About Us

Joseph Aleksander

Soon after we arrived in Buchenwald we heard bombing and artillery fire, and we all hoped that allied forces were coming closer. The guards asked for volunteers to be sent to a work camp with better food and living conditions. They had set up a table with food in front of the barracks to lure out the prisoners. The group that volunteered was marked out into the forest. We heard a volley of shots, and we knew that those people were being murdered. The Germans knew the allied forces were coming closer and wanted to eliminate as much of the horrible evidence as possible.

When there were no more volunteers, they started removing us forcibly. We realized that we had come too far to be murdered, especially when liberation was knocking at our doors. Several of us crawled under the foundation of the barracks and stretched out in the mud for three days.

May 11, 1945 was the day we first heard and then saw the American army tanks crushing through the gates of the camp. Some of the guards resisted and were shot, and some surrendered. Although we were all skin and bone and barely alive, we were rejoicing that we were liberated and finally free.

“Muselman” was the expression used in the camps for people like us. I don’t know why. The name just stuck. My weight was approximately 100 pounds, down from my normal weight before the war of 165.

The liberating servicemen were furious at the German population for their cruel and sadistic treatment of innocent people. They gathered Germans from surrounding towns and villages and forced them to walk around the camp and look at the human misery and cruelty that their people were responsible for.

The Germans protested that they knew nothing about it. “Wir haben doch nicht gewust.” Of course living around the concentration camp with all the atrocities and smell from the crematorium, they must have known all about this situation.

The Americans showered us with good, rich food. Unfortunately because our stomachs were not used to that, many of us became very sick with diarrhea and dysentery. Most of us wound up in hospitals.

I became very seriously ill with “fleckfeever”—typhus. I was in the hospital for two weeks, burning up with a very high temperature. I remember being constantly wrapped in ice-cold sheets to bring down the fever. After my recovery, I noticed that many veins were protruding from on my legs and also that my back was bent out of shape. This bothered me a lot because before the war, I was involved in several sports, as I belonged to a Jewish athletic club called the “Macabi” and I had been in very good shape.

I was alive but this was tempered with the sad knowledge that my entire family had been wiped out with the exception, I hoped, of my older brother who had emigrated to America.

Joe Aleksander speaks of his experiences at the Museum of Tolerance

Engelina Billauer

April 15, 2005 marks the 60^th anniversary of a very important day in my life. After three years of misery, hunger, separation from parents and just plain hell on earth, it was the day of our liberation.

The day started in typical fashion as we pulled dead and half-dead bodies to a place designated by the German SS men. One difference was that the German men and women, the Hungarian guards were wearing white armbands, but we did not know what that meant.

As I recall, at about 3 PM, we noticed a tank coming through the gate of the camp (Bergen Belsen). Shortly thereafter, in many languages, we heard the following announcement: “We are the British Armed Forces and we are here to liberate you. Many of us ran to the soldiers and kissed their hands, and then hugged and kissed each other.

Our liberators were not prepared for what they found: Piles of dead and half-dead bodies and many people too sick and weak to even get on their feet. Hunger and disease were everywhere. The first thing I did along with my sister and our friends was to find some water and wash ourselves. Secondly, we moved out of our typhus-infected barracks and into the empty barracks that had been vacated by the SS women. They and all the guards were arrested, and we were thrilled to witness that event.

The British were somewhat unprepared for what they found and thus did not have proper food for the survivors. Thus many died after liberation because their digestive systems were unable to handle the food they were given. I was fortunate to contract typhus after liberation and was able to obtain care from some of the many foreign doctors who had come to treat us. I will be forever grateful to them and the British army for their efforts.

Rose Burk

I arrived at Camp Berghof in 1943, where I worked in a kitchen. One day, a little girl wanting some food came to the window with a dish. When I returned with the food, she was gone and instead I was greeted by a German officer. She slapped me and said, “Tomorrow you must report to Gracie, the executioner.” As I waited for Gracie to come sentence me to death by drowning, I was left to ponder my own mortality.

But as I painfully waited, I heard Russian planes fly over us. I saw all the guards running. I felt like the sky had opened up for me. I was in shock and could not hold back my tears.

Next, we were walked by SS guards over to Bocborg, as we were welcomed by people from the UNRAH. Unfortunately, this was not the end of my nightmare. As I turned down the wrong street, I fell into the hands of some of the SS guards. They mocked me and proceeded to beat me, hitting me in the face several times. I fell to the ground from this savage beating and was knocked unconscious.

Eventually I found my way back to the UNRAH. I then went to Coffering and met some Polish survivors who were very kind to me and turned out to be the family of my future beloved husband, David.

David Burk

Unfortunately, David is no longer with us. He was in a number of camps from 1939 to 1945. While in the camps, David was responsible for building railroads. When he was liberated, the first words from his mouth were, “I must go back to Poland to see if any family is alive.

Unfortunately, to his horror, no one had survived except a single uncle. David was told by the people in Lodz that if he wished to live, he would have to leave and never return. David and his uncle left under cover of darkness to the city of Coffering where they had family. That is where he met his beloved wife, Rose. They were married in 1946.

Max Cukier

My birth name is Majlech Cukierkopf. I was born in a small town called Ryki in Poland on January 23, 1918. Ryki was between Warsaw and Lublin. My family was very Orthodox and consisted of one sister and three brothers.

When the war started in 1939, I was already in Warsaw. That day, I wanted to return to my hometown, Ryki. I didn’t have any transportation back, and after seeing the bombardment, the panic, the helplessness in Otwock, I decided to walk the 100 Km. back to Ryki.

During the war, I escaped to the divided Russian part of Poland, to a city called Molczad, where I became a refugee. Just six months later, we were told all refugees can register to go back to their hometowns. All of my friends felt there wasn’t any life in the Soviet Union, and they registered. But I felt I had nothing to go back to, so I stayed. Everyone boarded the trains in Brectlitwak, but instead of going back to their cities (the Russians didn’t want to take them there), they were taken to Siberia.

I was a refugee for two years in Molczad. One morning, I heard on the radio that Germany had attacked the Soviet Union. They offered me the opportunity to join the Judenrat. I turned it down, but because of that, I was afraid I would be killed. Eventually, I traveled to Dvoritz, from which young people working in a quarry cutting stone were being sent to the front. I escaped to the forest, because I felt I would be killed. News coming from all the big cities was that many people were killed there. I was wounded in the leg in the forest but I didn’t want to go back to Dvoritz.

I was told there was a hospital in the forest and that a Dr. Atlas would be able to remove the bullet. I was taken to him on a wagon. But Dr. Atlas said he was not a doctor here, but a fighter. After some persuasion, he operated and removed the bullet. A week later we went together with other Partisans to attack Dreczyn and take revenge.

I promised the people in Dvoritz that I would come back to take them out. When I returned, the Judenrat threatened to kill me if I rescued anyone. I was able to take out only one man, Lazer Novitzky. The night we escaped, everyone was killed in the lager. Had we stayed over night, we would have been killed too.

I became a Partisan in Otrat Barba. We organized ourselves to fight and put mines and do whatever we could to destroy the Germans while we saved the lives of our own. Eventually we went to another Pusche and another Otrat where I met my wife, Miriam. We spent several months in the forest and with the other Partisans blew up German trains.

As the Russians advanced, the Germans started escaping through the forest, and many were caught by our Partisans. There was a lot of shooting and many people were killed when the liberation was near. We then found out the Russians had come to liberate us in 1944.

Ruth Fenton

The date of May 5, 1945 will be forever inscribed in my memory. It is the day of my liberation from the depths of purgatory.

I had been in the Auschwitz concentration camp when a group of about 500 women (me among them) were put into locked cattle cars one dreary, dismal day in the latter part of October, 1944. We traveled for four days and nights until we arrived in Lenzing, Austria, at a branch of the notorious Mathhausen concentration camp.

Though still in shock and despair, we were amazed to see the beauty of the snow-capped mountains of the Alps and the lovely wood-carved cottages. I had just been released from the hospital where I was in quarantine for infectious diseases due to scarlet fever. This left me very frail and weak. Because of this, I stayed in the camp a few days longer. As soon as I was deemed able, I was assigned to a command digging ditches in a labor camp where 100,000 people from all over Europe, including prisoners of war, were forced laborers in the factories of Lenzing for the German Wehrmach.

Winter in Austria was extremely harsh. The ground was frozen solid. We worked in rain and snow after marching in ice and snow—sometimes even barefoot—accompanied by SS men and women and their vicious attack dogs. We returned to the camp where a watery soup was the only food awaiting us. Our clothes and shoes were always wet and we had to wear these same garments the next day, even though they were still drenched.

The days and weeks passed in continuous anguish, hopelessness, and tremendous feelings of despondency. Then rumors came of the Allied bombardment of some Austrian cities. Spring arrived, but our lives remained shattered without hope or change—only uncertainty. The hunger was unbearable. Often we made do eating leftover potato peelings and coffee grounds.

Then, one morning in early May 1945, we awakened and were astonished to find that the SS guards had disappeared during the night. They were replaced by Hungarian Iron Guards who had been attached to the SS. For three days we had no food. Rumors flew that the Guards were planning to poison our water, but they did not have time to commit this treacherous act.

In the afternoon of May 5, 1945, the first tank with an American soldier broke through the gates of Hell. This American GI came into our camp. I will never forget him and the look in his eyes. He was about 6’3” with blond, bushy eyebrows. When he saw us, he immediately crossed himself, tears streaming down his cheeks.

What a sight we were. Our heads had been shaven, our eyes were sunken caverns, and our filthy striped uniforms hung on our skin and bones. He immediately ran to his tank and brought us his own food rations. The soldiers who followed him did the same.

We could not be jubilant. We were still in shock—too numb in our hears with pain and sorrow to feel any emotion, but especially that of joy. We did not know whether any members of our families had survived this Holocaust. Unfortunately, it was rare to find any relative who did manage to live through this.

I will always remember Mr. Cheve, the American official who took me with a delegation to Evensee, a branch of the concentration camp Mauthausen with 30,000 inmates. There we saw mountains of dead bodies as well as human forms reduced to waking skeletons. At this camp, a few of us found some of our relatives.

The American Red Cross did a marvelous job of resettling us into a former Hitler Jugen Resort. They set up a field hospital and a kitchen and slowly nurtured us back to life. As we drove in open trucks through the streets of Lenzing, Austria with the American GIs, we proudly held the American flag, realizing that we were free at last!

Rose Futter

My Liberation Day

On May 8, sixty years ago, I was reborn. It was Tuesday, 2 PM and the concentration camp (in Peterswaldau, Germany) was quiet. No line-up; no roll call; no obscenities shouted by the SS women who guarded us; no screams from the tortured girls.

“Am I dreaming?” I wondered. Fearfully, we walked to the iron gates. All of a sudden, men from the neighboring concentration camp, looking like ghosts, called to us, “Open the gates! You are free! The War is over! The SS left!” One thousand women turned to stone.

“Is it true?” we asked one another. I remember lifting my hands to heaven. “Thank you, Dear G-d,” I said. “I am alive!” I started running and running. Then it dawned on me: Where am I going? I had no home, no country, no relatives—only me and my sister in the whole world.

I looked around. The sun was shining, the lilacs were blooming, the birds were chirping, and my heart was breaking. Five years of my adolescence were robbed from me, and still I had no where to go. “I’ve triumphed over Hitler,” I thought, “but at what cost?”

Sam Goetz

Day of Liberation

Sunday, May 6, 1945. My day of liberation; a day that will always live with me; a day forever etched in my memory. For the first time in almost three years, I was not awakened by the screams of either kapo or block leader, my body did not receive any blows, I did not have to take part in roll call. How did I look this morning? I really don’t know. I had not seen my face for three years. There were no mirrors in the concentration camps.

Sunday, May 6 was a cool morning, although spring was in the air. The sky was blue, the camp strangely quiet. The SS guards were gone from the observation towers, replaced by older looking men in Wehrmacht uniforms. I left Block No. 6 and made my way toward the main gate. I crossed the dreaded roll call square where a few people were milling around. The eerie silence of the square, normally punctuated by SS screams, seemed unnatural. The camp was still surrounded by barbed wire.

I was unable to fully comprehend the enormity of this Sunday morning. My body was weakened and my mind unable to respond positively to the sudden change in the morning routine. I felt very weak as I approached the main gate, but I could still walk.

People gathered around the gate. I was standing very close to it when an SS man motioned to me and three others to follow him. Too weak to resist, I left the main gate with three other inmates and entered a guard house located about fifty yards away from it. From this guard house, the SS observed the outgoing and incoming groups of prisoners and harassed prisoners if they were walking too slowly or if the row of five was uneven. Now deserted, I entered it to find a desk in the corner facing a large window overlooking the main road leading into the camp, a large round clock on the wall, and all kinds of weapons—hand grenades, pistols, and rifles—scattered on the floor.

The SS man ordered us to pick up the weapons and place them behind the guardhouse. We lay the guns down in the grass. I made several trips in and out of the guardhouse. But suddenly my eyes registered an unbelievable sight. A tank moved slowly up the road. Some distance behind it, I saw another tank. The first tank made a sharp right turn to face the gate of the concentration camp.

The gate opened. A figure in an olive brown uniform emerged from the tank. I glanced at the clock on the wall—it was eleven minutes past one. As hollow-cheeked figures emerged from the gate and swept the GI off his feet, I saw a large white star on the tank. At that moment, I finally became a free man.

For the first time in six years I was free. Overwhelmed by the events transpiring around me, I stood in silence, watching the crowds of emaciated humans surrounding the American GI. They kissed his hands and touched his uniform, as if touching a saint. Each of us wanted to make sure that the man was real, that the tank was real, that this was neither an illusion nor a dream created by our anxious minds.

Zelda Gordon

The Story of My Liberation from the Nazi Death Camps

I was born in Grodno, Poland. At the time of Hitler’s occupation of my town I was a teenager and I lived with my mother, Fruma, and my father, Jacob. My father died from illness two months before the war broke out. I also had four brothers (Leon, Daniel, Aaron, and Joshua) and two sisters (Tamara and Deborah) all of whom were married with children. All of these people perished in the ovens of Treblinka and Auschwitz.

After surviving six death camps including Treblinka, Majdanek, Lublin, Blizin, and Auschwitz, I was put on a train once more. On January 1, 1945, that train entered Bergen-Belsen. On April 14, 1945, we heard rumors that the guards and the captain of the camp had run away because the liberating armies were approaching. We thought that the Germans would probably blow up our camp with mines to destroy the rest of us. But the English army approached the camp the very next day, April 15. The guards were found and rounded up. That day, I witnessed the German commandant and all the Nazi guards digging three large graves in which thousands of corpses were buried.

Right after the liberation, the barracks of Bergen-Belsen were burned. We were all sprayed with disinfectant, and we slept in the Nazi soldier quarters. The first thing we had to do was register our names in survivor books. Of course, I had no place to go. So we waited to see what the future would hold.

In the middle of May, two young men came to Bergen-Belsen from Munich, among others looking for loved ones. To my great surprise, they were looking for me! They told me that they had survived in Dachau thanks to a man from Grodno who had taken care of them while they were together in the camp. After discovering that I had survived, this man, my cousin Ely Grodziensky, asked these men to find me and bring me back to Munich if I wanted to come.

They journey from Bergen-Belsen to Munich was a rough one, and it was another miracle that I survived. There was no public transportation because the trains and train stations were bombed out. They found a food truck driver with whom we caught a ride part of the way. But as we came closer to Hanover, Germany, the open truck made a left turn too quickly. There were fifty of us packed in and no sides to hold us, so everyone fell out of the truck! Many people had to return to Bergen-Belsen injured, but I managed to escape unharmed. The two men and I walked the rest of the way to Hanover, following the train tracks. As we came closer to the city, we found a coal freight train going to Munich. We climbed aboard and slept on top of the coal barrels. It took us four days to get there, but we finally arrived in Munich, where I met Ely.

Ely and I never stayed in a displaced persons camp. In Munich we registered affidavits to go to three places: the United States (because Ely had a brother who had moved there after the first World War), Sweden (because Ely had a sister there), and Israel (where we decided we would go illegally if we had to). We agreed that we would accept the first affidavit that was approved. Luckily for us, our registration to go to the U.S. came first.

Jeffrey Gradow

Liberation Story

I lived with my parents and two younger sisters in Mlawa, a town close to the German border. On September 1, 1939, when I was 14 years old, the Germans invaded and the occupation began.

Because the police were looking to arrest my father, the two of us headed east, ending up in Bialystok where we tried in vain to bring over the rest of the family. In June 1941, the Germans attacked the Russians and threw a grenade into the house where my father and I were staying. My father was killed. I was left to wander the streets until a neighbor took me in. Soon, I was forced into a labor camp, where I was required to clean the streets, cut down trees, and lay the trunks on the highway to pave the road. There was little food, and I was forced to work from dawn to dusk.

I decided to escape into the forest and eventually met up with and joined a group of Jews and Russians in a camp in the woods. There was a shortage of guns but because of my skills, I was chosen to use one. In 1941, the various groups hiding in the forest were separate and loose entities. Their goal early on was mere survival. Later, they became more organized and aggressive. Their mission changed from mere survival to attempting to disrupt the Germans and their accomplices.

I was sent out on missions at night, sometimes unable to return to the same base camp. The base camps were built as follows: They dug out a hole about 4 to 5 feet deep with shovels, cut down birch trees, and used the branches as vertical support. Tree trunks were placed diagonally across the hole. Then they laid leaves and smaller branches to fill the small holes. The dirt that had been dug out was placed on the leaves to help keep the hole warmer during the winter months. My partisan group slept in the hole on top of some makeshift bunks made of smaller tree branches. About 15 people slept in each bunker. Some of the partisans served as watch guards while others slept. My group consisted of about 100 to 150 partisans, mostly men, but some women—Jews or former Russian officers or soldiers.

In 1943, Russian paratroopers were dropped into these woods in an attempt to unite the local partisans. We cut telephone lines, fought with local police, and tried to blow up railroad tracks. In late 1943, my group began receiving supplies from Russian military planes, including dynamite, guns, and grenades. I participated in blowing up railroad tracks which derailed a train. I also participated in bombing local police stations. One of our more important and successful assignments was securing a bridge the Allies needed and making sure the Germans didn’t blow it up.

Eventually we partisans living in the woods between Bialystok and Berenovitch were absorbed into the Russian army. Fighting with the Russians, I was injured in a battle near my home and was hospitalized for 6 months. Upon my release, I was 20 years old. Returning to my hometown, I discovered that not one of my family (including extended family) survived. In 1949, I arrived in New York City, the United States of America.

Sig Halbreich

Another transport of sick prisoners arrived toward the end of March 1945. Among them was Otto Kosdaz, a non-Jew from Austria, who called himself a doctor but, in fact, was only a student. “Sig, I was told to replace you,” he said, “but you will be my assistant.”

I didn’t have any specific duties but I continued my work against the Germans. The more of us who remained alive, the more difficult it was for the Germans. I admitted younger prisoners into the hospital when there weren’t enough beds, crossed people off the transport lists, and hid young prisoners during the selections by pushing them from one room to another. Otto knew what I was doing but ignored it. A problem arose, however, when Otto took over. He was jealous of the relationships I had with the other members of the hospital staff. I was warned that he was trying to get them to write complaints about me. Fortunately, his attempts failed.

In the beginning of April, I was called to the main secretary’s office. “Sig,” he said, “a transport of sick people is leaving tomorrow, and you have been assigned to be in charge of it.”

This was it for me: no one from the hospital staff ever went on sick transports. There was no doubt that those transported were going to be exterminated. I suspected that Otto had informed one of the SS doctors that I had been hiding people.

I tried to get my order switched, but there was nothing that could be done. The order came from one of the SS doctors. It became clear to me that if I wanted to live, I would have to jump the train at the earliest possible opportunity. This was the first time in more than five years that I seriously contemplated escape.

I took the afternoon off to prepare for my departure. While I was discussing my escape with Janek, sirens began to sound. Looking up, we saw American planes flying overhead—bombs began to drop from them. Instinctively, Janek and I, along with other prisoners, ran out of the camp. We ran toward the fields at the edge of town and mixed with hundreds of civilians who were fleeing their town. Nearby, the chief of police was running with his wife and two children, each of them carrying a suitcase.

“Come on,” he hollered to Janek and me. “You’ll help us carry.”

We were annoyed at this, but also felt we had to: we were still prisoners. As soon as the bombing stopped, the planes descended and started machine-gunning the throngs of townspeople who had since turned around and were heading back to the city. Luckily, we were in the center of thousands. Being stopped by the chief of police had turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

We carried the suitcases back to his house. Once inside, the wife told us to sit down. She gave us real coffee and bread. After we ate, he told us to get ready. “I have to take you back to the camp,” he said.

“Why do you do this?” we asked. “Don’t you understand the Americans are close? They will march in here any day now. Please let us stay here, and when they arrive, we will testify that you saved our lives. You will be free—you and your family will have nothing to worry about.”

“I cannot do that,” he replied. “I am a German and so long as I am in uniform, I have to take my orders and obey them.”

“Listen to them,” begged his wife. “Let them stay here until the Americans come.”

Sirens went off again. Immediately, he turned off the lights and began to change his mind. As soon as the sirens stopped, though, he reverted to his former position. All of us, including his wife, begged him to reconsider—she even got down on her knees and begged him to listen to us, but it was no use.

At about 1 AM, he escorted Janek and me back to the camp. A light drizzle was falling, but what we saw was more chilling. Fires burned silently. The towers had been demolished. And the bodies, thousands upon thousands, lay everywhere.

“Why did you bring us here?” we demanded.

“I cannot help it, he answered.

“Well you’re partly involved here,” I said, “and we don’t want to have any more to do with you.” We left him standing there and walked into the camp.

Janek and I searched among the ruins for two dry beds, which we found in the corner of one of the hangars. About a dozen men were also there. We slept silently, deeply.

We awoke to the sound of sirens and the explosion of bombs; it was 9 AM. We ran outside and saw American planes dropping bombs on the city. Those of us who were able ran out of the camp. Passing the fields, we kept going until we reached the forests above town. SS men and soldiers were constantly marching through the area, searching for prisoners. We would have been shot or taken prisoner and used for their protection. We saw them leading the prisoners they had caught and overheard that they were being taken to jail.

For over a week we hid during the day. At night we went down to the fields to pick potatoes and squash. By the ninth day, everything seemed quiet; soldiers had not passed through the area in four days. We could see the camp and a little town from where we were. There was no activity there.

We watched as one of our men went down to the closest village; when he reached the bottom, he turned around to us and started waving. All of us went down. The Americans were already occupying the town of Nordhausen and our camp. This was our first him the war was unofficially over.

Excerpted from Sig Halbreich’s book, Before and After.

Sigi Hart

As a survivor of Auschwitz and Buna Monowitz, I do celebrate my second birthday on April 15, 1945. That’s the date I was liberated from the Bergen-Belsen Camp by the British.

At the Death March that began January 19, 1945, I walked from Auschwitz to Gleiwitz and then to Dora. At the end of March 1945, the Germans took us from Dora Nordhausen by train on flat cars on a death ride. The British and Americans mistook us for Germans troops and strafed the train with machine guns.

We finally reached Bergen-Belsen where we spent two weeks without any food ration.

When the British troops finally arrived—April 15, 1945—they started to repatriate us. Since I spoke French (having been interned in France in many camps) the British transferred me with all the other French citizens to Paris even though I was a German Jew born in Berlin.

I was one of the very lucky people to find my mother alive and well in Toulouse, France. From my mother I learned that my father had survived in Rome, Italy. My sister was able to reach America in 1944 after the Americans arrived in Italy, and my brother was now in Palestine, where I immediately got the British to send me legally.

George Herscu

I was born in Bucharest, Romania, a son of Liza and Jacob Herscu. We moved from Bucharest to the city of Roma in the province of Molsova.

My father and his family were very Orthodox Jews. He was a furniture manufacturer, and the director of a small business bank as well as the gabay in the synagogue. An only son, I had three sisters.

Anti-Semitism was always rampant in Romania, but the situation got worse around 1939 during the pogroms and with the Nationalist Green Shirt Party (the Legionnaires) coming to power with their leader Cornelin Costreann. The Romanians fought alongside the Germans against Russia.

The worst of it started on June 21, 1931. My father was arrested with up to 600 other Jews and held hostage in one of the synagogues. The rest of the family was divided and interned in forced labor camps. We had to wear the Star of David. We persevered until August 22, 1944 when we were liberated by the Soviet Army.

After the liberation, there was no reason to stay in Romania. I went over the border and became a displaced person in Austria and Germany. My three sisters immigrated to Israel in 1948 after the creation of the State of Israel. In 1950, I immigrated to Australia and married Sheila Bloom, a Jewish girl who was living there.

I became a permanent resident of the U.S. in 1996 and run a real estate development business.

The “1939” Club has meant a lot to me and for the rest of my life, I will always support the Club.

Ben Kamm

The Final Battles

Toward the end of the war, with the Germans headed for defeat and the Russian front nearly liberated, all Polish partisans were ordered back to Poland to carry on the struggle there. We were 1,200 Polish citizens. . . mostly Jewish. We just walked from the Ukraine back to Poland.

The partisans reconstituted themselves into a new group named for the well-known Polish Communist living in Russia, Wanda Wasilewska. The group continued to receive airdrops from Russia including such needs as ammunition, mines, medicines—even commanders. We also received regular reports from Radio Moscow. I made a daily habit of listening to the news and became friendly with the radio operator, who became my steady girlfriend.

The Wanda Wasilewska brigade had two objectives: to distribute weapons to the local population and to get as many people to fight as possible. Our troops fought the Germans in what sometimes amounted to full-scale battles. Once such battle took place shortly before the end of the war. The Germans sent thousands of soldiers to get rid of us. I listened to the news from Russia, so we knew they were coming. Having encircled miles of forest, trapping us, the Nazis launched a fierce attack, using every weapon at their disposal. But we held firm. Finally, after sixteen hours of combat, we succeeded in breaking through the German line and forcing their flight.

A few months later, Germany surrendered, and the war was over. Across Europe the Partisans laid down their weapons and went back home. But for me, there was no home to which I could return.

I am proud of having fought with three different partisan groups and of my part in destroying 549 trains which contributed to the defeat of Germany. But I’m saddened too. I can’t forgive people who killed innocent babies, innocent women, innocent people. . . they killed the best of us. And I’m sorry that more or our Jewish boys and girls did not have the same opportunity to do what I did.

Excerpted from the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation Study Guide.

Fred Klein

Freedom is a Glass of Milk

I called them the Dark Drums of Freedom. The artillery of the Red Army was very near, and we had stopped going to work in the factory in town. I was hardly able to work. I weighed some 70 pounds. One day, an SS man called me to the electrified fence, gave me a container with the rest of his pudding, and said, “Hitler is dead.” I didn’t react at all.

The last roll call was strange. The commander said, “You are being transferred to a civilian guard. I hope you will not complain about your treatment.” Next, each of us got a loaf of bread, a half pound of margarine, two pounds of potatoes, and a big pot of soup. I devoured everything in eight hours and became very sick.

The SS fled, but the watch towers were still manned by German civilians with armbands and machine guns pointed inward over the electrified fence. During the night, the civilian guard disappeared. A prisoner discovered the fence was no longer electrified. Someone made a hole in it, and the prisoners began to escape.

I was barely able to walk. But my cousin Bobby half-dragged me to the forest where we rested. I was so sick to my stomach that I thought I would die. In the morning, the Drums of Freedom became silent, and an eerie silence prevailed. It was May 8—VE Day—but we did not know it.

Weak and sick, we slowly started descending toward the town. Not yet used to freedom, we looked for guards with whips and police dogs. Supporting Bobby, I wondered, “Could we ask for a glass of milk? They won’t do anything to us.”

We entered the outskirts of the town, which was deserted. Suddenly, a young soldier in a strange uniform appeared—he must have been sixteen years old. He signaled us to enter a house and take what we needed. He was a member of the Soviet army. When we hesitated, he began tearing the clothes off our backs, forcing us to enter the house. The oven in the kitchen was still hot. Bobby discovered a whole goose in fat in a jar and went berserk. Grabbing an attaché case, he began to stuff it in. I went to the bedroom and lay down fully clothed. I slept for 24 hours.

When I woke up, I discovered that Bobby had disappeared. The town was deserted—just a few liberated prisoners searching for food, in vain. All of the businesses had been looted. I found some cereal and other prisoners discovered a cow. The Russians did not pay attention to us, but we had the right diet and a head start. Most liberated inmates did not make it—they could not digest regular food anymore.

Mary Kleinhandler

We spent the whole night in the shelter. I must have drifted off to delirium again, because the time flew by quickly. The next morning, men came into the shelter and shouted, “The Germans are gone! We are liberated! The Americans should be here any minute now!”

An electric current ran through our bodies. Everyone, save the sick ones, stood and erupted in jubilation. There was so much crying, laughing, shouting, embracing. We all went crazy with joy. Free! Free! Befried! What a scene!

We blinked furiously as we emerged from the darkness and into the sunlight. The day was crisp. It was April 28, 1945—the very first day of our freedom—and I was eager to drink in every last bit of it. We could still hear shooting; the thunder of exploding bombs followed us as we marched from the bunkers to the Germans’ dining hall. Still no sign of our liberators. All we knew was that our persecutors had abandoned the camp.

All the tables and chairs had been pushed aside to make room for us. A picture of Adolph Hitler, decorated with red flags and Swastikas, hung over a small stage at the front of the dining hall. It didn’t take long for the picture and bunting to come crashing down. The girls stomped on the picture, smashed the glass, and tore the Furher’s devilish face to bits. I never thought I’d live to see the day.

Too sick and weak to join the festivities, I lay on the floor, beneath a window. But I took in the scene, recording every precious moment of it in my memory. At the same time, I was curious about what was happening outside. And as I kept watch at the window, I saw the main gate fly open. Suddenly soldiers in khaki uniforms and helmets with rifles slung low over their shoulders spilled into the compound. Their faces, half-hidden by their helmets, were grimy and their uniforms covered with dust. “Americans!” was the outburst of joy. “The Americans are here.”

Anyone who could get up ran outside, whooping, laughing, crying to meet our liberators. All I could do was lift my head to observe the scene. There was so much rejoicing. The soldiers and the girls embraced, wept, and shouted all at once. As bighearted as they were, the Americans had little to offer us, but with tears streaming down their faces they emptied their pockets and shared with everyone whatever they had. One soldier distributed cigarettes, another biscuits. One had a bottle of liquor and gave everyone near him a swig. I envied those who were strong enough to participate in the euphoria.

It was the first time I’d met Americans or witnessed their generosity. One soldier standing near the window only had some sugar cubes to offer. At this, my mother sprang up, ran toward him, and put out her hand. When she returned, she placed a cube of sugar in my mouth. At this moment, at the taste of the sugar, I started to weep like never before. Tears streamed from my eyes and rolled down my neck.

“Why are you crying now?” My mother asked. “We are free. We are liberated. We survived. This is not the time to cry!”

But I just couldn’t stop. The taste of it, the sweetness. I hadn’t savored so much as a granule in years. It brought a rush of saliva to my mouth and with it a flood of memories: A lump melting slowly on my tongue while sipping coffee and milk as I chatted with my best friend in a café on Piotrkowska Street in Lodz after a movie. My brother and I conspiratorially sharing our blocks of chocolate. The luxurious taste of it in my grandmother’s rich butter cookies and babkas. The scent of baking had so perfumed her warm kitchen. That sugar cube suddenly crystallized the level of deprivation we’d all endured. And for what?

As I wept, the memories just kept flooding in. The cruelty, the filth, the greed, the starvation, the hatred, the viciousness, the sheer injustice of it all. No matter what happened now, no matter how free we were in theory, we would never be free in fact. We had lived with darkness and danger too long for our souls to return to the way they had been. How could we, when so much was lost and corrupted?

And I was ill. I had the tragic, bittersweet sense that I had survived the six black years of war and was finally liberated only to lose this last battle with typhus. “Mama,” I said between sobs, “I’m so sick. My life is slipping away. I think I’m going to die now.”

“No,” she shouted, falling to the ground, hugging and shaking me at the same time. “You are not going to die. You will live. You will be reunited with Arthur, and we will all go to America. You will not die!” By her words and their forcefulness, by her utter willpower, she interrupted my moribund reverie. She knew that “Arthur” was the magic word.

“Oh, yes,” I murmured, pulling my thoughts toward the future and hope. “I will live to see Arthur.” The vision of his smiling face, his sincere brown eyes brought me back, gave me the strength to fight a little longer against the specter of death. I rallied.

David Klipp

Memories of 1945

My last camp, Ahlem, was evacuated on Friday, April 6, 1945, leaving behind in the enclosure inmates unable to be included in the march to Bergen-Belsen. I was among them.

On Saturday, April 7, an SS officer arrived at the camp in an open truck and ordered all 19 of us to climb in. He drove us to the “Schutzenplatz” in Hanover where the SS housing quarters and other facilities were located. A gray haired army general stood at the gate instead of the SS guard who was normally there. Our SS officer reported that he’d brought 19 prison inmates to be executed. The general told him, “The army is composed of soldiers, not executioners.” We were then ordered off the truck and the SS officer drove off.

All this happened at the gate and I could hear the exchange very well despite the shots and other noises coming from the advancing Allied Forces.

Not far was a French prisoner of war camp, and they signaled us to come there. They explained to us that there was a possibility that German units might return and that we should not wear the concentration camp uniforms. There was a storage building not far away where the German uniforms were kept. We were advised to break in and change our clothes. That we did, and with their help we hid in the ruins of bombed houses.

The American tank unit entered Hanover on Wednesday April 11, 1945.

I told the American officer in the lead tank that we were 19 ex-inmates of a concentration camp. With the help of a Jewish-American soldier, we understood each other. He asked me to be the liaison between the Americans and the prisoners and wrote a note permitting me to walk around at any time, regardless of the general prohibition.

In the meantime, ex-inmates from other camps in the Hanover area started to come to town. With a few others, we established an organization to work on behalf of the their interests.

Shortly afterwards, the British replaced the Americans. They ordered the German authorities to work with us and to extend to us every possible help.

Our office was called “Hauptausschuss Fur Ehemalige Politishche Haftlinge,” commonly known as the KZ Ausschuss. Numerous ex-inmates from various camps were given food ration cards and pocket money to move where ever they wanted and try to find some surviving relatives. I was a board member until I left for the United States in April 1950.

This appeared in the 1990 Yearbook

Sally Korn

The story of my liberation is a more complicated tale than even I would have ever anticipated.

I had been hiding in the woods with a group of about 50 other Jewish concentration camp escapees and Polish men in eastern Poland near the city of Bobkra. Our group learned that Bobkra was free of Germans. The Soviets had passed through on their advance west. We also heard that some Germans were nearby and that a convoy was to pass through, which the men in our group decided to attack. The attack was a success. But staying in the woods was now too dangerous for us. We believed that we would overtake Bobkra and thereby liberate ourselves.

Getting to Bobkra was dangerous. We had to pass Ukranian villages. The Ukranians had collaborated with the Germans, and they too despised the Jews. We heard that these villagers suspected there were Jews and partisans hiding in the woods. We were fearful that their dogs would detect us and give us away.

At dawn we arrived in Bobkra, surprised to see the city was abandoned. We were exhausted, and entered some of the unlocked buildings to sleep, using our meager bundles for pillows. But some Ukranians did see us and informed the Germans of our presence.

Later that morning, explosions from cannon shells hit the part of the city in which we were hiding. Everyone ran outside. The bombing involved many city blocks, and we ran from building to building trying to avoid getting hit. We also heard machine gun fire, as if we were on the front lines. We were unable to escape the shooting until we got to the outskirts. From there, we saw a Soviet battalion and walked toward it, signaling that we were not enemy combatants. But as we joined the Soviets, a German plane appeared and began to strafe us. Everyone ran in circles or fell to the ground for protection. The Soviets shot back, and eventually the plane left.

We realized it was not safe there. The Soviets instructed us to walk eastward, toward Soviet occupied territory. None of us were familiar with the area, but we walked on a highway that had woods on either side. Someone heard the rumble of a tank behind us—it was a German tank. Our group split up, running into the forest on both sides of the road. As we ran deeper and deeper into the woods, we heard the tank firing shots at us.

When we were out of immediate harm’s way, and in fear and frustration, some of the Jewish girls in my group began breaking off vines that were covered with berries and eating the fruit. They threw the broken branches on the ground. It was not until some time later that I realized this had been our saving grace.

Our group continued to walk until we stopped on a hilly area that was sparsely wooded. From there we were able to see a fair distance. The Polish men became uneasy and planned to leave the area as soon as they could. One of my companions heard a Pole say that if we tried to follow them, they would have to shoot us.

We felt scared and doomed. But fate was on our side. The group that had escaped to the other side of the highway began to worry about our whereabouts. When they felt it safe to cross the highway, they started searching for us. They found the freshly broken vines and knew they were on the right track. Eventually they spotted us. Reunited, we continued our journey, encountering many other dangerous situations. As Jews attempting to escape our extermination from the Germans, we were caught in the life and death struggle between them and the partisans.

But a few days later, we crossed a major highway where hundreds of Soviet soldiers were crossing in both directions. We could tell from their equipment that the war in our area was over. We made contact with the Soviets, pleading with them to let us ride on their trucks. I decided to go to the city of Lvov, which had already been liberated by the Soviets.

In spite of the many hardships and difficulties we experienced on our road to liberation, fortunately no one in our group was killed and only a few men were slightly injured.

Dina and Isaac Kornbaum

My mother was Dina Fainkind and my father is Isaac Kornbaum. My mother was in the ghetto of Lodz until nearly the end of the ghetto. Then she and my grandmother were taken to Auschwitz, where my grandmother perished in the selection process. Mother was then transferred to Ravensbruk and then to a women’s camp by the Elba River.

As the war was coming to a close, the Germans told my mother and the other Jewish prisoners not to rejoice because they had wired the camp with explosives, which they would ignite the next day. However, early that next morning, when the Germans heard a report that the Russians were hours from the camp, they ran away, fearing for their lives.

My mother and the other Jewish women were left alive. They were liberated by the Russians. The American army soon followed.

My mother, who was under five feet, weighed less than 80 pounds, and the bones of her skeleton were clearly visible under her skin. The sores from malnutrition on her legs were so deep, they were not healed a year later, when she met my father. The liberators brought food to the surviving Jewish prisoners, but unfortunately some died from overeating. My mother said that although she was starving, she controlled her eating in order not to get sick. But her severe malnutrition and the harsh conditions she endured did require hospitalization in a hospital supervised by the Americans.

When my mother was released from the hospital, she returned to Poland but found no one left from her family. She made her way to a Kibbutz in the Polish city of Lignitz that was run by the Jewish Zionists. This was where my father met her, fell in love with her, and married her.

After the pogrom in Kielce, my parents stole their way across the border to Austria and a displaced persons camp on the American side run by the organization named UNRA. My parents left all of the documents and even their families’ photos behind, when they stole across the Polish border illegally. The displaced persons camp was near Kassel, Germany. I was born on year later. My parents gained liberty and kept their love, family, Jewish traditions and religious practices, and democracy.

Submitted by Brenda Brams, daughter of Dina Fainkind and Isaac Kornbaum.

Paula Lebovics

The Boots

The last German patrol left on January 20, taking with them the remainder of prisoners. Anyone able to walk was taken away. All the children in (Kinderblock) block 7 in E-camp, better known as the Zegeuner-Lager (gypsy camp) in Auschwitz-Birkenau were left. Right after that, the electric wires around our camp were knocked out by a bombing.

We were free. . . .No Germans, no supervision, no electricity, no food! We’d had no food since the Big March on the 18^th of January. Luckily, I’d found a moldy bread hidden and overlooked in an empty storeroom.

With my immediate hunger under control and the remainder of my bread securely in sight, I began to feel the freezing cold that was penetrating my body. I was wearing only a light garment, and I’m not sure whether I had shoes on.

The ground was covered with snow and where I looked I could see mounds protruding from flat the flat grounds. It looked like a white blanket covering the sleeping bodies beneath it—those were the ones who either never made the Big March or the following Last Patrol. They were the ones who were murdered or succumbed to starvation or sickness. I thought of myself as tough and indifferent to death and suffering. I was this little animal child, clawing and doing anything and everything to survive. I was properly trained in these tactics by this time. Still, every time I looked at a corpse, an knife went through my body as if I were the one being killed.

I recall joining the other children in a series of expeditions to find clothing. We walked through to the next camp, D-Lager, where again mounds were everywhere. We walked into the barracks where I knew my brother Herschel lived before the Big March. I don’t know what I was looking for or what I didn’t want to find. I saw a body on a lower bunk, and again a stab when right through my heart, and the sour taste of shoe soles (that sour spew of my earliest childhood memories) in my mouth. I held my breath. . . It wasn’t my brother, thank God.

We found the storeroom. There were mountains of clothes and shoes. I dressed myself in many layers of clothes. Finally I felt warm and I thought to myself, “I’ll never be cold again.” There was a lot of chatting—maybe even laughter—as we looked at each other and compared our finds. But when it came to finding a pair of shoes, the story goes like this:

Just imagine standing in front of a tall mountain of unpaired shoes, boots, and sandals of every style, color, and size. It wasn’t this small pile of shoes neatly tied up in pairs of my childhood memories. This was an overwhelming sight, and its true meaning I did not connect with or want to connect with until much later.

I dug in and started grabbing wildly at anything and everything. I glanced over to see what the other children were coming up with. I saw one of the girls putting on a pair of BOOTS. A thought went through my brain: I want and I must have BOOTS too.

Can you picture yourself trying on your mother’s shoes when you were a baby? Well, that’s how it was. I had such little feet, and the BOOTS I tried on were so big that they came way over my thighs. I could have fit both of my feet into them. The task became insurmountable. However, the harder it got, the more determined I became to find BOOTS.

It was getting late, and I was scared to go back alone and in the dark. I found a deep camel-color felt and leather-trimmed half-BOOT that fit much better than all the others. But I realized with disappointment after a while that finding the mate was an impossibility. Frustrated, I started to grab at anything. I found a white felt and black leather-trimmed half-BOOT. It was bigger, taller, and a completely different style. . . . how wonderful. . . I had BOOTS. Little did I anticipate or care that felt does not keep out the moisture. . . I had BOOTS.

Looking back, I can see that they did not succeed completely in breaking my spirit. . . I was still a CHILD.

Paula Lebovics was 11 years old when she was liberated from Auschwitz.

Barbara Lee

The Will to Survive

With the invasion of Poland by the Germans, life in Chrzanow, my hometown, changed greatly. I had hope to have a normal childhood like that of other children. Instead, I became an adult over night. I had to learn to fight for survival.

I had been brought up to love and respect other people. My parents had also instilled in me the importance of charity and respect for the poor and sick. My father belonged to the “Hevra Kedusha” of our community and was dedicated to assisting the dying.

One day, the Germans ordered us to assemble in the city’s square so that identification papers could be issued to us. It was just a pretext to round up Jews and it was then that my father was torn away from me. I was left crying and feeling helpless. I had the feeling that I was in hell and devils were dancing around me dressed in German uniforms.

Desperate, I pleaded with the Germans to release my father. To no avail. They were ruthless and without feeling. They took him away almost like a beast takes away his prey. I kept on begging for my father’s release to the point of endangering my own life. I kept asking myself why they are taking my father away. I man who had harmed no one! A great human being. But my questions went unanswered.

Suddenly, I found myself at the age of eleven in charge of my family, my two younger sisters and my mother. With my father’s deportation, my mother collapsed and was unable to tend to our needs. Instead of spending a carefree childhood, playing with friends, going to school, I had to hid in bunkers and live in constant fear of being discovered and arrested.

My brother was the next victim. At the age of 14, he was taken to a slave labor camp to work in a stone quarry and from there to concentration camp. After the liberation, I found out that he died of starvation in camp.

The rest of my family, mother and sisters, lived in the ghetto in one room. Every night we were afraid to go to sleep, fearing the Germans would come to take us away. We would take nightly refuge in a cellar right under our room. One of us had to stay back to alert us if the SS were approaching and to cover the trap door leading to the cellar. More than a cellar, it felt like a torture chamber without air or light.

One night they did come. My youngest sister was on vigil that night. We heard heavy footsteps and brusque commands asking her if anyone else was in the house. Then we heard silence. She was the third victim in our immediate family. How can I describe our feelings—we had to hold our breath, but our hearts were bleeding and our lips crying without emitting any sound. We felt so helpless. I wondered to myself how a mother must feel when her child is torn from her. I could feel my mother’s pain flowing into my body.

The next morning, when we came out of our hiding place to get some food, we heard German-speaking voices coming our way. My mother and I quickly descended into the cellar leaving my remaining sister to cover the opening to our hiding place. She hid in a nearby closet. The Germans searched the house methodically, thrusting bayonets into furniture and knocking on walls. Soon they found her and took her along. I can still hear resounding in my ears her desperate screams: “Mamma! Mamma! I don’t want to go.”

Here we were, my mother and I, helpless and paralyzed. I was shaken by fear and anger. I felt as if as if someone had torn flesh from my body. Conflicting thoughts raced through my mind. Should we give ourselves up or should we fight for survival in the hope that one day we could be witnesses to the unspeakable cruelty perpetrated on children by the so-called “master race.” By this time, however, we were aware of what would be in store for us too.

When quiet returned to the room above, my mother and I tried to lift the lid that covered our hiding place. We were unable to raise the lid, no matter how hard we tried. We were resigned to our death as we lacked oxygen and were getting weaker and weaker. After many attempts and with superhuman efforts, I was able to push the lid up, but in the process I knocked over a chair. We were terrified that the noise would alert our Gentile neighbors who, in the past, had collaborated with the Germans.

Reassured that we had not been discovered, and after much effort, my mother and I were able to leave our hiding place and in the dark of night, disguised as Poles, we fled.

Trying to rejoin the rest of our family—grandmother and aunts—we discovered that they had all been deported to Auschwitz.

My determination to survive at all cost carried me through the many years of suffering I had to endure. A determination to survive, to tell the rest of the world of the atrocities perpetrated by a so-called “civilized nation.”

Bernard Lee

A Last Farewell

Liberation came to me by the American Army, May 1945 in a concentration camp near Munich, Germany. Liberation came after six years of indescribable torture, starvation, and humiliation. As inmates of various concentration camps, we had to witness the most horrible atrocities carried out by the Nazi hordes.

And now I was free again. I thought it was a dream from which I would have to wake up sooner or later. It took some time to absorb this new reality. I had to make the adjustment from slavery to freedom. I felt as if I were born again.

Reality, however, set in. I started asking myself questions: Where do I go from here? What does the future have in store for me? How do I get started to build a new life for myself?

That is when I starting thinking about my family. When I was taken to a labor camp, May 1941 by the Germans, I left behind my parents, four sisters and four brothers. I hoped and was convinced that some members of the family were alive. I searched for them all over Europe.

When I finally grasped the cruel truth that I had lost my entire family, I asked myself over and over again: Why was I the only one to survive? Even today, so many years after the actual event, it is very difficult and painful for me to think that they went to their deaths believing that I had died. Today, more than ever, it is painful not to have them around me and share their love. More than ever do I realize what that family meant to me.

Beba Leventhal

On the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Liberation:

My Day of Liberation, May 3, 1945

Ordinarily, the Day of Liberation should be a long-awaited day, a day of great joy. But it was a day that most of us thought we would not survive to see—this, for reasons you will soon see.

But in order to understand and to penetrate into our lives, which hung as if in a spider web, one must first become acquainted with the place from which we were liberated: Camp Stutthof. This was the last stop in my wanderings from one camp to another. Stutthof was a small village on the Baltic shore in Ost Preisen—East Prussia—still part of Germany some 36 kilometers from Danzig. This was a terrible death camp, complete with crematorium, also known as the “Auschwitz of the north.” We were forced to haul bricks from one spot to another and to dig graves—sometimes thinking they would be our own. Everything was gray and cold from rain an dirty snow.

This was the worst camp I had been in, and all of us who had been sent there were convinced that we would not emerge alive. Some 110,000 prisoners passed through this international camp—people from 40 different nationalities including Poland, Italy, Norway, Hungary, Russia, and even China and Mongolia. Mostly, though they were Jews—over 52,000—coming from the Baltic countries, Poland, and transfers from Auschwitz. It is believed that some 3,000 survived.

The Russian front began moving closer to Eastern Germany and Poland, but we in the camp knew nothing of this. A typhus epidemic was raging among us, and every morning we would see who had not gotten up for the “apel”—the roll call formation. Then the sanitation aides would go into the barracks to carry out the corpses. The crematorium worked ceaselessly. The transports being driven or walking there will always appear before my eyes. Horrible!

It became clear that the number of prisoners in the camp was growing ever smaller either due to executions, transfers to other camps, or death marches. Then, on the morning of April 28, 1945, the Germans drove us out of the barracks and began to count us. They formed fairly small groups and dragged us to the Baltic shore. We were shoved into small boats. Ours was a cement barge. Some SS men were with us. The boat set sail along with the others. It was crowded and dirty aboard. There was no food or very little. The people were sick, some with typhus, others severely malnourished. There was much activity at sea around us—many boats were involved. It seemed that the camp was being evacuated. The skies above were not calm either. Allied airplanes bombarded the boats and whatever else they could.

I can see clearly before my eyes the large ship “Kob Arkona” as it passes us. Male prisoners stand on the top deck in their prison uniforms and round caps. They’re stout fellows, not starvelings like us. They appear self-satisfied, and they’re certainly not Jews. We all wondered were they might have come from. Early the next morning, as we were circling in the same waters we suddenly spotted the stern of a ship sticking out of the water. It was the “Kob Arkona” that had been bombed, and all its prisoners now lie in a watery grave.

And so we circled and dragged about for some for or five days in the Baltic Sea. As to the conditions aboard, one must not speak. Some of us began drinking sea water, which is dangerous, and they fell ill. The atmosphere was that of panic. Rumors spread that an explosive device had been placed aboard and that it would be set off, drowning us all. Anything was possible among the Germans. Others said a few Norwegian prisoners had disconnected the bomb. Still it is difficult to imagine the panicked state that ruled over us.

Around the first or second of May, toward late afternoon, we noticed that we were approaching the shore. Our SS guards lowered a rubber raft from the boat and some of them departed. We believed we might be free because the Norwegians told us that the British and American armies were close by. But it was not so.

The SS men who had remained brought our boat closer to shore—between 50 and 150 meters. They ordered us to jump into the water, to wade ashore, and not to turn around or look back. We did so with our last strength. As we ran or crawled toward the beach, we heard shooting—the SS were firing at us and some in our group were killed in the water. But mostly they shot at the captives who had not managed to jump overboard, those who clung to the rails or were holding on to the sides of the boat. I looked back and saw that one of those was my relative—Senitsky—who had a club foot and was unable to jump. As he realized what was happening, he shouted at me with his last breath, “Beba, remember the date!”

We could not watch this and barely dragged ourselves to the shore, which was covered with thick growths of tall bushes. Somehow we managed to crawl among them and hide. There we found Russian POWs who had made a fire and were cooking a soup from the cows or sheep they had slaughtered. We saw on Americans or British. The Russians shared their fatty soup with us, but many were sickened by it after having starved for so long.

And so we lay there on the cold, wet ground for a day or two, and no one came to rescue or liberate us. But on the third of May, British soldiers appeared in the late afternoon and began to evacuate us. I didn’t know who they were but we, the remnants of the long and dangerous voyage, were delighted. The British soldiers took us to a nearby military hospital in a submarine base in the city of Neustadt in northern Germany. Some German wounded soldiers were still in one section.

I couldn’t believe we had been brought to a large ward with beds and sheets and blankets. Oh, how long since I’d seen these! But my wonder and joy were short-lived. German doctors came around to examine us. I noticed uniforms from the Wehrmacht or the SS under their medical robes, and I was convinced that they would kill us here or end us with injections or other means. My mind was working so much in this vein that I was determined not to allow any injections or other medical procedures.

That first night in the hospital was difficult—people were sobbing or groaning in pain. No one could sleep. At dawn we saw that many of our friends from the boat were unable to endure and had died in the night. Oh, what a tragedy on that day of liberation!

And so my first day of freedom passed in pay and in joy and in wonder.

English translation by Hershl Hartman.

Jack Lewin

Thoughts from Before and After Liberation

After marching endless hours in deep snow in the evacuation from the K.Z. Trzebinia (a branch of Auschwitz) on January 17, 1945, we finally reached the field outside the gate of Auschwitz where we stopped for a rest. Our camp commandant, an SS officer, ordered 100 people who couldn’t keep up with the march to step out.

I was the first volunteer. Within 10 minutes, there were a hundred more. As I looked around at our group, I realized I’d made a mistake. I was surrounded by half-dead, broken bodies, shadows of creatures from another world. I’m sure they thought the same when they looked at me. I was overcome by a great fear. Here we are in Auschw