The Dentist of Auschwitz
Chapter 9 My heart beat heavily when we passed Krusche at the gate. I
had hoped never to see him again, and my wish was being granted.
Yet I equally regretted leaving the people from Dobra, among whom
we had lived all our lives. I knew that that chapter of my life
was closed forever.
As the morning slowly brightened, I could see David Kot, Reb
Moishe, Hershel Sztein, Josef Glicensztein, and a few others
waiting to leave. Two of the SS men and some of the guards I
knew, including Tadek, were at our side. Tadek told me we were
going to Gutenbrunn, a camp like Steineck, but larger. This was a
relief. "I will stay there with you," Tadek added. Tadek was a
decent guard, and since I had kept my word, he trusted me.
"Gutenbrunn is twenty-five kilometers away, and part of the same
railway project," he said. This good news spread quickly.
It was finally day. The crowing of a rooster and the barking
of a dog were the only sounds on the road as we passed a lonely
farm. In front of us I saw Rachmiel, the cook, and Leibel, a
jovial man who had often hauled grain for us in Dobra. I pictured
the pasture near Leibel's house. Back when I was five years old,
he would grab me in fun, and to be sure I wouldn't escape, he
took my clothes away. Though I knew it was a joke, I did not like
to be teased. I would beg him to give me back my clothes, and
eventually he would let me go.
We reached a paved road, and walking became easier. We
passed many Black Madonna statues. The sun appeared, and we knew
we were going north. After we passed a sandy flat and a bare
bluff, we saw a group of brick buildings. One was a small
grocery. A few hungry chickens followed a farmer who was raking
away the remnants of winter. Women holding half-naked youngsters
appeared, silently staring at us. The villages in this region
were all similar, indistinct places, nameless blurs along the
road. But one farmer greeted us with "Heil Hitler!"
"Heil Hitler!" the SS men and some of the guards returned
the salute. "Heil Hitler!" a passing bicyclist chimed in. All
these "Heil Hitlers" had a bitter ring in our ears.
Outside the village were windmills. Further on we came to a
dam, and beyond it were several barracks that housed Polish
women. The barracks were unfenced. These people did not live as
pariahs.
A few kilometers beyond, the SS men led us off the road for
a rest. Later, at the next fork in the road, we turned right.
Just ahead were some heavy cement buildings with a fortlike tower
in the center. Coming closer, we saw four huge buildings set in a
square, with a gate and tower in front, typical of the
traditional German Junkers' and Polish counts' farm estates.
These people ruled the farming industry in Poland, and the
peasants held them in reverence.
We stopped at the entrance facing two armed sentries. Unlike
the flimsy wire gate in Steineck, this one was of solid oak and
joined two twenty-meter-long concrete buildings. Each building
contained several small windows with iron bars strung across
them. A rusty sign above the gate read "Gutenbrunn."
The SS men led us inside. Surrounded by the four massive
buildings, the yard was dark. We had come to a farm. These
buildings were once stables. At the far end of the yard I saw a
gallows. It looked much like the one I had been lucky enough to
escape. Here we seemed to be cut off from the rest of the world.
In the center of the yard were two SS men surrounded by camp
police. They were obviously expecting us.
One man dwarfed them all. He was very tall and had stern,
catlike eyes. He looked at us with disgust. "What have we got
here?" he asked. "A bunch of Mussulmen?" Because he wore civilian
clothes without an inmate's patch, we did not know who or what he
was. We were convinced he was a German. He was over two meters
tall, had a square jaw, rosy cheeks, and large protruding lips.
He wore black riding britches that were tucked into an officer's
shiny boots. He wore a brown shirt and a beige sweater, and a
woolen scarf was wrapped around his neck. His strange-looking hat
could have been from the French Foreign Legion. As he strode
about, surveying us with contempt, he slapped his billy club
against his boots. The loud boom echoed off the concrete
buildings. As he called for the camp police, he kept taunting us
as a disorganized bunch. Intimidated by the cruel giant, we
stared at him and then at one another. He was a real mystery to
us. "This is Gutenbrunn, you lazy Ost-Juden." This was his name
for Jews who were born east of Germany. "You mother-fucking
bastards. You will have to earn your keep here."
The SS men just stood by. They didn't need to intimidate us,
since this giant was doing their job for them. Then our new boss
divided us into three groups and ordered his policemen to lead us
into three different blocks. As we left, he handed out a slap
here and a curse there. When he saw the box I carried, he slapped
it with his club and asked me what I had inside.
I looked at his glowering face. "Those are my dental tools."
"What!" he said, as if he didn't understand what I had said.
"Dental tools?" he repeated. "Who allowed you to bring them
here?"
"I brought them here because they were helpful in Steineck,"
I countered. He looked at me sharply but said nothing further. A
young policeman, Menashe, took charge of my group. At a safe
distance, I asked him who the man was.
"He is an inmate from Hamburg, the Lagerältester here," he
said. Then, realizing he had omitted the most pertinent point, he
added, "He's a Jew like all of us."
This was mystifying. I had never heard the term
Lagerältester, and I had certainly never heard of a Jew who was
so powerful in a labor camp. It was hard to understand how he
could have gotten all this authority. And even more important,
how could he treat his fellow Jews in such a cold and callous
manner? "What's his name?" I asked.
"Kurt Goldberg," Menashe answered.
Each camp building seemed thirty meters long and about
twelve meters wide. Inside each were eight rows of four-tier
bunks, capable of housing eight hundred inmates. On the thick
cement walls were rings that once held cattle in place as they
were milked. Our new home was a stable, now housing human beasts
of burden. The floors were hard clay, the kind that kept the cold
inside. "Even on warm days," we were told, "the temperature never
goes above thirteen degrees Celsius."
What light entered the room came through windows of iron
bars, augmented by an occasional light bulb that hung listlessly
from the high ceiling. There was just enough light so that we
could see the bunks. This time Papa and I were determined to find
bunks higher up from the floor. Someone helped us to find two
spaces at the very top. The inmates were already back from work.
Most were from Lodz, now called Litzmannstadt by the Germans.
There were Jews from Germany, Holland, and Austria here. While
most of us from Steineck were craftsmen and merchants from small
villages, the other inmates here were more worldly. I met
intellectuals, authors, and lawyers. But like the world outside,
there were also a number of common thugs. It was a multilingual
camp, and if one of us spoke in Yiddish, we could expect a reply
in a dialect of German.
Kurt Goldberg was twenty-four. He was the product of a mixed
marriage and felt more German than Jewish. In 1933 he had joined
the Hitler Youth, but later the Nürnberg laws reclassified him as
a Jew, and he was expelled from the "Aryan" organization.
Nevertheless, he was convinced that he deserved better, and he
took out the anger and frustration of his misfortune by
intimidating his fellow Jews. His boldness and his command of the
German language made him a perfect tool for the malevolent Nazi
system. He once admitted that if his mother had claimed that he
was fathered by an Aryan, he would be free of this Jewish stigma.
His special contempt, however, was reserved for Polish Jews. He
thought that the "Ost-Juden" were responsible for his dilemma.
Among the many diabolical characters anointed in that era, he
will always remain the most enigmatic to me. Ultimately he fell
from Nazi favor and died.
Gutenbrunn had begun to operate as a camp four months before
we arrived. In quick succession other camps had cropped up all
around Poznan: Eichenwalde, Lenzingen, Antoninek, Fort Radziwill.
By the time we got to Gutenbrunn, eighteen hundred inmates, all
Jews, were already inside the walls. The guards were Poles, just
as they were at Steineck. Our food rations were identical: a
"pica" of bread, morning and night, and soup twice a day. Yet
Gutenbrunn was in many ways different. It had better facilities,
including showers and an infirmary. The camp doctor was Seidel,
an Austrian. He supervised a hospital with twelve beds. The bunks
were roomier, with fresh straw on each with a pillow and pallet.
But not even this brought an end to the bugs, although taking
periodic showers and delousing our clothes brought some relief.
While on the surface it would seem that life was better
here, it wasn't. In our block, a boy barely twelve years old drew
my attention. He was the youngest person I had seen so far in
camp. His name was Mendel, but everyone called him by the
diminutive, Mendele. He had been arrested in Lodz for smuggling
food into the ghetto. He had claimed to be sixteen and was
believed. This landed him in Gutenbrunn. With a round face and
bright smiling eyes, he was pleasant to look at. He had a typical
Lodz Yiddish accent and was a compulsive talker. He knew how to
stay alive in Gutenbrunn by doing whatever was required to
survive. Neither a hard worker nor lazy, Mendele was camp smart.
Even though he was a malingerer and a goldbricker, the foremen
generally liked him. He knew how to make them believe he worked
hard, by wiping his forehead when they watched him. He stopped
his work as soon as they walked away. Gifted with the knowledge
of how to con everyone, he knew how to organize and outsmart
inmates twice his age. While others got punished for an offense,
Mendele, who committed the same offense, got away with only a
warning. He was no stranger to anyone he thought he could profit
from. The ghetto life had equipped him with a strong survival
instinct. He was a product of the new order. Yet one could not
help but like him.
We could not see outside the camp grounds, for Gutenbrunn's
four tall buildings and enclosing walls blocked out the world.
Sometimes it seemed as if this was all that was left of the
universe.
We had been in the block less than an hour when we were
called to the Appellplatz (mustering ground) again. The SS men
were gone, leaving us to Goldberg and his policemen. Goldberg
barked out orders in a cruel tone as he continued to demean us
with insults. The police obediently assisted him with their own
abuse. We were told that on Monday all of us were going to work
in the Herdecke Kommando, a newly formed group. Even though we
knew that everyone's usual work was constructing railroad tracks,
we didn't have the foggiest idea what the Herdecke Kommando was.
Our experience with rail construction nonetheless must be
valuable to Gutenbrunn, we thought. Unlike the prisoners already
here, the one hundred from Steineck had by now worked nearly a
year on this railroad. Perhaps that was the reason we were
brought here.
The monotony of the food continued. Our meals consisted of a
square of margarine and a spoonful of marmalade, and at noon and
in the evening we also got a ladleful of turnip soup. The staple
crop here was turnips. Getting food here took us twice the time
it did in Steineck. They needed kitchen help badly. As in
Steineck, the policemen here were not short of food, German
cigarettes, or alcohol. When we returned to our bunks, I learned
that Goldberg had been asking where the dentist was. Soon I could
hear him yelling from the far end of the building. When he saw
me, he came over and asked me which bunk was mine. I didn't know
what to say. But this time he acted more rational, and his voice
was much calmer. Soon I learned why. He was to take the bunk next
to mine. I was surprised that a powerful man like him didn't have
a better place to sleep. I was perplexed and puzzled at why he
picked a bunk next to mine. Was he targeting me for mischief?
Though there was no homosexuality in Steineck that I knew of,
this was Gutenbrunn, a different camp. Now that I knew Goldberg
was a prisoner, I decided to disregard his authority and treat
him like anyone else. I knew the situation required me to be
careful, though. I could not object to his bringing his personal
things and leaving them on the bunk next to mine. He came late
that evening, long after curfew. Neither my father nor I were yet
asleep. He noticed our uneasiness, then uttered a few words to
me, turned, and fell asleep. Though I was never at ease with him
next to me, I didn't fear him any longer. A couple of weeks later
he decided to move to another bunk. In time we developed a
smoother relationship, and he even went out of his way to help
me.
Monday at six in the morning policemen came into the block
and began hitting the bunks with their billy clubs and shouting,
"Aufstehen!" The usual rush began. Standing in the food line, I
began the silent debate. Shall I eat my pica all at once or save
part for later? In the confusion of the first morning, a young
inmate's bowl of soup spilled to the ground. Tears ran down his
cheeks, for he knew he would go hungry that day.
"Eintreten! Step in line!" the policemen yelled, herding us
into rows of five. Soon we learned how the Herdecke Kommando got
its name. Herdecke was then the engineer in charge of building
this section of the railroad. He was German, like all the foremen
here. My father and I were assigned to haul split stones in
wheelbarrows up to the rail beds. Pushing them on the sandy soil
was hard enough, but doing it uphill was definitely beyond my
father's strength. Yet he couldn't let on, for that would brand
him a work shirker, and that was a dangerous image to have in
camp. In a few days our arms and shoulders had become so sore
that we could hardly lift them. Fortunately, Herdecke noticed it
on one of his inspections, and Papa was moved to raking, where he
could take short breaks. We were able to return to the camp at
noon for soup. Since we no longer had Zosia's food packages or
Stasia's scraps, we relied solely on what we got in camp.
Although I was unable to contact Zosia, one day she came. I
was told that she was at the kitchen gate asking for me. This
gate was open all day for the trucks that delivered food. I
wondered how she had found me. "I heard where you were from the
people in Brodzice. I had no trouble finding the camp," she said.
By now nearly all the inmates knew that I had a relationship with
a shiksa. The attention we got made us both uncomfortable. When
the sentries at the gate were gone, we casually walked outside. I
discovered that we could have a certain amount of privacy here. I
embraced her, and we kissed. I was delighted to see her again.
First she was concerned about the quantity of medication I
still had. Then we talked a while about Gutenbrunn and our work.
As usual, she had brought some food for us. After we said good-bye I watched as she disappeared into the distance. I wondered if
we would ever have the freedom we had at Steineck. I returned
with Zosia's package, and for the first time Papa and I had real
bread in Gutenbrunn. My father must have known about Zosia,
although he had never met her and I never spoke with him about
her.
The inmates in Gutenbrunn did not have any dental care.
Since Goldberg knew about my instruments and my dental work in
Steineck, I decided to ask him if I could help when needed here.
He listened, and then he sent me to speak with Dr. Seidel, whom I
had not yet met. I went after work. The first aid room was full
of inmates suffering from a variety of ailments. A large number
of them had swollen legs, with huge ankles, and I wondered why.
Dr. Seidel said it was edema. He told me that to still hunger,
some inmates drank more water than their systems could handle,
and the excess settled in their legs. "The slightest scratch or
abrasion will not heal. The wound becomes infected, and that has
disastrous consequences for them," he said. "The cure is rest and
proper nourishment." Those luxuries were not available to us.
Some of the sick begged the doctor for a day or two off, hoping
to recuperate, but he could not grant their wishes.
Dr. Seidel was in his early forties, small of stature with
narrow shoulders and a slightly sunken chest. He was a quiet,
well-mannered man. He spoke with a squeaky voice. When he looked
at me, his eyes seemed to pierce right through me. He was direct
and quite sure of what he said. He seemed constantly to chew on
something. His standard advice was "Let those wounds dry, and
they'll heal by themselves." At first I thought his remedies were
the result of having few medical supplies. Later I learned he
actually believed this to be good therapy, and it was often so.
Because a lot of inmates were waiting, I wanted to leave and
return another time. But when he heard that Kurt Goldberg had
sent me to see him, he waved me into the next room. I explained
who I was and why I had come. He listened carefully. I told him
that I could come after work and help if a dentist was needed. He
promptly agreed. "You could keep your things in one of these two
hatches," he said, pointing at them.
I had few tools or medications: three extraction forceps, a
couple of scalpels, some explorers and excavators, a chisel, two
scalers, a dozen pulp-canal reamers. Some of my drills were
useless without a drilling machine. I left them all in the
infirmary. The inmates most frequently complained about painful
and bleeding gums. Without proper equipment for sterilization, I
had to disinfect my instruments over an alcohol flame.
At the next roll call Goldberg announced that a dentist
would be available for the inmates in the infirmary every day
after work and on weekends. By now I had experience extracting
teeth. Gutenbrunn held nearly double the inmates that Steineck
had had, and some days I extracted as many as half a dozen teeth.
Once when Goldberg came into the first aid room with the
Kommandant, he proudly pointed at me, as if I had been his
discovery, and said, "Herr Lagerführer, we now have a dentist. He
is one of those who came from Steineck. He has instruments. He
comes here after his regular work on the Baustelle." That idea
appealed to the Nazi.
On Sunday afternoon, when it was quiet in the stable, I
heard Reb Moishe pounding his chest in prayer. "He is perfect and
dealeth truly with the pure in heart. And all believe that his
work is perfect." In the pits of existence, he still believed
deeply in the Divine. I could hear the church bells ringing
outside. Birds flew in formation in and out of our "fortress"
with ease. I wished that I could share their freedom.
Like clockwork, as soon as the kitchen window opened,
inmates formed lines stretching hundreds of meters into the yard.
Rachmiel, wearing a chef's hat with an apron draping over his
bulging belly, looked on as we stood there craving his foul-tasting soup, which in a normal world would have been scorned by
dogs. But to us a bite of bread and a spoonful of soup had
immeasurable value. To understand what hunger can do to the mind,
one has to go hungry for a long time. Hunger gnaws at the insides
like a worm. The desire to eat something is so great that one is
ready to do anything. Rumors that inmates ate grass to stay alive
in Gutenbrunn are true. Retaining a vestige of pride in the face
of such hunger was very difficult. This was especially true for
my friend, David Kot, who had been pampered with cookies and milk
at home. Once a rugged fellow, he was losing strength and looked
thinner every day.
The latest letter from home was most disturbing. We could
no longer deceive ourselves but had to expect the worst. "Except
for a few older men and some still protected by the Judenrat,
most have been deported from the ghetto. The outlook for our
survival here much longer is bleak. We know that our lives will
soon end," Pola wrote. She corroborated the news from recently
arrived inmates: "All the ghettos in Warthegau will soon be
empty.... while the people are told that they're being resettled,
they are killed in the newest, most barbaric way, by the exhaust
of the very vehicle they're transported in."
One morning as we were about to leave for work, Herdecke
came to the camp and asked Goldberg for additional workers. At
the same time he asked for someone who could do office work.
Goldberg must have remembered that I had said that I worked in an
office in Steineck, because he ordered me to report to Herdecke.
My string of good luck was continuing.
Not every German at the camps was an unscrupulous, virulent
anti-Semite. Although Herdecke was a member of the Nazi party, he
did not totally believe in their racial policies. While I worked
for him, on more than one occasion I heard him voicing
displeasure with Hitler's senseless war. He never mistreated any
of us, and he ordered the Germans under him to do likewise. That
was a quality that wasn't often found among Nazis in camp.
Herdecke's field office, where he put me to work, was a tiny
hut with barely enough room for a drafting table, desk, chair,
and file cabinet. When he was there the hut was crowded, but that
only happened when he came to brew coffee for himself with an
electric immersion heater that he called a Tauchsieder. My work
consisted mostly of making hand reproductions of technical
blueprints and collecting construction data from the foremen.
One day as I stirred my soup in camp, fishing hopelessly for
bits of potato, a sudden turmoil erupted. I saw an inmate being
dragged by a guard. He was yelling and begging to be let go.
Apparently the inmate had been helping to unload a truck and was
caught stuffing potatoes in his pockets. This "crime" had been
punished before with a heavy beating by our policemen, but this
time a sentry hauled the inmate to the guardhouse and did not
release him. We did not see him for the rest of the day. Though I
no longer recall his name, I did know him. Given the opportunity,
many of us would have done as he did, so we were anxious to learn
what his fate would be.
Two days later, when we returned from work, we were marched
to the gallows. Our hearts were heavy. We knew something was
wrong. Could it be that they were going to hang a man for
stealing a few potatoes? Soon our fears were confirmed.
Surrounded by three black-uniformed Gestapo men, the inmate was
marched with his hands tied behind his back to the gallows, where
a sign was placed on his chest heralding his crime. His jacket
hung loosely, as if he had shrunk in those two days. He was pale,
his eyes bulging. "What have they done to him?" we whispered.
Then one of the Gestapo ordered him to stand on a chair below a
dangling noose. Next they tied up his legs and slung the noose
over his neck. The Gestapo man read his sentence aloud: "For the
act of sabotage, Reichsführer Himmler sentences you to death by
hanging on the gallows." A green-uniformed Waffen SS man jerked
the chair from under the inmate's feet. His body dropped, and his
feet swung back and forth. Then his neck snapped, pitching his
head to one side. We looked at each other with astonishment. This
was a new low for us. Outrage welled up in my throat. I thought
the fate of all of us was hanging on those ropes. I felt like
yelling "Murderers!" The ground seemed to shake under my feet. It
was as if I were a witness to a medieval horror. There was a
strange silence. Then Dr. Seidel examined the inmate and
pronounced him dead. Two first aid people removed his body and
laid it at the side of the building.
I saw firsthand the hanged man. On his neck were deep rope
burns. An enlarged blue tongue hung out of his mouth. Urine and
feces fouled his dead body. I asked God if he was ever hungry.
Later, as we stood in line for our evening ration, I had a
fleeting thought: How can we go on as if nothing has happened?
Penalties for petty crimes stiffened. Almost anything that
wasn't explicitly allowed became a crime. Sometimes simple
allegations of a planned escape were sufficient to cause a
hanging. The victim was often blamed for being caught. We now
risked execution at every turn, but prisoners continued taking
risks, for the alternative was starvation. In time we witnessed
more such horrors, and Thursday became a regular execution day in
Gutenbrunn. When more than eight hangings were scheduled for a
day, there was a double shift at the gallows. On one day eleven
prisoners, not all from Gutenbrunn, were executed. After they
were declared dead, we removed them. On one occasion, as if by a
miracle, suddenly one man began breathing. For a moment I thought
they would let him live. But when one of the Gestapo noticed his
chest moving up and down, he walked over and shot him point-blank
in the head. This was hard to shake off. Someone protested,
muttering, "The Geneva Convention forbids double punishment." But
who could stop them?
Another ugly incident would puzzle me for many years to
come. On one Sunday afternoon, as I walked in the yard, two
Gestapo came through the kitchen door into the camp and ordered a
policeman to drive a hook into a door frame. Then, in
extraordinary secrecy, they executed a pretty young girl who had
come with them in their car. Afterward, they put her body into
the trunk and left. Since on Sundays the Kommandant and many
guards did not come to the camp, few people ever knew what had
happened.
The price paid in human life in Gutenbrunn wasn't only on
the gallows. Here, as in Steineck, more inmates died from
malnutrition and from exhaustion. Those who lay in the infirmary
talked to one another. They could no longer contain their misery.
"We gave in to slavery, and we labor for them to see an end to
this, but if it goes on much longer, none of us will survive,"
one said. "Why did we allow them to bring us here?"
"What was our alternative? If we hadn't come in peace, they
would have taken us with violence, and we still would have ended
up where we are," said another.
"Why does the world remain so indifferent to this? Don't
they know what is happening?" the first said.
"They probably don't," said the other.
"They must know," the first insisted. "They just don't
care."
"Red Cross people know what is going on." I was called away
and heard only fragments of their continuing discussion. They
said they feared that because the Germans rendered us worthless
parasites, the rest of the world didn't see us any differently.
They spoke as if a sense of abandonment had taken hold of them,
as if they thought that the world had given up on us.
Among the newest group of Jews to arrive was a journalist
from Leipzig named Richard Grimm. I met him on the tracks. He
told me that he deplored the Goldberg reception. He was a clever,
courageous, and physically imposing man with broad shoulders.
Like Goldberg, he spoke fluent German. Unfamiliar with camp
strategy, he was cautious. He worked hard, probing and asking
questions. After he learned the camp rules, he went on the
offensive against Goldberg. With a recent change in Kommandants,
Grimm saw an opportunity to undermine Goldberg's authority. That
gave Goldberg much to worry about.
The clever and courageous Leipziger journalist quickly
attracted the new Kommandant's attention. More mature than
Goldberg, with superior intelligence, Grimm was appointed to a
newly created position as camp administrator. No one knew exactly
what his responsibilities were, but his post made him an insider.
Since it brought him into constant contact with the SS
Kommandant, he developed a power base and often challenged
Goldberg's authority. There was bickering and posturing as the
two vied for the favor of the SS. Goldberg complained about
Grimm, and Grimm openly criticized Goldberg. It became clear that
only one of them could be the top Jewish inmate in the camp. The
Kommandant preferred Grimm's bright, decisive approach to
Goldberg's impetuous brashness, and Grimm became the camp's
Lagerältester. Richard Grimm was now the main player, and
although Kurt Goldberg still hung on as head of the police, at
long last his rule was over.
In October 1942 the weather turned foul. The clothes we had
worn all these long months turned to rags, and our shoes had long
ago fallen apart. Some tied string around the fragments of their
shoes. How much we wanted to delay winter's coming! At work the
prisoners did everything to stay warm; they flung their arms
about and stamped their feet to warm their freezing limbs. Some
even traded their soup for newspapers or empty cement bags to tie
around their bodies. Herdecke now spent more time in the hut
keeping warm and drinking coffee. I noticed loads of wood scraps
lying around, and a plan developed. I knew that for Herdecke to
agree, my argument would have to be based on an increase in
productivity. Each time I was ready to bring up my proposal, he
left.
One day I stopped him before he could leave the hut. "Mr.
Herdecke, our people are losing much of their strength just
keeping warm. I think if we give them a chance to warm up at
intervals, they will be more productive. I wonder if you could
allow them a break at midmorning. We have enough wood scraps to
keep a fire going, and we could even brew coffee, as we did in
Steineck."
He raised his eyes from his blueprints and looked at me with
a distant gaze. A few moments passed, and when I thought he would
say no, he agreed. I could see that I had stirred his humanity.
"Yes," he said, "but where do you want to build the fire?" I told
him about Stasia's field kitchen, and he agreed to the idea and
offered to bring us some ersatz coffee. A few days later I called
on my father to gather wood, start a fire, and brew the coffee.
It could not have come at a better time, for Papa was beginning
to take on the look of a Mussulman. He set up a kiln of bricks,
and within a couple of days the half hour coffee break was a
reality. This simple work break may have saved many lives that
winter. Thereafter, everyone called Papa the Coffee Man.
It was refreshing to encounter a decent Nazi like Herdecke.
Good will is mighty contagious. He set an example for his
foremen, and they too became more reasonable. Herdecke was
condemning his Führer in front of me more often now. He told me
he had joined the party to hold on to his engineering career. But
he felt that the Führer was leading his people to disaster.
Regardless of what he thought, I couldn't afford to discuss that
subject.
My father also began to bake potatoes for inmates who
managed to steal them. In return, he could keep a share for
himself. Relieved from hard work and with a bit more sustenance,
Papa slowly regained his rosy cheeks. Thanks to Grimm's influence
on the Kommandant, our medical barracks was enlarged, allowing us
to keep more of the sick inmates in bed. Papa and I also moved
into a new barracks, which was built to house new arrivals. I
stopped working for Herdecke so that I could remain in the
infirmary full time.
It was a long trip on foot for Zosia to visit me, yet she
came at least once a month to bring some food, supply me with
medication, and deliver letters from Pola and Mama. One Saturday
she handed me two of their letters. I thought this was very
unusual, since the letters were postmarked only two days apart.
When I returned to the barracks, Papa opened one, and I the
other. The first letter told of the ongoing deportations. The
second, however, was even more disturbing. My brother, Josek, had
been arrested and deported, and Mama and Pola didn't know his
whereabouts. Even his exemption, issued to him by a captain in
the German army, wasn't of any merit. It was a severe blow to
Mother. "No matter what," wrote Pola, "I am not leaving Mama."
Papa looked at me, and with a deep sigh he intoned, "God asks us
not to question his will." His voice began to quiver with
enormous pain. We both knew that Pola and Mama were now in true
danger. In my mind I was at home with them. I went to the
infirmary, my heart in a vise.
Before long Goldberg lost all of his authority and had to
resign himself to Grimm's rule. His once unrestrained, cocky
demeanor disappeared as he sank into isolation. Grimm was
unscrupulously fair. One of the benefits of his rule was that he
called for mandatory bed rest on Sunday afternoons between the
hours of two and four. In moments of hope, quite foreign to this
place, the remembrance of passionate lyrics to an old Jewish
melody prompted the inmates to compose "The Song of Gutenbrunn,"
following the form of a then-popular Yiddish song, "Americzke
Ganiv," about the underworld in America. The refrain of the slow,
morose melody was repeated:
Gutenbrunn, here from morning 'til night we toil
After each refrain, inmates would spontaneously add their
own lyrics, such as:
Work, work, work, 'til freedom comes.
Yet another inmate broke in and sang:
What is the use, what will they do?
These and similar verses could be heard each Sunday
afternoon.
For a while it seemed that the war had come to a standstill,
as if all of the territories the Nazis had won would forever
remain theirs. But one day some welcome news arrived. We learned
that the United States had declared war on the Axis in December.
It was now January 1943, and Tadek told me of the newly formed
Jewish labor camps nearby.
Though it was still winter, we were graced with rather
pleasant weather one Saturday when Zosia came. This visit was
especially welcome, as I hadn't seen her in many weeks. Under her
coat she wore a simple but attractive polka dot dress. In the
absence of the sentries at the little gate, I went out, and we
walked down the road. By now the guards knew me as the dentist,
and at worst they'd only call out to me and ask me to return. We
kept on the road until we came to a small forest, which we
entered.
We strolled through the forest a while, and then we
stopped. I looked into her sparkling eyes, took her in my arms,
and kissed her. She put her arms around me and gave in to my
advances. As we kissed, she rested her head on my shoulder, and
our passions rose. We couldn't resist our desires. I lowered her
onto the snow, and we made love for the first time in Gutenbrunn.
Suddenly we heard voices coming toward us. I sensed trouble. I
looked around and didn't know where to hide. As we saw four men
coming directly toward us, we tried to act casual. They stopped
in front of us. One, the youngest, who was about my age, looked
at me with a hostile expression, which told me that we were in
for more trouble than I had first thought.
"What are you doing here?" he bristled.
Zosia broke in and answered, "He is my friend, and I came to
visit him."
Paying no attention to Zosia's words, he turned back to me
and barked, "We know that you're a fucking Jew from the camp. We
watched you two go into the woods. And you," he said, pointing to
Zosia, "you should be ashamed of yourself, mixing with Jews. A
Polish girl whoring with a Jew is disgraceful."
We were at their mercy. He grabbed me by my shirt and
punched me in the face several times. He then shoved me into the
hands of one of his comrades, who slapped me and threw me back to
him. I was thrown to the ground and kicked as I tried to get up.
Zosia was crying and pleading, "Why are you doing this? Why are
you hurting him? He hasn't done a thing to you." She begged in
vain, as the other two bullies grabbed her and dragged her away
from me.
Each time I tried to get up, they kicked me as if I were a
soccer ball. I thought they would never stop. "Why are you
beating me?" I pleaded. Throughout my ordeal, I kept thinking of
the consequences of being taken to the guardhouse. I thought I
was finished.
Their rage and anger eventually subsided. They had had
enough, and they left. My nightmare was over, and I was fortunate
that they had not taken me to the guardhouse, where anything
could have been done to me. My head spun, and my face burned. My
clothes were bloody, the insides of my cheeks were cut, and some
of my teeth felt loose. I tried to move my jaw. Though it hurt a
lot, it wasn't fractured. Zosia was aghast, seeing the cuts on my
face. Though my body hurt from the pounding it had received, the
deepest pain came from within, as stomach cramps doubled me over,
repeating the agony I had felt after Krusche's beating in
Steineck. Zosia knew how ashamed I felt.
"They're just a bunch of hoodlums. They don't know what
they're doing," she consoled me. Zosia helped me to clean off my
clothes. I wanted to get back to the camp as quickly as possible.
She left me my medication and a bundle she had brought with her.
Draped in shame and anger, I kissed her good-bye.
At the edge of the woods I carefully scanned the road to the
camp. Seeing it was safe, I walked the short distance back to the
kitchen gate. Once I was in the yard, I could easily mingle with
the other inmates. It was now half past two. The soup ration had
long ago been distributed, but the perpetual optimists still
monitored the kitchen window in case some seconds might be given
out. I left the bread and medicine package under Papa's blanket.
I went to wash my face and rinse my mouth. I hoped that in time
some of my wobbling teeth would tighten.
This winter didn't turn out to be as bitterly cold as the
previous one, but our clothes, now in tatters, were no match for
it. The attrition rate among those handling the icy rails was
considerable. Though I no longer worked for Herdecke, our
detachment still had the half hour breaks, and my father was
still in charge of brewing the coffee.
One day at the beginning of April, Mendele followed me as I
crossed the yard. "Did you hear what is going on in Warsaw?" he
asked. Mendele often told strange stories, some barely half true.
But what he said sounded so terrible that I decided to listen.
"The Germans are transporting men, women, and children from the
ghetto to a camp called Treblinka, and there's where they're
killing them," he said.
"Mendele, you are spinning some tale again," I said.
In a wild rage he repeated the story. "I swear to God, it's
the truth," he countered. This sounded serious, so I asked him
who told him in the first place. "A Pole from the underground,"
he said. This was the first such mass extermination that we had
heard of. Much later I learned that nearly three hundred thousand
people were killed there. By inspiring a mixture of terror and
reverence, the Nazis shaped us into well-disciplined slaves
willing to work for them just to continue living. But when they
couldn't kill us fast enough with forced labor, they came up with
ideas like Chelmno and Treblinka.
As the workers completed one section of rail, they were
moved further away from the camp. This added three to five
kilometers of walking per day to their toil. Because of more
frequent casualties, Dr. Seidel wanted us to patrol the sites at
least an hour each day for sick and injured. I was the first
volunteer. With bandages, cotton, and a bottle of iodine, I went
each morning to the work site.
On a Sunday in late April, when Zosia came, she had a letter
from the ghetto. My premonition was right. The news was grave.
Reading just the first sentence, I froze. My mother and sister
had been murdered.
[
Previous Chapter |
Table of Contents |
Next Chapter ]
Home ·
Site Map ·
What's New? ·
Search
Nizkor
© The Nizkor Project, 1991-2012
This site is intended for educational purposes to teach about the Holocaust and
to combat hatred.
Any statements or excerpts found on this site are for educational purposes only.
As part of these educational purposes, Nizkor may
include on this website materials, such as excerpts from the writings of racists and antisemites. Far from approving these writings, Nizkor condemns them and
provides them so that its readers can learn the nature and extent of hate and antisemitic discourse. Nizkor urges the readers of these pages to condemn racist
and hate speech in all of its forms and manifestations.
Gutenbrunn
For a reward of stale bread and turnip soup.
As Jews we have no right to complain.
And if we do, who will listen?
Then life will be good again.
But as for now we don't complain.
And if we do, who will listen?
The fate is ours to bear.
Don't grieve, don't be bitter.
And if we do, who will listen?