04.05.2008
Arieh (“Lion”)
Under The Nazis Regime
prisoner number 203141
From the early hours of Friday, September 1st 1939, there was a some kind of fear, like a pinch in the heart, that something about to happen. People running to the market square, maybe there is some information about the situation. In general it look like that: general panic, the policeman packing their things and getting ready to run away.
Before we understand the situation, a shell explodes near our house. I join my friends, and escape to the town “Lototov”, from there I keep running till Warsaw. Not far from the surrounded besieged capital, I am hosteling in a polish farmer house. After a few days, when the all city captured by the Nazis, I start walking back to “Wirosov”.
When I coming back to “Wirosov”, after dangerous, suffering and adventures way – I just don’t recognize the town. Most of it burned and destroyed. A lot of the Jewish population left without home. A good word can be said, people try to crowd together and make place to other Jewish.
The condition of the Jewish population was unbearable. The kidnappings for slave labor was common. Even woman and kids. My sister Handel, got blood poisoning, when working in the ruins. I got typhus. I got in to the hospital. Only because the efforts of my sister Sprincha and her husband, which bribed a christen nurse which was responsible of the medicines – I stayed alive.
In the winter of 1941, when I came back from school, without considering my weakness, I was taken right away to work. In the first day of Passover 1941, I was kidnapped and sent – with a big group – to work in the Otoninhuf near Pozen. The conditions in the camp were horrible. Not only the hungry, cold and low sanitary conditions, we also had to suffer Germans supervisors and the Polish workers that crawled to us in an horrible way. For me it was a little bit easier, I was working in my profession as a locksmith, and it helped me a lot.
In September 1943, most of the camps around Pozen destroyed and we sent to Auschwitz.
There we are first familiar with the horrible action also known as “right – left”, meaning to death or to life. We have entered the kingdom of Mengele “May his name and his memory will erased”. Lucky for me I was sent to “right”, I was dressed strips uniforms of the prisoners of Auschwitz, wood shoes to my feet and as “addition” a number tattooed on my hand. Here we became real “Katechnicks” (A nick name for prisoners the concentration camps coming from the German name for those camps). Here we suffered the seven departments of hell. A few days latter we were sent to the coal mines in Pirstnagroba. Here too, I was lucky I was working in as a locksmith in Hombold company. In this camp there were also German politic prisoners and a group of polish officers. I was in this camp till January 18th 1945.
The Nazis on the Run
Even when they escaped, in panic run, The “People of the Lords” did not “forget” us.
For us, the prisoners of the camps, the horror time, more pain than we ever had until that day. On January 18th 1945, we started in the famous “Death Marches”, which only few of the prisoners has survived.
After a day of walking, hungry, almost naked we got to the town of Mikolyb. There we spent the night in a place for straw. In the morning, after the morning count, it was found out that a lot of people are missing. They hided in the place where have slept, thought to wait until the Nazis will continue and then they will be free. The S.S. Soldiers didn’t thought allot, they set the place in fire and surrounded it with machine
guns. Nobody of those poor guys, hiding there, went out a live. They all burned a live.
From there we were sent to Glaybich, there we were packed into load cars of a train in an horrible way. In those two weeks of the trip we got only a few crumbs of food. They throw it into the car. If you could grab something you lived, If not – you died. When we passed through Czech, the civilian population risk itself and throw us a some food. After two weeks of trip we got to Dora camp. In the first days in the camp we “worked” in taking out the deaths from the cars, which died from hungry, chocking and murder.
From Dora we were moved to a new camp Tormlik, there we worked in the stone strip mine until march 1945. from that camp we were moved to Megdborg, there The Nazis made one of their despicable crimes. It was in the evening, in a timber warehouse, the Nazis divided what they called “coffee”. The hungry prisoners thought that there is some food in the pots. It made the Nazis to go crazy. They orderd everybody to sit on the floor, and shot everybody in the head. I played dead. Because I was so tired I fell a sleep between the deaths. When I woke up it was horror sight – hundreds of dead around me. The few that stayed alive, moved to the Elbe river and on two ships to Trabminde. On 28th of April, a Red Cross delegation, which announced the camp commander us, asked all
the civilians of the countries: Belgium, French, Holland and Greece, to stand so they could be send to Sweden. Of course everybody declared they are from those countries, and terrified run started, but people were so weak they couldn’t climb the cars that waited for them. There was also certain amount of places. One of the happy one that manage to get in was my friend for the suffer – Samuel Yehuda Yablonasky.
On May the camp commander orders us: “take place”, “we march”! In our last powers, we dragged our swollen legs during the all night. In the morning we got to Noystat. It was told we depart to Sweden, but when we got close to the ship, a S.S man shout: “back with the litter!” and we had to go back to where we came from.
Again came the order to load us on a big prisoners – ship called “Kapiarakona”. The ship was packed with thousands of prisoners and moreover it was in a process of crumbling.
It was clear what they meant to do, to drawn the ship with the people abroad. To get to the ship you had to climb a rope ladder. Because I couldn’t climb the ladder – from weakness – I stayed in the boat that took us to the ship. There were other people that couldn’t climb and they stayed in the other boats. In the end they took us to a ship called “Atan”. Tomorrow, May 3rd , British airplanes signaled to ships to get closer to the shore. Our ship obeyed, but the other ship opened in fire. The airplanes bombed the ship with flammable bombs, the ship became a flaming torch over the water. It was an awful image of burning crowd. The result was terrible, from eight thousands prisoners, only 112 stayed alive. When our ship got close to shore we were rleased.
After the freeing
I was completely shocked. Am I free? This was unbelievable. When I recover a bit the thought start to pick in my mind: who of my relatives is alive? I got recover in an UNRRA camp (I weighted 30 Kg when I was freed. A month later I was known that my sister Handel stayed alive. I started to walk in order to find her. It is hard to described our exiting meeting. We found out that the outcomes to our family were terrifying: Our brothers Kalman and Avraham Hillel died in Warsaw, in 1939, in a bombing when they waited in a line for bread. Kalman’s wife and his son died latter. Our sister Zisel and her husband Avraham Barl Syah and their two children died in Lodz Ghetto. Mom and Dad, our sister Fryda and her two children were sent to Chelmno extermination camp.
On the “HaHapala”
I joined the Beitar group that meant to go to Israel. It was a long and hard way and we had to watch out from the British. On the winter 1945, we left Austria on our way to Italy – through the snowing hard to climb Tyrol mountains. First we got to Ribolin near Torino. Latte we moved to Arona Veina. It took along time until we could immigrate to Israel. On the beginning of 1947 we depart ship, or better called raft, called “HaTikva” (The Hope). On May 18th we got to shores of Israel. But the English caught our “tub” with their battleships and exiled us to Cyprus.
On January 1949 – the elections day to firs Knesset (The Israeli parliament) the camps in Cyprus were wiped up, and we immigrate to the liberated country of Israel. I drafted to the IDF (Israel Defense Forces).