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

by Thomas Buergenthal

  Not long after my operation, a man who had been visiting another patient stopped by my bed. He wanted to know my name, where I had been before I ended up in the infirmary, and whether my foot still hurt. He told me that he came from Norway, that his name was Odd Nansen, and that one of his friends, also from Norway, was in a nearby bunk in my ward. Mr. Nansen returned a few days later with cookies, a picture book with big letters, and a pencil. “You need to learn to read and write and to draw pictures,” he said. Thereafter, whenever he came to visit, he brought me something to eat, usually sweets, which I had not seen or tasted in years, and he always wanted to know what progress I had made with my writing. I later learned that the Norwegian and Danish inmates of the camp received food packages from the Swedish Red Cross, which they frequently shared with other inmates. Every so often, Mr. Nansen would also speak with the ward’s orderly, hand him something (usually tobacco or cigarettes), and tell him to take good care of me. Soon I came to look forward to Mr. Nansen’s visits, not only because he always brought me something nice, but also because we talked about many things, especially about what we would do once the war was over. He sounded very much like my father when he kept saying that the Germans would soon lose the war, that I would then go to school with other children, learn to read and write, and be reunited with my parents. Mr. Nansen also spoke frequently of his wife and children in Norway. He expected to see them as soon as we were liberated and promised that I would get a chance to meet them.

  The barrack that housed my ward in the infirmary was constructed of wood, like most of the other barracks in the camp. It had a few little windows and one or two round ventilation holes cut out of the ceiling. I had never noticed these holes. They had always been closed until they were forced open one day. Not long after I had arrived in the infirmary, I realized that more and more Allied airplanes were flying over the camp at night as well as during the day. They were on their way to bomb Berlin. After a while, as the flights overhead increased and more bombs fell on Oranienburg, the Allies began to drop flares around the camp’s perimeter to ensure that our camp would be spared. The sound of the bombing was terrifying and made our barrack shake, but we felt safe, knowing that they were trying to protect us. Then one day, as the planes were again flying over, there was a tremendous explosion that shook our barrack more violently than usual, followed by an even louder scream from one of the beds. “They hit me, they killed me, the bastards!” I heard a man scream. Everyone who could sit up did. Then we all burst out laughing as if on command. One of the covers of the ventilation holes had been forced loose by the explosion and had fallen on the man. When he realized that it was not a bomb and that he was still alive, even he could not resist laughing. I don’t remember ever laughing before, either in Auschwitz or Sachsenhausen. This was the first such occasion, and it brought us some welcome relief, although, given where we were, there was something macabre about the laughter resounding around the room.

  Our SS guards gradually realized that the camp was the only place that could provide a safe haven from Allied bombing raids. Soon we heard that many of them would bring their families into the camp whenever the air-raid sirens sounded in Oranienburg. Oh, how we relished this information, and how it must have irked them. To think that the Germans now finally feared for their lives and had to seek protection in our camp! That made us feel good, even though one or two stray bombs did fall just inside the camp wall and killed a few inmates.

  At regular intervals, a loudspeaker in our ward broadcast Nazi propaganda news. We had developed a special system for listening to it. For example, whenever they reported that five German fighter planes had shot down thirty Allied bombers and their fighter escorts, we assumed the opposite to be true. News from the Western or Eastern front was treated by us in the same way. Then, one day, a special news item caught our attention: “The Jew Roosevelt, President of America, has died!” the announcer gleefully repeated a number of times. Of course, we assumed that Hitler had died and started to congratulate each other. This time, unfortunately, it was not Hitler but Roosevelt who had in fact died.

  I don’t remember whether it was before or after the news of President Roosevelt’s death that Mr. Nansen came to see me as usual. This time he looked very troubled as he told me that he and the other Norwegians would be leaving the camp within the next few days to be taken to safety in Sweden. He said that he had tried everything to be allowed to take me along, but it was unfortunately not possible. In any event, we would all be free soon and meet again after the war. He gave me a strong handshake, wrote down his name and address on a piece of paper, and told me to take good care of myself. I was very sad after he left and wondered whether I would ever see Mr. Nansen again. Much later I realized that Mr. Nansen had probably saved my life by periodically bribing the orderly in charge of our barrack with cigarettes and tobacco to keep my name off the list of “terminally ill” patients, which the SS guards demanded every few weeks “to make room for other inmates.”

  Not long after Mr. Nansen left, I woke up one morning to the usual sound of the camp gong. The sun was not shining, and it promised to be a rainy day. I remembered that the bandages on my foot would have to be changed again. This was always very painful because too much skin had been cut off around the amputated big toe, leaving an exposed bone over which the doctor, every few days, tried to pull the skin. The thought occurred to me that it would be wonderful if I woke up one morning and found that my toes had begun to grow again or, at least, if I could find some excuse for not having the wound rebandaged. At that point, the orderly came into the room without his usual list. Rushing through the ward, he announced that Sachsenhausen was being evacuated. Everybody able to walk had to get up and line up on the Appellplatz.

  The barrack was suddenly very quiet. The silence was interrupted only by the closing of the door as the orderly left the ward. There were people with me in this big drab room whose legs had been amputated, and others who were in body casts. Others still were in the final throes of some terrible disease. Certainly none of these individuals could leave. I decided that I could make it and started to get dressed. So did a few others in the room. They must have been thinking what I was thinking, and that made all of us hurry. Camp evacuation meant long marches and overcrowded trains, like those that had brought me to Sachsenhausen. But it also meant that people who could not walk would be shot wherever they were found — on the roadside or in their beds. I imagined seeing the SS guards with their big boots walking from bed to bed in the infirmary, shooting everyone left behind.

  I found my cane and a piece of bread and limped out of the room, leaving behind the moans of those who could not get out of their beds. In the small hospital yard, separated from the other barracks by a wire fence, people were hurrying toward the gate leading to the Appellplatz. As I followed them, I suddenly realized how fast I was walking. My foot did not seem to hurt. I only hoped that the SS would not notice me with my cane. I knew that I had to be evacuated with the camp’s other inmates if I wanted to stay alive.

  When I reached the Appellplatz, I started to look for Janek and Michael. They were nowhere to be seen. I wondered whether they had been shipped to another camp, for they had visited me only once shortly after my operation. Hundreds of people were standing around on the Appellplatz with blankets over their shoulders and pots or canteens in their hands. The SS guards were in full combat dress. They appeared nervous, and the dogs that were their constant companions barked much of the time. I managed to walk unnoticed to a spot near the rear of a column. Now a long wait began. Many hours passed. Rain started to fall, making standing difficult. I ate the piece of bread I had saved from the day before. The nerves on my right foot began to twitch, giving me the sensation that the amputated toes were still there. I could feel them wiggle and pressed my left shoe on my right to stop it. That did not really help much. I was very tired and finally sat down.

  After what seemed a long, long wait, the first column started to move out through the main
gate under the administration building. At that point, I noticed a group of five men with blankets and rucksacks on their backs. They stood close to where I was sitting. One of them was a doctor I knew from the hospital who had always been very kind to me. I limped over to him, and he greeted me with a smile. “Doctor, may I march with you?” I asked. “Yes, of course,” he said, looking at my cane and the oversized shoes I was wearing, given to me in the hospital. “We are going to try to leave with the second transport tomorrow morning. Half of the camp is leaving today and the others tomorrow. You should go back to the hospital and get a good rest.” “But, doctor, are you also going back to the hospital?” I asked. “I don’t want to stay behind.” He assured me that he was and told me to join him and his friends as they walked back to the infirmary. On the way, the doctor asked me whether my foot hurt. I lied and told him that it did not. I was afraid to tell him the truth because I feared that he would not want to take me along if he thought that I could not make it.

  During our walk back, the doctor and his friends reported that the front was getting closer, that the Soviet troops were nearing Sachsenhausen and Berlin, and that we would soon be liberated. I had heard similar talk before the evacuation of Auschwitz. People said that you could hear the sound of artillery from the approaching front if you put your ear to the ground and that the war would soon be over. That was in January 1945, and now it was already April, and I was in yet another camp. That explains why I was not particularly excited about all this talk of our impending liberation. Besides, I could never quite believe that there would actually come a time when the war would be over and I would be free and able to go to school. Once, when Mr. Nansen told me that after the war I would learn to read and write in a school with many other children, I remember wondering whether school would be like a big concentration camp for children, but where there would be lots of food and I would never be hungry again.

  When we had reached the infirmary, the doctor told me to go to my ward and get a good night’s sleep. As I opened the door of my ward, I could sense fear gripping the patients who had stayed behind. They must have expected the SS with their dogs and guns. There was a general sigh of relief when they recognized me. I was swamped with questions and reported what I had heard: that the Russians were coming closer, that there would be another transport tomorrow, and that there was nothing to worry about tonight. Then I went to sleep with my clothes and shoes on in order to be ready the next morning.

  The sun was shining through the small windows of our ward when I woke up. I jumped out of bed as fast as I could and hurried over to the ward where the doctor had his quarters. The door was open but nobody was inside. Everything pointed to a sudden departure. There were empty cans, paper, and rags on the floor and on the straw mattresses of the beds. As I hobbled through the room, I called out the name of the doctor. There was no answer. Fear choked my throat as I realized what had happened. “The doctor left me behind!” I cried. I limped out of the room into the hospital yard and through the gate. The Appellplatz was totally deserted! But I remembered the machine guns on the balcony of the administration building and on the guardhouses. Without looking up at them, I limped back to the barrack as fast as I could, trying to stay close to the wall in order not to be seen by the SS guards behind those guns.

  “He left me behind!” I cried, throwing myself on the floor next to the bed of Marek, my Polish neighbor whose legs were in a cast. Marek must have been in his midtwenties. Except for me, he was the youngest person in the ward. We had become friends as soon as he had arrived at my ward. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you wake me up? I don’t want to die with you. I don’t want to die!” He pulled me up to his bed and, with tears in his eyes, told me that the last group had left either late at night or early in the morning. I don’t know how long I had been sitting on his bed when I heard him whisper, as if talking to himself, “They were going to take my casts off next week. Now they’ll bury me with them.” I limped over to my bed. My feet hurt. Moans and muffled cries filled the room. This is it, I thought.

  A little while later, I heard Marek say, “You can walk. Why don’t you leave the hospital and hide someplace in an empty barrack?” This possibility had not occurred to me, not even when I realized that the doctor and his friends had deserted me. Had I thought of it, I probably would have tried to hide. Now, as I lay in my bed with my clothes on and the cane by my side, I did not want to hide anymore. I had lost the desire to live and the fear of dying. It was a wonderful feeling, complete emptiness. My feet seemed no longer to hurt; I was not hungry anymore. I hope they come soon, I thought, as I remembered having had a similar sensation in Auschwitz when, with no hope of escape, I waited for the truck that was to take me to the gas chamber.

  Hours passed, and I realized that I was still alive. The pounding of heavy artillery made our barrack tremble. Some people were sitting up in their beds looking at their neighbors, as if to reassure themselves that they were still alive. In between the heavy bombardment, we could hear machine-gun fire. “They must be fighting in Oranienburg already. Somebody should go and see what is happening.” Marek turned to me. “You can walk,” he said. I slid down from the bed, limped out of the ward, and began to crawl along the outer wall of the barracks through the hospital yard to the gate. The Appellplatz was deserted. Not far away from me something fell to the ground. It looked like a piece of metal. Heavy machine-gun fire could be heard coming from different places outside the camp’s wall. I looked up at the balcony of the administration building. There was nobody behind the big gun. I walked a few steps further until I could see another watchtower along the wall of the camp. It too was empty. I limped back to the ward as fast as I could, stormed through the door, and screamed, “They are gone, they are gone! The SS has run away! The machine-gun towers are empty!”

  Very excited, I reported what I had seen. Nobody seemed to believe me because Marek called me over to his bed and asked whether I might have been mistaken. Once more, I recounted what I had seen. “Those metal pieces are probably shrapnel,” he said. “When you go out again, try to stay under the roof of the barrack.” He suggested that I rest my feet for a while before going out to report back.

  A little later, I again took up my position near the fence of the hospital and stayed there for quite some time. The shooting came closer and closer. Then, all of a sudden, I heard a squeaking noise and realized that the big gate under the camp’s administration building was being opened. I hid behind a fence post, afraid that the SS were returning. When I looked up again, I saw some soldiers get off a military vehicle and walk toward the center of the Appellplatz in the direction of the big gong. They did not look like the SS and wore uniforms I had never seen before. But I was still afraid to move. Then I heard the sound of the camp’s gong. One of the soldiers was striking it as hard as he could, while another was yelling: “Hitler kaputt! Hitler kaputt!” They threw their caps in the air and performed what looked like a wild dance.

  First one and then two inmates ventured out very carefully from the barracks where they must have been hiding. Others followed. Fearing that the SS had tricked them into believing that the soldiers were Russians, I waited to see when they would lower their guns and start shooting the prisoners. That did not happen. Instead, the soldiers embraced the first few men who reached them and seemed to be giving them cigarettes. By the time I got to the gong, a small group of inmates had surrounded the soldiers, who kept repeating that Hitler was “kaputt” and that we had been liberated. More people came out of their hiding places in various barracks. Again I looked all around, hoping to spot Janek and Michael, but they were nowhere to be seen. In fact, I never saw them again and never learned what had happened to them.

  The Soviet soldiers who first entered Sachsenhausen had told us that we were free, that we had been liberated. I could not quite grasp what that meant. I had never really thought of liberation as such. My sole concern had been to survive from one day to the next. True, sometimes when lying in my
bunk in the infirmary, listening to the sound of British and American bombers flying toward Berlin, I would fantasize that one of these large planes would swoop down, lower a big hook, pick up the entire barrack, and take it, with me in it, to England or America. That is something I could imagine, not liberation.

  After the Russians had left, all of us who had greeted them around the camp gong started for the SS kitchen. I followed very slowly, some fifteen or twenty yards behind, always ready to take cover. I still could not believe that this supposed liberation was real and not some sort of trick concocted by the SS. They probably staged this liberation in order to draw us out of our hiding places, I thought to myself. That is why I did not walk into the kitchen with the rest of the men but kept my distance. When nothing happened, I slowly entered the building and on my way to the kitchen noticed an open door to what looked like an office. After making sure that no one was inside, I stepped in and looked around. Above the desk hung a photograph of Hitler; the walls were lined with filing cabinets; a telephone rested on the desk. I looked out of the window and saw a number of men going out of the kitchen carrying bread and some tin cans.

  Maybe we really have been liberated, I thought as I climbed on the desk and pulled down Hitler’s picture. I threw it on the floor, shattering the glass and the frame. I spat on it and stepped on his face so hard that my feet began to hurt, but still I went on until the picture was torn to pieces. Then I pulled out all the drawers from the filing cabinets and let the files fall to the floor. My work completed, I sat down behind the desk in the soft leather chair and picked up the telephone receiver. The line was dead, but I spoke into it anyway, telling my imagined listeners that Hitler and all Germans were dead. Then I pulled the cord out of the wall and limped over to the kitchen.