The living conditions were abominable. Inmates slept so tightly packed together that you were forced to lie on your side. Every few hours, at the guard's command, we had to turn over, but it wasn't always easy to do so. If the person next to you died during the night, you had to turn his body over before turning yours. If you didn't act immediately on command, you might be beaten to death or taken outside and shot.
(Basically, killing was only a means - it seems like they really wanted to strike terror into these people and humiliate them. My question - what lessons did the two sides learn after this experience. Germany today is the third most ethnically heterogenous country in the world (or second?). Is that through a deliberately enforced policy?
Atonement? Was it that there were no other scapegoats for hitler to pick on? The whole world was in a recession? Why should the Germans feel bad any more than the others?)
At Auschwitz, I was assigned to work outside digging ditches. We dug in the freezing cold and rain, wearing only the thin striped dresses issued to us. The ditches werern't to be used for any particular purpose; the Nazis were merely trying to work us to death. And many did die of sickness, cold, exhaustion, and starvation.
I wandered alone in the woods for several days. I had to eat grass and other forest vegetation to stay alive. But I knew liberation was near, and I was determined to survive. Yet I was still extremely aware of being an escaped Jew in enemy territory. I didn't dare allow any of the local people to see me. Now I had to live by my wits, and miscalculation could cost me my life.
(Really? Grass and vegetation? Sounds like salad. I remember a Chaplin movie where he pulls out a handfull of grass and munches on the fresh stems)
However, not everyone was immediately gassed. I was sent to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. There I spent five weeks on an outdoor work detail chopping down forest trees from six o'clock in the morning until dark. We couldn't stop to rest even for a moment as we were surrounded by armed guards and German shepherd dogs that were trained to kill. Those trees weren't being cut for any particular use. If I'd remained on that detail for another week, I don't think I'd have survived.
(That's a common theme - gruelling physical labour that was not serving any purpose. This bit about trees is crazy. Why would the Germans want to spoil their own country?)
We showered with cold water, and since we had no soap it was difficult to become really clean. After a few weeks, the guards realized that we were unable to function this way so they gave us soap. But when we saw what the soap was made of, we couldn't use it.
It had been manufactured from the remains of Jewish bodies and bore a stamp which read, MADE FROM PURE JEWISH FAT. I had no way of knowing if the fat used in the soap was my father's, my brother's, or whose.
We later learned that when Jews were gassed at some extermination camps such as Auschwitz, their bodies weren't always taken directly to the crematorium to be burned. Too many corpses were frequently produced to fuel the ovens simultaneously. Depending on the circumstances, one to three hundred people might die at once. Their freshly gassed bodies would be laid outside the ground and used as raw materials for German products. Their hair was stuffed into pillows and mattresses, their fat was used to make soap and their bones sent to German glue factories. The gold from their tooth fillings was extracted and used to help support the Nazi cause.
(BTW, watching Connections a few months ago - I saw something similar. During the industrial revolution, England faced a food crisis - they needed fertilizer. Guess where the potash came from - they imported bones from cemetaries in Italy. Neat? Dead Italians go into living Brits - through the plants of course)
No comments:
Post a Comment