By Chance Alone Read online

  Once we were in our bunks, the lights were turned off. There was snoring and groaning from the day’s hard labour. When we went to sleep, we only took off our boots. I used mine as a pillow, tying the shoelaces to my wrist so people would not be able to steal them from me in the night. As I lay in my bunk, I tried to digest the events of the past twenty-four hours. I thought of my clean and comfortable bed at home, which now seemed a million miles away, and I wondered what the next day had in store.

  ***

  After we finished harvesting the mustard, our unit was split in two. We were down to fifty people from the original hundred. My father, my uncle, and I stayed together in the Landwirtschaft Kommando and would be given a new assignment. After one week in Auschwitz, I had learned some of the ropes and was beginning to understand how to exist in this horrible place. But the dreariness of following the same routine every day was draining, and there was no mental stimulation of any kind.

  Much worse than the everyday indignities and deprivations were the horrors I was exposed to on a daily basis. I recall coming back to camp from work on the third or fourth day and seeing a body hanging from the gallows, right in our faces. The man wore a sign that read, “This is what happens to people who try to run away from here.” It was a shock to see the man hanging, and it was also a warning to keep us in line.

  Every day there was another unexpected horror. Those who tried to smuggle in so-called contraband from work—a potato or a beet, for example—were often discovered at the gate, and were given twenty-five lashes for their transgression. This punishment was always meted out at appel in the evening, when all inmates were present and had to watch. The accused person was stripped naked and bent over a wooden drum, and his hands and feet were tied down. His back and buttocks were exposed, and he was whipped by a Kapo. In reality, this beating was usually a death sentence, because hardly anyone was able to recover from it. The gallows was located in the same place.

  When it was not used to torture and execute inmates, this open square in front of the camp kitchen served other purposes. Sometimes, there was a black market where we could barter our bread rations for rags or something we called mahorka (a tobacco made from tree bark). Many of the old-timers were able to get a hold of luxuries such as meat, brandy, cigarettes, cigars, and woollen blankets from Holland. These special items were available only to the Prominente, the prisoners at the very top of the camp hierarchy. The Prominente lived in comfort compared to the rest of us, enjoying separate rooms and special privileges that gave them status and safety. Most importantly, they had connections they could use to procure food, clothing, and other luxuries. The rest of us had absolutely no chance to partake in these exclusive items. In the twisted logic of Auschwitz, this main square was both a place of everyday commerce and bureaucracy, and a site of torture.

  CHAPTER 10

  Draining Swamps

  It took about a week to harvest all the mustard (although it felt like an eternity), and after that we returned to Budy to pick up our tools for the next assignment. Shovels and hoes were loaded on a two-wheeled cart and brought to a large swampy area, where we were split into two groups. The first group was forced to dig trenches on the edge of the swamp, while the other group, which included me, waded in with boots on to dig channels to direct the water into the perimeter ditch. The sun was burning hot, and my boots and trousers were soon wet and full of mud. Despite all the water around us, we weren’t able to drink it because it could cause dysentery, which was often fatal. I had thought the mustard fields were awful, but this was much, much worse.

  During our lunch break, my father, my uncle, and I sat together as a family, just as we did every day. The Kapo, Heinrich, must have noticed this, though, because he stood right in front of us and asked my father to identify the person next to him, pointing to my uncle. My father said it was his brother. Then he pointed at me and asked who I was. My father said I was his son. I feared that this was not going to end well.

  I had taken my boots off during lunch to try to get the mud out of them, and so I was barefoot when the Kapo yelled at us to get our hoes and get back to work. I rushed to get my boots on while still sitting on the ground, but I wasn’t quick enough for Heinrich, who expected his orders to be followed immediately. He began to beat me with his truncheon. I thought my bones were going to crack, but I didn’t utter a sound. I had noticed that when the Kapo was beating others, he would pile it on even harder if they yelled out from the pain or begged him to stop. I kept my mouth shut, hoping that he would be more quickly satisfied and would leave me alone. When he was finished with the beating, I grabbed my tools and my boots and ran into the swamp to continue working. This was the first serious beating I’d received in Auschwitz. I was sore and had welts all over my body, but thankfully nothing was broken. Still, I felt violated and humiliated.

  The next day, Heinrich went after my father, giving him his own terrible beating. When I saw his pain, I was frustrated that I could do nothing to help him. Later that day, when we returned to camp, my father suggested that we split up, so as not to present an obvious family group. He believed that the Kapo was attacking us because he feared our family unit would strengthen the ties between us. My father thought that if we didn’t split up, we would not be able to survive the daily beatings.

  Two days later, my father and uncle managed to get into another work unit; I remained with Kapo Heinrich. I don’t know how my father and uncle managed to change work units, but it meant that they were moved to a different barracks. For me, this was the start of a new chapter. At fifteen and a half, I was completely on my own during the day, and I had only a few hours to spend with my father and Uncle Eugene before evening lockdown. I was worried about how I would manage without my two guardians, but I was determined to show my father that I had the wherewithal to survive on my own.

  After a few days of working in the swamps, my feet were bearing the brunt of the labour. Standing in water all day made my boots soggy, and I couldn’t remove them until I got back into my bunk. By the morning, when the boots had dried, it was very difficult to get my feet back into them. I had to force them, and I could no longer use the piece of rag that I had previously wrapped around my feet in place of socks. My heels rubbed against the boots and soon became a bloody mess. With constantly bleeding heels, I had trouble walking. I didn’t know how to deal with this problem, which was very worrying because without your feet, you were in big trouble. Every morning, I woke up and focused on making it through the day. My father had always told me to put one foot in front of the other, and this was the advice I repeated to myself constantly.

  After a while my heels miraculously healed and I was able to wrap them with a piece of cloth to protect them. In the camp, you had to be inventive and use your smarts to survive. I didn’t want my father to worry, so I never told him about my injured feet. And soon I had another concern: by the end of June, I was covered with painful boils from lack of vitamins. My body was screaming for protein, but there was none to be had. My bodily functions were also changing—something I’d observed in many older inmates, who simply could not control their bladders. I began to have the same problems, and soon I found myself climbing down from the top bunk in the middle of the night to rush to the washroom. When we’d first arrived in the camp, my father had said that we should take the top bunks even though it would be harder to get into them as our bodies got weaker. I realized now that being up top at least shielded us from the accidents of those who couldn’t make it to the washroom.

  Food was the foremost item on our agenda. We thought about it during the day and dreamt about it during the night. I constantly fantasized about meals I’d had at home. I remembered how much I’d hated my mother’s tomato soup with rice, but now I thought how wonderful it would be to have a bowl. I told G-d that if I survived and got out of this place, I would be a very good person. I would live happily in a forest alone, and a piece of bread, a potato, and a glass of milk would be a dream come true.

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nbsp; The nights were the time when memories of home and family came flooding back to my mind. How long had it been since I’d left? It was only a couple of months, but it seemed like a thousand years. I could see my family, the faces of each one of them. I didn’t want to forget what they looked like or what they had taught me. But at the same time, I knew that if I let my thoughts get too carried away, I would become very vulnerable. So I made myself stop remembering and then was able to sleep more soundly. Still, it always seemed that mornings came much too early, and the Kapo’s harsh voice screaming at us to get down from our bunks was a most unwelcome greeting to a new day.

  As the days dragged on, I noticed some men with glazed eyes, acting like drunken people who could no longer follow orders. They were beaten, but it made no difference. They had simply given up on living. Inevitably, these men were singled out and taken to the gas chambers. I didn’t know about depression at my age, so I worried that the behaviour of these men was somehow contagious. I resolved not to be stricken with what ailed them. There were many times that I faced desperate situations in the weeks and months that followed, but I was determined to survive.

  CHAPTER 11

  Walking Ghosts

  Sometime in June, our unit was marched to Auschwitz II, where the perimeter fence was being enlarged. It was our job to place the many cement pylons to which the electrified fence wires were connected. It took three inmates to lift one of these pylons, which were enormously heavy. It was crushing work that burdened my entire body, especially my shoulders. Each time we were ready to move a pylon, we counted to three and then lifted in unison. We carried the pylon down into a ditch and then up the other side, and placed it into a pre-dug posthole. If one of us faltered or stumbled, we would all have been crushed by its weight. All the while, the Kapo in charge kept harassing us and shouting, “Faster! Faster!”

  By the time we’d placed the first pylon, my body was already depleted, and I wondered how I could possibly lift the next one. It took superhuman effort and concentration just to put one foot in front of the other while this crushing weight threatened to push me to the ground. We were assigned to this job for three consecutive days under the strict surveillance of the Kapo, who watched us for any sign of slack or sabotage. My body screamed for water, nourishment, and rest. When our thirty-minute lunch break came, I savoured every drop of the watery soup and each moment of shade under a birch tree.

  While having lunch, I noticed a little curl of smoke rising out of the massive chimney of the crematorium. At first it looked quite harmless, but within minutes it was belching out red, angry flames. On humid days, the smoke would not rise but instead stayed low to cover a large area, and ashes rained down in flakes. The odour of burning flesh settled in my nostrils and made me feel sick. By this time, I was quite familiar with the extermination process. I’d heard stories around camp about the gas chambers, and I knew that the Nazis convinced people to enter by telling them that they were going to shower and be disinfected, creating a false sense of security. Once inside, these people—often two thousand at a time—were put to death with Zyklon B gas. Now, as I watched the smoke leave the chimney, I wondered who was in there and where they’d come from.

  One day in late June or the beginning of July, we were marched out to work to the sound of the orchestra and I wondered what surprises were in store for me. It was pouring rain. I was soaked and the water ran down my body into my boots. It was a hot and muggy day, so the rain felt good and we were able to drink it to keep ourselves hydrated. I took off my soaked cap, twisted it, and drank the water I was able to wring from it.

  We returned again to the satellite camp, Budy, and I saw that the flat cart was piled with woven straw baskets for some unknown purpose. We were led back to the swamps that we had drained of water a few weeks before. Now the fields were somewhat dry, and there was a mountain of white powder at one side. This chalky substance was the chemical lime (calcium hydroxide), which was used as a fertilizer. We were ordered to load it into the baskets, which quickly became quite heavy because the lime was saturated with rainwater. As soon as we had a full basket, we were directed to the fields we’d drained just a few weeks earlier and were told to apply the lime to the ground. I held the basket on my thigh with my left hand and used my right to scoop out as much as I could to scatter across the field. When the baskets were empty, we walked back and filled them up again. This process went on for many days. The chemical bleached the colour out of our uniforms, and we became known as the Ghost Kommandos.

  As the wet lime leached out of the baskets, it went through our jackets and onto our skin. I wanted to scratch my body all over, but that only made it worse—the skin became more irritated, and would crack and bleed. I wondered how I was going to survive this job, but there was no relief. The work detail continued for about a week, until we finished the spreading. By then, the flesh of the fingers on my right hand was eaten away and the skin on my kneecaps was gone, exposing the bone below. I was terrified of being eaten up by this chemical. At the end of each day, I tried to wash it out of my pores, but we had no ointments or treatments to help the skin heal. This was a job that would normally have been done using some sort of equipment, to avoid direct contact with the chemical; however, our health and safety meant nothing to the Nazis. We were expendable.

  For the final three days of this detail, we worked near some duck ponds. I could see and hear the ducks as we laboured. At the end of each of the three days, as a form of sport, the Kommandant ordered us to run into the water with our clothes and boots on, and then he told the guards to release their dogs. Those who couldn’t run fast enough were mauled. I was aware that when I hit the water, others would pile on top of me and I could be drowned, so I would always try to outrun the others. On the last day, after jumping into the water, I swam into nearby reeds and found a nest with two large duck eggs. It was a miracle. I knew that eating the eggs was dangerous—if someone saw me, I could be harshly disciplined or killed. But they were such a temptation that I didn’t care about the consequences. I immediately cracked one open and sucked it out. It tasted wonderful and gave me an infusion of strength that my body so badly needed. When I heard the order to get out of the water and line up for counting, I grabbed the second egg and tucked it into my armpit. I was determined to bring it back to camp for my father. But during the march back, the egg broke. I was devastated to lose this gift that I had so wanted to share. Not so long before, losing a single egg would have seemed like nothing to me, but now this loss was almost impossible to bear.

  CHAPTER 12

  A Piece of Bacon

  One day after coming back from work, I saw my father and my uncle waiting for me inside the gate, just as they always did. My unit was always the last to get back in the evening, and they never failed to wait for my return. A few times, they had managed to bring back a piece of bread or a potato from a work detail, and they always shared their good fortune with me. The risk of doing this was great. As the prisoners came marching back to camp, the SS sergeant in charge of the gate scrutinized each one in search of contraband. If he saw any suspicious behaviour, he would yell to the prisoner to lift up his hands. If the man had anything hidden under his armpit, it would immediately fall out. The sergeant would take offenders out of the column and record their tattoo and barracks numbers. At appel, the punishment would be meted out: sometimes lashes from a whip, and sometimes reassignment to a penal unit (Strafkommando). Inmates in penal units were subjected to severe beatings from the Kapos and their lifespans were greatly reduced. In spite of these dangers, prisoners who managed to find scraps of food would always take the risk of trying to smuggle them into the camp. We were constantly on the lookout for items that might improve our chances of survival.

  All the belongings of the newly arriving deportees were collected at the rail platform in Auschwitz II–Birkenau and sent for sorting at a special building that came to be known as Kanada. Meats and other food items also ended up in Kanada, where inmate workers sorted
through them. Sometimes food items were used to hide valuables—a coin might be hidden in a bread roll, for example. Inmates were allowed to eat the food but were forbidden to take any currency, gold, or jewellery. All valuable items were collected by an SS guard called the Bookkeeper.* On this particular day, my father’s unit was working near the Kanada building when a girl from our town recognized him. Having liberal access to food supplies in the luggage, she was able to find a chunk of bacon and managed to slip it to him wrapped in a rag. It was a totally unexpected act of kindness. My father, at great personal risk, smuggled the bacon into Auschwitz I under his jacket, then slipped it to me while we were standing in a huddle. My uncle blocked the view so that nobody would see this transfer. I was surprised to find myself holding a piece of bacon in my hand. We were a traditional Orthodox family, so we did not eat pork of any kind. And yet my father told me that I must eat a little piece of it every day. He and Uncle Eugene, who must have been just as hungry as I, would not break with their religious beliefs, and I marvelled at their strength. But my father told me that this was a matter of life and death, and I must choose life.

  As slave labourers, we had no lockers to store things, but I had managed to dislodge one of the ceiling tiles above my bunk in the barracks, creating a small space where I hid a few odds and ends, including pieces of rag. I stashed the bacon in the space behind this tile. For the next several nights, I waited until everyone was asleep and then, when I was certain that nobody could observe me, dislodged the tile and pulled out my secret treasure. Without a knife or any other utensils, I chewed off a small piece of the bacon. I could actually feel the energy flowing into my body from this sustenance. Every night, I had another bite—just a small shot of energy—and I am positive that this little bit of protein gave me the strength I needed to face the next day.