cigarettes, or vice versa. It is a strange form of trade, accompanied by never-ending discussions and negotiations. A wailing, stinking scene of endless misery, turned into a disgusting public spectacle. It is exactly what the Nazis intended—to humiliate us and reduce us to animals, to drive us out of our minds, to extinguish even the faintest memory we might still have that we were once human beings. Belsen 8.9.44. I would rather not look at it any more and put it all out of my mind. But I find I cannot. A few weeks ago I tried in vain to take no heed of what was happening around me. Today I can realise that my life cannot be separated from life in the camp, and that for better or for worse we are united by a common fate to share a common misery. Even if I wrote and wrote, page after page, I could never describe all the aspects of our wretchedness, never convey all the cruel details of our lives. . . . The horrors which confront us and which we are forced to endure are so great that the mind is paralysed and totally unable to respond to anything not directly connected with them. So at this moment I can only recall the most recent past-the terrible journey to this place. Fifteen days in cattle trucks, forty, sixty of us crammed into each―men, women, the aged, children. Locked in, without air, without light, without food, without water. Stifling, suffocating, parched with thirst, everywhere filth, sweat, foul odours and fumes. Only twice during these two weeks were we given a little water to drink and some canned food. On our way through Czechoslovakia we had what they called 'a stroke of luck': the Czech Red Cross served us with hot soup. We were beside ourselves with joy. Then we were given water. It is impossible to describe the expression on the Czechs' faces as they watched us fighting for every drop. Who knows what they saw in our eyes and the way we looked? The terrible journey continued. The Germans refused to open the trucks, even to let us relieve ourselves. Only three times during the whole journey were we allowed to get out for this purpose. And it was so vile and humiliating that the thought of it still makes me blush. The train stopped in beautiful countryside, in the middle of wide, open fields. We were in pain. The Nazi soldiers stood close by and brazenly watched us, ordering us to hurry up, holding their rifles at the ready and ‘guarding' us. And all the while they sadistically leered and swore at us, cursing those who were so sick, so exhausted through lack of food and drink, so pitifully self-conscious that they could not finish what they were doing. Not once did I see on the face of any of these soldiers the slightest sign of normal human feeling, the faintest hint of sympathy, let alone of shame or embarrassment at being made to behave like this. Their faces were utterly inhuman. As the train passed through villages at night time it was fired on by partisans or strafed by a hail of machine-gun bul lets from aircraft. There was one air-raid warning after another. The Germans rushed out of the train and took cover, while we stayed locked up in the trucks, panic-stricken, a sitting target. Huddled together in the darkness, the children almost deafened us with their screams, the women moaned and wailed, the men argued over a bit of space for themselves. Even in this state of hysterical fear and despair they did not stop squabbling and swearing at each other. We had a mad desire to stretch out but could not; sleep was out of the question, and even breathing was an effort. It was hell. When we finally reached our destination, without having the slightest idea where we were, and crawled out of our holes, we felt like wild animals that had just escaped being killed. Then began the sombre march along the seemingly endless road to the camp at Belsen, as we dragged ourselves along, exhausted, haggard, starving, the glint of fever in our eyes, covered in dust and sweat, weighed down by the few pitiful possessions we had been allowed to keep. Ghastly human shadows threading their slow, silent way down an unknown path. Villagers, women in pretty summer frocks, men on bicycles and on foot, all relaxed, well groomed and well dressed, wearing the untroubled look of people leading a 'normal' life, paused for a moment and looked at us with curiosity. But they did not shed a scrap of their indifference. And the hordes of soldiers strode beside the column with their rifles, hitting out at anyone who turned round or dared to slow down a little. This was the moment when our tortured spirits began to store up the memories of all the indignity and abuse that were to grow into a mountain of anguish. Belsen 25.9.44. New huts are being built. For whom? Nobody knows. But we can guess. There is more talk of big loads of prisoners being expected in the camp. The work is being carried out with feverish haste, new huts being put up in almost all the spaces between the old ones. Everyone has to work at it. Slave gangs being rounded up, sudden swoops by the Nazis, beatings, swearing-the same pattern over and over. In retaliation against acts of sabotage the Germans have reduced our daily bread ration. We are at the end of our tether, utterly exhausted through malnutrition and forced labour, and those who smoke are suffering through having no cigarettes. I watch some of them collecting the stubs that the Germans have thrown away on the square or going to the garbage cans outside the galleys to look for mouldy left-overs. The situation inside the huts is just as bad. We are all suffering the pangs of starvation. An unidentified epidemic is running through the camp, striking the women and children in particular. It lasts two or three weeks and takes the form of a continuous high temperature, with fainting fits, exhaustion and total loss of appetite. There is no marked pain. The doctors call it 'camp fever', paratyphoid or some such name, and claim that the symptoms do not permit any definite diagnosis. There is a sick man or woman in almost every other bunk. Then there are the abscesses and running sores caused by malnutrition and the bugs; suppurating ulcers, boils, contusions, oedemas, spasms and all the kinds of infection-these are everyday occurrences. Sometimes there are a few drugs or medicines; more often there are none. There is clearly no question of giving the sick medical treatment, real medical treatment. Either they will get better if their powers of resistance are strong enough, or they will be left to die. The whim of fate decides.... Heedless of all that happens, autumn moves onwards. The grim prospect of a terrible winter makes us shiver. Then there is the rain and mud. The whole day the air is full of the sound of hammering and the creaking of timber as the construction work goes on and new huts are erected. Belsen 6 November 44. A further huge convoy of prisoners has arrived in the last few days, 1700 women of various nationalities, most of them Jewish descent. They have come from Auschwitz. According to rumours circulating here, the camp at Auschwitz has been completely, or almost completely, wiped out, and these women are some of the few survivors. A number of them come from northern Jugoslavia Vojvodina or Croatia. They were only deported recently, so we cannot find out anything definite about the fate of our relatives who were sent to Poland in 1941 and 1942. There seem to be no witnesses.... Belsen 20 November 1944. There is something strange, something frightening in man's capacity to adapt himself to everything the humiliation, the cruel starvation, the cramped living conditions, the foul air, the infections, the communal washplace. Conditions in this washplace are beyond what any normal person can imagine. We all stand there together, naked. Instead of doors and windows the room has gaping holes in the walls, and the wind howls in from all sides. Standing in a mass of filth, refuse and excrement, we rub ourselves down with cold water. We get used to it, just as we do to the way we are increasingly terrorised, to the callous brutality, to the air-raid alarms and the intimidation, to the rampant infections-and to the certainty of a thousand communal, lingering deaths. Incredible-people get used to it all. Slowly they sink deeper and deeper, and when their strength finally gives out, they die. It is the only answer. Those of us who are left try to hang on, slowly being dragged down like the others. O the horror of this slow death, this living death. . . . For more than a month our meal has been reduced to one bowl of soup a day. Soup? Just a word for it-turnips boiled in water. And what water! Nothing else. Turnips in water on the ground, in front of the barbed wire and beyond it, whatever direction we look, wherever we turn, noth ing but turnips, huge mountains of turnips-turnips in the carts, turnips in front of the big gates and the galleys, turnips in the underground store rooms, turnips everywhere. . . . The Nazis have made us crave for these turnips-these grey things usually fed to cattle-so that we are not utterly consumed by the gnawing pangs of hunger. This hunger! The whole winter long we shall have to eat these turnips-unless we die first. O blessed Germany, land of the turnip, of Ersatz, of concentration camps, of slavery and terrorism! . . . Those who are 'fortunate' enough to work outside with the Germans have brought us the good news that Germany has almost reached the end of the road. The civilian population are subjected to endless bombing and are in desperate straits. The end is near. ... We have heard that the whole of the Balkans has been liberated. The same report says that a Balkan Federation has been founded, with Salonica as its capital. There are other incredible reports too. Even if some of the details are not accurate, the news of this development as a whole is true enough-and that is what matters. I am trying to imagine what the liberation of my country will be like, and the immense happiness that will fill the new society. The thought of it almost turns my head. Sitting here in the midst of the misery and letting such visions pass through my mind, I feel as though my nerves will snap under the strain of such unbelievable happiness. Then, when this tension has passed, I envisage a flood of emotion welling up, like the eruption of a volcano, and the tears that have for so long been fought back will pour forth. Such happiness would be too great, too much for us to bear, would cause us too much pain. . . . Belsen December 1944. I thought the end had come and there was nothing more for me to record. But there is no end. One day follows another-fearful, terrifying dark days. If only we could see the end, whatever it is. . . . We are all exhausted, reduced to a shadow. The food they give us gets less day by day. It is three days since we saw a crust of bread. A few prisoners have saved some tiny pieces and have now spread them out-only to find that they have gone mouldy. Bread is like gold here. Anything can be had for bread, and people will risk everything to get some. Stealing is on the increase, especially at night.... Those who still have a little bread keep it under their pillows or rather, they make it into a pillow, so that it is safer while they are asleep. It is especially the mothers who do this, in order to make sure that their children have something to nibble. Those in the labour gangs, who are out at work all day, have to carry all their food with them in a bag the whole time. 'All their food' means six days' ration at the most, that is, half a loaf. Sooner or later they all succumb to the temptation of eating the whole six days' ration in a single day. As we were going to work yesterday-the women's labour gang, that is—we saw some potatoes lying on the road. Either they must have dropped off a lorry or been thrown away on their long and arduous march by some of the last batch of prisoners who had decided on their long march that they would rather die of starvation than of exhaustion. We know that feeling. Our hungry eyes lighted on the potatoes, and a woman bent down to pick one up. But in the same instant she was frightened into dropping it again by the savage shouts of the soldier in charge of us, who could not tolerate the thought of such gluttony.... Belsen December 1944. The camp commandant has been replaced by one Kramer, a former commandant from the camp at Auschwitz. That speaks for itself. The camp routine is getting harsher day by day. The Germans make regular swoops on the huts. Instead of punishing individual prisoners by stopping their meal or their bread ration, they have introduced new measures for the whole camp as a general punishment. Who cares that there are sick people and young children in the camp? We are gripped by the sickening feeling that from now on nobody will care what happens to us. We are totally at the mercy of the new commandant, this rabid, anti-Semitic monster. He is absolute master of the camp and answerable to no one. There is nobody beyond him to whom we can appeal-even God is powerless. Kramer does as he wishes. Fresh loads of prisoners roll in ceaselessly. Between the compounds and the barbed wire fences endless columns of pitiful, strangelooking creatures move around-terrible they look, ghosts, not like human beings at all. We stare across at them, and they fix us with a terrifying gaze. To them we probably look the same. There is not enough room for all of us. Every day we have to move somewhere else, and conditions are becoming more and more cramped. Finally they order us to sleep two to a bunk, so that the three tiers together now hold six persons. In this way we have made half our hut available for some of the new arrivals. We now notice the mud, rain and damp inside the huts as well, which are very badly built and now in a poor state, full of holes. But there is nothing we can do about it: we just have to stay here. We are engulfed in our own stinking sea of germs, lice and fleas, and everything around us is putrid and slimy. As we are literally lying on top of each other, we provide a perfect breeding-ground for the lice. It is impossible to catch them and kill them all-a hopeless task. The bunks are so narrow that we cannot move, and to find room to sit down or rest is out of the question. This infernal confinement! . . . Have we reached the depths of our suffering yet? Or is there worse to come? Women's Camp at Bergen-Belsen Josef Kramer, commandant of Bergen-Belsen in 1944-1945, was an electrician by trade. A member of the Nazi Party since 1931 and the SS since 1932, Kramer served as a staff member of the concentration camps of Esterwegen, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Mauthausen from 1934 to 1939 and served as adjutant at the Auschwitz and Natzweiler concentration camps from 1940 to 1944. In 1944 he became commandant of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) and later that year commandant of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Arrested by the British after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, Josef Kramer was sentenced to death by a British military court in Lüneberg, Germany, in 1945 and executed in 1947. In the final month of 1944, about the time that Josef Kramer assumed his new position in Bergen-Belsen, slightly more than half of the inmates in that camp were females. In August 1944 a new section for additional housing had been added to the camp, and in late summer and early fall, thousands of Jewish women prisoners from Auschwitz had arrived. They were placed in barracks which had no water, no beds, and no facilities of any kind. New transports of prisoners continued to arrive at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp well into 1945, the women outnumbering the men by an everincreasing margin. The following article outlines some of the prisoner statistics for Bergen-Belsen from 1944 and 1945. The camp was liberated by the British on 15 April 1945. Reprinted from Joseph Gar, "Concentration Camp Bergen-Belsen," in Holocaust and Rebirth: Bergen-Belsen; 1945-1965, ed. Sam E. Bloch (New York: Bergen-Belsen Memorial Press/World Federation of Bergen-Belsen Association, 1965), 80–81. There was also in Bergen-Belsen a camp for women. During the months of August and September of 1944 large transports of Jewish women arrived from Poland. They came from different ghettoes and concentration camps which the Germans at the time were continually liquidating as the Soviet offensive advanced in Poland. ... Besides Poland, Jewish women were also brought from Hungary and other countries. Out of the 15,257 internees, who were in Bergen-Belsen on December 1, 1944, about 8,000 were women and girls. Between December 1, 1944 and March 1, 1945 about 20 to 25 thousand women were brought to Bergen-Belsen, mostly from the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Gross-Rosen. The last transport of women from the Auschwitz concentration camp, which was liquidated on January 18, 1945, arrived in Bergen-Belsen on January 20, 1945. Women were also brought from Ravensbrück, Mauthausen, Flossenbuerg, Neuengamme. In consequence of the addition of large transports of men and women, the number of inmates in Bergen-Belsen increased considerably. On March 1, 1945 there were 41,520 internees (26,723 women and 14,797 men); on March 15, 45,117 (of which 30,387 women and 14,730 men). The large number of deaths helped reduce the number of the internees, despite the arrival of large transports of new inmates. Buchenwald Save My Son Of the nearly six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, approximately one-fifth were children. Unable to perform the grueling labor that extended the lives of concentration camp inmates, young children were usually selected for immediate extermination. The following excerpt illustrates the determination of a Polish Jewish father, Zacharias Zweig, to save his two-year-old son from certain death. He carried the child hidden in a backpack from Plaszow concentration camp in Cracow to Buchenwald concentration camp outside Weimar. The collaboration of fellow inmates at Buchenwald in Zweig's often-dangerous enterprise formed the basis for the well-known novel Nackt unter Wölfen by the East German Communist author Bruno Apitz. Father and son survived the war and were reunited with their chief benefactor, former political prisoner Willi Bleicher, in Stuttgart in 1963. Reprinted from Mein Vater, was machst du hier... ? Zwischen Buchenwald and Auschwitz: Der Bericht des Zacharias Zweig (Frankfurt: Dipa-Verlag, 1987). Excerpts from throughout the book were translated by Patricia Heberer. An Illegal Inmate in Biezanow Concentration Camp It often happened, as I already mentioned, that a surprise inspection took place in the camp. Then the older children would be brought out of the camp; but what should one do with a child little more than two years of age? In such circumstances I succeeded, thanks to the aid of other prisoners, to save my child from death. A member of the sanitation brigade placed my child on a refuse wagon, covered him with paper, and then on top of this, scattered garbage, peelings, and other offal. Under the eyes of the SS, the laborer left the camp with his wagon, drove to the nearest garbage pit, and there unloaded the refuse along with my child. I would like to note at this juncture that my child was extremely well-trained. He never cried and at the sound of the word SS knew that he must be silent. When the SS men had left the camp, I retrieved the child from the garbage pit and brought him back to camp. It was worse when such an inspection was carried out at night. Then the Jewish prisoner on duty woke me immediately, and I ran into the room in which the child slept with his mother. I grabbed the sleeping child and looked for a place to hide him. This happened at a time when I served as administrator of the camp bathing facility designated for prisoners. I always had the key to the bathhouse on my person.... On an exceptionally dark night, I hid the child under my jacket—his little head held against my shoulder-and ran to the bathhouse. At the same time I whispered without interruption, "SS, SS," and the child did not cry. Thus I reached the bathhouse, opened it, and locked myself along with my child in the cold oven of the steambath. Because of my fear, my heart pounded wildly. My little son, whom I held in my left arm against my heart, comforted me like an adult with the words: "Daddy, don't be afraid. The SS will not come in here."... These were the circumstances under which my child lived in Biezanow concentration camp until the time of its liquidation; that was in November of 1943. Transport to Buchenwald My family and I found ourselves on the list of transportees bound for Germany.... Of course, I hoped that the danger for prisoners at war's end would be slighter in German areas than in the occupied territories. I also did not believe that men and women would be allowed to remain together. And therefore I decided, after consultation with my wife, that I would take my son with me in the train and that my wife should travel with our daughter. We did this with regard to gender, since my son actually required greater care. Besides this, it would be difficult, in case of separation, for a woman with two children to save herself [from selection]. Despite great protest on the part of my wife, I succeeded in persuading her, and I took my son with me in the railway car. . . . On the same day—it was the 30th or 31st of July 1944– the freight cars prepared for the transport were positioned directly in front of the camp. Two transports were loaded. One was sent to Germany, the other to Czestochowa. . . . The freight cars were meant for animals, and one hundred persons were packed inside. I saw my wife no more and did not know for certain if she had been loaded in one of the cars. The cars were encircled with barbed wire and the entrance nailed shut. There was only a small opening through which during daylight hours a little light penetrated. The train began to move late in the evening. In the freight car, a macabre scene played itself out. We were without light, without water, and without any opportunity to attend to our most necessary bodily functions. During the night I succeeded in securing a space on the floor of the car. I lay on my back and the child lay on top of me. In the course of the night, the child became separated from me several times. I searched for him frantically, or he searched for me, crying aloud. During the day-the first day of the journey-my little son cried almost without interruption. He wanted his mother and pleaded for water. Of food he did not speak at all. At a railway station we begged the SS guards for water. The SS escort declined the request and there were those among them who pointed their machine guns at us and threatened to shoot us. Under such conditions we traveled for four or five days. Finally, the train stopped at Leipzig. All the women were unloaded from the train, and through the cracks in the walls of the freight car we saw how they walked in the direction of the factory building on which some of our number could make out the words HASAG Leipzig-Schoenewald. The train started up again and on the following daythat was 5 August 1944—we arrived at a train station, from which we traveled to the concentration camp Buchenwald by foot. As we were unloaded from the cars, I saw for the first time the camp, which because of its size, appeared initially to be a large city. Political Prisoners at Buchenwald Intervene to Before the bathing facilities waited a group of persons in civilian clothes. On their chests they wore red triangles, in the middle of which were stamped their prisoner numbers. In the first moment I did not know that these were prisoners. . . . They picked my child and me from out of the throng. One of them, whom I later learned stood at the head of the camp's illegal international organization and who was the leader of the camp's prisoner organization [Willi Bleicher], turned to me and asked me my occupation. I didn't know that he was a prisoner and hesitated with my answer because I didn't know what I should do. He understood my unease and told me that he was also a prisoner. He consoled me and turned to another prisoner, a Pole, to testify to the veracity of his words. The Pole spoke with me in the Polish language and advised me to tell the entire truth, because the prisoners had decided something about the child. They advised me that the elite of the Czech, German, and Polish political prisoners-mainly Communists-were very amazed that there was a small child in Buchenwald, regardless of the fact that he was a Jew, and had resolved to save the child. If such a child had been saved up until now and I had been so far able to protect him, then he should remain a symbol of resistance against Hitler and deserved to be saved. Only at this minute did I draw more courage and told them that I was a Jewish lawyer from Cracow. After that I also told them of my war experiences. ... Then the political prisoners . . . said that I must trust them. They would take my child with them and quarter him in the German Barracks. There he would receive appropriate care, and I could see him often. I should console myself that they would endeavor to help me as well; and in this way I could stay in the same camp as my child. . . . If the effort to kill all other prisoners succeeded, there might still be the possibility that the German prisoners would survive. After the war they would approach the appropriate individuals in Cracow and inform them that the child still lived. . . . The elites among the political prisoners had a wash basin at their disposal. My child was bathed daily in the basin. He had a number sewn on his blouse just like any other prisoner. It was a red triangle with the letter P [political prisoner] stamped on it. All Jews in the camp were supposed to wear a yellow band in addition to the triangle; nevertheless, the political illegal organization fought against this regulation and removed it. The SS men in the camp tolerated the decision. For the winter [the political prisoners] made the child boots from sheepskin and also a pair of warm house slippers. For the winter he also received warm linens and sweaters that had been manufactured in the camp workshops. Besides this, he wore-either for propaganda purposes or as a jest an armband designating him as a kapo. My Child's Illness It was the beginning of September 1944 when my child became ill. It started when he developed a high fever, and the fever would not abate. At first, I knew nothing of it. . . . The fever rose from day to day, and it was assumed that it was scarlet fever; [a block elder from among the German prisoners] saw it as his duty to apprise me of the situation. At the same time, he told me that they would do all they could to save the child. Above all they decided to keep the child's illness a secret from the SS and not take him to the infirmary. There prisoners worked as doctors, although under the strict control of SS physicians. These individuals would not make any effort for such a child and would simply kill him. . . . Because Bleicher's friends would not trust the care of the child to any other physician, and because they had influence in the camp's Statistical Office, where they had their own people, they procured a Jewish doctor. They freed him from his daily labor and made sure that everything was formally in order. . . . Willi Bleicher declared that [the doctor] should not hesitate to prescribe any pharmaceutical and that everything which he might require would be delivered. And in fact, the physician wrote out the prescription and on the following day it was filled outside the camp. The medicine was brought in from Weimar. There is no doubt that some SS man returning from Weimar had the prescription filled. Whether the SS man knew for whom the pharmaceutical was purchased, I do not know.... Rescue from Deportation At the end of September, on the 30th, I believe―a Saturday—I was told by my block elder that I was released from work for the day and that I should report to Willi Bleicher. Here I learned of a tragic affair. Despite countless efforts and despite concealment of the fact that the child was |