by Vic Shayne
The gas chamber, as well as the crematory, was installed in Hartman Castle. All traces of these installments were removed in Feb. 1945. Constructing plans of a new gas chamber and crematory intended to cremate 10,000 corpses daily were elaborated at the Baubure. The detailed data concerning this subject could be gained from Capo Henryk Matyszkiewics. In the course of evacuation in Poland and eastern Germany all unfit march prisoners were killed. Several evacuated transports were a month on the way. Transports of 200-3,000 prisoners were coming into Mauthausen Camp at a time. These people were in a state of complete exhaustion. The majority died in the first days or weeks of general exhaustion. The Mauthausen hospital mortality in Jan. 1945 amounted to 257 prisoners (the total number of sick 6,000) in Feb 1945—1,600 (the total sick number—7,000) and in March—3,242 (the total 8,000). Organized methodical famine should be considered as the principle cause leading to death in 90% of the cases. A transport of 4,000 sick prisoners from Cross-Rosen came in Mauthausen in March 1945, 400 men picked out, stripped and kept outdoors for 14 hours (from 8 PM till 10 AM) while standing in the cold, the victims received several times a spray of cold water. Those who survived were murdered with cudgels. The above methods of destruction are entitled to be mentioned in this brief repot, as methods most commonly applied, a detailed elaboration requires time. The veraciousness of these facts is testified with my signature. If requested, I am willing also to take oath.
Captain Fabrick not only wrote detailed descriptions of the horrors he encountered during the liberation of Mauthausen, he also took a series of photographs to document the carnage. Captain Fabrick’s granddaughters, Annalise and Cristina Eberhard, more than sixty years later, would pay great tribute to their grandfather and honor the names of all who died to liberate the concentration camps. Annalise and her friends worked on a school project and won a national award for their effort in creating a DVD about Mauthausen. The Eberhard family even visited Mauthausen in 2007. Part of the girls’ project reads:
At Mauthausen the tragedy is obvious: due to Hitler’s Aryan philosophy, 200,000 innocent people were taken captive and 119,000 were killed. These numbers represent only a small percentage of the people imprisoned and killed in the hundreds of concentration camps all over the Third Reich. Prisoners were worked to death, starved, killed in gas chambers and tortured in other unimaginably horrific ways. In spite of all the horrors, there is a triumph: the triumph of the human spirit. Those who experienced Mauthausen, soldiers and inmates, have gone on to dedicate their lives to serving humanity. Politically and culturally, another triumph was the formation of Israel as a Jewish homeland.
Had we known what was in store for us, we might not have undertaken this tremendous task. However the depth of our understanding has greatly increased in a way that would not otherwise be possible. The topic was disturbing, but the gift of personal testimony given to us by the men we interviewed will stay with us forever.
The American soldiers’ experience with Mauthausen is now documented history that attests to the conditions that the GIs encountered in the spring of 1945. One such experienced has been recorded in this report from American Veterans (AMVETS), in the 2005 issue of their newsletter:
Bill Corwin, a sergeant with the 260th Infantry Regiment, 65th Infantry Division, attached to Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army, hardly knew about the camps. But he sensed something was up when his unit followed a tank that crashed through the gate at the Mauthausen Fortification Camp in Linz, Austria. They had been chasing retreating Germans all the way from the Battle of the Bulge.
As part of a frontline combat team in April of 1945, “We hardly saw a copy of STARS AND STRIPES. We just didn’t know,” Corwin pointed out. “But we found out damn quick. After we were dumped off into a field, what appeared to be light, gentle snowflakes began falling. They covered everything—the grass, flowers, our guns, helmets.” But it wasn’t a snowstorm that Corwin and his unit were in the midst of. It was a shower of ashes from the crematorium at Mauthausen.
“It was unbelievably mind-blowing,” recalled Corwin from his home in Henderson, Nevada. “I remember the smell even now. I saw every degree of human being walking around in one physical condition or another,” the 79-year-old said. Corpses were stacked 10 to 15 bodies high, like piles of cordwood 30 feet long.” He is quick to quell any connection between liberating Mauthausen and his religion. “This was not a Jewish issue. The minute I walked through the gate I was in hell. There was no more rhyme, reason or common sense.”
For many a GI the gruesome sights that greeted the liberators were hard to accept. Silver Spring, MD, resident Colonel Louis “Chick” Cecchini, today eighty-four, from the 89th Infantry Division, Third Army, recalled the reaction of such a soldier: General George S. Patton.
“Patton, with his [tough] image, couldn’t stand it. He went off and vomited,” Cecchini said (Source: Yablonka, Marc Phillip; American Veterans online magazine: http://www.amvets.org/HTML/news_you_can_use/magazine_spring2005_article2.htmt).
In April, 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, made this statement following his visit to Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany:
The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.”
As Eisenhower predicted, now that more than sixty years have passed, there are indeed groups of individuals arguing that the Holocaust never happened. This outrageous claim, motivated only by the brand of prejudice that caused the Holocaust in the first place, is in complete ignorance of the fact that the Holocaust is the most, and best, documented event in human history. To say that the horrors of the Holocaust did not occur is an insult not only to every survivor of mass murder and those who senselessly lost their lives, but also to every brave American soldier who risked his life as he fought across Europe to combat the Nazi menace. The validity of the Holocaust rests not only with the records of the victims and the perpetrators but also with the firsthand accounts of soldiers who witnessed the aftermath of the atrocities. All across America, tucked away in closets, boxes, and chests, are personal photographs, letters, and artifacts collected by GIs as proof of what they saw in the concentration camps. For good reason, retired soldiers often repeat the same sentiments in defense of history when they say, “Don’t tell me the Holocaust never happened. I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. Anyone who says otherwise is selling a lie.”
Acknowledgments
As you may imagine, there have been hundreds of people over the past ninety-one years who deserve credit for their positive influences in my life. But let’s begin first with those most directly helpful in making this book possible.
Thank you to my writer, Vic Shayne, whose thoughts have melded with my own so that I could bring to bear this difficult account of life, love, and loss.
Thank you to my wife, Doris Small, a fellow Holocaust survivor who, with her sister Ida, barely escaped Kristallnacht and exportation when they joined the Kindertransport and fled to England at the start of World War II. And thank you to my daughter, Miriam, for her love, encouragement, and the photographs she provided for this book.
Thanks to my son-in-law, Bill; granddaughter, Jenniffer Rachel; and her husband, John; my great granddaughter, Samantha; and Jenniffer’s boys, Vance David and Ezra. Also thanks to Jacob Michael, my grandson; his wife, Jennifer; and their son, Julian, and daughter, Jaden Elka (named after my sister Elka).
A special note of appreciation goes to Josh Shayne for his cover design and for assisting with all of the computer work needed to make this book a reality.
Thanks to Myrna and Shael Siegel f
or providing photos, background information, and support, as well as for Myrna’s tireless work on the Maitchet Yitzkor book. Myrna and her husband were brave enough to return to Maitchet many years after the war to videotape the town and outlying areas. Representing all of us from this shtetl, Myrna said kaddish at the monument where my family, and hers, were murdered along with three thousand other Jews in the summer of 1942.
No amount of words can describe my appreciation for my friend Jim Curry, retired New York City policeman and, years before that, Army soldier of the 65th Infantry Division. Thanks to Beth Eberhard for contacting author Vic Shayne about her father, Captain Elmore Fabrick of the United States Army, who fought through Europe to one day be among the liberators of Mauthausen concentration camp. The world will never know how brave and great these American soldiers were as they persevered and fought to end the madness of the Holocaust era. Too many of them, albeit for the right reasons, have kept their experiences locked up in the recesses of their memory owing to the pain of revisiting the trauma that marked their lives during the war years.
Thanks to Jody Berman for her professional proofreading services and encouraging words.
I also want to thank my friend, Andrea Jaracz, who shared her thoughts about this book, saying, “This is a story quite difficult to ponder, much less to live through. So much hatred has been poured into Martin Small’s life, yet he exudes love. It is plain to see that the enemy, who has diligently tried to rob him of all human dignity, has failed miserably.”
Another personal friend, Irene Calvano, wrote these supportive words: “During the reading of this book, I was privileged to be able to share the details of the wonderful childhood bestowed on a very few, and then gradually the horrors bestowed on many millions. To be able to call Martin Small a friend is one of the grandest privileges one can have in life.”
I thank every family member and friend who read this book with interest and gentle guidance.
Much appreciation as well goes to veteran actors Ed Asner and Jerry Stiller for taking their time to read the manuscript for this book, as well as friends Rabbi Zalman Schachter, Irving Roth, Cynthia Nieb, Victoria McCabe, George Lichter, and George Maxwell, MD.
Last but not least, I would like to mention my family from New York who helped me feel at home when I came to America in 1950. Of course, there was Aunt Frieda, my mother’s sister; and Frieda’s cousin, Uncle Harry Berman, who came to find me in Italy. But there’s also my extended family, who welcomed me home with open arms, beginning with my cousin, Ruby Watskin, and his wife, Frieda; and Ruby’s brother, Murray. Also supporting me were my cousins, Larvey Plotkin, and his wife, Ida. All of these newfound relatives, I learned, helped put up the money to bring me to America (Ruby and Murray Watskin, along with Aunt Frieda, supplied the affidavit for me to come here). Frieda and Ida were daughters of my Aunt Frieda’s brother, Schmerl Berman. I also came to know Frieda and Ruby Watskin’s daughter, Cynthia (my second cousin), and their son, Jerry. Plus, I met Ida’s son, Elliot, and daughter, Joni; as well as Ruby and Morrie’s brother, Larry.
Further, upon coming to America, I was connected with other relatives from my mother’s side of the family. About twenty kilometers from Maitchet, in a shtetl called Zetel, lived the family of my mother’s sister, Yachna Senderowski, who was from another father. Yachna had two sons, Hilka and Isroel, and a daughter named Rywka who married Baruch Silberklang. Rywka’s son, Melvin, was born in Germany in a DP camp. When the Silberklangs moved to New York, they had one more addition to their family, a son named David (now professor in the Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he serves as editor-in-chief of Yad Vashem Studies) with whom I frequently communicate as he travels the world as an educator.
My deepest appreciation goes out to all who have uplifted my life.
About the Author
Vic Shayne has been a professional writer for more than thirty years, having published several books, hundreds of articles, and several screenplays. An avid researcher of the Holocaust period, Vic Shayne has interviewed survivors, family members, and WWII veterans to bring to life Remember Us, the true story of survivor Martin Small.
This book is the result of more than three years of almost-daily conversations with Martin Small in which he imparted the details of his life’s experiences to Vic Shayne in the hopes of preserving, honoring, and sharing invaluable memories.
