大象传媒

After three weeks, although still weak, evacuations of the camp started and we were made to march for three days and nights. The only food for our journey was a loaf of dry bread and a tin of meat. Our guards on the journey were old SS men, because the young ones had been sent to the front.

On the journey many people were shot because they could not keep up with the march 鈥� even an old SS man shot himself in front of me. That was joyful to me.

We arrived at an empty camp in Gleivitz in January 鈥� it was bitterly cold with much snow. The barracks quickly filled up and I went to sleep on a flat roof outside in the snow. While I was on the roof I was told to go with some others to a certain barrack where we would be under cover and would be let out in the morning. We realised the people there were going to be gassed. In the morning the SS guards wouldn鈥檛 let us out. Six of us managed to persuade the guards to let us out with three dustbins filled with excrement 鈥� we ran off and mingled with the other inmates and this saved my life.

One loaf of bread was given to us for the next journey and we were loaded into open trains with 140 people in each wagon. We sat with our legs apart with the man in front sitting between my legs. We were not allowed to stand up while the trains were stationary or we would have been shot. We tied belts together, put a can on the end to let down to collect snow to drink,m and sometimes the snow was full of oil from the wheels of the train.

At each station where we stopped the dead were removed to the front of the trains. I carried hundreds of dead men 鈥� they were just skeletons. We laid them out, head to feet, like sardines. By the end of the journey there was plenty of room for those of us still alive.

The nine day journey ended in Dora at Nordhausen where I worked on the V1 and V2 rockets 鈥� the flying bombs that were sent to England. By this time I was a skeleton myself. Breakfast consisted of 2 cold potatoes 鈥� no bread. There was a lot of torture and hangings 鈥� I saw 30 Russian prisoners hanging outside my window.

While working I jabbed my hand and it became septic. I went for help but there were no medical supplies. They simply held me down, cut my hand and scooped out the poison. They cut up my shirt to make a bandage and a sling. I was advised not to register sick, because after 3 days off work I would be taken to be gassed. I went to work using only my left hand, pushing the finished bombs to the end of their tramlines.

The British started to bomb the rail lines., No supplies could get through. The camp was evacuated and we were given a loaf of bread and a tin of meat 鈥� but my meat was stolen. We were put in open trains for a four day journey to Belsen. Hungarian SS men were in charge. We could not throw out the dead people so I sat on a dead person all the way.

Belsen 鈥� typhoid, cannibalism, people moaning 鈥� horrifying scenes. I managed to work in a makeshift kitchen. People were deranged and skeletons. I saw prisoners gunned down by SS as they scrambled for a miserable raw potato 鈥� and all so close to liberation. I saw a man lying on the ground who recognised me. I was with him in the first civilian camp. He asked me in Yiddish for a piece of bread and then died in front of me. 鈥淛osef geb mir a shtikel broit鈥�

Liberation cam on the15th April 1945 by the British. We then found out that on arrival in Belsen we should each have been given a loaf of poisoned bread, but the high ranking officer in charge, a doctor, realised the end was near and to save himself, did not give it to us. When the British entered the camp he showed them the room full of bread and the British gave a piece of that bread to a little dog, who died instantly. The doctor later worked in the hospital and saved Jewish lives.

The first day after the liberation, Rev. Leslie Hardman, a chaplain in the British Army spoke to us for about an hour in Yiddish and gave us tremendous hope. He advised us to go nowhere else in the world except Eretz Yisrael. There were 60,000 survivors in Belsen, thousands listened to him but all around as he was speaking inmates were dying 鈥� they were all skeletons. He seemed like our Messiah.

There were a lot of Jewish Kapos who became inhuman in the camps. People were tortured and died as a result of their treatment. Whichever Kapo we managed to find after the liberation was killed by inmates.,

A group of religious people came into the camp 鈥� we did not know where they came from or who they were 鈥� but I now realise they were from America from the Lubavitch movement. They preached religion to us but the inmates marched them to the gates of Belsen and threw them out.

After the liberation I went with another inmate to look for food in a village nearby. I was stopped by a Corporal in the British Army by the name of Leslie Hanson He spoke a little German and asked us where we were going. We told him we were looking for food and he said if we came to the army camp we would work in the kitchen and we wouldn鈥檛 be hungry again.

We went, but my friend returned to the camp after a few days, but I stayed on. I wore an army uniform. One evening I went out with the soldiers to a pub and had a few drinks 鈥� I got a little tipsy. During the night I got up and took a loaded gun and I went downstairs and wanted to shoot any German I could get hold of. Unfortunately I was stopped by the guards, was taken back, put to bed and they kept watch over me for the rest of the night. The soldiers who took me in were part of a tank division who were guarding the German prisoners of war in Munster Camp. I went with them to the Camp. In the centre were two barracks fenced off. I found out that those prisoners were special SS men, who had freely volunteered for the SS. They were called the Waffen SS. They had two SS鈥檚 tattooed under their left arm and this was how they were identified. They were the worst SS. I asked Corporal Leslie Hanson if I could go in and make sport with them like they did with us. He didn鈥檛 think it would be possible but after speaking to his officer, permission was given.

They brought out the SS prisoners, surrounded them with machine guns to protect me and they were told I was a camp survivor and I am going to make sport with them the same as they made with us.

I wore a British soldiers uniform but wasn鈥檛 allowed to have a gun otherwise I would have shot them all. I broke off a little tree to use as a weapon 鈥� the ground was wet and mucky 鈥� I made them run, fall down, up, run, down, hit them with the tree, trod on their heads and pushed their faces into the mud. For over an hour I did this to them. In the end the soldiers carried me shoulder high and they were overcome with emotion and cried, realising what I had been through at such a young age. I felt good.

I stayed with the soldiers for several months and then went back to the camps.

My aunt that wrote the letter to me survived, was caught a couple of times, beaten to admit that she was Jewish. When she showed them a cross she was wearing they let her go.

Out of the three little girls my cousins, who were handed over to the Poles at three different places, the youngest one, seven years old, had been handed over to the Germans by the Polish farmer she was left with after the Ghetto was liquidated. The other two survived by going from farm to farm and working as slave labour 鈥� the farmers didn鈥檛 even know they were Jewish. They went to Church for confession, they had to wear rosaries with a cross. When they heard of the liberation they escaped during the night and made their way towards their home town. They were the only two Jewish children who survived from the whole town.

One of the two girls lives in London and the other in New York. My uncle who lived in Cricklewood brought the three of us to London.

Later on, I found out that 103 members of my family had perished.

My war experiences left me shattered and I trembled with nerves. I went to a hospital for nervous diseases in Sutton in Surrey. Psychiatrists listened to my story for 3 or 4 days and told me there was no cure. Shock treatment would only make it worse. They said I must talk about the past and not bottle it up. I should eat three regular meals a day, make a home, get married and in time things would improve.
In London I could not work with my uncle in the garment industry because my hands were trembling, so I became a butcher and worked for Frohweins in Golders Green for 39 years.

In conclusion I would like to tell you that I have found the grave of my father who died in 1928 in the ruins of cemetery in Lodz. When I returned to my hometown I found the place where we used to live and also met my old school teacher with whom I now keep in touch.

I also went to Chelmno and spoke to the caretaker there who told me that all the mothers and
and children from Czechoslovakia met their death there. In Lodz I was told that in the forest near Lublin people are buried in shallow graves and when it rains and you walk there, the earth moves.

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