A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy

by Thomas Buergenthal

  There was one barrack in the Gypsy camp where we could wash. Its water, always a rusty brown color and always ice cold, came streaming out from small holes drilled in the long pipes that hung above sinks that resembled feeding troughs for cattle. Another barrack served as a communal toilet. There, holes cut into long rows of elevated concrete slabs served as toilet seats. This was our favorite camp location because it was the only place where it was always warm. But we were never allowed to stay there longer than a few minutes. This rule was strictly enforced by an inmate caretaker from Greece. I will never forget him. He played the mandolin very beautifully when not chasing us out. I soon learned that if I told him that I loved his music, he would let me stay a little longer in that warm toilet.

  One day, it may well have been in late October, we were awakened for what appeared to be a selection, although it differed from the previous ones I was familiar with. We had no idea what was happening, since the SS was not following its routine selection procedures. Instead of being counted as usual on such occasions, we were lined up, barrack by barrack, and herded into a barrack toward one end of the camp. Once inside, we had to move in single file past a group of doctors who stood facing us at the end of the barrack. I believe Mengele was there, but I cannot be sure since I never really dared to look. SS guards were posted a few meters apart throughout the entire length of the barrack and on either side of the panel of doctors. My father walked in first, and I followed behind him, looking for an escape route. There was none. When we were just a few meters away from the doctors, one of them motioned my father to the left and me to the right. My father tried to pull me with him, but an SS guard grabbed me while another kicked my father out of the barrack. That was the last time I saw my father.

  I was taken to an adjacent barrack. It was guarded by an inmate who must have been the barrack boss. When I arrived in that room, some other people were already there. Most of them looked sick; others were old, and some had become Muselmans or were close to it. There was another entrance at the end of the room. That door was kept closed with a piece of wire. Seeing my opportunity, I stationed myself close to the door and waited. More people were brought into our room, all no different from those already there. They seemed resigned to their fate. I was not! I knew that our destination was the gas chamber and that I had to find a way to escape in order to rejoin my father. Moving ever closer to the door and keeping my eye on the barrack boss, I began to unwind the wire. It came apart rather easily, and I bolted out of the door. Behind me, I could hear some fellow inmates yell that I was escaping. Alerted, the barrack boss raced out and caught me. He slapped me around a few times and dragged me back to the barrack. I managed to get out of the room twice more but was caught each time and hit again.

  At that point, I decided that I would not be able to escape and that in a few hours I would die in the gas chamber. At first, I was terribly angry with my fellow inmates who had given me away each time I had tried to escape. I could not understand why they had done that. My escape would certainly not have affected their fate, and they must have known that they were on their way to the gas chamber. Then I thought of my father and how upset he must be because, unlike in the past, he had not been able to keep me from getting caught in a selection. I would like to have been able to tell him that he should not blame himself, for he could not possibly have anticipated the trap we had walked into.

  With these thoughts still swirling in my head, I moved to a corner of the room, away from the door, and sat down. After a few minutes, I realized that I could no longer hear any voices around me, nor the barked orders of the SS guards in the nearby barrack. Until then, I had been gripped with fear, fear of dying, for I realized that, having failed to escape, I was on my way to the gas chamber. But then something most unusual happened. Slowly, very slowly, my fear and anxiety faded away as I admitted to myself that there was no way out and that I would die in a few hours. The nervous tension that had hung over me like a cloud lifted. An inner warmth streamed through my body. I was at peace, my fear had vanished, and I was no longer afraid of dying.

  When the selection had ended, there were some thirty to forty inmates in our room. We sat there waiting for the truck that would take us to the gas chamber. Nothing happened for a while, and then an SS truck rolled up, and we were ordered inside. At first, the truck moved in the general direction of the crematoriums, but then it veered off slightly and entered the nearby Krankenlager, or hospital camp, which I believe was camp F. The camp consisted of a number of barracks that housed prisoners who were sick or quarantined. The truck rolled up to one of these barracks, and we were ordered out. Here we were received by orderlies who took down our numbers on small index cards and made some other notations on each of them. Pressed to tell us why we had been brought to them, we were told that we were there “in transit.” The SS had apparently concluded that it would be a waste of resources to take our small group to the gas chamber, which would also have meant starting up one of the crematoriums. They decided instead to keep us in this camp until they had put together a larger group.

  The barrack in which we were housed held inmates with a skin disease: scabies, or Krätze in German. They appeared to have scabs all over their bodies and scratched all the time. Every morning they would line up, be inspected by a young Polish doctor, and usually be given an orange salve. I was afraid that I would catch this disease and went to see the doctor a few times. He was always very kind to me and gave me advice on how to avoid coming down with scabies. On one occasion, he handed me a piece of soap — it had been quite a while since I had seen soap — and told me to wash my hands frequently. Every so often, he would examine me and express delight that I had not contracted scabies. He made sure that I always had enough soap. From time to time, he also slipped me some bread and arranged for me to be moved to a corner bunk at the other end of the barrack, away from the entrance and those parts of the barrack where the other inmates tended to congregate.

  When I was pretty sure that I would be able to avoid getting scabies, I began to like my life in the hospital camp. Maybe the SS forgot us, I thought, hoping that I was right, and for a while, it seemed that that is what had happened. The only unpleasant part about being in that barrack was its proximity to the crematoriums. Many a night I would wake up to screams and pleas for help coming from the crematorium area, as people were being herded into the gas chambers. It was terrible. At first I would lie awake shaking. Then, when I fell asleep, I would have nightmares, terribly scary and vivid nightmares in which I was being beaten or executed. They made me afraid to sleep because the same nightmares kept returning night after night. After a while, without realizing what was happening, I had found a way to cope with my nightmares: In my sleep, while the nightmare was upon me, I would hear myself say, “This is only a nightmare; there is nothing to be afraid of.” And the nightmare would vanish. After that, whenever I was half awakened by the horrified screams coming from the nearby gas chambers, my mind would unconsciously transform them into nightmares, and I would continue to sleep.

  Then, one night, when I kept hearing terrified voices all around me, I went right on sleeping, believing that I was again having one of my nightmares. But when I woke up the next morning, I was told that the SS had come during the night or very early in the morning and dragged out all the people who had been brought to this barrack with me. It was a miracle, I thought, that the SS had not found me. Soon, though, I learned how I had been saved. When we first arrived at this barrack, a red X had been placed on the backs of our individual index cards. My friend, the young Polish doctor, apparently tore up my card and issued me a new one without the red X. When the SS came in and demanded the cards with the red mark, my card was not among them. The doctor had saved my life, and my nightmares saved me from witnessing what was happening that night and possibly giving myself away.

  I remained in the hospital camp for another week or two. Then one day the doctor called me to his little cubicle and told me that I was to be moved to t
he children’s barrack in camp D. Having learned to be suspicious — not of him, of course, but of the people with whom he had arranged my transfer — I kept asking him how he could be sure that my destination was camp D and not the gas chamber. He assured me that I had nothing to worry about. That turned out to be true. A few hours later, I was taken to the children’s barrack in camp D. To this day, I don’t really know how this transfer was arranged. All I remember is that I was picked up by an SS guard, the oldest SS guard I had ever seen. He did not look like the other SS guards I had encountered. They were usually young, seemed to pride themselves on their military bearing, and appeared to enjoy mistreating us. This man was kind and kept telling me that I would like the children’s barrack in D camp and that I would be safe there. He was the first SS guard in whose presence I did not fear for my life. Later, I heard that by 1944 old men were being drafted into the SS because the young ones were needed at the front. It may well be that this SS guard was one of these draftees.

  Before I arrived in the children’s barrack, I did not know that such a barrack existed. I was told later that it was the brainchild of a German political prisoner. He had saved a group of teenagers from the gas chambers by convincing the SS that it made no sense to get rid of the kids when they could be made to perform useful work in the camp. The SS agreed to let him prove it and put him in charge of a barrack that housed only children. In time, other boys ended up in that barrack. Most, if not all, of the kids in the children’s barrack were older than I. As soon as I had met the head of the barrack and was assigned to a bunk, I recognized two friends: Michael and Janek. I knew them from Kielce. They had survived the murder of the children in the labor camp of Kielce by hiding in the attic of the house where the children were being held before they were taken to the cemetery. I was delighted to see them again. Given our common Kielce experience, we became inseparable and thought of ourselves as brothers.

  Garbage collection was the main job to which most of the children were assigned. Sometimes we also had to collect garbage in other camps. We would pick up the garbage in various places, put it in wooden carts, and take it to a garbage dump. Three or four kids were usually assigned to a cart. Michael and Janek somehow managed to have me put on their team. In general, our work was not very difficult. But when it rained, which happened often, our shoes and the wheels of our cart would sink into the mud, making pushing the cart much harder.

  Once, we ended up close to one of the women’s camps. We were sent to pick up some garbage in C camp, which was bordered on one side by our D camp, enabling the men and women in these camps to engage in yelling conversations across the electrified fence. My father had found out that my mother was in B camp, which meant that we could not see her from our camp. But as soon as we had entered C camp, Michael, Janek, and I, together with two other kids, began to push our cart close to the side of the fence that bordered B camp. Whenever we saw any women on the other side, we yelled over to them in Polish and Yiddish that they should alert women from Kielce. A few minutes later, we recognized some women we knew from Kielce, among them relatives of Janek and Michael. Then I saw my mother. When she saw me, she began to cry and call, “Tommy, Tommy!” And if some women had not held her back, she would have tried to touch me through the electrified fence. All I could think of was that she was alive, while she kept repeating, “Du lebst, du lebst!” (“You’re alive! You’re alive!”) Then she asked about my father. As I began to tell her that my father had been shipped out on a transport, a woman Kapo raced over and chased all the women away from the fence. For months afterward, I kept replaying her words in my mind and seeing her tear-covered, smiling face through the fence. What mattered was that she was still alive and not a Muselman: she was thin but looked well under the circumstances, and, I kept saying to myself, she was very beautiful even without her hair. Not long after that encounter, I heard that a large number of women, including my mother, had been sent to another camp in Germany.

  Our barrack boss treated us well and distributed the rations fairly. Only rarely did the rations suffice to overcome that lingering feeling of hunger that had become part of me. Still, I always resisted eating anything we found in the garbage. Since we were also responsible for the garbage of the SS kitchen, the temptation was great to eat the remains of a sandwich or to lick a can that still contained a few slivers of food or some drops of soup or sauce. Whenever I saw such items in the garbage, I would remember my father’s repeated warning never to eat anything from the garbage lest I get terribly sick. Once, though, a special opportunity presented itself. While collecting garbage outside the SS kitchen, we looked through the open window and saw that no one was in the kitchen at that moment. Near the stove stood a pan filled with milk. It had been years since Michael, Janek, and I had tasted milk. We looked at each other, and without saying a word, Michael climbed into the kitchen through the window. He took a big gulp of milk, then passed the pan through the window to us. Janek and I took a few sips from the pan and handed it back to Michael. He put whatever was left of the milk back where he had found it and climbed out again as fast as he could. Had we been caught, our punishment would have been a very severe beating or worse. But we were not caught, and to this day I can still taste that heavenly mouthful of milk. No milk has ever tasted as good. Years later, when my own children would have to be coaxed to drink their milk, I would think of that milk in the SS kitchen and be grateful that they never had to risk their lives to get it. At the same time, I would have to hide my anger that they did not appreciate what it meant to have milk in abundance. But how could they? For many of us who survived the camps, food took on an almost mystical quality. Despite the fact that I am not religious, I consider it a sin to throw bread away, however stale it might have become, and will walk miles to feed it to birds or, remembering my job as Shabbat goy in Kielce, let my wife throw it away instead.

  Not long after I had seen my mother, the older boys in our barrack reported in conspiratorial tones that there were rumors that the Germans were losing the war and that the Russians were approaching. I did not really know what to believe or what it all meant. The thought that we might soon be liberated never quite entered my consciousness. I could think only of the cold Polish winter that was upon us and the fact that it was ever more difficult to stay warm. It must have been late December 1944 or early January 1945. The soil under our feet was frozen. The mud was no longer a problem, but the ice made it hard for us not to slide while pushing the garbage carts. Of course, the garbage was also frozen and difficult to load. As we worked on breaking it up, we consoled ourselves with the thought that frozen garbage did not smell.

  Then, one morning, we were awakened by repeated announcements coming at us in those harsh German command tones to which I never quite got accustomed: “Das Lager wird geräumt!” (“The camp is being evacuated!”) We were ordered to line up in front of the barrack with our blankets and other possessions. My possessions consisted of a thin blanket, a spoon, and a metal container that served both as my cup and soup plate. I always had the cup tied by a string to the piece of rope that served as my belt. Next, we were ordered to march through the main Birkenau gate. The road outside the gate was already lined with thousands of inmates, standing about eight or ten people abreast. “Children to the front of the column!” came the order. Our barrack was to be in the lead. The column was so long that it took us quite some time to get to the front. It was freezing, and a very strong wind was blowing through our clothes. As we stood there waiting, we were thrown a loaf of black bread. Then the order came: “Vorwärts marsch!” (“Forward march!”)

  The Auschwitz Death Transport had begun.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Auschwitz Death Transport

  AS WE BEGAN TO MARCH, leaving Birkenau gradually behind us, I looked back toward the vast stretch of land with its hundreds of barracks, administration buildings, guard towers, and electrified wire fences. Further in the distance, I could see the remains of the crematoriums that the SS had tried to
demolish. I could not really believe that I was leaving this terrible place alive. I remembered what my father once said in the Ghetto of Kielce as he and a few friends shared a bottle of vodka: “Do not despair. Sooner or later we will win this war and bury them deep under the ground.” And I could hear my mother trying to shush him by warning that “the walls have ears.” But he would not be silenced. Years later, I wondered whether my father really believed what he had said, or whether it was vodka-induced optimism or hope or both. Now, as I looked back on this vast murder factory, I felt victorious and kept repeating to myself, as if addressing Hitler directly, “See, you tried to kill me, but I am still alive!”

  Of course, the march had only just begun, and I had no idea what lay ahead. And what lay ahead turned out to be worse than anything I could have imagined. The roads were covered with snow and ice. It was January, after all, and a typical Polish winter. As the sun gradually set, it became colder and colder. The trees along some of the roads gave us temporary protection against the icy wind that would blow against us and pass right through our thin clothes. I was wearing my mother’s boots, which she had given me before we reached Auschwitz. My socks had been taken away when I had arrived at the camp. In their place, I used some rags to keep my feet warm. Michael, Janek, and I stayed close together, trying to keep warm. We were getting tired and realized that those of us from the children’s barrack, having been ordered by the SS guards to the front of the column of marchers, had it harder than those who followed on the snow and ice we had already trampled down. By late afternoon, Janek, Michael, and I found it increasingly difficult to keep up and decided to let the marchers pass us until the rear of the column was almost upon us. Then we jogged to the front again. Once we realized that this maneuver worked, we kept repeating it. Of course, we were getting pushed aside or bumped by the marchers, but that was a small price to pay for the respite it gave us.