the blows we were dealt by the SS as we were running didn't bother us much. A fifteen-minute lunch break came soon after we arrived. The first thing we did was get a drink of water. We had gone seventy-two hours without water, and the feel of it running over my swollen tongue and cracked lips was bliss. Fred's leg had been badly damaged by Müller's kick, the flesh torn and bloody. Fortunately, though, the bone wasn't broken, and he was able to carry and run with the stones.

At the end of the day we marched back to the camp, and soon all four of us were reunited; we kept hugging and kissing one another. Felek and Sam were overjoyed; they'd been certain they would never see us alive again, although their pleasure at our return was dampened by Müller's threat to hang us. Everyone was puzzled by what he had said about approval from Berlin. But despite this new cloud hanging
over us, we could rejoice at being together again. It felt wonderful too to lie down on my bunk after the evening Appel; compared with the Stehbunker the bare wooden slats felt like a feather bed. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep at once and didn't wake up all night.

The next morning Fred and I were afraid they would send us out to work again in the Strafkommando, but our names weren't called during the Appel, so we happily returned to our Chemiker Kommando barracks. My fellow mathematicians were glad to see me back; they too were amazed that we were still alive. No one had ever heard of a prisoner physically resisting an SS guard and not being immediately executed. They were also mystified by the “approval from Berlin.” We speculated that perhaps the SS was running short of Jews; there were jokes about what a precious commodity we had become.
*

A few days later we heard the news that our crazed camp commandant, Amon Goeth, had been arrested. We didn't believe it at first, but it was soon confirmed by the prisoners who worked in the main office of the camp. Evidently, in the wake of the Chilowicz affair, the Gestapo had found out about the rake-off in money, gold, and jewelry he had been getting from Chilowicz and his gang. Everyone was happy to hear about Goeth's downfall, especially those who had been in Płaszów the longest and had often witnessed his killings and torture.

When we assembled for the evening Appel a few days after that, we were greeted by the sight of three Jews hanging from the gallows, and
an announcement that they had been sentenced to death for planning an escape. This was the first time we had heard the words “sentenced to death,” another innovation, like “approval from Berlin.” Never before had the Gestapo or SS found it necessary to justify the killing of Jews with any explanation whatsoever. Fred and I wondered how long it would be before we were hanging there ourselves. At every morning and evening Appel I was waiting tensely for our names to be called; I knew that Müller would get the approval to hang us, and unless something unexpected happened we were going to die soon. It didn't cheer me up any when one evening after supper, Fehringer came over to me and said, “Don't think your crime has been forgotten. The doctor and you too will be hanging soon.”

Over the past couple of weeks the situation on the fronts had not changed much. In the West the Allies had paused on the borders of Germany, and the Russian front in Poland was not very active. The Red Army was busy clearing the Balkans. Romania and Bulgaria had turned against their former allies, and in fact declared war on Germany, but this seemed unlikely to make any difference to us. Something drastic had to happen, and soon, if Fred and I were to be saved.

One morning in the second week in September, after the count on the Appelplatz was finished, the guards separated some of the prisoners in our barracks from the rest, Sam, Richie, and me among them. They started marching us toward the gate. I tried to explain to one of the guards that we belonged to the special Chemiker Kommando, but he just hit me over the head with his club and threatened to do it again if I said another word.

They were taking us toward Hujowa Górka, we soon realized, for there was a very unpleasant odor of burning. When we arrived at the Górka we were overwhelmed by a sickening sight. The ditches in which the thousands of Jews who had been killed on the Górka were buried had been opened and the earth removed from the top,
exposing hundreds of naked, rotting corpses. The SS were going wild, frenziedly hitting and cursing the prisoners, some of whom were taking the corpses out of the ditches, others carrying them to a clearing a few hundred feet away, and still others stacking them up, pouring gasoline over them, and setting them on fire.

I threw up at the sight. Sam, Richie, and I were assigned to be corpse carriers. With one person holding a corpse's legs and the other the arms, we carried it on the run to the clearing, the SS hitting us and yelling at us all the while to run faster. I was literally in shock, in a daze; I didn't look at the bodies as I was carrying them, sometimes with Sam, sometimes with Richie. The feel of the cold, decomposing flesh was sickening. I moved as if in a dream, a terrible nightmare. The stench of the rotting and burning flesh was worse than anything I had ever known; I threw up several more times. My back hurt terribly, and Sam and Richie let me carry the legs of the corpses, which made it easier.

When at the end of the day they ordered us back to camp, I was so upset I couldn't speak. Fred and Felek had been lucky; they and most of the others in the Chemiker Kommando had gone to work as usual. It was impossible to even think of eating that evening. After the Appel I went to my bunk in a stupor and lay awake most of the night in dread of the morning's Appel and having to return to that place. As it turned out, though, I was lucky; our entire commando was sent to our usual workplace. But I couldn't concentrate on my work all day, and from then on I worried more about being taken back to Hujowa Górka than about being hanged.

After the Appel one morning toward the end of September they ordered the nine mathematicians from our commando to step out of the ranks. Three SS guards surrounded us and led us to the gate. It was so unexpected and happened so fast that Sam and I had only
enough time to shout “Good-bye!” to Fred and Felek, who remained behind with the rest of the prisoners.

At the gate each of us was given a fairly large portion of bread and margarine; then we were loaded onto a waiting truck. One of the guards sat with the driver, the other two in the back with us. I was unhappy at being separated from Fred and Felek, but I was glad to be leaving Płaszów, where the order to hang us could come at any time. Fred, of course, was still in grave danger, and I was hoping they would evacuate the rest of the Chemiker Kommando soon. It was a good sign that the mathematicians were being moved out as a unit. That meant we were going to continue our work; it was an extension of our lease on life. Perhaps this time they would take us deep into Germany so that we wouldn't have to be evacuated again. I also felt that a group of only nine Jews was not very conspicuous, and might get lost in the shuffle at the end of the war. We had no idea if there were any Jews at all left in Germany, in concentration camps or anywhere else.

The truck pulled into the Krakow railway station, and the guards ordered us out. We had never seen them before; the three of them were very young and treated us well, although they seemed to have had orders to guard us very closely. We tried to find out where they were taking us, but they were not forthcoming. They led us through the station to a track with a sign over it that read
“Nach Berlin.”
Was it possible? Berlin!

The other travelers stared at us, three armed SS guarding nine Jews in striped suits. I felt like an exotic animal on the way to the circus. Our guards took us into a waiting train, also marked “Berlin.” It was a Pullman car, with separate compartments joined by a long, narrow corridor. Standing in the corridor were German women with children—Volksdeutsche, apparently, who were afraid of being caught by the Russians in their next big thrust to the west—and a lot
of German soldiers, some wounded, others probably on leave from the Russian front. There was a feeling of evacuation, of crowds on the move, but not of panic. To make way for us our guards pushed slowly through the mass of people, who whispered and pointed at us. Every compartment we passed was jammed, with not even standing room left. In the middle of a car our guards stopped at a compartment that was empty—reserved for us, it seemed. They let us in and stationed themselves at the door.

What a farce! In this train, for a change, the Germans were packed in like sardines, while nine Jewish prisoners rode in comfort in a private compartment! We took out our bread and margarine, but were careful to eat only part of it, not knowing how long it would have to last. Through the window we saw a mob of frantic people trying to force their way in. Some were screaming at the conductors because they had tickets for the trip but couldn't get on the train.

Just outside our compartment was a colonel of the Wehrmacht sitting on his trunk. His leg was all bandaged, and the bandage was soaked with blood. Prominent on his chest was the Iron Cross, which was awarded only for exceptional bravery. He politely asked our guards to let him into our compartment so that he could lie down, but they told him they had orders to keep us separated from everyone else. The colonel tried to reason with them, but they insisted they could make no exceptions. He grew more and more angry, and finally burst into a tirade against the SS, literally foaming at the mouth, screaming that here he was, a colonel of the Wehrmacht who had shed his blood for the Fatherland, having to defer to a bunch of lazy cowards who were using the damned Jews as an excuse not to fight. At first our guards didn't answer him; one of them tried to explain again that they were just following orders, but the colonel would have none of it. Now the other Germans on the train entered the fray, one woman screaming that
her children were worn out and the dirty Jews were keeping them from their sleep.

All this was making me nervous. If it continued, some higher-up in the Gestapo or the SS might come and take our compartment away from us. Fortunately, just then the train started to pull out of the station. We were surprised to see anybody, even a colonel, daring to rebuke the SS in public. Either the legendary German discipline was breaking down, or the SS was losing its power to terrorize. The whole scene was very funny, but of course we didn't dare laugh or even crack a smile.

The train rolled northward, making frequent stops, and at every station crowds of people were frantically trying to board it. Soon we arrived at the German frontier, where frontier inspectors came on board to check everyone's papers. They too were surprised to see us all alone in the compartment, and had a prolonged discussion about it with our guards. Finally the train pulled out again, and there we were—inside Germany. Where on earth could they be taking us? Our professor was from Berlin, so perhaps we were going to a big concentration camp in Oranienburg, which was not far from Berlin. We all felt more hopeful than we had permitted ourselves to be in a long time, although it was still hard to believe that the SS would ever let us survive, unless the war ended so suddenly that they had no chance to kill us first.

We passed Breslau, a major German city, and were still heading north, toward Berlin. We had now been on the train for several hours, and some of us had to go to the toilet—a major undertaking. We had to go singly, always with a guard accompanying us. When my turn came, I realized that I had almost forgotten that there was such a thing as a normal toilet, with a seat. What a fantastic luxury!

Night fell, and the guards warned us against any attempt to escape—unnecessarily, for what would we do in the middle of
Germany with nothing but our striped prison suits? We lay down on the benches to get some sleep. There was plenty of room for us all to stretch out comfortably, which gave the colonel another fit when he saw us do it.