And are not satisfied with my flesh?
Oh that my words were now written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
That with an iron pen and lead
They were graven in the rock forever!
~ JOB XIX: 22-24
This is a chronicle of the tragedy of millions of Jewish people during Hitler's "Kampf" in Poland (much of which I witnessed), and of the great personal loss of all my loved ones in the infamous Majdanek Extermination Camp at Lublin.
Had it not been for Maria's indomitable spirit, I should never have had the courage to come to America and begin life over again.
We are grateful to all the good people in America who have contributed to establishing us in a new and heretofore unknown life, where a man may stand to his full height and walk in freedom and dignity.
George Pfeffer, Sr.
Dayton, Ohio
September 11, 1958
by George Pfeffer 1944
translated by Pauline Kleinmaier 1958
edited and posted by Elizabeth Behr 2009-2011
** ** ** ** **
WARSAW 1944
I am George Pfeffer.
I am the quarry of the Nazis.
I run in the night from covert to covert -- panting like a wild thing fleeing from the hounds. I cower and pray and wait interminably for the end of the war.
My story might have been written by millions of other Jews. The basic pattern of their travail would have been the same as mine. Only the details might differ.
For them and for them alone I hold the pen, as though they held it. I should like to write it with an iron pen -- that our story could be graved in rock -- that future generations might read and not forget.
Just now I am hiding with several other Jews in the apartment of a Polish widow. With every knock on the door our sanity is assaulted. We quail in our hiding places and pray that we shall be overlooked again. Writing this story may help me to hang onto my reason.
My thoughts turn back to the end of World War I, when I was ten years old and Poland was put together again. Our teacher, Mr Pawloski, told us all about it. For 125 years Poland had been occupied by its surrounding neighbors. Geography and history were NOW for us. We were part of history being made. We were proud to be Poles. A patriotism was aroused in us, such as only a child feels when he first becomes aware of his nationality.
At home our parents and friends discussed the new turn of events. Would this new Poland bring citizenship for the Jewish inhabitants? Would a happier, freer Polish people abandon their old persecutions?
Mr. Pawloski told us how Ignace Jan Pederewski had left his piano and, as premier of Poland, went to the Paris Peace Conference. There, in exchange for important territorial grants, he was asked to sign a pledge that all minorities within the boundaries of Poland would be given equal rights, including those of different faiths. He signed.
Upon his return to Poland he made these provisions a part of the new Constitution. The Jews wondered if this new law was written in good faith.
Counting those in the re-united sections, Poland now had the largest population of Jews in Europe: over three million. Yet post-war privations made the Poles restless. They turned again to their old punching bag, the Jew, to pound out their frustrations. There were economic boycotts against the Jews; hoodlums stoned Jewish stores; signs were put up reading "Nie Kupuj U Zyda" (Don't buy from a Jew). These things and the daily insults made life utterly miserable for the destitute Jews.
Marshall Josef Pilsudski tried to uphold the Constitution to stem the rampant discrimination. He did not seem able to implement the new law which provided full rights to Jews. Yet these rights had been earned with the blood shed by Jewish soldiers who had fought shoulder to shoulder with the partisans to regain Poland's lost territories.
The economic situation for the Jews became increasingly acute. What could they do? Because other nations had closed their doors to immigration, they could not flee the country.
This was the background of my boyhood in Warsaw. Within the limits of my childish comprehension, I was conscious of these things.
Our family was prosperous. My father, Abraham Pfeffer, had a leather goods factory, employing 80 people. He also owned income property. Yet in spite of their own comparative security, our elders were deeply disturbed by the perilous position of the entire body of Jewish Poles, prone as they were to continuous harassment and economic ruin.
In the summertime we led a sheltered life in a small villa my father owned on a tributary of the Vistula at Miedzeszyn. Our old nurse Jadzia Zagierska came with us. The Polish janitor and his wife, Michael and Michaelowa Glazewski, lived in a nice little cottage. They tended the apartments and gardens, the tennis courts and fruit orchards.
My sisters, Stefania and Helen, and I were Michael's shadow. He taught us to swim and fish, and to row a boat on the broad Vistula a few miles away. We had a deep affection for him.
When I was 16 our dear mama passed away. One day the principal of our Gymnasium called me from class and sent me home to learn that Mama had been rushed to the hospital for an emergency operation. She had asked to see me.
When I saw her face, pale and distorted with pain, I sensed that she was about to die. She was very brave and tried to shield me from the truth. She asked me always to look after Stefania and Helen, no matter what should happen. In that moment I became a man with a grief and a burden.
In time, my father married again, but he remained very close to us. His warmth and love compensated, in part, for the loss of our mother.
After I graduated Gymnasium my father sent me to the College of Commerce in Warsaw. In 1932, at the age of 30, I received my Master's Degree in Economics and Accounting. After the commencement exercises, Father took me to his factory. As we stood before the building he put his arm across my shoulders and pointed proudly to a new sign above the door, which now read: Abraham Pfeffer and Son. That was a glorious day.
By 1933 Hitler's fire of anti-semitism spread through Central and Eastern Europe, [as he] created a smokescreen of lies to cover his foul machinations. Out of our radio receivers his terrifying voice spewed his malevolence in harsh guttural Austrian accents. Our Polish newspapers screamed his headlines of hate.
At this time, however, my ears were also attuned to pleasanter sounds. They emanated from a concert grand piano at the Philharmonic in Warsaw. The music was Chopin, the pianist a beautiful young virtuoso named Luta Chigryn. According to the program, she had placed fifth in an international competition held annually in memory of Frederick Chopin.
Her performance was at times gay and capricious, or full of poetry and romance. When she played a nocturne I closed my eyes and seemed to see her in a garden with fountains dripping in moonlight.
In a daze I entered the reception line after the concert and managed an introduction. Then I stepped aside and observed her from a distance. I noted the simple dignity with which she accepted the compliments paid her, her unaffected charm and poise.
Luta had the courtliness of a Polonaise, the sparkle of a Mazurka, the lyric beauty of a Chopin ballade. How dare I dream of breathing the same air as such a rare creature? But I did dream. And dreaming made her mine. Luta -- lovely Luta! We married as soon as she was graduated. That was 1935.
My father was generous. We honeymooned at the Europejski Hotel at Zakopane in the Tatry Mountains. It was the end of February and winter sports were at their height. We skied and tobogganed, dined and danced, attended plays and concerts. In our lovely and loving dreamland, Hitler was merely an ogre conjured up to frighten little children.
Upon our return, we spent part of Luta's dowry to furnish our apartment on Komitetowa Street. Her grand piano dominated our home, as did her exquisite music. Her music poured over us, drowning out the strident, threatening radio. In those days, we lived in a world of our own. At the end of our first year of marriage, our son was born. Ignas, with his blue eyes and fair hair, was a joyful baby. Our happiness was complete.
In 1938, when Ignas was two, there occurred in the Polish cities of Brest-Litovsk, Czestochowa, and Prystyk the most appalling pogroms against the Jews of these cities. The thoroughness and technique of these mass killings and atrocities were Hitler-inspired, without question. We were profoundly disturbed. But we tried to quiet our fears with the delusion that this could not happen in Warsaw, even as the horrendous threat to our happy future began to dawn upon us.
Our family had grown considerably in the years since my mother's death. Two children had been born to my father and "Aunt Dora," as we called our step-mother. A girl, Edra, and a boy, Izio. After our marriage, my wife Luta had been added to our circle and then our baby, Ignas. Stefania had married, and our younger sister, Helen, was engaged.
Summer: the entire clan was together at Miedzeszyn. The men of the family commuted to their businesses in Warsaw, some 20 miles distant. That last summer, 1939, Hitler had "freed" Sudetenland, swallowed Austria and Czechoslovakia. Now he demanded the Polish Corridor. With some sense of security because of the mutual aid pacts with France and England, Poland mobilized.
At our summer place, we tried to put up a brave front. A little tennis, a little picnicking in the orchard. We fooled no one, much less ourselves. Our hearts were heavy. There was no escape, no where to run. Minutes and hours became precious jewels. Days were priceless.
Luta played for us in the evenings. As always, her music entranced and possessed us. But now it had a brooding quality, a vein of sadness underlying the notes, intensifying our feelings of hopelessness and doom. A bone-aching nostalgia welled within us, such as only a disinherited Jew can know -- a homesickness known only to the homeless.
That last week of August, Father and Aunt Dora returned to Warsaw. I talked to my father daily by telephone. He reported that business was at a complete standstill. and that he had to discontinue extending credit to his customers. The banks had stopped all loans. Father advised me to stay where I was and look after the family.
Blitz Krieg struck at midnight, September 1, 1939. By sea, air, land Nazi's swarmed over our western border. From the Baltic, south to the Carpathians they drove forward. Ahead of them swooped the shrieking dive bombers. Taken by surprise, our airfields were quickly put out of action. Our army fought bravely but were forced back by the Nazi tanks. By the second or third day . . . the enemy was approaching Warsaw.
The people did not want to believe at first that this was enemy action. They thought the Luftwaffen were Polish planes on maneuvers. Not until they saw swastikas on the wings of the planes, not until they saw large buildings falling down like toy blocks, not until they saw the streets bloodied by the innocent dead: not until all this did they realize we were at war.
Over the radio came the call from President Stefan Starzynski -- all able-bodied men must flee to eastern Poland to be mobilized. I left the villa and went at once to the city. Warsaw was paralyzed. All communications had been severed. The city was in flames. Gas and electricity had been cut off. Half-dazed people ran crazily through the streets.
When I arrived at my father's home, I told him I was going east. He said he would also go. My brother-in-law said the same. We left Warsaw on foot, taking food enough for only a couple of days. We past River Bug, there the highways were crowded with people fleeing with their babies and bundles. Overhead, the bombers strafed us. As we hurried along, we wondered if we would ever see our families again.
Mid-September we reached the place of mobilization only to find we were cut off by the Russian army. By arrangement with Hitler, previously their enemy, the Russians occupied all of Poland east of the River Bug. The enemies of yesterday were friends and allies today, and both now were enemies of Poland. What had happened to our friends, France and England? We were shut off from the world and knew nothing of what was going on outside.
The return journey took us two weeks. We had to take a circuitous route to avoid capture by the Russians. We arrived home to find the entire family in Father's basement. We were welcomed with tears of relief.
Luta told me of events after I had left Miedzeszyn. When the bombing started, the rest of the family there decided to return to Warsaw. With the help of the servants, they hurriedly closed the house and started walking the 20 miles to the city. Ignas was frightened by the bombs and Luta had carried him in her arms most of the way.
At Father's home they found Aunt Dora and her younger children huddled in the basement in a makeshift bomb shelter. They had gathered a sufficient food supply and water from an artesian well, so they had survived the unnerving bombing raids.
By September 28 Warsaw fell and the bombing stopped. Luta, the baby, and I returned to our own apartment. Our building was still intact. We resumed our lives, but with many restrictions. Jews were not allowed to travel out of Warsaw. Within the city limits, they must use special street cars. We had to wear blue and white armbands. The Nazis were now in full command.
The end of September, all Jews living in Warsaw -- 350,000 -- were ordered into a part of town defined by certain boundaries. All non-Jews living in this neighborhood had to move out. With overcrowded conditions and increasing poverty, the area, which had once been a nice residential district, became a ghetto. My father's apartment, as well as my sister Stefania's and ours, were all situated within the boundaries of the restricted Jewish district. We did not have to move.
All Jewish-owned businesses outside this section were confiscated. Our leather goods factory was taken over by the Nazis, as well as the real estate my father owned and, of course, our summer villa.
Our old Polish Aryan nurse, Jadzia, who had become sort of confidential secretary in my father's business after the children were out of the nursery, pleaded with Father to let her remain in the Jewish district with us. She was 65 and had no home but ours. I saw several officials on her behalf and we received permission to keep her. We trusted her like a member of the family and were touched by her loyalty.
Every day the terror for the Jews increased. No night passed that some homes were not entered and the men killed in the presence of their families. Many professional Jews, doctors and lawyers, were taken from their homes in the middle of the night and never heard from again. Young Jewish men were taken for slave labor.
Little by little, at first, the liquidation began. First old people and the weak and sick were eliminated. I remember hearing of a case where a feeble old man in a wheel chair was thrown from a fifth-story window, chair and all, before the eyes of his terror-stricken loved ones. Then came the order to build a wall around the ghetto. Soon after that, Nazis called for volunteers to form a Jewish police force to keep order in the ghetto. Many young men volunteered, believing they could be of service to their people.
Jews from small towns were brought into the ghetto pen. Conditions became unbearable. As many as ten families, total strangers, were crowded into five rooms. The population quickly grew to half a million. My father took three families into his apartment. We took in one family, in addition to Luta's parents and her brother's family.
The food situation became acute. People died of starvation. Children fell dead in the streets.
Typhus, born of starvation and filfth, of vermin-infested, unwashed bodies in too-close proximity, aided the Nazis in their goal to rid the earth of Jews.
Somehow we survived. My father was able to turn his valuables into cash on the black market. This kept us from starving. Some food and necessities were smuggled in from the Aryan side of town.
In the winter of 1940-41 an order came that all Jews who owned furs must turn them over to the Nazis. Failure to comply meant death.
Eastern European winters are long and bitter. Anyone who could afford furs had them. The women of our family had fine ones. The men, too, had fur-lined great coats with large fur collars and cossack hats. Why should we provide Nazi soldiers with fur linings for their uniforms? Let them freeze!
Through Jadzia, my sister sent hers to a friend on the Aryan side of town for safe-keeping. My sister and I were the only ones who knew this, and only Jadzia knew where the furs were hidden.
Some months later, when the action against the Jews increased, Jadzia had to say goodbye and move from the ghetto. After she left us, we kept in contact by telephone. And later when the telephones were cut off, we wrote letters. At one time I told her to sell a Persian lamb coat. We needed the money and this was the only way to raise it.
For several weeks after, I did not hear from her and could not locate her. I asked some Aryan friends to try to find her, and after some time they did. Following my instructions, they pressed her for the money. She sent part of it. We never saw the rest.
Early in 1942 the liquidation of the Jews began in earnest. The Nazis were systematic. Daily action took place now on a much larger scale. Selections were made from the unemployed, the weak, the aged. During this time, Luta's parents were taken from our home by the Gestapo. How my darling cried.
A thousand or so Jews were sent to the Umshlag Platz. This was an open square where the unfortunate chosen were herded by storm troopers and Jewish police into boxcars like cattle, then taken to God-knows-where.
By summer that year the tempo increased. As the population shrank, the ghetto area was made smaller and smaller. All able-bodied men and women were now employed in factories, or shops, run by the Nazis. These shops were set up in vacant apartment buildings in the ghetto. Luta and I were working in separate areas in our shop. That summer I kept Ignas close to me. Children were on the priority list. He was nearly eight now. Luta decided Ignas would feel more secure with me. He and I hid together whenever danger seemed imminent -- making a sort of game of it.
On a certain Sunday that year, all the Jews employed in our shop --3,500-- were ordered to go to a place in the vicinity of Umschlag. Only 600 gathered there were to receive slips of paper which would permit them to return to work. The remaining 2,900 would be sent to the Umschlag Platz and the boxcars. The lucky ones with the name cards were to be billetted in the factory building.
I soon found out that Luta's and my name were not among the 600. So the three of us were destined to go to Umschlag. UMSCHLAG! DOOM!
The names were written on small slips of paper, together with the person's number. One of the foremen climbed on a box and called out the name on each slip. That person, if present, was to reply with the number on his identification card. If the number and name checked, the foreman delivered the slip to that person. Little slips of paper: the difference between life and death. Luta and I thought we were lost. I determined to get a slip for each of my family, if I could.
I stood close to the foreman and tried to memorize the names not claimed. I looked over his shoulder to read the number assigned to that name. I noticed he put the unclaimed slips under the stack in his hand to be called again later. After memorizing four names and their corresponding numbers, I managed to collect four slips. One for Luta. One for Aunt Dora. One for my sister-in-law. One for myself.
My father was lucky enough to have had his name called.
I was unable to get a paper for my brother-in-law, so I tore a piece of paper the same size as the others, wrote down his name and number. With a mechanical pencil I forged an "official" stamp on this card, copying the stamp marks on the four I held. It was easy to see it was made by a pencil, but I figured we had nothing to lose.
Aunt Dora was in the hospital. She'd had a slight operation on her leg several days before. She was still there when we were told to assemble for name cards. When the order came, my father ran at once to the hospital to get her. The hospital staff had orders to release no patients. All the sick were to be taken by escort to Umschlag.
Father was not able to enter the hospital. Aunt Dora, who had been expecting him, came to a window on the second floor. Father signed to her to come to the window of an empty room he could see on the first floor. Wearing a house robe, she came down to the window indicated. She had no other clothing. With Father's assistance she jumped from the window. They got away unobserved.
On their way to their home to get her some clothing, he broke the news he had withheld while she was in the hospital: Their two children, Izio 13 and Edra 16, had been taken to Treblinek concentration camp. The shock of this tragedy in her weakened condition unbalanced her. Father had to carry her the rest of the way and, once home, force her to dress. After quieting her, he helped her to the meeting place. I gave her the bogus "slip of life."
After the slips of paper had been delivered to the lucky six hundred, the Jewish police formed a tight cordon around the crowd, allowing only those with slips to pass, counting them as they left. Those who had no slips of paper began rioting, attempting to break through the police line to save their lives, all to no avail. The police beat people over the head and finally called SS men to restore order.
Those with slips now crossed the cordon and lined up outside the square. I had a difficult time because they would not let me take Ignas. Then one of the policemen who knew me let us pass. Our lines were surrounded by Jewish police and overseers. The police told me there was no use trying to get Ignas through, the SS would hold him and us as well.
I tried to hide him in the suitcase I had with us, throwing out all the contents, but he was too big. I rolled him in a blanket to take him on my back, but the bundle was too large. Besides, it was obvious the bundle was a child. A Jewish policeman told me the Nazis in previous selections had killed children so hidden, with their bayonets. There had been one such case earlier that day.
Having no alternative, I decided to lead him by the hand beside me. I made Luta agree that if I was taken out with our son, she was to stay in the file as though she did not know us. In my heart I believed I might escape with Ignas, even if we went to Umschlag.
Before the final check our factory chief gave the order that everyone must hold the name card in one hand and the slip ("slip of life") in the other. These credentials were then checked to make sure we held the right cards. When we realized there would be a showdown, we feared our deception would be discovered. Nevertheless, we held cards and slips as directed.
Our factory chief, who was a civilian German governement worker, checked the first four rows very carefully for the data on the cards to agree with the data on the slips. We were in the fifth row. When he came to our row, he checked only to see that each one held two documents. He did not compare them.
As he passed me he looked at Ignas, then at me, and without a word let me know I must get rid of him. I was unable to speak. With a pleading look I begged silently for mercy. I knew he had three children of his own. I prayed that he would understand. The pain he saw in my face and the horror in my boy's eyes must have moved him. The chief shrugged as if to say "we'll leave it to the SS men." Then he passed to the next row.
The SS men ordered me out of file and I stood aside with Ignas. Seeing that the SS men were busy checking others and paying no attention to me, I picked Ignas up, pressing him tightly in my arms, and dashed into the group already qualified to return to the shop. A Jewish policeman saw me do this, but no one interfered. Ignas and I mingled with the others. Luta was already there. Her eyes filled with tears when she saw us in the crowd again.
During the march to the shops I hid Ignas under my coat. The street along which we marched was full of SS men and Ukrainian soldiers and I was terrified that they would notice him. Ignas was the only child rescued in that day's action.
Our shop was set up for renovating damaged helmets for Nazi storm troopers. We hammered out the dents in these helmets with murderous blows, as though we were bludgeioning the heads destined to wear them.
Ignas became popular in the shop. Everyone loved him. The assistant director of the factory, an Aryan Pole, could scarcely believe the child had survived the action. He asked me to tell him again and again how I had accomplished it. I told him God had been with us. It was indeed a miracle.
Living conditions in the billetting places were harsh. A few sticks of furniture, left by the unfortunate ones who had lived there and had already been liquidated, served us for beds and chairs. Our lodgings crawled with vermin. Our family -- twelve of us -- was housed in two rooms.
We had been selling family jewels one by one on the black market for a fraction of their value. The few zlotys we received kept us from complete starvation. Now the jewels were almost gone. When we moved from our home to the billetting quarters we hid what little of value we had left between the lifts of our heels or in the seams of our clothing. Luta and Stefania hid $20 American gold pieces in their hair.
On April 19, 1943 the last liquidation phase started. In three and a half years Warsaw's population of 500,000 Jews shrunk to a few thousand. those who still survived were reduced to poverty, their clothing in rags.
Rumor came to us that the destination of the daily "shipments" was an extermination camp, although the official Nazi information was that the people were being re-settled in the east -- in work camps.
The remnant of the ghetto population, emaciated, destitute, and ill, suddenly came alive. Underneath our filthy, crawling shirts still lived a spark of courage. We determined to fight to the last. Guns were smuggled to us from the Polish side. Every man and woman able to fire a gun was armed.
Our Nazi overseers in the factory fled in fright. We were on our own. We manned the guns at entrances and windows of the building and fired at any Nazis who tired to approach. A number of Nazis were killed. We put a real scare into the SS bullies. They became wary and would not enter the ghetto except in armored cars. Many of those, too, were picked off by our guerillas. We knew from the first that we could not win. The attempt was what counted.
Block by block, now, the Nazis set fire to the factory buildings. Those who could ran out of the flames to to buildings in other blocks, only to be routed again and again by the spreading flames. Our family fled from our burning factory and ran to a bombed out basementin the next block. Helen and Stefania were with us.
After we were five days in this shelter the Nazis set fire to the entire block. We had to run for our lives again. All of us had burns on our legs and faces. We ran in terror to the next block, which had been razed two days earlier and was still smoldering.
Luta found a refuge of sorts for us -- a basement under the ruins. Normally this shelter could have held about 30 persons. Well over 100 injured and starving people crowded into this basement with us. They came, as we did, practically empty-handed, their only provisions a bag of dried bread or biscuits.
We knew we could not stay here more than a few days: No light, no food, no water, no lavatory, the stench of burned bodies under the ruins all made that impossible.
Lips moved in prayer to the Almighty, pleading for release from our unbearable sufferings. Death seemed preferrable.
The memory of May 2, 1943 will be with me always. The Nazis, under the guidance of a turncoat Jew (God knows what false promises they made), found us. Gestapo troops used tear gas to evacuate us. Luta and Ignas were choking for air. I dragged them from our hiding place. An SS man commanded us to raise our hands. We were thoroughly searched and stripped of everything they could find.
The officer in charge took me aside. He told me we were to go to Poniatowa, a concentration camp, but if I would tell him where similar shelters were located and lead the way, he would set me and my family free.
It was a great temptation but I could not bring myself to betray anyone. I told him I was a newcomer and did not know of other shelters. Soon, though, another man from our shelter agreed to help find and evacuate similar shelters in the vicinity.
After the Nazis had rounded up a number of people, the unmarried men were taken away and shot, since they had no close relatives and might try to escape. The rest of us were taken to Umschlag Platz. There we were searched again.
The Gestapo was joined by Ukrainian and Latvian volunteers who were, if possible, more merciless than the Gestapo. (We learned that the Ukrainian and Latvian armies had revolted against Russia and had taken sides with the Nazis as they expected Germany to win the war.) They beat us into semi-consciousness and, after several hours, we were loaded into the cattle cars to be taken away.
From the Platz to the railroad cars was only a city block, yet for us it was an interminable horror march. We were continuously beaten, shot at, and robbed. They took our shoes, our overcoats, our jackets, even our trousers. An SS man struck Aunt Dora on the head until the blood streamed over her face and dress. They hit me, too, with an iron rod. The day was one of those hot ones which comes early in May, yet they refused to give us water.
They herded us into the cars hours before train time. Ukrainian guards had already closed the small windows at the top of our car. I remember it was a French freight car with three windows at the top on each side. After closing the windows, the guards offered to open them for 1,000 zlotys each (about $100). No one seemed to have any money left. We struggled for breath. Some began to fight violently. Only then, somehow, money was found and the windows opened.
In the evening, after a horrorific day, we began to move. In a cattle car scarcely large enough for 40 people, 150 of us stood tightly packed together. No one spoke for a long time. We stood like mute beasts. We had been drained of all emotion and thought.
The moon shone through the high windows in shifting shades of light, lending an eerie, deathly pallor to our faces. Expressionless, our starved, bony heads seemed to float bodiless in a moon-washed purgatory.
Beneath us the relentless wheels rolled on and on, on and on, on and on --rattling our bruised and beaten bones. With the sometimes jerky movements of the train, we lost our footing and, having no place to fall, fell upon one another.
During the long night, some prisoners escaped by climbing through the small windows and jumping. I wanted to do this. I discussed the possibility with Luta. she opposed the idea, saying it was too risky. It was quite a height from which to jump. Also, she was afraid I would be shot by Ukrainian guards who, from the roofs of the cattle cars, fired after escapees. The strongest argument was our child. I wanted to throw him out the window and jump after him -- but Luta would not hear of it.
The Nazis were well aware of family devotion among Jews. They counted on these strong ties to prevent escape attempts. They were so right. Families remained together like sheep being led to slaughter.
Most of us were sure we were not being taken to a concentration camp, but only to a labor camp at Poniatowa or Trawniki. Others believed we had passed through the town of Otwock, which meant we were headed for Lublin. LUBLIN! We had heard unbelievable rumors of the camp at Lublin. At the thought, a cold shudder went through us.
With no room to lie down, we were kept in the railcar all night and a full morning, a time of excruciating misery to the sick and wounded. During the trip, six persons in our car died. Three others went insane. One woman became violent and started biting her neighbors. We had to bind her with some of our clothing. To protect our small son, to give him a little space to breathe and to keep him from being crushed to death, I had to keep my hands pressed against the wall of the car, pushing my back against others.
In daylight we arrived at our destination. We could hear the voices of the station attendants. We were in Lublin. But we were not unloaded. Our train was placed on a siding as though it was marked "Contents non-perishable. Unload when convenient." We were kept in the stifling railcar in the heat of the day four more hours. We prayed -- or thought we did. WHERE WAS GOD?
It was possible to obtain a little water here, but the Ukrainian guards and Polish railway workers demanded 100 to 500 zlotys for a half-pint from the station pump. After so many searches, few people had anything left to pay for the precious fluid. I was able to buy a few drops for Ignas, whose lips and tongue were parched and swollen.
At last we were released from the steaming, fetid boxcar. We saw the occupants of other cars already standing on the Lipowa Square. We were indeed in Lublin. With numbed and cramped legs, those of us still alive joined the ranks of the condemned.
We were lined up ten abreast, guarded every fifteen feet by SS with a light machine gun, and a police dog on a chain. The march started almost at once.
We proceeded along the highway outside the city. Some of the people fainted from exhaustion, exposure, and hunger. Those of us stil able to walk had to carry the fallen on our shoulders. I helped carry a half-dead woman. We were certain now, with such an escort, we were being led to our execution. Little Ignas, fully aware of the circumstances, asked his mother, "Mama, shall we be shot or gassed?" But the perverse Nazis did not want us to die too fast -- just a little at a time so they could enjoy our suffering.
At last we arrived on the camp square, where the counting and the searching started all over again. We had been assured that we were being brought here to work for Germany. But the next day we were told by Jews who had been here for some time that this was the most infamous of all extermination camps -- Majdanek. We knew then we were at the end of the line. No Jew who came in here went out alive.
Some of the people begged our captors for a drop of water. Begging was useless. Our one wish was for water. It had been 24 hours since most of us had any at all. I prayed to God that we would be taken to the gas chamber, that our misery would be ended. That prayer, too, was not answered.
Through the night, we were kept on the open square under the sky. It turned quite cold and a heavy rain drenched us. At the first drops we turned our faces thirstily to the heavens. But the rain pounded and became colder. We could not sit on the ground in the cold rainwater. Many people whose clothing had been stolen at Umschlag were half naked, their bare feet frozen.
The camp square where we stood was surrounded by towers every 50 meters (160 feet). Our first morning after the cold, wet night, guards in these towers began shooting into the crowd with machine guns -- just a little morning sport! Lucky the ones who were killed, their suffering over.
Finally they gave us water -- through fire hoses. We could scarcely stand against the force of the stream. Our clothing carried the excrement of two days. The soaking we received only made us more miserable. Still we had no drinking water, nor any food.
About midday we were divided into groups to go to the showers. Women and children were separated from men. I could not have known it then, but that was the last time I would see my beloved Luta and our dear little Ignas.
My father and I tried to stay close to one another. Our group of about 120 men was taken into the shower shed. The leader was an SS man on a motorcycle. All the guards were armed with whips. We had to run as fast as the mororcycle while the guards whipped us to keep up.
My father, who was 56, was not able to hold the pace, so I caught hold of his arm and dragged him along. I remember distinctly his last remark to me. "I prefer to die rather than suffer more, and there is no end to the suffering, as I can see."
By now we had reached the dressing shack. There, SS men with iron rods and whips drove us like cattle. We had to be undressed in one minute. The guards then searched us for hidden money or jewelry. They examined our mouths, ears, and rectums with brutal, dirty fingers. If they found something hidden, they gave the culprit a ghastly beating.
From the dressing shack we were whipped and driven into the showers. Here the old and disabled were separated out and sent to one side. This was their method of selection. It was the death verdict. My father was among those selected.
We still had a moment to communicate with one another, eye to eye in silent blessing and farewell across the space that separated us, until we were blinded with grief.
I cried within me the Hebrew confession of faith in time of trouble: Sh'ma Yisroel, Adonoy Elohonu, Adonoy Echod. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. My one comfort was my father's last wish "to die rather than suffer more." One of his prayers was answered.
I was numb now. The human heart can bear only so much suffering and no more.
About 25 of the 120 men in our group were taken to the gas chamber and crematory that evening. In my heart and soul and mind I searched for God. When I found Him, He was crying. May 4, 1943 . . . always a day of remembrance of my father's passing.
Before we went into the showers, our hair was clipped short. Then we were searched again and given a medical examination of sorts. What a relief it would be to get under the shower after these ordeals. But that small hope was short-lived.
At first the water was frigid -- then it was scalding. We had no soap, no towels. Then we were given clothing and told to dress very fast: wood-soled shoes, dirty shirt, shorts, a cap, trousers, a jacket from which the lining had been torn. These were the legacy of the dead who had preceeded us.
The jacket of this outfit had a wide scarlet stripe painted on the back with the letters K.L. -- Konzentrazions Lager, concentration camp. Similar stripes were painted on the trousers, in the front on the right leg, on the back on the left leg. The cap bore the same stripe front to back. We also had insignia: two triangles, one red, one yellow sewn on either side of the jacket. Above this was a white band on which our identification numbers were printed. This was to distinguish Jewish prisoners from others in the camp.
As we came out of the shower shack in these outfits, we were attacked by officers and non-coms of the SS. Lined up on either side of our path, they tripped us, hitting and kicking those who fell down. We were then led to another structure where the main office was located. Czech Jews filled out questionnaires for us on special forms. We were measured, asked all kinds of personal questions. When the forms were completed, we each received a number. Thereafter, we were known only by our number. No more George Pfeffer. I was 2848. This was stamped on a piece of tin which I had to wear around my neck. I wondered how many others had passed into the gas chamber before me with that same number over their still beating hearts.
After this registration, we were led to the barracks: Rough sheds, neither air- nor water-tight, with small holes near the ceiling serving as windows. Three-decker bunks with a little straw and a straw pillow and some thin rag that was supposed to be a blanket. No plumbing.
We were ordered to turn in for the night-- still without food or drink. Our first day was over. Like dead bodies we fell onto our bunks.
At 3 A.M., they roused us. We dressed hurriedly, "made" our beds under strict supervision and cleaned the floor. (For the slightest fault in our work, we were given 25 strokes of the whip. After a month of such treatment we could scarcely sit or lie down.) On command, we rushed double-time into the cold dark morning. The moon was still bright. I looked up at the heavens. God was there going about the business of His universe. Why did He not hear our cries?
Huddled together in little groups for warmth, we crossed a path to the open air wash-room -- a few taps to accomodate 4,500 people on our Field No. 3. No soap. No towel. No toothbrush. No handkerchief. Gingerly we went through the motions of washing, a few of us at a time. About 5 A.M. we were given a half-pint of sour black ersatz coffee, nothing more. At 6 A.M. -- parade.
We lined up in five rows at attention, and remained in this position while the guards amused themselves with such orders as "Caps off! Caps on!" After that, they counted the men from various barracks. Our field had 22 barracks. About 200 men were assigned to each one.
They then divided us into groups for work. Some groups had to lay railway tracks, some worked on a new road, some were put to breaking and carrying stones or coal, cleaning lavatories, digging ditches. All this went on inside the camp, of course.
As a diversion, the guards beat the working men with whips and rods for no reason whatever. Fiendish laughter followed from the gallery of SS onlookers. If the beating continued until the victim fainted, he was kicked in the ribs, face, stomach, or more sensitive organs. Another prisoner would be ordered to pour cold water on the victim to revive him. Often the victim did not respond, having suffered broken ribs, knocked out teeth, holes in the head. In this eventuality, he was carried to the gas chamber.
The most popular game devised by the Nazis transformed a Jew into a punching bag. Two Jews were ordered to hold up a third Jew by the collar. After the first murderous blow to the jaw, the victim fell. Each time, he was picked up so the prize-fighting Nazi could continue training. The punching continued until the victim --teeth knocked out, nose broken, perhaps an eye hanging out of its socket-- had to be carried to the doctor to have his wounds dressed. Great sport. Great sportsmanship. They always gave the punching bag medical care so he could be beaten up another day.
Another popular Nazi game was kicking a Jew in the shins with heavy spiked boots while he stood at attention. If you were close enough, you could hear the crunch of breaking bones. These victims always died in agony. In these ways, the SS men had their daily exercise.
There was another group of guards called "Kapos" --Kaserna Polizei. They had been recruited from among Condemned German criminals. Taken from the prisons, they became overseers at Majdanek. Being Nazis they had special privileges, although they were not at liberty to leave the camp. Their living quarters were separate from ours. Their food and drink much better. They wore red or green trousers with high boots, such as those worn by horsemen.
One of the Kapos in our yard was an old fellow, a gangster in his former life. Often when he received an order to pour water over a victim, he would choke him with his bare hands instead. I saw this man catch a 13-year-old boy and swing him around by the legs until the young head crashed on a pole. From this the SS men learned a new game: how to finish a Jew with one swing.
A gallows stood in the middle of each field. Any Jew who was late for morning callup, or guilty of any similar "crime," was strung up by the camp commandant. One day a friend of mine from Warsaw was hung for coming late for callup. He was late because he had been so badly beaten the day before that he was unable to get out of bed.
The work done at the camp was neither constructive nor necessary. It was intended to exhaust us. When a prisoner fell from exhaustion, the guards had an excuse (as if they needed one) to beat him ...until he was ready for the gas chamber.
On those fortunate days when we had lunch, it was at noon. All prisoners lined up in front of the kitchen where we were given one-half liter (one pint) of cabbage soup, without any fat or flavor. No matter what the weather, we ate it outdoors and standing. We had no spoons. More exactly, every prisoner had a wooden spoon assigned to him. These were kept in the barracks to show to members of the International Red Cross Commission on their inspection visits to the camp.
Mostly there were so-called "Korne" days, when lunch was skipped entirely and only supper was given to us. The meal was cold, the food stale, but after a day of hard labor, it was devoured.
After lunch, if we'd had it, we returned to the same routine of work and beatings until 6 P.M. At that time we had to muster for the evening callup, standing at attention while the SS men counted and re-counted us. This ordeal lasted two hours. During this time some men were called out for some supposed wrong done during the day. Stripped of all their clothing, they were made to lie on special benches to receive their punishment-- usually 25 or 50 strokes of a whip.
Once during the morning callup one of the prisoners was absent. the alarm was given at once and the entire camp alerted. All the guards, SS men, and Kapos were sent to search for him. They looked everywhere. Inside the barracks, bedding was thrown on the floor; all possible places were searched, but they could find no trace of him. It was impossible that he had escaped during the night, and he had not been missing the previous evening. The search lasted until noon when, at last, he was found dead in the filth of a latrine.
All prisoners were punished for this. We were made to stand at attention for six hours without food or water. Legs went dead and bodies numb from standing rigidly for so long a time. If prisoners fainted or fell, they received an extra beating.
We were told by some of the prisoners who had been there longer that during the winter prisoners were kept at attention three to four hours -- until their feet froze to the ground. Many died and were taken to the crematory.
After evening callup, supper was given to us. Normally, it consisted of boiled potato or soup, and one-third pound of heavy dark bread. Once every ten days, we also given a small piece of margarine, or a dab of plum jelly, or a small piece of horse sausage. After this sumptuous repast, we waited anxiously for the gong which meant we could enter the barracks and crawl into the straw.
Starving prisoners searched continuously for something edible. The most likely place to find it was around the kitchen. We were forbidden to enter the kitchen, so a crowd milled around the area searching for bits of raw potato, cabbage, or other vegetable, which from time to time were thrown out by the men working in the kitchen. All of us had chronic headaches and hunger pangs.
We were allowed to go to the lavatory only for two hours before morning callup or after evening callup. No one was permitted to go alone. A group of eight was allowed to enter at one time. The next group had to wait until the first group came out. As there were only two latrines in our yard of 4,500 people, the time allotted was totally inadequate. The latrines were holes in the ground with no roof and only board partitions. There was no sewage system. Prisoners were forbidden to use the latrines during the day. Anyone who violated this rule or relieved himself outside was subjected to seven consecutive days of whippings at evening callup.
Most of the people were ill with diarrhea and there was no medical help. One of the workers in the kitchen had it so bad he could not control himself. The overseer reported his condition. An SS guard took the man out and ordered him to undress. The rest of us were made to pour buckets of cold water over him for an hour. The man died. Afterward, the guard sent for a doctor to certify the death.
Medical aid in our yard was provided by two Jewish doctors, themselves prisoners. They were allowed to give advice to the sick only after evening callup. A couple of hundred prisoners waited every evening to talk to these two, but only a few could be seen before the sound of the gong sent everyone hurrying to the barracks.
The help of these doctors was limited, since even the simplest drugs, like aspirin or iodine, were seldom available. What could they do for bleeding heads, broken ribs, ears torn half off? How could they cure pneumonia, diarrhea, or bodies swollen from constant beatings?
Those suffering from pneumonia, typhus or other contagious disease were sent to hospital on Field No. 1. So we were told.
The food for the sick was the same as for the rest of us. If they wanted to eat, they had to stand in line with the others. Sick-bay was the last stop. Every few days SS men moved the sick from the infirmary to the gas chamber.
Part of the Nazi plan was to appoint Jews to positions of authority, such as barracks commandants, secretaries, etc. In order to hold their jobs, they had to become as hardened as our captors. These Jews were the tough characters who had survived the cruelties of the camp, whereas the more sensitive or frail had died trying to stay alive. Often, the "boss" Jews outdid their SS masters in cruelty.
A Jew of this type was the commandant of our block. He was proud of having been chosen. He strode up and down the block like an animal trainer, wielding his whip. Hw would curse us with vile epithets. His whip had a piece of lead fastened to the end, the better to batter our heads and faces.
In each barracks a Jew was appointed "host." They were gracious characters, these hosts. If a man did not hold his bowl properly when receiving coffee or soup, our host dumped the hot liquid on the man's head, then kicked him in the stomach for wasting food.
We loathed such Jews even more than we despised the SS. Their inhumanities betrayed family, friends, their very Jewish heritage.
If an SS man or Kapo happened to overlook some slight slip-up in our work, we could be certain that our Jewish watchdogs would not let it go unpunished. They vented their own frustrations on the prisoners at every opportunity.
Some of the Jewish police in the ghetto had been of this sort. When they had volunteered to serve in the "protective police force," they thought they could be of service to their people. Little by little, however, they were caught in a moral vise. Each day's quota of captives had to be met. Each Jewish policeman was responsible, at the risk of his own life, for bringing in so many Jews a day for the kill.
A gradual metamorphosis took place in some of them. Slowly they assumed the attributes of their hated Nazi masters. They seemed unaware of the breakdown in character which was taking place in them. Others realized what was happening and deserted the police force, preferring to take their chances with their fellow Jews.
Those who remained on the force were not given the special treatment that had been promised by the Nazis, but were eventually brought to Majdanek with the rest of us in the final round-up in the ghetto.
There were both good and bad among the Jewish overseers at Majdanek. I remember one, formerly a Jewish policeman and now with us. He held perhaps the highest possible job in the office -- Field Secretary. Although I knew him to take payment for getting someone a better job, he was nevertheless a man of his word. And he did not carry a whip. That alone was enough to endear him to the prisoners. He was helpful to everyone as much as he dared.
Although I had not previously known him, shortly after my arrival at the camp he placed me in the kitchen as a potato peeler. This job was literally a life-saver, and he asked no payment of me.
My assignment in the kitchen was night shift. I was allowed to rest in the barracks during the day. Better nourishment was to be had in the kitchen, and we were not beaten as often or as severly as others. Our working conditions were much better than for those who labored in the open all day.
A number of Czech Jews worked with me in the kitchen. They were mostly kind and helpful. One of them told me that when they were brought from Czechoslovakia 14 months earlier, they were 12,500 in number. Now there were about 600 still alive. There had been epidemics of typhus, dysentery, pneumonia among them. During illness they were not permitted to lie down. When they became too weak to remain on their feet, they were taken to the gas chamber.
All of the officials in the camp were not bad characters. I remember an Aryan Pole from Warsaw, an engineer. He was a Block Commandant for a short time in our barracks. Though he had the authority to beat and punish, he preferred to make life more bearable for us. Another Aryan Pole, a doctor I had known in Warsaw, was there as a political prisoner. He shared with me the tidbits of food he was permitted to receive through the mail. A bit of sugar and a few crackers did much to lift my morale.
At the other extreme was a Czech Jew who was sadistic to the point of insanity. All of the prisoners feared him. He held the position of overseer in the kitchen. He slapped the workers in the face with no cause. I still bear the marks of a beating he gave me.
The atmosphere in this evil pit called Majdanek was one of near madness. It brought out the beast in some Jews, while others tried to hold onto sanity although under unbearable pressure and agony.
A 12-year-old Jewish boy became the favorite of the Nazis. They trained him to be an overlord, giving him unlimited power over the prisoners. This child swaggered around the camp with a whip in his hand, using it mercilessly on the prisoners -- especially Jews.
The Nazis dressed him in special clothes and high boots. He ate in the kitchen with the Kapos and slept in their barracks. His name was Boby. The boy became so depraved that he had his own parents hanged on the gallows in our Field just because they did not approve of his behavior.
Another Polish Jew held a job as block secretary. One day he beat me to unconsciousness, then pushed my head into a barrel of water. I nearly drowned.
We were surprised when we first learned there were Aryans at Majdanek. Poles, Czechs, Russian POWs, gypsies, and German criminals. Most of the Poles were well-educated professional men, as well as officers of the Polish army and police, priests, aristocrats, members of parliament, and senators. Their crimes? They were leaders of influence, and the Nazis wanted them eliminated.
(note: "Aryan" is used loosely, as the Nazis used the term.)
Relations between Aryan and Jewish Poles in the camp were generally pretty good. All were in the same boat. In the face of death, we were equals. The Polish prisoners, though, were treated a little better than the Jews. They were given additional rations of bread; they had permission to receive parcels and censored letters from outside. Most importantly, they did not have daily assignments for the gas chamber. From time to time, a few were released and went home. This gave others the hope that if they could withstand the hardships of the camp a little longer, they, too, might be freed.
The Jewish population was cosmopolitan: There were Jews from France, Belgium, Greece, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and all parts of Poland. Among them were many distinguished men from Warsaw. I cannot recall their full names, but there was a Dr. Schiper, a former member of the Polish Parliament, who worked with me in the kitchen. And Cantor Szermah form the Warsaw Synagogue. Dr. Lando, a well-known physicist and his brother, an engineer. A big "Fibra" manufacturer, Mr. Himmelstaub. ["fibra" clothing?] Mr. Kulas, a pharmaceutical wholesaler. Mr. Okon, an engineer whose wife jumped from our train. A well-known welfare worker, Mr. Wegmajster (son-in-law of a senator) and his two sons from Lodz. And a banker by the name of Gelbfish. All of these men either died or were liquidated during the first 3 or 4 weeks at camp. A famous writer, Andrey Marek, was gassed at the same time as my father.
These men were not important to me because of who they had been or the positions they had held, but because of the example they set for the rest of us: the manner in which they accepted adversity, the humbleness with which they approached the most degrading tasks, and never losing their innate dignity. They showed us how to hold onto the core of decency which separates civilized men from human beasts. Even the gas chamber could not rob them of their stature as men in whom the spark of Godliness dwells. We mourned their passing.
A few days after our arrival at the camp, as the weather was warm, our sandalsm caps, and jackets were taken away. We wore only underwear, shirt, and trousers. I managed to hide my cap. It might help to disguise me by covering my shaved head, should I find a way to escape sometime. With little clothing, even the weather became our enemy. Some of the prisoners had heat strokes, others suffered from exposure to the rain.
Every morning at callup time, the bodies of those who had died during the night were brought out and laid in their proper places in the line, so the numbers would tally for the count. Nazi thoroughness. In addition to the "natural" deaths, there were many "selections" daily. A swollen leg from a beating was sufficient reason for a prisoner to be sent to the gas chamber. Those selected had to stand to the left. We all knew what that meant.
Selected prisoners were kept in the "Barracks of Death" sometimes as long as eight days before they were marched into the lethal chamber. Eight days waiting for death. The gas chamber and crematory were running overtime, but still could not keep up with the load. The odor of roasting bodies hung heavily over the camp.
Women were gathered on Field No. 5. If possible, they fared worse than the men. Their work was the same as ours: aimed to exhaust and kill. I learned from letters smuggled to me that Luta and Ignas were suffering miserably. There were no bunks in the women's barracks. They slept on bare floors with few covers. They had to fight for their food. It was not apportioned to them. The strong women ate; the weak went hungry.
I heard my son was ill with an intestinal disorder. Luta wrote that she had sold her American $20 gold pieces for 3,000 zlotys in order to buy him some food. The following day the Nazis took the money from her.
On May 23, 1943, all mothers with children, 2,000 all together, were made to stand at attention from six in the morning until midday. Then they were loaded onto trucks and sent to the gas chamber. We learned all this from the men who delivered food to the women's part of the camp. I was frantic. I had to find out if Luta and Ignas were among that day's extermination. Three times a day food was placed on platforms which were then pulled by the kitchen workers into the women's field. That evening, I went along with them.
When we arrived at Field No. 5, I saw my sister Stefania at a distance. When she saw me, she came near enough that I could hear her. She told me that women with children were given a choice: Let the children go alone to be gassed-- or go with them. Luta would not part with Ignas. They were both dead. My dear brave Luta! My beautiful boy! Oh, God, now take my life.
As we pulled the platform back from the women's field, an SS man broke two sticks across my back. I felt nothing. I probably would not have felt it if they'd cut off my leg. As I pulled my heart seemed to explode in my body. Luta! Ignas! But I lived. Again, I thought there is no God
The following day 2,000 bodies were burned on the open field. The crematory was too small to accomodate such a number. They piled bodies in a ditch, sprayed them with kerosene and burned them to ashes. The smoke from the mass pyre rose like an evil cloud. The living wept for their loved ones. I wept for my dear wife and son.
My loss almost unbalanced me. I could not sleep. I tried to project myself into that final scene. It was torture. The mothers and children, per Nazi system, were made to remove all clothing before entering the gas chamber. This had to be saved for later prisoners, and it was more efficient to have the selected undress before they died, so the corpses would not have to be disrobed later. My beloved must have taken our boy by the hand, trying to comfort him as they entered the killing room. How strong she must have been for Ignas. How terrified my son.
I agonized over these images night after night. I peeled potatoes as though I were slicing skin off a Nazi's body, gouging bits of root with my paring knife, wishing they were Nazi eyes.
My sole consolation during this time was the smuggled notes my sisters sent. They wrote that they were no longer human beings, merely automatons living from day to day. They knew they were condemned, and there was nothing they could do to prevent their doom. I totally shared their thoughts and fears. But not their resignation, though I was unaware of it at the time.
The SS men were bad enough, but their female counterparts were more deadly, if you can imagine. The term "woman" as applied to them was a crude joke and an insult to the rest of womanhood. They were killers in skirts. They wore high boots and carried pistols in their belts, whips in their hands. They were a new breed, devoid of all feminine attributes, their faces obscene masks. The first day in camp, when we were taken to the showers, one of these Nazi cows came among us, completely nude, parading herself for us. Hitler had decreed that any German woman having relations with a Jew would be guilty of "Rassenschande," race-shame. But what Jew worthy of the name would commit race-shame with such as these?
There were other women in the camp. While we were still in the ghetto, we heard that attractive Polish girls and other young women were disappearing from the streets of Warsaw under mysterious circumstances. Now we knew what had happened to them. They were here at Majdanek, victims of Nazi white slavery. We saw them. They were housed in a brick building surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence, guarded at the gate by SS men. As they walked in the gardenthey looked well-fed, these young women, kept in good condition for the pleasure of the SS beasts.
The notes from my sisters suddenly stopped. Some of the male prisoners who worked beside the women's field acted as postmen between the two camps. When I asked them why I had not heard from them, they gave no straight answer. Had they seen my sisters? No. I felt positive I would never see my sisters again. Their deaths severed the last earthly ties for me. In just a few weeks' time I had lost all of my loved ones: Orphaned, wifeless, childless, bereft of my entire family. I alone survived.
At this moment in May, the most beautiful month of the year, when everything comes to life, I died within myself. For as long as I live, May will be a month of mourning. But what prospect could the future hold for me if I should survive? I prayed that I might join my loved ones. I considered suicide.
Others had taken this way out. The easiest way was to throw yourself against the electrified fence surrounding the field. This was known as the "lane of death." The fence stretched between towers that were manned by Ukrainian guards armed with machine guns. So the odds were good that you would be killed before even making it to the fence. One way or the other, sudden death seemed preferrable to the torture of the camp.
Yet, as I nursed the thought of suicide I was emotionally conflicted. I wanted to be dead, but I wanted vengence. Vengence required me to live. It was the purpose of the Nazis to kill me eventually -- why should I help them? I determined to defy them and to live. Now I had a reason: to see the enemy destroyed. I wanted to live to witness the destruction of the Nazis and their punishment for crimes against humanity. To do this, I MUST ESCAPE.
During my night work in the camp, I sometimes was able to stroll into the yard and look around. Escape seemed impossible as the camp was surrounded by a double fence of electrified wire, about 6 meters (19 feet) high. Big reflectors were trained on the fence and the "forbidden lane" (the suicide lane). A needle could be seen in that bright light. The slightest movement could not go unnoticed. And the trigger-happy Ukrainian guards kept a close watch from the towers.
On the other side of the fence, SS men and Ukrainian guards with trained German police dogs patrolled ceaselessly. Even if one were lucky enough to get over the fence alive, he would be picked up by the patrols on the outside. Further, all the nearby roads and lanes were guarded by Ukrainian and Lithuanian patrols. The camp's defenses seemed impregnable.
Some prisoners who had been at Majdanek much longer than I insisted no one had ever successfully escaped. Not only the would-be escapees, but their outside helpers were caught and executed. But I was not discouraged by these seemingly insurmountable difficultie. Perversely, they served to spur me on to find some new avenue of escape.
It was madness, I knew, to dream of escape, yet I also knew I must try. During this time I became quite self-contained. I peeled potatoes and spoke to no one.
At the beginning of June, I heard of a group of 80 Jews from Majdanek who worked under guard at a sawmill outside Lublin. This was something to think about while I peeled potatoes.
Some people I knew were in this group. I learned that occasionally they were able to talk to Poles from Lublin who worked at the mill. Through them, the Jewish prisoners were able to buy a little food. They also said that the work in the mill was much easier than at the camp.
Trucks for the sawmill workers left camp early in the morning, returning late at night. This group of Jews wore special blue and white striped uniforms with the Star of Zion and large identification numbers printed on the fabric.
Soon I made contact with a Kapo, the leader of this group. He wanted 500 zlotys to arrange for my transfer from kitchen duty to his group.
All my money had been confiscated, and I was unable to smuggle any into the camp when I came in. If a prisoner had money, a Kapo could buy him bread, butter, sausage, or other items. Also, he could mail or receive letters, always for a certain price. There were ways of making a little money in the camp, strange as that may seem. At the lowest levels, running small errands or passing messages. But I had contact with several people of influence. Through them, I was able to place some prisoners in better jobs, for which the prisoners paid me small sums for the favor. Little by little, I managed to save near 1700 zlotys (about $15.30).
I paid the 500Z the Kapo asked, but he reneged and demanded more for me to be in his group, said he used the 500 for a few drinks. I charged the loss to experience and looked for other opportunities.
Meanwhile, for when I would be able to go with the work group, I knew that I could not take 10 steps on the street with my clipped head and striped uniform. A fellow prisoner had baggy long underwear that looked much like loose white trousers. I bartered for them with my own tighter long underwear and one kilogram of bread. And I had hidden in my pocket the cap I'd been issued the day I had arrived. We were told to turn them in the day we gave up everything but shirts, trousers, and underwear. My cap was not discovered. Bit by bit, I had scraped off its painted red stripe. Now it looked like any other workman's cap. To complete my escape outfit, I exchanged my shirt with another prisoner for his rubaszka -- a wide Russian blouse buttoned up to the neck. Wearing these items, I could easily be mistaken for a Russian peasant.
I knew these preparations were dangerous. Had any camp authorities discovered I'd removed the Jewish identification stripe from my cap, I would have been hanged.
I now tried through another man to join the outside work group. I paid him the 500Z and he did not fail me. Every week the work group was reshuffled. Each newcomer paid the 500z, and the Kapos or guards pocketed the money weekly.
I modeled my new striped uniform for my friends in the kitchen. They tried to discourage me, certain that leaving the kitchen job was the biggest mistake I could make. There was no better job in the camp than kitchen work. When our kitchen secretary learned I was leaving, he gave me a severe beating. I had to pay him 150Z to keep him from canceling my transfer. I explained that being in contact with outside people might enable me to buy items that I could resell in camp at a good profit. This sounded plausible to me... and logical to those who might benefit from my bringing in outside items.
Once a week we went to the bathhouse. While we were undressed, our underwear was taken to be deloused. The exact same garment was not often returned. As I could not risk losing my baggy pants, I did not give them up for two weeks. Had I been caught, the punishment would have been 25 lashes...PLUS, I would have lost my escape outfit.
Bathhouse scenes were macabre: ravaged and wasted bodies, the ashen pallor of starvation, exposed bones, black spots from beatings with sticks and whips. And, yet, we had to take the showers. Everyone had lice. The "cleaned" underwear, straight from the oven, still crawled with lice.
In the hall outside, where we waited naked for the return of underwear, a sharp draft from two paneless windows caused hundreds to catch colds, and many to die from pneumonia in their weakened conditions. Even in summer.
[There were a lot of young men at Majdanek who had been sent from Treblinek. Their wives and children had been exterminated there and the men shipped here for the slow death that Majdanek SS excelled at. Majdanek, we learned, was one of the worst Nazi camps. Jews from Dachau said Dachau was like a hotel. After spending 15 months there, they all looked comparatively well when they arrived. I wondered what even a few weeks at Majdanek would do to them, how many would survive a month or two.]
At last the great morning came when I would go to work outside the camp.
Eighty of us in our striped uniforms marched in files through the camp, in the direction of the highway. We stopped at the gate where we were counted and re-counted, and each man given a thorough search. Under the heavy escort of several SS and more than two dozen Ukrainian soldiers armed with light machine guns, they loaded us into two trucks.
As we rode in the direction of Lublin, I drew clean air into my lungs for the first time in six weeks. Free from the stench of roasting human flesh, the clean ar was intoxicating.
Passing through the streets of town, we stared dumbly and numb at the burned rubble and devastation of the ghetto. Wherever Nazis took a city, this was their method in the ghetto: burn whatever was left standing.
Beyond the ghetto, women strolled the streets with their children, tended flower boxes in windows, smiled at passersby. Though not at us. They didn't appear to see us. Did these seemingly happy people even know they lived one mile from Hell? Is it possible they did not know? Is it possible they did not care?
A wave of bitterness rose in my brain, like a black tide. The full meaning of freedom engulfed me as if I thought it for the first time. I was ready to fight and to die for my right to freedom. Freedom. The word is understood fully only by those who do not have it.
On the outskirts of a Lublin suburb, we came to the sawmill, the lumber yard where we were to work. On one side it was bordered by a plain, ordinary street. This street became my window to the world.
Our police escort surrounded the yard on all sides, just outside the fence. Inside the fence, SS stood at strategic points. A Ukrainian guard stood on the highest pile of lumber in the yard; from there he could observe everything and watch every movement of the prisoners.
As we were unloaded from the trucks, the overseers divided us into small working groups. Particular tasks were assigned to each group. All members of a work group were responsible not only for the amount of work accomplished, but for each other.
On the first day, I paid particular attention to the neighborhood in the vicinity of the sawmill. Bare fields edged three sides of the yard, with fences patrolled by guards spaced about 20 meters apart. Although it was not fenced, the street side was also constantly patrolled. The street was closed to civilian traffic, and a railway spur to the mill ran along the other side of the street. Sure that the street side, used by free Polish employees, those whom we relied on to make purchases for us or to smuggle letters, would be the only possible means of escape, I began to form a plan.
As they entered, free workers had to show their passes to the guards at the gate. These documents proved they worked in the yard or had official business to conduct. Over time, I noticed these documents were checked carefully when a worker entered, but seldom when he left. The outside guards, it seemed, took it for granted that passes were checked and approved. I figured if I could just get to the street and walk freely, I could escape unchallenged. It would be my only chance. All I needed to do was to watch for the right moment.
It was not to be easy. Officers and the Kapos were everywhere. And prisoners watched one another suspiciously and even more carefully than the SS. The reason for this was the regulation that said if a prisoner attemtped to escape, every second prisoner in the unit would be hanged. Forty men would pay with their lives, as well as myself, if I should try to escape and fail.
For the next six days there was no opportunity. Two of those days, rain prevented any attempt. My pseudo-peasant outfit would need a coat in the rain. I had to wait for better weather. During this time workmen began building a fence on the street side. Soon we would be fenced on all four sides and my chance for escape would become negligible.
Then, on Sunday June 20, we learned that 2500 healthy young Jews were to be sent to a synthetic rubber factory at Oswiecim. I had heard that workers at this factory died off quickly because of the poisonous chemical acids in the process. The qualifying for this crew started at once, but as it was late in the day only 500 were selected. The next day the selections would continue until the quota was filled. I felt certain to be picked for this crew. If I were going to escape, I had to hurry.
Monday June 21, the last day of my week's assignment at the lumber mill, I went to work as usual. But I was determined to escape that day. . . or die trying.
Just before the noon break I told my overseer that I had to use the lavatory. On the way, I jumped between piles of lumber, tore off my striped uniform so that I was in my "Russian peasant" costume, stuffed the uniform deep among the lumber, put on my cap and a pair of old shoes I'd hidden there (we worked in wooden shoes)-- and started toward the gate.
I was just about to step out from my hiding place when I saw the head overseer walking nearby. Holding my breath, I waited a moment for him to pass, a moment that seemed like a year. Then I heard our unit overseer calling me back to work. That was the final spur.
I looked left to right. The SS man at the right side of the street was checking someone's pass. Good. I walked, outwardly calm and confident, to the middle of the street in front of the lumber yard. The patrolling SS on the left side had just turned and was walking in the other direction, his back to me. I prayed to Almighty God that the guard would not notice me.
As I arrived at the left side of the street, the SS man suddenly turned and saw me. I met his gaze calmly and walked slowly and deliberately in his direction. The street was completely empty, but I felt that thousands were watching.
As I approached him, he looked at me with a smile and spoke in Polish: "Going home so early?"
I was sure I was caught and that he was being sarcastic.
Taking a deep breath, as though exhausted from the heat, I answered: "Yes, I am going home to have some lunch and drink. It is too hot to work more today.
He did not stop me, so I walked past him, my heart pounding in my throat.
He called out to my back: "Good appetite!"
Over my shoulder I said thank you, and kept walking.
Those moments, I felt hypnotized. It took all I had to command my feet to walk, to keep walking. Now I had passed the officer and was on my way.
I did not dare turn nor look back, but I had an overpowering need to know if I were being followed. I bent down as though to tie my shoe; between my legs I saw the street was still empty.
As I walked on, I remembered I still wore around my neck the piece of tin bearing my identification number. I unbuttoned my shirt, tore off the badge and buried it. I was a long way yet from being free.
I crossed the street and walked the railway tracks as though I were playing a game: but it was so as not to leave tracks on the damp ground.
The first person I met was a girl of about ten. Her fair hair and blue eyes pained me with the memory of my son. I asked her where a certain street was, and she replied with a child's confidence that it was quite far, but since she was going to school in that neighborhood, she offered to walk with me. I was deeply grateful because I didn't want to ask an adult for directions and arouse suspicions.
I managed to keep our conversation flowing so that it would seem to those we passed that we were relatives walking together. With each step I felt the eyes of strangers burning into my back, heard ominous whispering. But my paranoia was utterly justified, so I made efforts to keep it under control. At last we reached the street I needed and we said goodbye. I thanked her very much then, and I shall never forget the sweet child who gave me my first help toward freedom. Sometimes I think she may have been an angel.
Next, I looked for the shop of a customer of our leather goods factory -- one to whom we had extended credit and who still owed us money when our factory was closed.
The shop was not open, but a note on the door said the owner had moved. I walked to that new address and found the man I sought. When he saw me in my strange outfit, he imediately led me to a room in back of the shop. I told him of my escape. He turned pale and trembled. Remarkably, I was calm. I asked of him some old clothes and shoes, so I could be on the street dressed as others. He refused. He feared that if I were caught again, the Nazis would force me to tell who had helped me. I understood his fright only too well. I begged for just a cap so I could discard the old one with remnants of reed paint on it. His answer: "If God does not have mercy on your people, why do you ask for mercy from a man?"
Why, indeed? I decided I'd be better off asking for mercy from atheists, if the God-fearing were so much more afraid of men than of God.
I told him I was hoping to join the Polish partisans who had hideouts in the woods. I asked if he knew anyone, anywhere. He said he did not know, but if he did know, he would not tell me. To his credit, he gave me 100 zlotys and wished me good luck. His expression told me he thought I did not stand a chance of getting away, but I was grateful for the little pocket money.
Several other customers of ours had businesses in Lublin; but after this unhappy experience, I abandoned the idea of locating them and, instead, to try to make my way to Warsaw.
A few days earlier, travel restrictions had been issued. Anyone boarding a train must have a pass. The only alternative was to walk along the highway. But I must get out of Lublin. It was nearly noon. There would be a lunch break at the lumber yards. All prisoners would be herded together and counted. My absence would be discovered and the police alerted, especially in Lublin.
I stopped in a used clothing store to try to buy a cap. They wanted 130 zlotys... I hadn't enough. As I reentered the street, empty-handed, I caught a glimpse of the daily "selections" officer from the camp. He did not see me. I looked around at the free people on the street and thought: who among these many people would believe that this smartly-uniformed distinguished-looking man with such a charming smile was in reality a merciless murderer, responsible for the gassing of thousands upon thousands of human beings?
Walking as quickly as I dared, I hid myself among the crowds on the street. As I approached the area leading to the highway, I saw a Nazi and two Polish policemen checking the personal documents of all who passed. I turned abruptly onto a side street, changing directions several times, using lanes and byways between houses until I reached a wooded area. I trudged through the woods in the direction of the highway, and after some wandering and backtracking, I found it. I had avoided the police. I was on my way.
I took the time, as I walked, to recollect the events of the day. During my bitter bereavement, when all my dearest ones were taken from me, I had lost faith in a personal God. Yet, here I was, by the grace of God, walking on the road to Warsaw. I deplored my lack of faith.
I had never ceased to pray, however, in the hope that God would hear my prayers. When I walked into the kitchen yard at the camp at night, I never failed to look at the glory of His creation. I saw the stars orbiting the earth in their usual courses and knew that God was in His heavens; but all was NOT right with the world.
I thought now of the 40 prisoners who must lose their lives because of my escape. Grief for their deaths burdened me remorselessly. While I might have rationalized that they were condemned to death one way or another, I could not reconcile myself to having hastened their deaths.
A road sign tells me I am already 10 kilometers out of Lublin. the distance from Lublin to Warsaw is more than 170 kilmeters. I must walk barefoot, as the wood soled shoes from the camp rubbed my feet raw.
Close to sunset, hungry and thirsty, I stopped at a pesant's house. He invited me in. As I took off my cap, he noticed my clipped hair. In answer to his questions, I told him I had been discharged from the hospital in Lublin where I had recovered from typhoid fever, my head having been shaved during treatment. I explained I was on my way home to Ryki. I had no money for rail fare, so had to walk.
Clearly, he was not quite satisfied with my story, and asked to see my documents. I assured him that I had them, and he did not insist on seeing them. He gave me bread and water, for which I offered to pay, but he (fortunately) refused my money and gave me more than a half kilogram of bread for the road. I thanked him most sincerely, said goodby, and was on my way once again. He seemed abundantly relieved at my leaving. He could not have been more relieved than I.
I walked cautiously until dark, then turned into a wood off the highway and hid in underbrush. Sheer fatigue put me into a deep sleep. Toward dawn, I was startled awake by the barking of a large dog. Immediately I thought this to be a police dog, leading them to my hiding place. But it soon seemed not the case. Still, the dog would not let me move for several minutes. When I would try, he only barked louder. If I were picked up as a vagrant -- no one was allowed out at this hour -- it would not be long before my identity was discovered. My only hope was to try to make friends with the dog. It seemed a long time that we just stared at one another. Eventually, the dog quieted, growled a little, then turned and loped further into the woods. I realized I am now more afraid of men than of dogs.
When it was daylight, I resumed my journey. If only the weather would remain this good until I reach Warsaw, I thought. With my outfit and bare feet, I needed good weather.
Mid-morning, I met an old woman on the road. she warned me that a Nazi patrol was up ahead, with cars hidden in the bushes. They were checking papers of every passerby very carefully. I took her advice and hid behind a nearby barn until I saw the cars with the Nazi parrol drive off. I continued my travel, but feared to beg food or water. I had a little bread from the day before, and I drank water from streams.
From time to time Nazi patrols passed in cars or on motorcycles. I had to be constantly alert. Hearing the sound of an approaching motor sent me scrambling into wheat or brush to wait until it passed.
Late afternoon of my second day on the road, I cautiously neared the town of Ryki. With a troubled heart, I remembered the night of September 7th, 1939, when my father and brother-in-law and I witnessed the burning of this town, as we headed east to be mobilized. Three-and-a-half years of tragedy, and the war was not yet over for us.
I left Ryki behind by early evening, then lay in a wheat field for a much-needed rest. The next morning, I got an early start. I felt the need to increase my speed for fear of changing weather.
That day I had a frightening experience. A heavy truck, a lumber truck, approached so fast I had no chance to hide. Two men jumped out and came toward me. They asked where I was going. I said from Ryki to Garwolin. I gave this short distance so they might better believe me. They demanded to se emy identification card.
Instinct again saves me. I pretended to be insane. I started to dance and sing and make faces in a simple sort of way. The men laughed, encouraging my behavior. The man behind the wheel called out: "Antony, can't you see what he is? Let him alone and get in. We must get going."
I continued to dance and sing until their truck was out of sight. And then I sang a prayer of thanks to God as I walked on.
By the sheer effort of will, I kept walking. I had to reach Warsaw as soon as possible. As it was on the way, I decided to go first to our villa at Miedzeszyn. By noon, I was at Garwolin. I had made 27 kilometers in half a day, but I dared not rest. It was possible to take a local railway from Garwolin to Otwock. I thought I might be able to do that.
A young man gave me directions then, taking stock of my appearance, advised me not to take the train. He told me that in the last couple of days the military police have been checking documents at the station and on the train. He seemed to understand my situation. I felt confident, as much as possible, that I could trust him, and so took his advice and went my way on foot. He had also told me exactly where Nazis and police were stationed.
I left the main road now and walked side roads and lanes and alleys. Twice I had a close call. The first was when I saw two policemen on bicycles. There was no place to hide, and I was prepared to go into my crazy act. But they rode on by, paying no attention to me.
The second close call was late afternoon. Men repairing a side road saw me. Pointing to my rubaszhka, very similar to the Russian "Muzhik" dress, they started singing a Russian song, "Two Guitars." They were joking, and one pointed at me and shouted, "The Russians have already arrived!" To play along with them and encourage their good feeling, I caught up the melody and, in Russian, sang along with them. I laughed as I passed, and they did not try to stop me.
About 9:30 in the evening I reached Otwock. I had made 62 kilometers that day. My feet were bleeding and painful. I lay down in the woods for a short rest, but exhausted and footsore, I stayed the night. The woods where I slept was near a TB sanitorium. It had belonged to a Jewish charity. Now it was for Nazi patients only.
During the night I was awakened by rain. In my clothes and no shoes and no raincoat, I could not walk far in the rain without arousing suspicion, and the young man had told me there would be police at Otwock. So I determined to take the electric train from the first stop after Otwock: Swidor. It took all my willpower to drag myself to Swidor. Once there, I checked carefully for police. Not seeing any, I got on and bought a ticket.
Passengers stared at me with suspicion. A man came to my seat and tried to find out where I came from and where I was going. I told him I had been sent to Prussia as a laborer andwas now on my way home. This seemed to satisfy him.
It was no wonder I felt self-conscious and ill-at-ease. My dark, heavy beard, tanned face, dirty rumpled cap, wet clothing (Russian style), and my bandaged feet made me conspicuous, to say the least. I had wrapped my bloody feet in an old scarf and a piece of carpet.
I was quite relieved when the train arrived at Miedzeszyn. It was pouring. I walked toward our villa, which was not far from the railway station. But when I got there --or where it should have been-- I could not recognize the place. I had not been here since the war began, three and a half years ago.
The white fence around the compound was gone. The houses and apartments were gone. Many buildings had been razed. Our birches and the orchard trees were also gone. Only one landmark remained: the cottage where our janitor, Michael Glazewski, and his wife had lived. I walked around back to the kitchen and looked through the window. There stood Michaelowa.
Forgetting my appearance, I knocked on the glass.
I startled her, and she turned her back to me, obviously did not recognize me. I must have seemed only a beggar whom she wished to discourage.
I called her name. Michaelowa turned to me then, recognized me, and flew to the door to admit me. It was 7:30 in the morning. Michael was just coming into the kitchen for breakfast. I joined them for breakfast and told them the horror stories of the fate of my family.
After breakfast, I had my first bath-- with soap. SOAP. Such a small thing we had always taken for granted. Before bathing, I saw mself in a mirror for the first time in many months. It was a stranger who returned my stare. My appearance --heavy beard, shaved head, dirty and tattered clothes, gauntness from starvation-- revolted me. I had lost at least 20 kilos (63 lbs). After I bathed, I shaved the heavy, matted beard. Such as he was, it was a relief to see George Pfeffer once again in the mirror.
The Glazewski children did not recognize me. This was a good thing, or the neighbors would have heard about my arrival in no time. I realized I could not stay here indefinitely without being discovered. I wrote to a Polish friend, Stanislov Tegi, in Warsaw, and told him briefly of my situation and poverty. Michaelowa delivered the letter. He replied that he would be out to see me that evening.
Only a person who has been betrayed by friends could comprehend the joy of finding a friend remains true in a hostile world. As he promised, Stanislov brought me a few hundred zlotys that night, all he could afford with the financial crisis of the Nazi occupation. The next day he sent me all I needed in the way of clothing.
Standing well away from the window, I looked out at what had been our summer home. The tennis court was scarcely recognizable under the growth of weeds. I stood there dreaming for a little while of happier times. I could see the young, eager faces of Stefania and Helen through the net of years. Tall Stefania reaching for the high balls; petite Helen clutching the heavy racquet with inadequate fingers, scurrying to return the low balls -- or shouting, "Serve, George!"
Our ball had bounced out of bounds now. It could never be retrieved.
Since the cottage was actually my property now, I assumed I could stay a little while in the Glazewski home. But my presence was awkward for them. When neighbors came to the door, they could not be asked inside. Micahel received his friends in the yard or in the kitchen.
About five days after my arrival, a neighbor's curiosity was aroused. She entered the house unannounced and saw me in bed. As she had a reputation as a gossip, I knew I must run to save myself and to save the Glazewskis. In my new clothes, I looked and felt like a self-respecting human being again...and left at once for Warsaw.
I couldn't risk going back to the train station, so I chose the narrow-gauge suburban railway as far as Park Skaryszewski on the outskirts of Warsaw. From there I took a streetcar.
In Warsaw I looked up some Polish friends who hid me for a day or two. I had to move from friend to friend almost daily to avoid discovery. To their everlasting credit, each was glad to see me and courteous and wanting to be helpful. But also frightened of harboring me. I could not blame them.
My biggest problem now was to obtain ways and means of living underground. From some people who owed me money, I was able to collect enough for a month's living. I also looked for people who had stored furs and other valuables for us when we were in the ghetto. Oddly, everything we had tried to save had grown legs and walked away.
Having no other place to go, I returned to Miedzeszyn. I paid Michael enough from my small means for several weeks of food. The very next day, however, something happened that would force me to run again:
Michael and Michaelowa were away for the afternoon. I was napping on the floor when the coroner and a policeman came into the house looking for Michael. There had been a homicide in the neighborhood, and they wanted two citizens to guard the body until the official investigators arrived.
Of course these men immediately began questioning me... who, what, where, when, why. Thinking quickly, I claimed I was Michael's brother-in-law, come from Garwolin to sell some merchandise, which was the reason Michael had gone to Warsaw. I was waiting for him to return in order to be paid.
Then they asked me to produce my identification papers.
Just the day before, Michaelowa had found the "kennecarte" of her son by a previous marriage, who had recently passed away. She gave it to me in event of an emergency. Here, now, was an emergency. I became flustered, however, and could not remember the name of the dead man.
Hesitantly, I reached into my pocket, drew the card out, and read it. As I was still on the floor, I hoped they would not notice my reading my name, nor my head. I had a kerchief on to keep my shaved head warm, but which they must have thought was to keep my hair in place.
Once more God and His angels were with me. Without examining the card, the men left. when the Glazewskis returned, they were terrified by the episode.
As we feared, The policeman came back the next day with a fellow officer. I was out of the house at the time. The first officer told Michael that he had recognized me as a Jew the day before, but did not want to denounce me in front of the coroner. Since Michael was a friend of theirs, they would agree to accepting protection money every week, and the Jew could stay as long as necessary.
Michael gave them vodka and other refreshments, after which they agreed to come back the next evening to settle the matter with me.
I returned to the house late that same evening. When I heard what had happened, I knew I must be on my way again. There could be no security in making deals with people who would prey upon me. A day could come when the Nazis would offer a few zlotys more. And there was no telling when the neighbors might report me.
That night I spent in the woods, and left early the next morning for Warsaw.
Before I left, though, Michaelowa gave me a photograph they had of my little son, Ignaz. This is the only memento of my former life --life before the pogrom.
Again, I had very little money, as I had paid Michael for several weeks' board and he did not return that money to me when I left. But more than money now, my most pressing need was obtaining unquestionable identification documents. I ppealed to my Polish friends again for funds for this purpose. Many of them owed me money. From them I gathered a small sum for this purpose.
About this time, I tried to join a Nationalist Polish underground fighting party. I offered to carry out the most dangerous enterprises. Because I had nothing to lose, and had seen so much, death held no horror for me.
A member of this organization promised to work something out for me in the way of identification. I gave him almost everything I had, 1,000 zlotys. After several weeks of pressing him for action on this, he provided an employment permit, but no identification card.
He had also promised to share his quarters with me; he knew I had no place to stay. But as soon as I paid him the sum he asked, he disappeared. He knew perfectly well that I had given him everything I possessed -- that the papers were more important to me than food. Then I received word from the underground that my request to join the fight for Poland had been rejected because I was a Jew. I was "unworthy" even to fight and die, if necessary, for Poland.
This, of course, was the Nazi school of thought, a most insidious brainwashing of even the Poles. For these Poles had forgotten that the Nazi tanks which crossed the Polish border on the night of September 1, 1939 had contained no German Jews, and, more importantly, the Polish tanks -- which fought with everything they had to hold back the Nazis -- contained many patriot Polish Jews . . . who died for their country. What more could a man give in order to be considered a worthy citizen? I had cast the pearl of my life before these Nationalists, and they threw it away.
Now I did not know where to turn. There were even moments when I regretted my escape. Depressed, I went again to see Stanislov. While I was there, a Jewish friend of mine phoned him. This friend had changed his name because he did not look Jewish, and passed for a Pole on the Aryan side of Warsaw when the Jews were herded into the ghetto. I spoke with him on Stanislov's phone, and he invited me to come to his home, where I was able to hide for several days.
I realized that I could not subsist on the small sums my friends could give me, so I decided to try again to collect some old debts. A former customer, who had known me from boyhood, listened sympathetically to my story, then told me to come back the next day as he had no money on hand.
The following day he put me off again. On the third day, he told me he had consulted his attorney who advised him that it was too dangerous to help a Jew. He was sorry, he said, but since he had known me so long and knew me to be a good man, he would permit me to leave and he would not call the German police.
At last fortune smiled on me. A Polish friend loaned me a sizable amount of cash. As I was my father's only surviving heir, my friend took an unofficial mortgage on my father's large apartment building.
Under existing circumstances, this amount would give me security -- a roof and food -- for about a year, provided I did not have to buy security from the police.
Then one night two Polish policemen came to the home where I was staying. I had on me all the money I had received from the mortgage. Quickly I dropped the wad of money from my pocket into a bag of strawberries I had in my hand. I then offered them some of my strawberries, hoping that, as they searched the house, they would deem the bag as not worthy of attention. What precious strawberries: one thousand American dollars! But they did not make a search. The collected a few thousand zlotys from the occupants of the house and left. Once again, I had to move on in a hurry.
After four weeks of running from place to place without proper papers, hiding for hours at a time in bathrooms, cellars, and attics, I found a safe harbor. July 20, 1943.
My hosts were a mixed couple. She was a German gentile, born near Leipzig; he was a Warsaw Jew who had studied in Leipzig. As in so many mixed marriages (Jew and gentile), Hitler's phobia ruined their happiness. A year before the outbreak of WWII, they were forced to leave Germany and come to Poland. They had lost their shop and their home and were thrown across the border at Zbaszyn without a cent in their pockets.
In Warsaw, the wife and children were classified by Nazi authorities as "Poles of Lutheran faith." The husband was forced to hide in his home from police and Gestapo. Another Jew, an attorney from Warsaw, also stayed with this family.
The three of us -- the husband, the lawyer, myself -- had to move very quietly in stockings only, and speaking only in whispers, more often by sign language. We dared not give evidence of our presence to neighbors in the apartment building. We were essentially prisoners. If someone came to see the wife, we hid --one in the closet, two under the beds. At times, we had to spend hours in these cramped positions until a visitor left.
We could not be too careful. Every day, Jews in hiding were being caught: shot on the spot or hung the same day. As we lived in constant fear of discovery, our nerves were as taut as violin strings. "Our souls were on our shoulders."
But our hostess was kind and treated us all like family. I began to regain my strength and even put on a few pounds. Under their care, I was as happy as I could be, under the circumstances.
The couple had two fine boys, eight and eleven. They were well-mannered and served as our only contact with the outside world. I became an amateur teacher, as the Warsaw schools were closed. Teaching the boys kept my mind occupied. We read the German nespapers and German books from the library.
Thusly, the days passed fairly well. Nights, however, were hideous. I could not sleep. In the darkenss, I relived the nightmare of the past months and thought of my own lost family. Often I succumbed to grief.
But as I began to feel physically healthier, I decided to write of my experiences. After four months, though, my writing was interrupted when I had to leave.
Staying in an apartment with no camouflaged hiding place became too dangerous. Our building had several raids. In one raid, the Nazis took 14 Jews, and three in another. Living through these raids unnerved us. It was a matter of time before we would be found. Sometimes the Nazis blocked off a few apartments, which they then searched with German thoroughness. Many Jews were found this way.
The attorney was the first to move. In his place came another unfortunate. He was a young man who had come to Warsaw from Berlin during the war. In 1943 Polish agents had caught him on the street. He did not have sufficient money to satisfy them, so they took what he had and turned him over to the Gestapo. He and other Jews caught that day were sent to Pawiak prison. All but three were shot that day in the prison yard. The lives of these three were spared because they were skilled smith-tool workers. They were assigned to the tool shop at the prison, then later transferred to a concentration camp in Warsaw.
As this young man spoke German fluently, he was attached to a Gestapo squad. The duties of this squad were to confiscate and empty apartments and houses of Poles who were arrested. All possessions were then seized by the Nazis. This man was taken along, under escort, to open safes and break locks. On one such job, two Jews managed to escape. My new young friend was one of them.
Our tragic experiences created a bond between us. Both of us were escaped prisoners, both guilty of the same crime: being a Jew.
He came to us the day after his escape. We soon learned that he had tuberculosis, contracted in the prison. His body was full of open sores from Nazi abuse. He stayed with us a very short time. A coughing man in an apartment where only a woman and two children were supposed to be living would bring certain discovery. Afraid of being exposed by neighbors, our hosts refused to keep him longer. I felt sorry for him, but after seven days, he found another place.
Two days after the young tuberculin man left, I moved to a house with a built-in hiding place, and joined my old friend the attorney. Our hosts were a nice young Polish couple.
There I met a young woman who had been a classmate of my sister Helen. Before coming to live in this home, this woman had a hideous experience:
During the first action in the ghetto, she had been taken to Umschlag. There she met a girlfriend. They planned together how they might escape. They approached an SS man in the night and pleaded with him to let them go. Smiling, he told them to kiss his cheek, then he would let them go. Of course, they each kissed him then, on his direction, preceeded him. He drew his gun and fired at their backs.
Toward morning, this young woman regained consciousness, but found her friend dead beside her. Wounded and bleeding, she pretended to be dead. There were several other bodies lying nearby. Early morning, horse-drawn lorries arrived to take away the corpses. As she was loaded onto the lorry, she gave sign of life and pleaded with the men to save her. They placed her on top of the pile and as the lorry left the Platz, they stopped and carried her into a vacant apartment. Although her arm was paralyzed, she was lucky to be alive.
The attorney and I remained in this home only three weeks. A letter scared us away.
Our landlady had confided to her best friend that she and her husband were getting additional income from harboring five Jews in a secret hiding place the couple had built.
Surprise, surprise, the friend immediately demanded a share of the income for keeping the secret. Our landlord, certain that her demands would increase, was afraid to submit to the blackmail. A few days later, the couple received a letter saying if the Jews were not sent away within three days, they would be reported to the Gestapo.
For the past seven months now, I have been living with a widow and her three children on the fifth floor of a large apartment building. There is a very good place to hide here.
She was born of German parents at Lodz and had been married to a Jew who died from a heart attack during the first action.
When I first came to this place, I met a young man who had served in the Jewish police before the ghetto was wiped out. In April 1943, he was sent to Treblinek Camp -- the same one to which my younger half-brother and sister were taken in 1942. At that time we had been told it was a work camp. For the first time, now, I learned the sickening truth about Treblinek. It was solely an extermination camp. There was only one large building, an enormous gas chamber. And burial ditches.
My new companion in exile had been attached to a liquidation squad at the camp. During our long hours in hiding, he described the procedure there.
When a transport arrived, all the prisoners wer elined up in the square. A high-ranking SS officer gave a long speech, assuring them they were to be given work, each according to his or her ability. But first, he told them, they must go to the shower house where they would be issued clean underwear and clothing.
They were commanded to disrobe in the open square. If anyone exhibited a sense of modesty, they were beaten with rifle butts or whipped. Then they were herded into the "showers." Before entering the gas chamber, the women had their hair cut off. This man who escaped believed the hair was used to stuff mattresses for the officers' quarters.
As soon as the last of this group were inside the chamber, the doors were sealed. Air pumps started up to draw out air. When the pressure inside was low enough, other pumps poured in lethal gas. Those nearest the building could hear the strangled cries and screams. Mercifully, death was swift.
After this, the doors on the opposite side of the chamber were opened and the Jewish crew, to which my friend was attached, had to carry the bodies to the prepared ditches, where they were thrown in and covered with dirt.
This was the way the Nazis won the war against European Jews in 1942 and 1943.
Next, the crew had to search the clothing and belongings of the dead. The garments were cut along seams and searched inside and out for jewels and money. Luggage went through the same process. The loot was sorted and placed in boxes.
Currency was separated according to issuing country. Gold, precious stones, watches: each had its own receptacle. Boxes were marked in large letters: Gold dollars. Paper dollars. Polish Currency. Diamonds. Rubies. . . . Alles in Ordnung. Clothing, underwear, shoes were placed in piles, the best quality and newest in a special lot to be sent back to Germany for needy Germans.
The Jewish crews worked under pressure. The SS guards watched every move, whipping them to speed things up.
During the winter of '42-'43, steam shovels were brought to Treblinek to dig up the corpses. They were then cremated in huge, specially built stoves. In this manner the Nazis attempted to hide all signs of their crimes. When this project was completed, the stoves were destroyed.
In the autumn of 1943, the ground was levelled and plowed. Treblinek vanished like purgatory in a bad dream.
My friend had been a member of the crew which labored to erase all evidence of the Treblinek cemetery. After the job was complete, he was assigned to another camp. En route to the new assignment, he and another Jew leaped from the window of the moving train. His companion was killed by an SS guard's bullet. My friend escaped and made his way to Warsaw.
He lived only a short time with us, then moved on. We later learned that he and another Jew, a doctor, were robbed by their hosts at his new hiding place and turned over to a gang. They were taken to the ghetto and murdered.
While he lived with us, though, having little to do but exchange experience anecdotes, he told me something of his life as a Jewish policeman in the Warsaw ghetto. Two of his stories concerned children.
The first was about an orphanage in the ghetto during the liquidation. The general manager was Dr. Janusz Korczak, a well-known teacher and author of books for children and teens. During the action, SS men were ordered to send the orphans to Umschlag. Two hundred children between the ages of three and ten lived at the orphanage. Dr. Korczak was relieved of his duties and told to leave. The doctor refused to leave his children and asked to be permitted to accompany them to Umschlag. The SS men agreed to this and so the doctor marched to the Platz with the children. He went first, like the leader of a regiment, to board the train. The children, weeping and holding hands, followed him. He was reminded again that he was free to leave, but he did not. And so he went with the 200 children to Treblinek, their last ride anywhere.
The second story was about an 8-year-old boy who was brought to Umschalg. He was known as a child prodigy, a phenomenal violinist. When he left home, he brought his precious violin with him. The Jewish policemen at Umschlag did everything they could to save this gifted child. As a last resort, one of the policemen went to the commander of the camp, who was known as a lover of music. The commander ordered the boy to be brought to him. The boy, in front of the commander, was told to play Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony." The SS men and Ukranian guards crowded in to hear the boy's performance. They burst into applause as he finished.
Everyone there felt certain that the music had softened the commander's heart. But, with a smile on his face, the commander said, "Ya, meine lieber Virtuose, leider, morgan wirst du schon in Treblinek, und wirst nicht mehr spielon." (Yes, my dear virtuoso, unfortunately tomorrow morning you will be in Treblinek, and you will not play anymore.) Then he signalled to take the boy away. The "unfinished Symphony" of his short life was finished at Treblinek.
With too much time on my hands, I dwelled a great deal on my experiences. I have become almost anti-social. So many friends have betrayed me. War tears the masks from men's faces.
Theoretically, I had not been unaware of the duplicity of human beings. Yet, experience now has taught me that a deceitful friend can be more dangerous than an avowed enemy.
In December of 1939, a few months after the Nazis invaded Poland, I asked my friends the Drewnowskis to take care of our furs. Before the war, Mr. Drewnowski was a high-ranking official in the Polish ministry. They said they were only to glad to do anything they could for us, so I brought some of our furs to them. That very evening, Luta and I left her new Persian lamb coat and my nearly new weasel greatcoat with them.
Mrs. Drewnowski offered to use napthaline to protect our coats from moths. She handed me hangers for the coats, which I then hung in their closet. We thanked them for their kindness and went home feeling satisfied we had done the right thing.
Within 24 hours, Mrs. Drewnowski sent a message through the janitor of our apartment building that our furs had been stolen. Thinking it a joke, I phoned her. She assured me it was no joke and invited me to come see for myself. She showed me the lock on their door, how it had been tampered with, but the marks of the jimmy tools were on the inside of the door. It was most unfortunate, she said, that only our furs had been stolen. The robbery had taken place in daylight; no one saw anything; nothing else in the house had been touched. Mrs. Drewnowski could not meet my eyes. She was so flustered that she handed me the empty hangars, knowing as she had to that they were hers.
I reported the case to the police. In a short time they reported back to me that the robbery was a hoax. They asked if I cared to press charges and have the couple arrested. I did just that, and phoned our "friend" to let him know. He said if I were to go through with the charge, he would notify the Gestapo that I, a Jew, had tried to hide my furs in his house. He knew that such a crime would be punishable by death. I dropped the charge.
The police were sympathetic. I took them to supper and drinks for their trouble, which added to my loss.
It is not good for me to dwell on past wrongs. As the Great Bard said, "I grieve at grievances foregone." But there is little to divert my thoughts to other channels -- no destination on this treadmill.
I think of Jadzia.
When I returned to Warsaw after my escape, I found her again through friends. Desperate for funds, I asked her to go to the people who had hidden my sister's furs, as Jadzia alone knew where they were stored. I sent a letter by messenger, giving her authority to get the furs from storage and deliver them to him. She gave him an appointment to meet her at a certain time and place. The messenger waited in vain.
He went again to her home. No Jadzia. On further investigation, I learned that after the liquidation of the ghetto, thinking we had all been killed, Jadzia took possession of our furs. Knowing the man who was storing them was Jew with false Aryan identification, she reported him to the Gestapo, then sent men to his home to steal the furs for her. For material gain, she sent an innocent human being to his death.
Jadzia had also delivered some of our furs to a Polish customer who was a good friend of my father. When I returned to Warsaw I went to see him and asked for the return of the furs. He told me the Persian lamb, which had been my step-mother's, had been eaten by moths. The other furs he claimed never to have received, although when I saw him before the action he claimed they were all safely stored in his home.
I asked him about a weasel collar that had belonged to my father. He said he had taken it and would pay me 1,000 zlotys for it. The market price was ten times that amount. I reminded him that the furs were sent to him for storage, not for sale. He reminded me that I was an outlaw. I took the pittance.
He also had a huge skunk collar of Dora's. He said he had sold it for 300 zlotys (about $3.00) and offered me that amount. The actual value of this fur at that time was at least 25,000 zlotys (about $250). I had to be satisfied.
On top of insulting me this way, this man had been deeply indebted to me. He had come from Posnan in 1939, just before the war. He had no money nor merchandise. I organized a business for him and set him up with merchandise, with only his word as security. He did finally repay my loan, but by that time inflation had set in and he had become rich on my loan.
The widow with whom I am now staying told me that before I came to her home she had had to pay off the police several times. Her closest and most devoted friend had been the informer.
The widow had given up her own bedroom in order to give asylum to additional Jews. To make room for them, she went to stay with a girlfriend, paying her well for a room. The friend could not resist the opportunity to cash in on her knowledge of her friend's secret. The widow had to pay the police for immunity and all those hiding in her apartment had to pay heavy fines. She had no idea who had reported her and never suspected her good friend.
She found another apartment and built a secret hiding place into it for her lodgers. She told her friend all about it.
Only a few days passed before police came to the new address in the small hours of the morning. They went directly to the hiding place as, though they had a blueprint, and found several Jews. The raid cost the widow and the Jews about 6,000 zlotys. It wiped out all the resources of the Jews. With no money to pay for board, they had to leave. They were soon all caught and killed.
Shortly after this experience, she moved to her presnt address, where I now stay. . . a safe distance from her false friend.
It pains and depresses me to think of the duplicity of so many. Is it the times that shape evil men, I ask myself, or evil men who shape the times?
And, yet, I must also think of those who did not betray their friends. The many courageous people who remained true in the face of great personal danger. The Poles and Germans who hid me and others like me in their homes, or helped when we were destitute. In all the waste there is still precious metal.
The Nazis announced they would permit some Jews to migrate. They said the Western Powers had agreed to give asylum to a certain number. Nazis circulated certificates which could be used by Jews still in hiding. This, of course, was another ruse to smoke out those underground. The hoax brought more than 2,000 Jews into the open. They paid hundreds of thousands of zlotys to the police to put their names on a waiting list so they could be sent abroad. They were all killed. If I'd had any money to pay the police, I would have been one of them.
At about 10 minutes before the police curfew one night, we were all startled to hear frantic running on the stairs and pounding on our door. No one would dare visit at curfew. When friends did come to visit, they used a password. This sudden knocking was ominous. Alarmed, we took cover, locking ourselves into our hiding place.
Our landlady went to the door, asked who was there. She heard the frightened voice of a young man begging to be let in; he gave the name of a mutual friend. She cautiously opened the door and in he stumbled, face pale and lips trembling so he couldn't speak. At the all-clear signal from the widow, we came out, finding this young man shaking against the door frame, trying to compose himself.
After he calmed down, he told this story:
He had run from what he called a "burning hideout." The place he had ben staying was run by a Jewish woman who looked Aryan and had Aryan documents. Several days earlier, she had changed apartments. Her lodgers remained at the old place until she prepared a hiding place in the new apartment. At the new address, however, the Polish owner of the building discovered she was Jewish. He took all her money then turned her over to the Gestapo.
The hiding men learned of her capture. Fearing a search of her former address, they ran for their lives. None too soon. During the night the Gestapo came to her old address, but all had gotten out in time. The woman was shot the next day.
The new arrival is still with us. We became buddies quickly. He said he had changed hideouts dozens of times in 14 months of hiding. He had no real idea how lucky he was not to have been sent to a concentration camp. But, like the rest of us, he lived in mortal fear of being caught.
During the days that followed, our new guest told us he was married and had an eight-year-old son. The parents thought it safer for them to split up to hide. His wife looked Aryan and carried false papers, but the boy had definite Semitic features. She and the boy were elsewhere in hiding and they had to change places often. For a short while, the mother and son came to stay with us.
The boy, Yureczek, reminded me of my own son. I loved him like my own. For his part, he attached himself to me with complete childlike trust. I walked with him in another world and knew happiness for the first time since my loss. I prayed that this boy might be spared the fate of my own son, that he would not be deprived of life just because of the shape of his nose.
After a time, the mother and son left for another place --somewhere in the country. It was difficult to keep a child housed up constantly, hard to make him understand why he could not run and play with other children.
For traveling, his mother bandaged his nose so no one would report her son to the Gestapo. The anguish of his parents cut me. I so well understood their suffering. His mother taught him to give the name on his fake birth certificate. Also, he must say, if asked, that his father was unknown.
I know what it meant for parents of good conscience to teach a sensitive child to lie. But how could they explain that his real name and identity would cause his death? How could they tell him that the shape of his nose made him a hunted criminal who could be shot dead on sight? How could they justify forbidding him to use a public toilet, for fear someone would see his cut foreskin and call the Gestapo?
During my forced idleness, and out of utter boredom and an overwhelming need to cry out, I wrote a few poems. Into them I poured the dissonances of my pain and mutiny, my sorrow and adversity, my longing for Luta and Ignas. The lines were emotionally charged. Writing them may have been good therapy, but they are much too personal to put here.
One of these concerned Ezio and Edra. I could not have loved them more had they been my full brother and sister. Every day after their disappearance, Father and I went to the post office with hope of having some word from them. We thought they had been taken to a labor camp. But by now I knew -- there was no labor at Treblinek except the digging of ditches for the new bodies.
Another poem, one addressed to the boy Yureczek, ends on a more hopeful note. . . that he may outlive these years of madness and know in his lifetime the destruction of Nazi evil.
Yet another poem I called "Majdanek." This one I share:
lies the lash-torn body on the bench.
Every muscle afire in pain --
the poor man soon to be slain.
The spiked boot, the clenched teeth ...
fatal breath, the pyre's stench.
The Nazi whip -- the dull crunch
of a broken skull.
The swollen tongue of a man hung.
The SS men drink their beer:
"Hei! Hei! Only a Jew," they jeer.
I have been hiding almost a year now and still there seems no prospect of an early end to the war. The lives of the remaining Jews in hiding hang on a thin thread. Everyone is on the verge of breakdown. If even a few Polish Jews survive the war, most will be unfit to resume normal lives. They will be physically and mentally broken.
Every knock on the door, if only a neighborly visit, startles us, puts us on alert and in flight mode. Every time news comes to us of the capture and killing of a Jew in hiding, we are sickened. We are weak from fear and tension. None of us any longer have the vitality to fight. In our loneliness and fear, life has lost its meaning.
During long sleepless nights, I imagine myself in another world, with my loved ones around me. This is my only escape.
On January 24, 1944, which would have been my son's eighth birthday, I bought a flower for him. Alone in my room, I studied the pale pink tulip in a small vase. Next to it I burned a memorial candle. Ignas' bloodless face seemed to look back at me from the smooth petals. I nearly hugged and kissed that flower. I feared for my sanity in that moment, but as tears streamed from my eyes, I was suddenly aware of reality... and its horrors.
Another anniversary, a double one, occurred on February 24. It was Luta's and my wedding anniversary, and it was her birthday. I thought of that romantic evening nine years earlier when her sweet music flooded my heart with love. Now, her music so faint and far away, I felt I could drown in this dark pool of memories.
At the end of April, I learned from the underground party newspaper that due to the Russian advance westward, the Nazis had liquidated Majdanek. The article said that all Jews in the camp had been murdered in the past month. Two hundred Hungarian soldiers of Jewish origin were among those "liquidated." The Aryan Poles who had survived camp life had been transferred to concentration camps deep inside Germany -- the men to Gross Rosen, the women to Ravensbruck and Mecklenburg. I prayed that the good Poles who were my friends had survived and would be released at the end of the war.
When May came, it brought memories of the previous May ...at Majdanek. I thought of my father's death, consoling myself with the thought that he would have been happy to know I had escaped and that, through me, perhaps, his good name might be carried on. This thought, and remembering his courage, braced me, gave me something to hold on to, gave me hope.
Later in May there were other sad days: Luta's and Ignas' gassing and, still later that month, my dear sisters' end.
Early in June the newspaper reported that the Western Allies had landed in northern France. Until now, we had been completely isolated from events in the west. The German news commentators, however, put a good face on the situation, saying it was just what der Fuhrer wanted, now the Nazis could meet and overcome the Allied Forces. Germany, they claimed, was assurred of victory.
Concerning the Italian front, from the same news item, the Nazis were leading the Allies on by withdrawing to new and more favorable positions. It said Hitler decorated his officers for their brilliant strategy in seeming to retreat before the enemy. Those officers were given silver, gold, and diamond crosses. We wondered if the medals had been fashioned from the stolen jewels of murdered Jews.
The latest news in the underground paper is that Allied Forces are on an island in the River Elbe. Are the Nazis on the run? Reports from the eastern front say the Russians are involved with the Finns. We hope for air action from them. It cannot come too soon. We pray they will rout the Nazis from Warsaw.
It now seems to us that the end of the war is not too far off. Jews must lie low and wait. Though still in great danger, those of us still alive have more hope than we've had in a long time.
We had a close call a few days ago. About 5 P.M. a lorry filled with Gestapo troops stopped in front of our apartment building. On the opposite side of our landing, Gestapo surprised a Polish underground party meeting. Shots were fired, grenades thrown into the apartment, screams and shouts. The battle lasted about two hours, during which we trembled in our hideout. We were sure the Nazis would search the entire building and this would be the end for us.
We learned later that they did break into two neighboring apartments looking for party men. Two young men were killed in the fight, several wounded were taken away, several more arrested. That night a knock came on our door. We could scarcely breathe. It was men sent to collect the corpses. The widow directed them to the correct apartment. We are still ill from this close call, completely unnerved.
Today, June 17, is my birthday. Last year at this time, I had not escaped from Majdanek. I am still alive. Never can we second-guess God. We are foolish to try.
Today is June 21, 1944. The first anniversary of my escape. I vow, if I live to see the end of this long night that I shall try to have this record published so that the world can see through my eyes the truth of Nazi crimes. If I do not survive, I hope my notes will be found by someone who will carry out my wish for me.
I hold in my hand an underground party newspaper dated this last day of June, 1944. One article says that from the middle of May until a few days ago, Nazis brought 100,000 Jews from Hungary and exterminated them. It says the Nazis are running low on gas for the gas chambers. Half-conscious people are thrown into the huge stoves. Living people are burned to death. Some try to crawl out of the oven. Nazi guards push them back in with iron pokers.
The article says that children are not sent to the gas chamber at all. Children are given a hard blow on the head and thrown immediately into the fire.
Is this the middle of the 20th Century? Life is not worth living where such barbarism exists.
The outcome of this great world tragedy is in the hands of the Free World. It is no longer a Jewish problem -- or has it ever been?
Questions crowd my mind. Will it be possible, I ask myself, for civilized nations to devise a punishment commensurate with the evil perpetrated by the Nazis... without destroying themselves?
August 1, 1944
The street is full of excited people. The widow went out to get the news.
The Polish underground has taken most of Warsaw: Men, women, children, even elderly people, are fighting the Nazis. The Poles have large quantities of guns and ammunition. They throw bottles of gasoline into Nazi tanks as they rumble through the streets. Emergency hospitals are being set up for the wounded.
The battle has been going on five days now. The three of us (a woman and another man) hiding with the widow discuss our position. We want to join the fight, yet we are afraid to show ourselves. Would the Poles even welcome our help? We decide to risk it.
It took us a few minutes to get from our fifth floor apartment to street level. We scarcely had time to join the widow and her children in the yard when a Nazi bomb destroyed most upper floors of our building. Had we hesitated a few minutes longer . . . .
We mingled with neighbors from our apartment, telling them we came from a bombed out house on another block. We did not want to get the widow into trouble.
I spoke to underground members in charge of defense, offering our help. The widow vouched for us. They gave us the official white armbands of the underground to wear. We were put to work at once, building barricades along the street in front of our building. We dug up the cement pavement blocks, raised them on their sides to form a wall, behind which the fighters crouch with their guns.
We also must watch for fires, started by incendiary bombs, and rush to extinguish them. The city water has been shut off. We must carry water in buckets from a pump three blocks away to supply our fighters and neighbors. The basement has been turned into an improvised shelter. No one can go upstairs into the building.
The Nazis are lined up on the street. Our commander has given us guns. We are sent from one post to another, wherever the fighting is hardest, to protect the barricades. When we can be spared, we catch a few hours of rest in the basement with the other tenants.
After a few days, the Poles in the basement discovered we are Jewish. Most of them are friendly. One of them was a judge. He uncovered a plot to murder us. He told the plotters that if they harm us, after all we had suffered, he would tell the Polish police that they had killed innocent people. His interference saved us, but he warned us to be on guard.
The battle has been going on now about two weeks. The Poles are losing their advantage. The Germans control the situation in the air and on the ground. We have been expecting help from the Allied Forces, but this has not materialized.
The rebellion is a failure. The Poles have lost control of the city. The Germans are throwing leaflets from airplanes telling us to capitulate an dleave Warsaw. The larger population want to stay and continue the fight. Those who want to leave are permitted to go. Since I do not dare risk falling into Nazi hands again, I decide to take my chances with those who remain and go on fighting.
After more than two months of fighting, the Poles could hold out no longer. They surrendered. Underground fighters were taken to labor and concentration camps. Old people were allowed to go to surrounding towns. The Jewish woman who was hiding and fighting with us threw away her papers and posed as a Pole.
My friend and I decided the Nazis must never take us alive. In case of that emergency, we each had a capsule of cyanide.
Our apartment building consisted of three separate wings around a courtyard. The two side wings were completely demolished. A small part of the rear building stood like a watch tower against the sky. We decided to hide in the ruins.
In the basement, we found a barrel of preserved beets and a sack of sugar. A little water still remained in barrels. We carried these provisions up to a fifth floor room in the tower. If we were lucky, these things would keep us alive until we were liberated. I also found my notebooks containing this journal where I had hidden them in the basement during the fighting.
We felt certain we would not have to wait long in this room. Word had reached us that the Russians were encamped on the opposite side of the Vistula River in the town of Praga, waiting for the strategic moment to enter Warsaw. Freedom could be a matter of days.
The windows of this room had been shattered. There was no heat, and no water for washing. The fall weather was cool, the nights especially cold. After getting ourselves settled, we moved a large wardrobe in front of our door to camouflage the entrance.
With so many buildings destroyed, we could see quite a distance from our tower. The city was alive with activity. We watched Nazis working at top speed with Polish crews to remove all furnishings from deserted homes. When their work was finished, they set fire to Warsaw. House by house was ignited. The city rose in a flaming ring all around. To us it seemed we held gallery seats to the end of the world. The roar of the angry fire-beast reached our ears -- the crunch and snap of its hungry maw -- the crash of crumbling debris. Black smoke filled our room. Every day we expected to be caught in the conflagration; in which case, there was always the cyanide.
But by some miracle our ruins were overlooked.
The long, cold winter set in. A soft shroud of snow now hid the charred bones of Warsaw. It sifted through our broken windows. Our water supply gave out. We blessed the snow, which gave us moisture for our mouths, if not enough to drink.
WHERE ARE THE RUSSIANS?
I kept count of the days elapsed since we came to this room. It must be December first by now. I wondered what strategy could be keeping the Russians.
Unable to keep ourselves clean, we were covered with body lice. They are not very nourishing. Starvation was taking its toll, my mind became dim and I could no longer count the days. My friend could not hold on. He died in my arms. There was no place to take his body, even if I were stong enough to move him. I lay for what must have been a month, his dead body beside me. I was still alive, somehow sustaining myself on snow.
After my friend died, for the second time since the Nazi occupation, I wanted to kill myself. Ill from starvation, bleeding from the bowels, my body vermin infested: I gave up hope of ever being liberated. I looked for my cyanide capsule. How was it possible to lose anything in this room, other than life?
In my search for it, I glanced out the window and saw a boy, maybe 12 years of age, running around the ruins of our building. I called to him, explained how he could come up to this room. He was able to move the wardrobe from the door. When he saw my dead friend, he immediately stole his shoes.
In answer to my questions, the boy explained the Nazis had burned nearly all of Warsaw, and that he was one of a group of Poles who had joined a clean-up crew working for the Nazis. He said he lived in the town of Wlocky, outside Warsaw, and came every day with the crew.
I asked if he could help me get out of Warsaw; he promised he would. In payment for his trouble, I gave him a camera that had belonged to the widow. She had left several items behind that she thought might be of trade value for us. But there had never been anyone with whom to trade, nor anyone from whom to beg or borrow. Until now.
The boy had to help me down the stairs to the street. Debris everywhere, and my weakened condition, made walking difficult. The smell of burned houses still filled the air. The boy took me to a place where a crew of Polish workers were loading carpets into freight cars. Taken from fine old Polish homes, these were now being shipped to the fatherland.
To go on the train to Wlocky with the workers, I had to get permission from the Nazi in charge of this crew. At first he was a little suspicious. He wanted to know why I was so unkempt. One of the workers close to me spoke up and said he knew me, that I was one of the workers and had been sick a few days. This man recommended I be released from work and returned to Wlocky.
The Nazi wanted to see my identification card. I showed him the false papers I still had in my pocket. He was satisfied.
I was able to leave Warsaw with the boy on the train to Wlocky. We arrived there at night. I learned the date: January 2, 1945. I had been in hiding for 97 days.
When we left the train station, the boy took me to a tavern where there were many workers. They were eating, and drinking vodka. I ordered something to eat and a glass of vodka. The liquor I was able to swallow, but not the food. When I went to pay my bill, I was too weak and lame and could not reach my hip pocket to take out my billfold. The boy handed it to me and, after paying my bill, he returned the wallet to my pocket. Then he took me to a place I could stay the night.
Thirty people were crowded into one room. They were all members of the cleaning crew in Warsaw. Listening to their conversation, I learned that every house in Warsaw had been razed. The only buildings spared were those, like ours, which had been so thoroughly bombed that burning them seemed redundant.
This room some 30 of us shared had three built-in bunks along the walls. Two men slept in each bunk. The rest of us slept on the floor.
In the morning when I was about to leave with the others, the owner of the room demanded I pay for my night's lodging. Again, I had to ask that he take the billfold from my pocket. My pocket was empty! The boy was gone. I explained what must have happened, but the owner was angry, calling me a cheat and ordering me to leave at once.
It was still dark out. I had walked only a short distance when two men approached and tried to rob me. When they found no money on me, they tried to take my wristwatch. I struggled, but was too weak to defend myself. I yelled for the police. One of the men punched me in the stomach, knocking me down into the snow, and they ran off.
I must have been lying unconscious for some time. When I came to, it was broad daylight. Some passersby helped me to my feet; I told them what had happened and asked for direction to the hospital. In the hospital, the doctor in charge looked me over. He did not want to touch me because of the lice. I showed him my false Polish identification card and confessed I had been hiding in Warsaw 97 days. He permitted me to enter the hospital as a patient. As soon as I was admitted, I was given a hot bath, the first bath in many, many months.
From others men in the ward, I learned that every day Germans came in to check for Jews. All male patients had to throw off their covers. If the Nazis found a Jew, he was shot in his bed.
For the next three days, the Germans were much too busy evacuating Wlocky to bother with the hospital. On the third day we heard bombers overhead. Russian and Polish soldiers fought to liberate the town. We learned this from wounded who were brought into the hospital. They told us the town of Wlocky was now cleared of Germans. We all breathed more easily, none more than I. This was an historical day: January 5, 1945.
Why had the Russians, with all their power on the other side of the Vistula, delayed 100 days before coming to liberate Warsaw? I asked this of a Russian soldier, now a patient in my room.
He said,"When the Polish underground started their uprising against the Nazis, the Russians offered their help and were refused. This angered the officers, so they decided to let the Poles see what they could do without Russian help."
The Poles, of course, feared the Russians would want a share in any victory. This was a great disaster for the Polish people. Their fairest city had been completely destroyed.
Food was scarce in the hospital and there was a fuel shortage. To cure me, the doctor had said, I must eat well and keep clean. Only time would heal me. My entire body was covered by infection caused by the lice. I barely escaped having typhus. I could expect that my skin would never be free of the scars from infection. With food rationing and little fuel for hot water -- those needing surgery had priority, of course -- I would not improve much in hosptial. I asked to be released.
I left the hospital with no money and no place to go. For the first time in my life, I begged for food. I went into a small grocery store and asked for a piece of bread. The grocer refused, saying he had so many beggars each day, he was not able to help.
I walked along the highway with crowds of prisoners liberated from labor and concentration camps. We walked toward Warsaw. I knew there was nothing there, but I hoped to find something I had left behind. Along the way, there were feeding stations, operated by women from the Red Cross who passed out bread and hot coffee. I was never so grateful for food in my life.
Back in Warsaw, I went at once to the ruins of our building which I had left only two weeks earlier. I climbed slowly to the the fifth floor, then searched for my notebooks. I had hidden them in a cabinet under a window. They were there just as I left them, five books filled with my story.
I was saddened to see that my friend's remains were also just as I had left him. (I later learned that his wife found his body and had him buried.)
Back on the street, I next searched for the home where Luta, Ignas, and I had lived on Kometetowa Street. There was no way to find the place. The area had been levelled to the ground, one street the same as another, all choked with rubble.
I tried to find the large apartment building my father had owned. After searching for hours without success, I returned to our ruined tower, the only structure still standing in that part of the city.
Earlier that day, when I went into the ruins to get my notebooks, I saw some former tenants on the ground floor. They had boarded up the windows to make a temporary shelter. I went there now and knocked on the door. They kindly gave me asylum for the night.
Early the next morning, I considered what should be my next move. Warsaw was practically decimated. But I could not stay here. Where could I go? Where could I find a friend to take me in? I was sick and penniless, too weak to wander the roads in this severe weather.
One thought sustained me: I was FREE. Yet I questioned "free" for what?
No home, no family, no friends, no means of making money.
I determined to try to get to Miedzeszn. The janitor's home -- the only property left now of my father's estate -- was the only place I might have a roof over my head, if the Glazewskis would permit me. And would I be able to regain possession of this property which Hitler had confiscated?
The people where I had spent the night shared their breakfast with me: hot boiled potatoes, coarse bread, a cup of hot tea. I was very grateful. After breakfast, I started out for Miedzeszyn.
Although it was still very early in the morning, the highway was crowded with people liberated by the Russians. As we walked, I talked with some of them. Most were former Warsaw residents who had either fled during the siege or been sent to labor camps by the Nazis. Every one of these agreed they did not believe what they had heard of the destruction of their beautiful city, and so, on being freed, their first impulse was to return. Only then did they see the rumors were true and Warsaw lay in ruin. They, like myself, had no choice now but to move on. But to where, they did not know.
Warsaw had had a population of over 1,250,000. Those who remained or returned was still a large number. They must now seek new homes in surrounding cities or throughout the countryside.
Most of us were reduced to utter poverty, yet a new spirit moved in us. Death no longer flapped its wings over our heads. There was hope in our eyes. Although many of us were ill and hungry, we drew renewed strength from one another, from our community of mobile, displaced souls.
Various vehicles made walking hazardous. Military transports and cars, horse-drawn carts and wagons sometimes crowded us off the road. Now and then one would stop to take on additional passengers. Also now and then, some of those riding would give up their places to give others a turn at riding. I received several lifts this way, finally arriving in Miedzeszn by horse and buggy in the afternoon.
The Glazewskis and their children were amazed to see me. For a second time I had returned as though from the dead. They had to hear all that had happened to me in the 18 months since I last left them.
The situation was quite different from when I'd returned after escaping from Majdanek. I no longer had to sleep in the woods. Michaelowa prepared their best bedroom for me. It was almost like coming home.
Michael made a decent living selling bread and other baked goods for a bakery in town, travelling as far as Warsaw and other settlements. We had plenty to eat. In spite of their previous behavior toward me, I was humble and grateful for their generosity. I had no one else in all the world but our old janitor and his good wife.
After a few days' rest and care, I felt able to visit some of our Polish neighbors -- people with whom my family had been friends years before, when we came to our villa in the summers of our innocence. During the war, these people had found Miedzsyzn to be a safe harbor. Their funds had also been depleted, and there was little means of making a living in this little country town. Together we talked over possible places to relocate. They had heard that the city of Lodz, about 170 miles west and now evacuated by the Nazis, had been untouched by bombers because it had been Nazi headquarters during the occupation.
Realizing many former Warsaw residents would have the same idea, we lost no time in getting started.
The journey took us two and a half days. Starting on foot, we received numerous rides. In some places, trains had begun to operate again. We rode in crowded lorries, but how different from that ride of torture to Lublin a year and a half ago.
Fortunately, no fares were collected for no one had money. The crowds were still filthy and in rags. Entire families who had lost their homes travelled in this way. Many, too many, who had lost their loved ones travelled alone, some making new friends along the way. All hoped to find a roof and a job in Lodz.
My Miedzeszyn friends, the Lewandowskis, had relatives in Lodz. They took me with them the night of our arrival. The family consisted of Mrs. Swiderski and her four children. When Lodz was occupied, the Nazis threw the Poles out of their homes. Most of them went to Germany as slave labor. The only Poles permitted to remain were those needed to maintain apartment buildings, or to perform menial tasks for the Nazis. Mr. Swiderski had been taken away and killed. His widow and her children took care of 60 apartments in a fine building. The Nazis made them work very hard.
When the Russians liberated Lodz, Mrs. Swiderski took possession of the apartments. In their haste, the Nazis left everything behind --lovely furniture, expensive rugs, clothing and food, all of which they had confiscated from the Polish families for their occupation.
Mrs. Swiderski moved her family from the janitor's quarters to one of the best apartments on the second floor. On our arrival, she and her children welcomed us warmly and gave us a good supper -- meat, potatoes, vodka, canned fruit, and a freshly baked cake.
The following day, Mrs. Swiderski made me a very nice offer: During the five years of the occupation, her children (ages 7 to 22) had had no schooling. If I would teach them for two or three hours a day, she would give me a room and my evening meal. I happily accepted.
After daily lessons, I had time to look around the town. A Jewish Committee had already been established. One of the men knew me from pre-war Warsaw. He gave me a position. My work was to make a file of all liberated Jews who came to Lodz. If they had no trade or profession, I helped place them in jobs. My pay was not much.
Mrs. Swiderski gave me a complete outfit from clothing she had salvaged, which provided me a decent appearance in my new job. I remained with the Committee only two weeks, as a better opportunity came from my old friend Stanislov Togi, whom I met one day on the street.
When Lodz was liberated, The Polish government took over all businesses and factories which had been seized by the Nazis. If the rightful owners did not return to claim their property, the government gave it to those who applied to make up for losses suffered from the occupation. No money was involved in these transactions.
Stanislov received a ladies' ready-to-wear store, complete with stock merchandise. He asked me to be his assistant. I took inventory, made out reports to the government, and helped him operate his business.
The Jewish Committee, knowing I could make a better living in Togi's store than they could offer me, were glad to release me. I also had to relinquish my teaching job. I was paid well in my new job. Through Polish friends who were officials in Lodz, I was able to get good living quarters of my own.
My health, however, was still poor. Several doctors who examined me were of the opinion that I did not need medication, only good nutrition and rest. Of course, I could not afford to take a long vacation because I needed my income to buy nutritious food. So my return to health was slow.
Meanwhile, the war to the west still raged. America, England, and Russia were giving Hitler a bad time.
As I walked on the main business street of Lodz one day, I heard someone call my name. "George Pfeffer! George Pfeffer!" II was startled. I still carried my false Polish papers and went by an assumed name.
I looked around. The cry had come from a beautiful young woman whom I recognized at once as a girl I had known only slightly in the ghetto years before. Maria Haberling. I reached out to take her hand but in a split second she was in my arms, hugging and kissing me. I was amazed. I remembered her as a shy, reserved sort of girl, restrained and dignified.
A few passersby turned to stare at us for a moment, but surprise reunions were not rare on the streets of Lodz these days. The city had become a mecca for lonely survivors of the war who haunted the streets, peering into faces, searching for lost loved ones or old friends. Finding a mere acquaintance became an occasion for great joy.
Maria could not believe her eyes upon discovering me, nor I mine. We went to a nearby coffee shop where we talked for hours, completely oblivious to our business obligations.
I told her the story of the loss of my family, of my escape from Majdanek --where over three million Jews had been murdered, of my years in hiding, of my ill health, of my loneliness and grief.
In turn, Maria told of the loss of her parents and all other family. She had escaped from the ghetto to the Aryan side of Warsaw, where she passed easily as a Pole, with her blue eyes, titian hair, and dainty features. During the final siege of Warsaw, she fought with the undergound in her neighborhood.
When the rebellion failed, she was taken to a labor camp, managed to escape and found refuge with a Polish farm family until the liberation. Then she came to Lodz. She was employed by the city now, making rental appraisals of apartments taken over when the Nazis fled.
I invited her to have dinner with me that evening. There seemed no end to our conversation. Just before dark I escorted her to her apartment. A local curfew was in effect. I hurried home, but from then on we met several times a day or spoke by telephone.
By now it was early May, 1945. May! Was it possible that joy could come to me again in this month that had brought so much sorrow? I fought with myself. I wanted to hold onto my grief. Yet to reject love would be to reject life itself. And I needed Maria. Oh, how I needed her! I felt I could not go on without her love. And I know she needed my love, too.
Maria and I found mutual friends in Lodz -- the Urwiczes. Frances Urwicz and her husband Josef and their two sons had left the ghetto before the final uprising of the Jews there. they hid in a small village near Warsaw until the liberation.
One of the sons, who could easily pass as Aryan, travelled occasionally to Warsaw to try to make a little money to sustain the family and to bring back necessary supplies. One day he was picked up on the street as a suspect, turned over to the Nazis, and immediately shot. After the liberation, the Urwiczes and their second son settled in Lodz. Maria and I visited them frequently.
On the evening of May 7th, on our way to visit these friends, we heard great news from loudspeakers on the street: The Nazis have surrendered unconditionally to the Allies.
For a moment it seemed the world around us froze with joy, then erupted into tears and laughter and excited screaming. Strangers hugged and kissed strangers. We rushed on to the Urwiczes to find a dozen people already there with the exciting news. All of us hugging one another, crying with gratitude that the Nazi terror was finally at an end. None of us had dreamed we would live to see the Nazis' downfall. Luftwaffe planes were in the air until the end, their bombs a constant threat. Our relief was nearly unbearable.
The occasion called for a great celebration. Maria and Frances went to the kitchen, the other women joining them. Some of the men left, returning shortly with packages of food and wine. Before long a feast was laid out with vodka and liqueurs, hoarded no doubt for just such an eventuality. We had sandwiches and snacks of all kinds.
Our first toast was actually a prayer of thanks for our deliverance. Our second toast was also solemn -- to the memory of all of our family and friends now with us only in our hearts.
Also that night, our hosts proposed a toast to Maria's and my engagement. In that singular moment of joy, however, I could not wuppress my sorrow. I looked into Maria's eyes with tears streaming from my own. In that moment, I knew she understood and forgave that I had loved Luta and could never forget her. I drew Maria to me with a silent promise. We were about to write a new book in our lives. Together we could bear whatever the future might hold, because nothing could be as bad as the past.
A radio announcement informed us that the curfew had been lifted for the night. Th eparty was still going strong when Maria and I left the Urwiczes home. Back on the street, it seemed the townspeople had gone mad with joy. Dancing, huggin, kissing, crying, laughing. Bottles and flasks exchanged hands freely, happily. No one was a stranger tonight.
Musicians playing violins, guitars, clarinets, saxophones wandered among the revellers. Overhead, Polish planes dipped crazily in salute. Far off in the night, Russian and Polish guns fired cannonades. More than once we were nearly swept off our feet by the celebrating mobs before we finally reached Maria's apartment. We hated to part, but I had a new and sobering sense of responsibility. I must get to work as usual in the morning.
By July, thanks to some of my influential friends, I was assigned to manage a women's clothing store of my own. On August 5th, Maria and I were married.
A number of other couples, bereft of spouses and familes, were also marrying, new beginnings, new partners, hoping to establish new families. The ceremonies were separate, but we were witnesses for one another. For a party, each couple invited their closest friends. We were a fine group of well-wishers for each other. They were not the gayest of weddings, but I feel each couple, as Maria and I did, faced the future with renewed hope and fortitude and purpose. There is an improved quality of life that is to be had from a sense of belonging to another, to a family.
After our marriage, Maria left her job with the city and came to work in our store. In no time we were making money.
Business took a sudden upsurge after the war. There was a great shortage of manpower, which made jobs easy to get. People once more had money to spend. They began to dress better and to go to places of amusement, to forget the terror of five years of war. Restaurants and nightclubs were crowded every evening. Patrons ate, danced, and drank with abandon. Maria and I joined the gayety each night after closing our store. For us, it was a honeymoon.
Businessmen had no confidence in the government operated banks. They carried their money with them in briefcases wherever they went. The wheels of commerce turned slowly at first, then picking up speed.
By the beginning of 1946, it became evident that Polish Communists, under direction from Moscow, did not intend to give Poland her freedom. Soon, private business and industry would be in the hands of a Communist government. The brief bubble of prosperity was inflated to the breaking point.
A referendum was presented to the Polish citizens. One provision was for abolishing the Senate. The people hoped to vote this down. But the result was deliberately falsified. It did not reflect the will of the people. The Senate was abolished. The Provisional Government of National Unity (as the Polish Communist Committee now called themselves) was a front for a Communist dictatorship ruled by Moscow. Clearly, they would not permit a free and honest election by the Polish people. All opposition was being put down by force. The remnant of the Underground in the forests was now being "liquidated."
Weighing all this, Maria and I decided to sell our prosperous business. I applied for a government job, for it seemed that only government employees could survive in this political climate.
There was an acute shortage of able men for administrative work. The intelligentsia had been virtually wiped out by the Nazis, now also by the Russians. The Katyn Forest Massacre of 3,000 Polish Army officers is an example of Russia's role.
With my business training, I felt I had a good chance of landing a government position. My friends were instrumental in finding a contact for me, and I was given a post in the Department of Agriculture.
Poland had been given a large portion of East Germany in exchange for territory in East Poland, which had been confiscated by the Russians. Polish families who lost their land in the east were assigned rich farmlands in East Germany. When the German farmers evacuated their land, they left behind heavy farm equipment. This, in turn, was confiscated by the Polish government.
The Department of Agriculture, realizing the essential nature of farming, trained a large crew of men to operate the machinery: tractors, cultivators, harvesters, and so on. The farmer had to rent the equipment and pay for operator services. I was in charge of this project with a workforce of 200 men. Maria was assigned as my secretary. I established an office in a lttle town in the middle of farming country. As Director of this new program, the farmers had to pay me. They were not permitted to own their own equipment. I, in turn, after deducting Maria's and my salaries, paid the operators . . . the balance went to the Polish government.
I continued to use my Polish name and false papers. Jews had hoped that anti-semitism would die out in Poland after the tribulations we all suffered in the war. But that didn't happen. Extremist Poles were constantly on the lookout for Jews masquerading as Poles. When discovered, they were murdered.
Coupled with fears caused by anti-semitism, we were deeply concerned over the political trend. Free elections, which had been promised at the Yalta meetings of the Allies, failed to materialize. It began to dawn on non-communist Poles that they had not been "liberated" by the Russians, after all, but were nce more a captive people.
The treachery of the Russians was abundantly clear. Angered by the refusal of the Nationalist Polish Underground to accept their help in pushing the Nazis out of Poland, the Russians bided their time in Praga, on the other side of the Vistula River, until the rebellion failed and Warsaw was buried in its own rubble.
Though the Russians did not actually occupy Poland, Moscow now dictated the policies of the Provisional Government of National Unity. These acts and more ponted to their premeditated crime: the rape of Poland.
As horrible as their lot had been during five years of Nazi occupation, many Poles now realized that Communist domination would be a worse disaster for them.
The great powers were fooled into believing the name Provisional Government of National Unity represented the democratic elements of the Polish people. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
The position of the few Jews who remained seemed doubly perilous: Communist domination versus persistant anti-semitism.
Maria and I were invited (meaning commanded) to a dinner in the home of the Secretary of the Communist Party, whose district included our town. We had no choice but to go.
Following a lovely dinner and several rounds of vodka, our wives chatted on the divan while the Secretary and I moved into his library. Then he revealed the reason for his hospitality.
First, I must note that the new government insisted that every citizen belong to a political party. This, they believed correctly, would satisfy the Allies that their mandate for a representative government in Poland was being followed.
The Labor Party and the Farmers Party were already in existence. But, the Secretary now confides, too many Poles refuse to belong to either party because they know both parties are under the influence of the Communists. For political reasons, it is important that non-affiliated Poles should make up a third party.
The Communist Party was looking for leaders with good reputations, men repected in their communities, to organize a so-called "Democratic" party, and to enlist the independents into the new party.
In the intimate ambience of his library, the Secretary confided that I was the man to do the job in our town.
I admit to being under the influence of the vodka, but not so much that I could misread his meaning. He was not making me an offer, but issuing a direct order.
With this he took a gun from his desk drawer and laid it on top of the desk. This gun, he told me, was now mine. I was to go to the Secret Police the next day to pick up a permit, which was already waiting for me there.
The Secretary had arranged everything for me. Tomorrow, he said, a man would contact me. This man has been assigned to me as Secretary for the Democratic Party. This man knew the entire setup and would handle all the details of organization. Clearly they wanted only my reputation and the rapport I had with the townspeople and farmers. He gave me the address for this man; it was that of headquarters for the Communist Party.
Though I was to be Director of the Democratic Pary, I would have to report directly to my secretary of the Democratic Party, giving him lists of those who signed up. I was to work in cooperation with him. Each month, heads of the three parties would meet to make decisions. My "secretary" represented the Labor Party. He would expect me to uphold his decisions in these meetings.
He then told me that every town was being organized in this manner. the heads of the three parties comprised the government of their town. Their power was absolute.
The proposal/order and the gun sobered me. I must keep my wits about me or Maria and I would not leave that house alive.
I put the gun in my pocket, assuring him that I would pick up the permit the next day, as well as the permit, also waiting for me, to organize the Democratic Party. I told him he could count on my cooperation with him as well as with my Party secretary.
We had a couple more drinks to toast my new assignment, then Maria and I left. It was midnight when we arrived home. Neither of us slept that night. Maria had heard enough to know our position was extremely dangerous. Not only would I have to be a Communist agent (every fiber of my being rebelled at the idea), but if we were discovered to be Jews, it would mean instant death. We had not lost so much, suffered so much to even give a second thought to this "proposal." I would pick up the gun in the morning (we might need it for our own protection). I would meet with the party "secretary." Then she and I would disappear from the town -- and from Poland.
The day following getting the permits and meeting with the "secretary," Maria and I packed two small pieces of luggage, such as would be normal for a short outing or overnight, and caught a train that left town before sunrise, heading west. So as not to arouse suspicion, we left all but our most essential belongings. The train took us to Breslau, where we found friends who were also preparing to leave the country. We remained there only long enough to map out a plan.
During the time we lived in Lodz, I wrote a number of articles for the newspaper, taken from my memoirs. They attracted the attention of a former Polish Jew, Pat Jacob, who went to America with his family before the war. He was now making a tour of the entire European Theatre of war for first-hand information about the situation of Jews in Europe.
He wanted to buy my memoirs, but I was not ready to part with them. At the time, He gave me advice, which I now entertained seriously. He had suggested that I leave Poland and go to the American Zone in Germany, where we would have good opportunity to obtain visas for the United States. Maria and I decided to take that advice. Immediately.
(111)
From Breslau we took a freight train, along with many others who, like us, wanted to get out of East Germany. We had money for travel in better style, but there was no other option. And time was of the essence.
It took us two days and nights on this slow freight train to escape the Russian occupied part of Germany. Then we passed through the English Zone. Finally, we arrived in Frankfort-on-the-Main in the American Zone, bone-weary from the journey, but buoyed by excitement. We had our first glimpse of American soldiers, American Jeeps, American military cars.
In Frankfort we lived among Germans. Yesterday, our murderers. Today, under the protection of American forces, we were free of fear. Not since my escape from Majdanek had the sensation of being free felt so bittersweet.
The situation in Frankfort seemed well organized. An active, efficient office of the American Joint Distribution Committee had assumed all responsibility for displaced Jews seeking to emigrate.
We presented ourselves to the head social worker there -- an able young woman whose soulful eyes seemed to have witnessed all the misery in the world. She had a soothing voice that immediately calmed our fears, gave peace ot our hearts. She spoke German fluently. Yes, she was sure she could get us the papers to go to the United States, but we would have to be patient. For the meantime, she arranged for us to go to a DP camp in Eschwege, not far from Frankfort. The population of the camp, which had been a Luftwaffe base during the war, was 2,000 Jews, all waiting for a home.
To relieve the tedium of waiting, I bought a small used radio, and, as I knew several languages, I was able to pick up news from various European sources. Several people joined me in this venture, which supplied the residents of the camp with world news. I received extra rations (chocolate and cigarettes, e.g.) for this service; and, as editor of the paper, we were given nicer quarters, including a bedroom.
During the waiting months, I at last had a chance to rest and lie in the sun. My skin problems, which had been very stubborn, healed completely. Slowly, my health improved.
It took several months for our papers to be processed. When we finally received notice to appear at the American Consulate in Frankfort, our first thought was the fear of being refused. But we had to push fear aside and continue the process.
First we were fingerprinted and photographed, put through all kinds of medical tests and x-rays. We had complete physicals from American doctors and nurses. After all that, we were facing the American Consul.
Neither Maria nor I could speak English. The Consul could not speak German. A German translator interpreted for all parties. I could see the concern in Maria's eyes. We did not trust the translator. It would be too easy for him to misquote us. "Nervous" does not begin to describe our feelings of the moment.
After a 20-minute exchange of questions and answers, while the Consul paged through our papers, I heard him say the one English word I know: "Okay." It was the most beautiful word I had ever heard.
We were then transferred to an emigration center in Frankfort. Eleven-hundred of us crowded into barracks as we waited for a ship to America. Because we were all a step closer to realizing our dream, everyone made light of any discomforts.
Every evening we went to places of amusement. Maria and I attended operas and theaters. We enjoyed many of the cultural advantages Frankfort had to offer. Our waiting time, two months, passed quickly.
At last, we were taken to Bremer-Haven, the point of embarkation.
January 28th, 1947 was our sailing date. Awed and a little frightened, we went down to the dock that morning. Our ship, The Marine Porch, waited in the harbor. The sunlight was so brilliant, it made an aureole of gold around the boat.
Maria excitedly grabbed my arm, "George, it is my dream ship! My dream ship! I have seen this boat before. I sailed in it to America. It was crowded with strangers." I looked at her as though she were talking crazy. I knew Maria had never been on an ocean voyage in her life.
She explained: In her second year of Gymnasium, her class had an assignment: They must write about an actual dream, just as it occurred. In Maria's dream, she sailed in a boat exactly like this one. It, too, had been bathed in golden light and was crowded with strangers. She had won a prize for her dream account.
Could this moment, then, be the consummation of her dream? I had heard of such things but only half-believed.
Maria cried softly as we walked up the gangplank. I noticed others walking in resolute silence. It was a moment weighted with emotion.
Our boat was actually a troop transport ship used during the war. Would it hold 1100 people? We didn't care. Yes, it had seen better days, but we knew there were not enough ships to accomodate the many Europeans clamoring to go to America. Grateful for any passage, we all boarded.
The men had bunks in the lower part of the ship. . . the women above. During the day, all could mix freely.
The first four days the voyage was smooth. Then we hit heavy weather. Our little ship was tossed and battered. No one could go out on decks. Some of the superstructure had been torn away. Everyone was seasick and bruised; some became hysterical.
We had one night of terror. At the height of the storm, the lights went out and the thunderous throbbing of our engines -- stopped. After all we had been through, were we to end at the bottom of the Atlantic?
In the women's quarters, Maria had a bunk high up, near the ceiling. The scene there, she told me later, was "Rabelaisian." One woman closed her baggage and tried to walk down the narrow passageway between the bunks, screaming that she needed to get off the boat. She had to be restrained, as the women feared she would jump overboard.
Another woman lay in the aisle, very sick. From her high viewpoint, Maria could see her being tossed, side to side against the bunks.
Near hysteria herself, Maria could not control her laughter. Another womn hung over the side of her bunk laughing. It was the mirthless laughter of the insane.
From her bunk, Maria discovered she could see into the Engine Room. Men were in there working to repair the problem. They worked with deliberate motions and without panic. She was reassured by this.
Toward morning, the great heart of one of the engines began to beat again. We proceeded very slowly for the rest of the crossing, a full two weeks in all.
The last few days were calm and bright. Out on deck we strained our eyes to the west, anxious for some sight of land. In spite of difficulties ahead (learning a new language, adjusting to a new culture, finding work), 1100 of us were impatient to get started in a new life.
On February 11, 1947 -- a clear, radiant day with a lift of spring on the breeze -- The New York skyline rose into view.
As we drew nearer, tall buildings sparkled in the sun, emitting shafts of reflected and refracted light. The Goddess of Liberty held high her welcoming torch of freedom.
All passengers were at once on deck, shouting themselves hoarse with excitement or weeping with relief and joy.
Th evil winds of our lives had finally driven our bark to a golden shore.
Through the Jewish Community Council, arrangements had already been made for Maria and me to come to Dayton. An apartment and jobs were waiting. We went to work immediately: Maria as a draftsman, and I as accountant for a supermarket chain. We enrolled in night school and tackled English. Fortunately, the office manager where I worked spoke German, which helped smooth the first months.
Maria and I made friends and began to know a happiness that was new to us; but it took almost a year before we were able to relax completely, before we lost the fear that at any moment there would be a tap on the shoulder and freedom would end.
In 1951 we moved to Fairborn, bought our own brick ranch house, and I opened a jewelry store on West Main Street.
That same year, our son, George, Jr, was born. A blue-eyed blond who reminded me deeply of the son I lost in Majdanek. I could only pray that George, Jr would never know such horror.
A year later, Maria and I became American citizens, an incredibly proud moment for us. For the first time in my life I knew what it was to live in a world untainted with anti-Semitic hate.
I became active in Fairborn civic groups: The Masonic Lodge, the Lions Club, The Toastmasters, The Civic Music Association, the Retail Merchants Association.
I will never forget the moment when I felt complete acceptance. It was the night the Lions asked me to speak of my concentration camp experiences. When I finished, the members rose as one and came forward to shake my hand. Never, in six years, had I seen such a strong reaction to a speaker.
We had come to America with empty lives and now they were full.
Last year, though, the business climate forced me to make a decision: I closed my shop and moved my family to Cincinnati, where I now manage a jewelry store.
George, Jr. is now in the second grade. I have told him nothing of the past because I do not want to put shadows into his happy young life. But someday, when he is older, I will tell him. In many ways, what happened to me is part of his heritage.
I have several written communications from George. And, though I don't find it in writing, I'm certain he told me about a son, William or just Bill, they adopted through a Jewish agency in Columbus. Around the age of four, he proved to be retarded and a savant for the piano. When I first meet George, he said Bill lived in a housing situation with others and was 29 years old. I have not been able to find this in writing.
Some of my notes and thoughts:
In August 1982, with my three children in a 14-foot yellow Ryder truck packed with our possessions, I left for Grand Forks, ND, where I would go to graduate school and teach Freshmen English classes. I took the manuscript with me, telling George my hope was to use it somehow as my Master's thesis, thereby getting it into shape and proper format for submitting to publishers. That was my thought then.
As editor of North Country, UND's literary publication of student, faculty, alumni prose, poetry, art, it was my honor to meet many of the writers who attended and contributed to UND's annual Writers Conference. The only name I'm dropping here is Norman Mailer, whom I met in 1985.
A couple of years later, after having done nothing but worry about George and his manuscript, I contacted Mailer and told him about George Pfeffer and asked if he could help me get George's story published. Mailer had me send the ms to his publisher, FSG. My heart was full of hope, because I had realized how nobody I was and inexperienced, not to mention inept, for what I had undertaken years earlier.
How can so many comply with so unjust demands without a fight?
I wish you could answer me this, George.
I am astounded that you see God's
hand in your son's life, when so many other children have perished.
Where was God for them? Was your faith so much greater?
When Job was so sorely tested, others were not.
It is easy, I think, to have faith in God
when you are singled out for suffering. But in a crowd?
Am I getting angry with God as I read your account again?
No, not that. I am so very angered by man's inhumanity to man,
the insidious evil of which men are capable.
But you, George, so quick to see and seize opportunity to save
your family, your son! Such an intellect for memorizing names and numbers!
Why not sooner? Why not sooner. . .
about 25 years ago, I was just sick about it. Man's inhumanity to man,
etc. George's memories were painful to read.
Writing his memories, however, has caused a different perception. Often
I sense that they are MY memories.
The sensation brings to mind John Donne's "No man is an island" sermon;
Carl Jung's Collective Unconscious theory;
even a quote I heard by chance last night--
The most dangerous form of denial is delay. And Faith.
How are these things related? What do they have to do
with what happened to so many so long ago?
to meet Elie Wiesel at UND when he came to speak
at the Chester Fritz Auditorium. I told him I have
George Pfeffer's manuscript. Wiesel said, "Send it to me."
I added that George is wanting his story published.
Wiesel said, "Send it to me."
I knew he wanted it just for his files and it would rot there,
so I made a copy and sent it to him. Never a word, of course.
