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"Papa travelled a great deal in his youth. At one time, he considered Argentina to be his home. He liked to talk and his stories were like tales from the Arabian Nights to us. We learned that he had met my mother in Radom during his travels. After he returned to South America, they continued to correspond through letters and postcards. He tried to persuade her to go there many times, to marry him and make Argentina her home too. But my mother was an only child and couldn't bear to leave her parents, let alone travel such a great distance. It was very common in those days to move away and perhaps never see your family again. And so it was that my father eventually returned to Radom, married my mother Milka and started his family. No one would have ever thought that this happy, carefree life would take a turn for the worse in just a few short years."
"My parents taught us that all men were created equal in the eyes of God. That color and creed does not make a difference in the character of a man. It is the way a person is inside that's important, not the color of his skin. My Papa was a good man and lived by his convictions."
"Papa told us about the dark-skinned people that lived in South America. He also spoke of the passengers on the ship he travelled on and how they would throw coins in the harbor. The young black men would dive for the coins, bringing them up with their teeth every time. This was all so fascinating to me. I was eleven years old when I first saw a dark-skinned man."
"I remember that Chinese people visited our town too. I watched as they set up their beautiful rugs, which they intended to sell. They wore colorful dresses made of silk. I wanted to talk to the children, but I was too shy."
"During the summer months when we were free from school, my father would take us for long walks in the beautiful countryside. We would bring lunch and find a spot in the shade in which to picnic. Sometimes, we would stop at a farm and the farmer would give us milk, still slightly warm from the cow. I can still remember the taste of that milk. Those Polish and German farmers were our friends."
"Our family could not afford to buy a radio but there was a neighbor in our building who could, and for a while I was almost a permanent member of their household. How I loved the great orchestras from Hungary, Romania and our Poland. I would finish my lessons quickly and then spend an entire evening lost in this wonderful world of music. Sometimes my mother would give me a pie or cookies or part of a cake to share with my friends in exchange for this great enjoyment."
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"“Hello, what’s new today?”
“It is bad son, very bad. They have mobilized young men and reservists by the authority of the Polish High Command.”
"“Does this mean that we are going to war?”
"“I’m sure of it.” He sighed and shook his head. “War will soon be declared.”
"I tried to read more but people were grabbing the papers, anxious to learn more. There were groups of men everywhere, discussing the frightening thing that was happening to our country. I continued on my way to school, but when I arrived, I found it closed. I ran home, concerned about my family."
"It was cloudy and dark, with a sense of foreboding in the air. I was sure the sun would never shine again. It was as though a hurricane was about to hit the city, but we weren’t scared of wind and rain, but bombs."
"Around 8 pm, we heard a loud knock on the door. Mama and my brothers ran into the bedroom. Papa opened the door. Outside was a member of the special Polish police. He ordered us to go to the basement of our building. That was all.
"My father and stepmother herded us all together, shoving blankets, food and other supplies into our arms. Mama sobbed as she took one last look around our small apartment and gathered a few belongings. She knew this could be the last time she would see her cherished treasures."
"Finally, on the fifth day at about 5 pm in the afternoon, a patrol of policemen on motorcycles arrived. We could hear the noise of their engines as they came to an abrupt halt. They were the German Nazis, the real enemies of the Jews."
"For the first time, we met our enemy. I was struck with disbelief as I realized that among these German policemen were several familiar faces. They were the same people I had come to know at the marketplace and the farmers who had always been good to us. They were the ones who had taken me into their homes, shared their food and been my friends. Now I saw them wearing the armbands with the swastika and looking at me with hatred in their eyes. Why? I also saw weapons of war for the first time.
"Huge black tanks manned by Germans dressed in black shirts with red armbands with swastikas, large green trucks filled with German soldiers with rifles drawn and finally the convoy of motorcycle policemen roaring down the streets in our section of the city."
"Now the looting started.
"The soldiers left their weapons of death and destruction and began breaking into the shops and offices. They broke the fine glass windows and doors, the same ones Stanley and I had looked through, daydreaming, not that long ago. They took the merchandise that had been abandoned when the owners fled for their lives.
"I watched as they grabbed bundles and boxes of whatever they chose and returned to their trucks sneering at our people as if to say, “What can you do about it?” The answer was easy: nothing.
"We stood helpless."
"I walked towards my building and slowly turned around to take one last look at the broken shop windows where there had once been pretty dresses, lovely furs, sparkling jewels, and children's clothes and shoes. The bookshops were in ruins too. Books were thrown into the streets, and then run over by the large tanks. Other soldiers poured kerosene over any fresh meat and crushed vegetables and fruit under their feet. German soldiers guarded the entrances to the stores so that the shop owners would not attempt to salvage any of their goods. As I made my way back to our building I could not control my tears. How much could a boy of thirteen take? But as I found out in the years to come, the human mind and body can endure the most unimaginable hardships. Deep in thought I continued home.
"I began to realize that this destruction meant that all business would stop. There would be no jobs for our people and no wages. They had taken away our liberty, earning potential, and dignity. The next step would be our lives.
"It was my opinion that the Jewish population made the best merchants in the world. It was as if the Jews had a gene governing salesmanship. There would be nowhere to purchase goods, buy supplies, or even food."
"A chilling scream caused me to jump out of my seat.
"We ran to the window and witnessed the most savage and cruel act I thought could ever be seen. I was nauseous as I watched young Polish girls with their legs tied apart, their bodies exposed in the most humiliating and degrading way. The soldiers were raping, mutilating and subjecting these women to unbelievable acts of sadistic torture."
"Several trucks went slowly up and down the streets carrying hysterically sobbing teenage girls. The men were of all ages and acted like animals. I could see the lust in their faces and the girls' pain and horror. After they had brutalized and used these young women, they saturated their helpless victims with brandy and threw them onto the street. Clothing torn, their bodies abused, left for dead."
"The streets were muddy from a recent shower and stagnant pools of water were everywhere. Among these, innocent victims lay moaning, crying or lifeless."
"The next day we discovered that we had not, by any means, seen or felt the full wrath of the Nazis. The SS troops arrived in their black uniforms with the skull insignia on their caps. How appropriate as their prime interest was the death of the Jews.
"In their first hour in town, under orders from the madman, they began taking our people and killing them. First went the leading citizens, the Rabbis, teachers, intellectuals and any strong young men. Without leadership they knew it would be difficult for us to organize and that the likelihood of resistance would be low.
"For no reason, our leaders were sentenced to death and shot in front of their families. Justice was not a word in the German vocabulary of the Nazi commanders. Nor did they recognize the word in any other language.
"Many people who were sick, ailing, or elderly were also exterminated at this time. The Nazis considered Jews to be inferior human beings, to be disposed of like rubbish.
"For some unknown reason, they spared the lives of a few Rabbis. Perhaps, in their sadistic way of thinking, the idea of ‘torture first’ was responsible for this decision. Because there came a time when these holy men were grabbed, held down and had gasoline poured on their beards and then set on fire. The Nazis watched, smiling, as these men of God writhed in agony. Some of them burned to death while others lay dying from the excruciating pain. In some cases, the finale was a shot to the head and then the body was left in the road where it had fallen."
"Our days and nights were filled with endless terror.
"Corpses littered the streets, covered with large sheets of paper. Family members searching for their missing sons, fathers, daughters or mothers roamed the streets, lifting up the corners of these paper sheets, then shaking their heads in pity and moving on to the next one. All they wanted was to know the fate of their loved ones.
"I will also never forget the day that a group of German soldiers decided to gather a group of Jewish boys and girls for their enjoyment. They broke bottles to make a large mountain of glass, and to this they added small sharp tacks. They rounded up children like cattle, and then forced them at gunpoint to dance with bare feet and perform sexual acts upon each other on this bed of torture. When they were no longer amused, they shot the children."
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"I thought of our beloved Rabbi, who had been tortured and killed. He was my Hebrew school teacher and had taught me well. I knew the Old Testament by heart and had a good understanding of the Bible. He had poured his heart and soul into his teachings, not only with regard to religious subjects but how to behave, how to grow up to be a good Jew and the Golden Rule. He had devoted his whole life to teaching and now it was over. Again I wondered, why?"
"Near starvation, my family with three growing boys was forced to live on half a loaf of bread and one can of soup a day.
"Stanley was almost twelve years old and little Jacob was six by this time. Because tomorrow might never come, we never saved any of the bread. We could be taken away and killed that day.
"I would stand in line for three or four hours waiting to get our supply of daily bread at a bakery that was allowed to operate under the German command. The line moved slowly and sometimes the window closed just as I reached it. “No more bread and soup today, come back tomorrow.”
"Another day without food and perhaps we would be too weak to make the trip the next day to stand hours in line. They would say that since the Germans could not spare any more flour for bread, there was no more soup either. They would make us disperse and go home. The tyrants did not want people outside the Ghetto to see the bread lines."
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"Their inhumanity was to be a secret to the outside world. There were times when a Red Cross truck would come into the Ghetto filled with bread. They would hand out these loaves to the Jewish people and have pictures taken, in order to show how well we were being treated. Once the photography was done, the loaves were taken from us and put back on the truck. Deceptive propaganda, and there was nothing we could do to protest or expose this awful lie.
"In addition to the wire fence surrounding our Ghetto, which housed some thirty thousand Jews in an area of approximately six blocks, with SS guards at the entrances, they now installed loudspeakers so that we were subjected to their orders, threats and commands all throughout the day. Always those guttural voices with their deadly messages. How I yearned for one hour of complete silence.
"One day I heard that the purpose of establishing the Ghetto was to keep as many Jewish people as possible in a small, contained area and then without warning set fire to it and burn everyone alive. My hatred grew stronger and deeper.
"A general exodus began.
"Relatives, friends and neighbors started disappearing. We heard that some were taken to other Ghettos while others were sent to prison camps.
"This was the time when people were sent to the gas chambers hourly for quick extermination. Families were separated and then strangers would be brought in to keep the population in over-crowded quarters. Although things were terrible, we were at least together and had the privacy of our apartment. Behind closed doors we could talk and say what was in our hearts. We could still eat and sleep when we chose, but now that was to be taken away from us too.
"They inspected the number of inhabitants in each apartment, and soon there were sixteen people in our three rooms where there had previously been five. First to share our living space was a young couple with a year-old baby, a little girl I remember well. She was such a pretty toddler, but she cried almost continuously. I realized that babies cry when they're hungry."
"The reward for reporting a Jew was a bottle of vodka and a bag of sugar. That was our value at the time. The reward soon turned into a death penalty for anyone harboring or giving sanctuary to a Jew.
"A family of five came from the outskirts of Radom. They had three children, two boys aged four and six and a little girl who was still a toddler. After six weeks with us, they were taken away and shipped to an unknown destination. We never heard of or saw them again.
"And so it continued. As soon as one family was disposed of, another one took its place. It seemed that just when we began to get to know each other and learn to live together, the Germans would tear it up so that we had to start all over again with new strangers."
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"The day my friend Itzrock and his parents disappeared was very sad for me.
"One day we had been talking together and the next day he was gone. The German soldiers came into their room at night, and the next day we learned that he had been sent to one Ghetto and his parents to another. Hadn’t they suffered enough? The Nazis had closed their restaurant after ruining it, taken their belongings and were now moving strange families from other sections of Poland into their empty home.
"I could well imagine the struggle that took place as Itzrock was taken away from his mother and father. He was the only reason they continued to live. Such cruelty!
"My father later heard from a reliable source that Itzrock's mother and father were sent to the gas chambers. I felt much pain in my heart for poor Itzrock, now all alone in the world."
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"On the way to the work, we were forced to sing songs or pay the penalty of a slap across the head with a leather strap."
"“I have a big job for you”, he shouted. “You see the German Reich has many airplanes, but we cannot land them here, too much snow. Since we do not have the machinery here to remove it, you can enjoy the day dancing and stamping on it. Press it down to create a hard, even surface. It is 7 am and I am going for breakfast and for a visit with my girl. I am leaving you in the hands of my comrades. Killing all of you, or just one of you, would be to them the same as it would be for a Chinaman to eat a bowl of rice. I shall return later in the day and expect to find the airport in usable condition. For this you will receive a bowl of soup. I expect a job well done for our German Reich's cooking.”"
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"There were many casualties that day. The men who fell from hunger and fatigue were kicked out of the way and left to die. If they were able to survive the bitter cold, they were hauled home with us that night. Some were beaten for no apparent reason. Noses were broken, arms were fractured and two Jewish men were beaten to death for reasons unknown."
"It was dark and light snow fell during the ride back to the Ghetto. The silence was deafening. Tired and hungry, the uppermost thought in many of our minds was the fate of our families and loved ones while we were away. How many had been killed that day, how many beaten, how many young girls and, yes, even old women had been raped and subjected to the torture of our German conquerors?"
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"The Department of Death was busy those days. When a Jew was shot, the body had to remain where it fell with just a sheet of paper thrown over it. Soon large bugs and other vermin were seen crawling over them. The death work detail had been ordered not to touch them for the first few days. The Germans figured that the bodies would start to decompose and that an epidemic would occur, bringing about the end of Jewish lives in another ghastly way. Jewish men, women and children would begin to die from disease and infestations, thus relieving the Germans of this tedious job and saving some of their ammunition."
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"German guards with huge, vicious police dogs would keep watch along the fences. Although these dogs were on leashes, the guards would drop the leather straps and let the dogs attack at any given time. They would yell “Jew” and the poor soul wouldn't stand a chance.
"I saw a little Jewish boy, maybe five or six years old, a friend of Jacob, murdered this way, when he asked a Polish man on the other side of the fence for a piece of bread.
"We had been forbidden to make contact with anyone on the outside, but what did this child know about that? All he knew was that he was hungry. The guard saw him and in an instant the beast was devouring him. He went for his thin little neck, and with one bite of his sharp teeth the head was separated from the body. There was blood everywhere. The lifeless body lay on the dampened ground."
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"When the German forces suffered at the hands of the Allies, or when their home towns were bombed, they would punish us. They blamed us for it. To retaliate and express their anger they would shoot Jews as if for sport."
"Our miserable existence in the Ghetto ended in June 1942. We could never have predicted what happened next. The German soldiers, great numbers of them, came in the early morning, just as the sun was rising. They came with their tanks, trucks, machine guns and dogs. You would think they were invading the territory of a powerful enemy rather than helpless, innocent and starving people. There were a few guns and rifles in the possession of some people in the Ghetto, but no one had enough strength to pull a trigger or fight for our defense."
"“Get out, Jews! We will give you ten minutes!”"
"I stumbled many times going down those three flights of stairs. There were dead bodies lying in the halls and on the steps with their heads beaten in. It was hard not to slip on the brains and blood. These victims no doubt did not move fast enough and suffered the consequences from the German murderers. To my disbelief and horror, a soldier threw an infant up in the air and used her for target practice. Her mother screamed in excruciating agony and was then also shot. Would we ever wake up from this living nightmare?"
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"The old, the ailing, the sick and some of the younger boys were lined up. They were given shovels and told that they were going to be shot. Therefore, if they wanted to be buried and not lay on the ground for the vultures, they would have to dig their own graves. The shock was more than some could bear and they dropped to the ground, dead. Slowly and sadly the others performed their chore outside the camp, while the guards beat and kicked them as they dug their own graves. It wasn't long before we heard a continuous echo of shots as this mass murder was carried out."
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"I faced the first of thousands of line-ups and counts. We would be called at all hours of the day or night. We stood in the boiling heat of summer, the coldest winds of autumn and the snows of winter for a minimum of an hour or as long as eighteen hours. We stood silent and in fear that we would be told to step out of line. This generally only meant one thing. It was our time to be exterminated. The slightest infraction of a rule was a death sentence. If the guards saw that you were ill, it could also mean death. You were only allowed to be poorly for a few days, after which they considered you to be of no value and sent you before a firing squad.
"That first morning I had been without food for twenty-four hours and feared that I might faint in the hot sun. Somehow, with the help of my friend, I lasted through the count and at noon, after a bowl of weak soup and a slice of bread, I finally went into a deep sleep which lasted until we had to line up for our night rations.
"This first of the prison and concentration camps that was to be my home till the end of the war was located about ten miles from Radom. We were near the small village of Szkolna, where a large ammunition factory was in operation.
"The camp itself was about two miles from the factory and many of the prisoners who were able to work labored there. In exchange, they were given extra rations of bread, but only enough to give them the energy they needed to do a full day of work. I began work there, and eventually became involved with the Polish underground movement."
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"The camp also had its own underground movement, a way for news to get through to us. A detail of men was taken each day to work on the railroad tracks and took this opportunity to talk with the Polish railway employees. They were only allowed to take the trainloads of prisoners up to a certain point. Then another crew took over, and this arrangement made for a certain amount of secrecy in this inhuman operation, the transfer of thousands of innocent people to the gas chambers and the crematoriums.
"Some of the Polish men working on the trains sympathized with the Jews and passed on information. They told of how a chemical that smelled like chlorine would be sprinkled inside the cars. When the prisoners urinated, a deadly gas would form, suffocating them to death."
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"“My friend told me that everyone on the train from Radom either died on the way or was killed at the extermination camp. He has a relative who was part of the crew that completed the run into Treblinka and he told him about the horrible things that happened. I don't know if I should tell you more, Mendel.”
"“Please, I have taken this much, I want to hear it all.”
"“Well,” he took a deep breath, “when this trainload of innocent men, women and children arrived at the outskirts of Treblinka, they were thrown and herded into shallow ditches that had been dug by a detail of Germans and Ukrainians. The graves were so shallow and there were so many dead that the blood seeped through the thin layer of dirt covering the bodies and formed a red sea. He said the stench of stale blood and rotting flesh could be smelled for miles and stuck to the area for several weeks.”
"He stopped for a minute.
"“There is more, Mendel.”
"I nodded for him to go on.
"“Those that survived the train ride from Radom were taken off the cattle cars and moved inside the camp. They were told that they were going to have a bath after the dirty train ride and after they had been cleaned up, they would be given work orders. The children were given a small piece of candy and told that they would be with their mothers and fathers after their baths, and that they should make sure to breathe deeply when they went into the showers. In their weakened condition and confused state of mind, people willingly obeyed these orders. ... ”"
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"The guards were watching us very closely, because there was a rumor going around the camp that a group of five men and one woman had escaped from the prison. How happy we were for them! It was the main topic of conversation, and we were wondering how they did it. This only made the guards more alert than ever, and they began counting and recounting. At odd hours of the day and night we were called out for the count. No one else was going to get away, and our every move was monitored. The question in our minds however, was how anyone could ever escape this well-guarded prison. We knew it had to be a miracle from God. The mystery would soon be solved in a most extraordinary way.
"We dug around the wheels of the wagon but still could not get it to budge. The guard on duty called for some extra men from our barrack to help push or lift it out of the mud, which acted like quicksand. As the wagon came free, one of the guards happened to notice some tightly packed sand under the mud. This puzzled him, so he brought in the police dogs. The guards suspected something and put us to work digging further.
"After a few minutes of concentrated digging, we broke through the ground into a tunnel. My heart was in my mouth. We were told to stand aside and two guards dropped into the tunnel.
"Shortly afterwards the five prisoners climbed out, pale and trembling, the fear showing in their faces."
"I shall never forget how ghostly pale they were from living in the tunnel. They had enough food, but living underground had taken its toll. We all felt sorry for them. This had been a tremendous job and day after day they had lived in great fear of being discovered. And then, with their goal almost in sight, they were found out; their dream of freedom was gone.
"Even the Germans had to admire their strength, their fortitude and the ingenuity of their plan. When the gaping hole was exposed, the Germans’ expressions were of complete shock and disbelief. The five men and one red-haired woman had worked nights for almost two years tunneling and living beneath the earth. All the prisoners were in awe of these courageous individuals, as were the Germans."
"The guards made our lives hell. They were determined that no prisoner would get away, and became more brutal. There were more beatings as they took out their embarrassment on us."
"At last the Germans suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Russians, and needed every man they could spare to strengthen their armies. There just were not enough guards to go around. What relief and joy we experienced as we saw the Germans suffer defeat after defeat! Our hopes began to rise and our every thought was of eventual freedom.
"As the days went on, the Germans were getting weaker on the Russian front. Their armies were pushed back. The guards at the concentration camp were replaced by older men. The young and strong men were needed at the front. Their losses were made known to us in the form of extra beatings and punishments. That was the only way we had of knowing what was going on in the outside world. On the other hand, every small success was celebrated by singing and dancing, so such news reached us as well.
"In the night we could hear heavy bombardment. I could see fiery-red flashes from guns and great billows of smoke in the far distance through the one window in our barrack. My heart filled with renewed hope. I was sure the Russians were getting closer to us, but how close I couldn't know. Deep inside me I rejoiced. I had no idea what our fate would be at the hands of the Russians, but at least the Germans were being killed and crippled and I took comfort in knowing that thousands would never see their families again either. These German families would know some of the sadness and pain of parting that they had inflicted upon us."
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"We were ordered out into the night for a final count and while we were there, we were told that the Russians were only seventy miles away and that they were coming in great force. A spasm of joy went through my body, like a symphony of beautiful music, a feeling of exuberant happiness. Weak as we were, Stanley and I grabbed each other's hands and held on tightly.
"We left the camp at dawn. Thousands of prisoners moved slowly through the gates and beyond the barbed wire fences and walls. We did not know where we were going. The German guards were on horseback and used their whips to keep the long line of men moving forward."
"Every now and then, the guards would pull out their pistols and shoot some poor soul. There were also those who were tied to trees and shot for being too slow or tripping. “Good riddance”, the Germans would shout as they galloped away. Hundreds of prisoners lost their life in this manner, after everything they had already suffered behind the barbed wires."
"After four days and four nights of torture, we arrived at a little town named Tomaszow. We were guided into a large building that had once served as a hangar. Weak, sick and hungry, we remained like animals inside the building. Everyone was terrified that we would be gassed. As we were shoved and pushed through the doors, I thought about the building that housed the gas chamber in the camp. It was smaller than this one, and had a glass roof. The guards and officers would stand on top of the roof and witness the agony and suffocation of the helpless Jews. These Germans must be insane or inhuman. Nobody moved. The silence was deafening. Our time had come, we would now die. I looked up and noticed the small spigots along the top of the roof. I figured that was the way they would pipe the poisonous gas into the hangar.
"All of a sudden, a panic broke out and people began screaming and crying for help. Everyone dropped to their knees praying and begging for their life to be spared. I fainted from exhaustion, pain and hunger."
"The next thing I knew, a loud voice announced that the train had arrived for our transportation. We were to get to our feet and be ready to move on. We lined up five in a row and marched outside, only to see that the train consisted of cattle car after cattle car. We were treated like animals and traveled like animals. Locking arms with Stanley, I shuffled my way towards the train.
"After the door was slammed shut, the darkness was almost complete with the exception of a few small cracks and a tiny window at the rear of the car, covered with strands of barbed wire. Why had these Germans placed barbed wire over this small window? How could anyone possibly escape from one of these cars? We were packed so tightly that there wasn't even enough room to turn around.
"Before long, people began to die from the lack of air and cramped conditions. The dead bodies were left were they had fallen and then stood upon in an effort to make more room in the car. After a while, we were able to stack the bodies and use them as a ladder to break the small window. Everyone took his turn climbing the bodies to take a breath of fresh air. There was no food or water for hours and hours. We didn't travel like animals. It was worse. With no toilet facilities and the stench from the dead bodies, it was surprising that anyone lived through the journey at all."
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"After several days, we finally reached our mysterious destination. It was Auschwitz, the most infamous of the concentration camps. Here the gas chambers were said to work day and night to keep up with the mass murdering. Hope was gone again, replaced by the threat of death."
"We were told to remove our clothes and put them in a pile at our feet so that a physical examination could be carried out. I heard someone be addressed as Dr. Mengele and knew that this was the end. We had heard that he was Eichmann's main collaborator, and thought that we would be subjected to the most extreme torture. I prayed for Stanley and Papa and myself to be strong."
"This place we were in was a large railway terminal. Many trains pulled in throughout the day. Those awful cattle cars transporting our people came from all parts of Europe: Austria, Holland, France, Greece, Hungary and Poland, bringing more and more people to be killed. The gas chambers and crematoriums were constantly in operation as the Germans tried to keep up with the overflow of victims. There were others, too, that were killed because their ancestors had been of the Jewish faith. Some of the murdered victims claimed to not even have known about their heritage.
"For the first time I saw the tall chimneys with the reddish smoke billowing out from the top. They were the crematoriums. As soon as people arrived in the cattle cars, they were taken to the gas chambers. Older people that were too weak to walk or young children who had not learned to walk yet were thrown onto trucks with hydraulic lifts. The trucks would drive over to the crematorium, reverse up to it, and then use the hydraulic lift to make the people slide to a fiery death.
"Prisoners were given a piece of soap and told that we could take a bath if we wanted. This would have been a great treat, but of course we were afraid. We knew that this had been used to lure people into the gas chambers."
"After a while, it became time for us to again board the cattle cars for another unknown destination."
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"Another sudden stop, but this time the large sliding door opened and we were ordered out into the ditch alongside the tracks; an air raid siren began to sound. The guards hit us with clubs to make us move faster, away from the train. I was covering my head and trying to shield Stanley, when I saw Papa a few yards away. In an excited voice I told Stanley to look. There was Papa!
"He almost forgot where we were and started to run. I held his arm tightly, and warned him that Papa would be killed if they saw him. A club came down hard on my head and reminded me to move along. With Stanley by my side, blood dripping down the side of my head, we made our way with the crowd looking to take cover from the planes that would soon drop bombs over us."
"This prison camp was called Vaihingen."
"The days dragged on, but I did notice a change in the air raids. At the beginning of the war, the planes were few in number, but now there were few hours of the day and night when we didn't hear them. They came in waves except between midnight and 2 am. It was a joke among the prisoners that this must be the time the English took a break for a cup of tea."
"“I need three hundred prisoners in the next hour for a clean-up detail. Stuttgart is in complete ruins. We must start digging for people and try to establish some order there. I will have trucks ready to pick them up and there will be a special unit of guards to see that no one gets away.”"
"As I gazed at the destruction around me, I imagined other German cities razed to the ground and how many Germans must be going through this same panic. Fires continued to smolder; there was hardly a building left intact. The Allies had done a thorough job, obliterating the city. Unexploded bombs were lying about in the streets. Even after the city was in ruins, still the planes came, again and again. I should have been happy, but I wasn't."
"But one evening after the count, a convoy of trucks arrived at the camp. Jan and I were among the prisoners rounded up and hauled away. It was so sudden that I didn't even have a chance to find Papa and Stanley to say goodbye."
After a few hours, I opened my eyes to find that we had arrived at yet another camp, Unterriexingen."
"The guards that were assigned to this camp were among the cruelest men in the German military, as they had been serving time in German detention facilities for murder, rape and other heinous crimes. The SS purposely recruited these criminals because of their ability to abuse and kill innocent people. Needless to say, they were the perfect people to carry out orders of mass killings and torture. These guards always seemed to get pleasure out of being cruel and finding new ways to torture us. They too, wore a colored triangle on the upper part of their uniforms with one large letter that signified their crime. My triangle bore the letter ‘J’ in bright red, meaning political Jew. That was my crime. But, what did I know about politics? I was only thirteen years old when I began my life of hell in the prison camps.
"These criminals, these guards, were stealing rations from the prisoners and reduced our food supply to such a small amount of bread or soup that more people died from starvation than from being shot."
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"This camp was much different in that there were very few Jews. Most of the prisoners were Christians of different nationalities who had been arrested in their homelands for protesting and fighting against the German regime. There were numerous Catholics. Priests, bishops, and even a cardinal shared this camp with me. Somehow, I felt a little safer by having these Christian people mixed in with the Jewish prisoners. I always thought that we would have a greater opportunity for survival and welcomed this mingling. Still, I was exposed to anti-Semitism from some of the prisoners and often wondered how this could be. We were all together here in this hellhole and yet they kept their bigotry and biases.
"I did, however, become acquainted with a young Christian fellow who had been captured by the Germans on the Russian front. He was a Russian boy by the name of Serge. He had been living in different camps for many months and apparently had been able to adjust to this way of life. His way of thinking and expressing himself moved me deeply. He never lost his courage and was always making plans for when he would return home and to his schooling. He wanted to take up his science studies again and go back to his life before the war."
One Belgian was shot dead by Germans for shouting as an American plane flew low over.
"I wondered if the world would ever know about the countless victims who suffered the brunt of the Nazi regime during the years of 1933 to 1945, not just in Germany, but in all of Europe."
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He was taken with some others, on trucks, to a medical facility, and had a blanket after years.
"“And what is the name of this camp, Ivan?”
"“It is called Neckargerach. It faces the beautiful Neckar river.”"
"Towards the end of March, around 3 am, a group of German guards arrived at the camp. We were ordered to get up and go outdoors for a count. The only thing I had to cover my body was my blanket. I tore a hole with my teeth in the middle of it, and pulled it over my head. With a piece of wire I found on the ground, I fashioned a belt to hold it close to my body. Then we were finally told the truth about the war: the Americans, the British and the French were very close and the camp was to be evacuated at once. We were to be taken to Dachau. I was sure that they would exterminate us now. Would I never be free of this torture? I had died a million deaths, it seemed. This one will be the last, I thought, the last torturous trip. Hundreds of prisoners too sick or too weak to walk were taken on stretchers.
"The German commander announced over the loudspeaker, “You will have six miles to walk to get to the train. You will form lines with five in a group. Lock arms. The two men on the outside of the line will be responsible for the other three. Whoever gets out of line will be shot immediately. I am responsible for getting you to the trains as quickly as possible.”
"Our progress was slow. The women prisoners took the lead, and then followed the long line of stretcher bearers and those like myself who could walk. Alongside were the German guards on horseback with their treacherous dogs. As always, they did not want the citizens to see us, and we avoided the proper roads, though they would have made for an easier and quicker walk. We marched through fields, still wet and muddy from the spring thaw, and many prisoners, sick and weak, stumbled and fell, but a quick sting of a club brought them to their feet again. Many people died on that march.
"I was one of the outside prisoners, so I had the use of one arm. Going past a miserable-looking building, I happened to glance up and saw a little girl who appeared to be about seven years old leaning out of a window. She dropped an apple core, and I reached out my hand and caught it. I was about to eat it when a German guard noticed and knocked it out of my hand with the butt of his carbine. He hit me in the chest. I lost my balance and fell. We were close to our destination so the other four men in the line dragged me the rest of the way.
"Even though I was in a semi-conscious condition, what followed became etched in my mind. When we reached the trains, there were no tops to the cars and they still had a few inches of snow inside. This was our bed. My chest was giving me great pain and I gently touched the place where I had been struck. It seemed like there was a deep indentation and I had difficulty breathing. I managed to tear off a strip from the blanket and with the help of another prisoner we wrapped it tightly around my chest like a bandage. To this day, I suffer from that wound."
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The Germans abandoned the trains in a tunnel, although they'd intended to exterminate them all, due to war having come close.
"We were in that tunnel for six days, some twelve hundred men and women waiting to be rescued. Finally the day came. The date will be forever burned into my memory: April 5th, 1945.
"The Americans finally liberated us. What heroes, what supermen they were to us! Everywhere there was hugging and kissing and in my supreme gratitude I fell on the ground and kissed the feet of one of my unknown liberators."
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"The streets of Osterburken were deserted. The town's population of German citizens had fled. They were not as afraid of the Allies coming as of the thousands of prisoners of war who had been liberated. They feared that there would be retribution, so they left their homes and places of business.
"Since the Americans had not had time to work out some kind of processing system for the prisoners, there wasn't any supervision and a state of chaos prevailed. Looting began and German property was demolished. The shops were broken into and the prisoners took what they wanted. There was no control over this new situation. Many of the prisoners believed that they were entitled to take what they could after suffering at the hands of the Germans for all those long years."
"Suddenly there was a great influx of foreign correspondents and photographers. They were anxious to hear the tales of horror, to tell the world at last about the atrocities that had been going on all those years. We were told to undress and were photographed and filmed. Our emaciated bodies with scars and injuries from the savage beatings were recorded for history. The prisoners recounted their experiences in long interviews.
"We agreed to talk about and reveal to the world what the German Nazis had done to us personally and to millions of innocent people. Many trips were made to view the mass graves and report the validity of these killings.
"The reporters were shocked and horrified when they realized how many had suffered at the hands of the Nazis. It was overwhelming to them, and they were convinced that the world would not believe or accept it to be true. But it was the awful truth. This genocide and torture had involved millions of innocent men, women and children."
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