By Chance Alone Read online

  On the next Sunday morning, the Kapos ordered us to give up our jackets and pants so they could be disinfected, and in the afternoon, the entire camp was given a shower. Thousands of us gathered in front of the entrance to the shower. The door was only a few feet wide, and I knew from experience that there was going to be mayhem when it opened. The waiting prisoners would all try to get in at the same time. Anyone who fell on the ground would certainly be crushed by the mob. I asked myself if a shower was worth putting my life in danger, and then tried to determine where I should position myself so that I would be safe. But as soon as the door opened, I was sucked into a whirlpool of bodies. I fought with all my strength not to lose my footing or be trampled. Suddenly, I felt myself pushed up over the top of people’s heads, and then I was passed toward the edge of the mob, where I fell to the ground, uninjured. Some people were not so lucky and were trampled to death under the feet of their fellow prisoners. I missed my opportunity to shower, but I was thankful to have made it out alive. A few days later, on March 15, I turned sixteen years old. Would I make it to seventeen?

  ***

  As we neared the end of March 1945, the weather became increasingly warmer. I could hear sounds of bombing coming from the east, from the direction of Vienna, and I felt encouraged that the end of the war was coming closer. My thoughts turned to my home life back in Moldava, where we would have been celebrating the holiday of Purim, which commemorates the salvation of the Persian Jews from the murderous tyrant Haman. On Purim, it was our custom to share goodies with our friends and neighbours to celebrate our freedom from oppression. Our home would be filled with the enticing aroma of baked goods and delicious cooking. My mother would make chicken paprikash with all the trimmings. How long ago it seemed, and now it was only a memory for my mind to savour.

  One morning after wake-up call, I felt very sick. I had stomach cramps, diarrhea, fever, and dizziness. How was I going to cope today? I simply wanted to curl up into a ball and pay the consequences. But my bunkmates hauled me out of bed and pushed me into a line to receive our breakfast tea, which I couldn’t even drink. I barely managed to march from the camp to the train that took us to work. When I arrived on the site, I started to collect the broken drills from the night shift and take them to the blacksmith for welding. I told him that I was very sick, that I had diarrhea and couldn’t keep anything in my stomach. He gave me a piece of charcoal to chew and swallow with a bit of water. He said it would take a few days to kill the germs in my stomach, and he told me to crawl under a bench in the shop and sleep it off in the meantime. I ate charcoal for three days and became very dehydrated. I gave my meagre rations to my bunkmates, because anything I put into my stomach would not stay there. I was so weak, I felt that I was at the tipping point.

  On the third day of the sickness, while I was marching from the train to the camp after our shift, I got severe cramps in my stomach, and my bowels suddenly evacuated. In this moment, I released the poison from my body and instantly felt better. I knew that Misha’s home remedy had saved me. Without his charcoal, I would not have survived this illness, and I was grateful for his help. However, my pants were a new problem to deal with. I had to walk back to camp, smelling putrid, and quickly wash the pants with cold water and no soap. The next day I wore wet pants to work, which was extremely uncomfortable.

  The next day, when our shift ended and we were lining up to be counted, the civilian foreman came running up to the officer in charge and reported that someone had sabotaged the conveyor belt by cutting out two pieces to use as soles for their shoes. This was a very serious violation. The Kommandant announced that the person who had done this had one minute to step forward, but no one did. The Kommandant then ordered the SS guards to pick out every tenth person from the line and bring them forward. They skipped over me by only two people, and I breathed a giant sigh of relief. They marched the men a short distance away and then the Kommandant gave the order to fire. Ten men were murdered to set an example for the rest of us.

  ***

  At the end of March 1945, I saw large groups of civilians from the direction of Vienna fleeing west by boat on the Danube. I also saw overloaded trains with people sitting on top and hanging off the sides. From the top of the hill in the camp, I saw military and civilian vehicles, buggies loaded with furniture, and people on foot pulling handcarts full of goods—all of them fleeing the advancing Red Army and heading toward the Americans in the west. Clearly Austrians were not accustomed to travelling in this style.

  If everyone was running away, what would happen to us slave labourers? I hoped that our guards would simply go away and leave us alone, but that is not what happened. The next morning, we were marched down to the railway station to work as if it were just another ordinary day. I collected drills and carried them to the blacksmith’s shop. Misha told me that there was no need to work quickly because the Red Army would soon be here. “Go and sleep under the bench,” he said. Soon after, I was awakened by the sound of shooting. I jumped up, and Misha and I looked out the window to see a fighter plane circling around our yard at a very low altitude, shooting at anything that moved. A locomotive pulling boxcars full of aircraft parts emerged from the tunnel, unaware of the fighter plane. The pilot banked around and fired a stream of bullets into the locomotive, which exploded, creating chaos everywhere. Misha shouted over the noise that it was a Russian Yak fighter plane. It felt wonderful to have a front seat for the pandemonium that a single airplane had caused.

  When the coast was clear, I took my drills and went back into the tunnel, where no one yet knew of the strafing by the airplane in the yard. I had a feeling that the end was very near. When our shift ended, the SS lined us up to be counted as usual, but the evening shift did not arrive. We climbed into the boxcars and went back to the camp, where there was a buzz about the pause in operations. I thought that if the SS made us take another death march, at least I would not have to worry about freezing weather this time.

  The next day’s wake-up call came earlier than usual, and this time the entire camp was assembled in the square. We stood for some time and then were ordered to line up in rows of five, after which we were divided into several groups. My group was taken in the direction of the railway. I took a last glimpse of the Franciscan monastery, thinking that I would never see it again, and then followed the other inmates in my group down to the banks of the Danube, where there were many barges tied to the shore. The SS crammed us into one carrying metal railway tracks. Once the barge was fully loaded with people, its openings were secured with metal covers and padlocked so we could not escape. I thought to myself, If this barge sinks, we’re all doomed. Then I wondered if they intended to drown us by deliberately sinking the barges.

  One tugboat pulled several of these barges, which were attached to each other with metal cables, and eventually I felt the movement of the waves on the Danube. We were headed upriver to the west. We were only a fraction of the prisoners from Melk—about one thousand people—and I figured that most of the inmates were being evacuated to other camps. The following day, the barges were tied up and we were ordered to get out. We found ourselves in Linz, Austria. I saw a large area full of bomb craters—possibly former factories. The SS marched us through the city of Linz, and after a full day’s march, we bedded down for the night in a farmer’s field near Gmunden. I dug around in the dirt of the field and managed to find a couple of small potatoes. I savoured them and then slept soundly through the starry night. We marched on, without any food or water, to the town of Wels. That evening, we again camped out in an open field. The following day, we walked through a town called Lambach. On the third day, the road climbed to a higher elevation; it was very warm and the column began to stretch out, with many men unable to keep up. The SS gave us one hour to rest. There were pine trees on one side of us, and on the other side the road dropped off into a valley. The scenery was beautiful, and under different circumstances this might have been a wonderful outing. When the rest period was over, we march
ed on and followed the road ever higher. At this point, we had been without food or water for four days, and I was desperately thirsty.

  Along the sides of the road, we started seeing signs that said, “Achtung Tiefflieger” (Beware of enemy fighter planes). Suddenly, I heard an airplane approaching. The pilot began strafing us from the rear of the column, but he stopped suddenly and veered off when he realized we were not enemy troops. He then returned to the front of the column and tilted his wings at us in what I thought was a sort of apology. Fortunately, no one in our group suffered fatal injuries. I could see the star on the airplane and knew it was an American fighter. I thought to myself that if an American airplane could fly that low without being challenged, their army could not be far away.

  We came to a sharp turn in the road and I saw an amazing scene in the valley below: a beautiful lake called Ebensee with blue water and houses and trees around the shoreline. I could see several Luftwaffe soldiers in blue uniforms leisurely rowing their girlfriends in boats on the still lake. This sight was a remarkable contrast to the prisoners around me, and I wondered how these people could enjoy this peaceful vignette while we were so downtrodden. There and then, I vowed to myself that if I survived, I would one day experience the pleasure of boating on a peaceful lake. A short while later, we entered the gates of Ebensee KL.

  Ebensee KL was on a plateau encircled by mountains, and it was a stark contrast to the beautiful town and the lake situated in the valley below. I had a sense that this would be the last camp for me to endure, and that liberation could not be far off. Most of the inmates in my barracks were Greek Jews, and I once again had to go through the usual process of integration among already established inmates with their hierarchies and seniorities. In my new work unit, we were detailed to mix cement and pour it into forms to produce large tiles. Thankfully, we were not pressed to work hard, and it seemed to me that we were simply putting in time while the war wound down. It was the first week of April 1945. I was skeletal and the soles of my once-sturdy boots had large holes in them. Like most inmates, I was infested with lice. They burrowed under my skin to suck out my meagre drops of blood. They also carried the typhus bacteria from body to body. Most of the men in my barrack were sick with high fevers from typhus, and there was no medication or doctors to treat them. Many of them died in their bunks, their bodies unceremoniously carried outside and piled up in the latrine.

  Around mid-April, the SS ceased distributing rations and the water system was shut down. I walked to the cistern where water was collected for extinguishing fires. It was large and had steep sides that angled down toward the bottom. Because the water level was very low, these side walls were about eight metres high. I saw several bodies floating in the cistern, and I suspected that these men had tried to get water and could not crawl back out because of the steep angle. I noticed others who had cups with a long string attached so they could retrieve some water in this way. I was surprised to see the Lichtman brothers, Gaby and Bandy, whom I knew from home. They told me that their father had died just a week before. I was happy to see them, but I also envied the fact that they had each other while I was alone. I knew they couldn’t take care of me, though. I went back to the barracks and I didn’t see them at Ebensee again.

  The situation was desperate and there were cadavers all over the camp. There were mountains of naked bodies piled in the main square, the clothing removed by desperate living souls. People were starving to death, and some even chewed on their leather boots to get any kind of juices into their stomachs. I grew weaker and weaker, and finally I succumbed to fever. I slept for days, consumed by fever dreams. When I awoke, I dragged myself to the cistern to try to get a drink, but by then there were so many bodies floating in the water it was impossible.

  A few days later, I woke up to the smell of cooking meat, a smell that was nauseating to me in my ravaged state. Several inmates sat around a small stove and watched as a pot boiled. I could not imagine how they had acquired meat, but when I crawled to the latrine where the cadavers were stacked, I noticed that some of the bodies were missing pieces from their buttocks. I put two and two together and realized what kind of meat was being cooked in the pot. Desperate people will do desperate things to survive. I crawled back to my bunk and hoped that I would not be their next meal.

  The next morning, an inmate shuffled in with his wooden clogs and made a surprising announcement. He said the SS guards were no longer in the watchtower and there was a white flag flying at the main gate. Was it possible that our liberators had finally arrived? I was very sick and weak, but I marshalled my strength and climbed over bodies on the floor, determined to get out of the barracks. In that moment, I felt that getting outside meant life, and that if I stayed inside, where I was surrounded by death, I would surely perish. When I looked up and saw the white flag with my own eyes, I knew that my horrible ordeal was over. I felt as if a crushing weight was lifted off my body.

  At that moment, the gate came crashing down and a tank with a white star barrelled through. What a sight it was! Several African American soldiers were sitting up on the turret, their eyes wide as they gazed in horror at the scene before them and smelled the odour of thousands of decomposing bodies. Our liberators belonged to a unit called the 761st Tank Battalion, which was attached to General George S. Patton’s Third Army. Known as the Black Panthers, they had come through the Battle of the Bulge in France, but the devastation here was more horrific than any battlefield conditions they had witnessed. Had they arrived mere hours later, many more of us would have been dead. The date was May 6, 1945.

  Ebensee after liberation.

  Survivors of Ebensee.

  CHAPTER 21

  Ebensee, After Liberation

  After observing the situation in Ebensee, the tank unit left and reported back to headquarters. The war would not end for another two days, and they left to liberate other camps, such as Gunskirchen and Mauthausen. After a short while, an American jeep full of officers arrived to assess the horrendous situation in Ebensee. There were decomposing bodies piled high in the square, sick and skeletal inmates who were naked or only partially clad, a typhus epidemic and lice infestation, thousands of starving people. I heard an officer on his radio discussing the next steps. For these men from the 40th Infantry Division, it was their first experience with a concentration camp full of walking skeletons. Their first act was to sanitize the camp and eliminate the typhus bacteria, and to accomplish this, all the barracks had to be burned to the ground.

  I was content simply to watch the events as they unfolded. There were no more SS guards, no more Kapos, and no one could harm me. Many thoughts went through my head, and some memories of events with which I could barely cope. I realized that I would need help to get back on my feet before I could deal with any other issues, such as where I would go from here, and how I would get food and shelter.

  While I lay on the ground, I could hear the sound of heavy trucks slowly coming up the road. The trucks rolled through the gates, bringing dozens of soldiers with them. The soldiers’ reactions were amazing to see—they wanted to help us, but they didn’t want to touch us. I felt ashamed that anyone had to see me in my filthy, helpless, demeaning condition. I felt exposed and vulnerable. The officers ordered the soldiers to spread out through the camp and assess which prisoners needed to be attended to immediately. Other trucks brought female nurses, hospital tents, mobile kitchens and supplies, and canvas cots. A big water tanker arrived, and the soldiers set up showers.

  A female nurse wearing a mask picked me up. She cut off my filthy shirt and sprayed me with DDT to kill my lice infestation, then started to wash me under the showers. I felt so ashamed to be attended to in this condition, and I needed much more than one washing to remove the dirt. After the shower, I was laid on a canvas cot in the hospital tent. It was heavenly, even though all my bones ached from months of lying on wooden planks. Eventually, doctors made the rounds, examined each one of us, and recorded their findings. I had a superficial exa
m because there were so many patients to attend to and so many issues to be addressed elsewhere in the camp.

  The kitchens were set up and meals prepared. I could smell the aroma of a stew, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to eat it. I couldn’t walk and I feared getting caught in a stampede of starving people. The smell of the food brought anyone who could still walk to the kitchen, and I could hear the soldiers shouting, “Hold it! Hold it! The food is not ready!” Nobody listened. The soldiers tried to rope off the kitchen area, but this didn’t help much. One soldier took out his pistol and fired into the air. I knew that even bullets would not hold back the mob. The soldiers just did not understand that they were dealing with starving people who had lost all sense of normalcy. Eventually, they began to ladle the stew into bowls and distribute it to the inmates, who wolfed it down. Soon their bellies were protruding, and within minutes some men’s stomachs had ruptured and many died on the spot. There was a terrible irony in the fact that so many had survived hunger only to die now that food was finally available. The kitchen unit quickly stopped cooking hard-to-digest proteins and turned to bread and scrambled powdered eggs to feed the liberated prisoners. In the hospital tent, I received water, crackers, and powdered milk.

  My first night sleeping on the cot in the tent was a restful one. When I awoke, I saw large trucks carrying big bulldozers on trailers. The soldiers used these bulldozers to dig five deep trenches. At noon, US military police brought a group of local civilians to the trenches and told them to carry the dead, with one person holding the hands and another the feet. The townspeople were all dressed up in their Sunday best. Men wore suits and ties, and women wore summer dresses. They held scarves to their noses because of the stench; in many cases, flesh came away in their hands as they touched the bodies. The people looked horrified. When they dropped the naked cadavers into the trench, they looked like rag dolls. Somebody’s father. Somebody’s son or brother. Thousands of nameless bodies were disposed of in these mass graves.