There the men were eating everything they could find. Some of them were hanging over big kettles, slurping what looked like soup the SS had left behind. The door to the storeroom was open, and a number of men came out carrying armloads of bread and sausages. Everybody was chewing on something. I found two loaves of bread, some onions, and a pickle. I began to eat the pickle, which was the only food I had an urge to eat at that moment and which tasted delicious, and limped out of the kitchen to share my “liberated” food with Marek in the infirmary. People were running back and forth out of the camp and into the kitchen — eating all the time while carrying more food. On my way out, a man pushed me and snatched one of my loaves of bread, but I was too excited to worry about it.
The news of our liberation had already reached the infirmary by the time I got there. Somebody had brought pails of soup and other food. Marek tried to tell everybody not to eat too much all at once because, being undernourished, they might die from overeating. But no one paid attention. Marek and I split the bread and onions and a remaining piece of the pickle.
In the late afternoon, a Russian officer came into our barrack. He told us that all sick people would be cared for by Russian doctors and nurses who were to arrive in a few days. Those who could walk were free to leave the next day. Marek called me over to his bed after the Russian had left. “We had better try to get out of here on our own,” he said. “Who knows when the Russians will come and take us to a hospital. Besides, the Germans might reconquer the camp, and we don’t want to be here when that happens. You’ll have to help me get out of my casts.” He produced a knife, and I started to cut. “Let’s leave tomorrow morning, all right?” I agreed, although I would have loved to have been taken to a Russian hospital on a Red Cross truck as the officer had promised.
When I woke up early in the morning, Marek was already practicing walking. “What a day!” he said, pointing to the window. “The sun is shining, celebrating our liberation. I had already given up all hope of ever again seeing my folks in Poland. What a surprise it will be!” And he performed an awkward jig. “Get ready,” he said to me, “you are coming to Poland with me, and then we’ll start looking for your parents.” Yes, my parents. How I wanted to be together with them again! I did not know where my parents were, nor where or how we would be reunited. But even though I had seen many people die in the camps, it never occurred to me that my parents might not be alive. I was sure that they would find me as soon as they were liberated.
CHAPTER 7
Into the Polish Army
THE BIG SACHSENHAUSEN GATE WAS OPEN. Marek and I walked through it, under the administration building with its tower and the now-empty machine-gun nest near the area where some of the SS guards had been housed, and left the camp. We did not look back, either because we were afraid that some SS guards would suddenly give chase or because we did not want to be reminded of what lay behind us or both.
It took us a while to reach what looked like a major road or highway. It was teeming with tanks, military trucks, and horse-drawn wagons, carrying men and supplies. The men were waving to us and shouting. “Polish soldiers,” Marek said, and we waved back, calling out to them in Polish. They threw us loaves of bread as they drove past, chanting anti-Nazi slogans and singing “Long live Poland!”
We had been told to travel away from the front, which was moving closer and closer to Berlin. That meant that we had to go in the direction from which the soldiers were coming. Along the way we met inmates from other camps. There was much waving and cheering, with everybody wanting to know what camp we came from. For a while the road resembled a street carnival. A Polish military truck offered us a ride to a nearby German town. “Most of the houses here are empty,” the driver told us. “The Germans ran away because they are afraid of the Russians.” Then, acting as though he owned the town, he added, “Move into any of these houses, and take anything you find there, compliments of the Polish Kosciuszko Division.” The soldier laughed and drove away. As we walked down one of the streets, we met three Jewish girls from Hungary and two young men who had also just been liberated. They asked Marek and me to join them in the search for a house.
It did not take us long to come upon a large two-story brick house with a garden in front and a large backyard. It must have been abandoned on very short notice because the kitchen table was set, and there was even some food still on the plates. “Let’s continue the dinner,” one of the girls suggested. The cellar was stocked with canned fruit, vegetables, and even canned meat. We carried some of it up, and the girls started a fire and began to cook. What a wonderful dinner it was! My first real meal in years. The trouble was that while it all looked marvelous to me, I could barely swallow more than a few bites. Marek claimed that my stomach must have shrunk during all those years of near starvation. I did not know whether he was right; all I knew was that I could eat very, very little. Rather than stay at the table, I remembered the chickens and rabbits in the backyard; it had taken some persuasion on my part to save the rabbits from our eager cooks. I went out of the house to feed and play with the rabbits.
Wealthy people must have lived in the house, I thought. It had many rooms with fine furniture and paintings on the walls. It was hard for me to imagine, after Kielce, Auschwitz, and Sachsenhausen, that such homes existed and that families lived in them. The closets were filled with clothing. There were sheets and towels in drawers, as well as blankets and pillows. What would I not have given to have my parents with me in this house!
To the delight of the Hungarian girls, we found a sewing machine, and one of them immediately sat down to make herself a blouse with some material she had found. The men took all the clothing out of the closets and began to try on suits and pants. I found a pair of trousers, and since they were much too long on me, I simply shortened them with a kitchen knife and found a string to use as a belt. When I was all done, I threw my prison garb through the open window into the garden. Then I washed myself. No more prisoner, I thought, but then realized that the water and soap could not rid me of the one thing that would serve forever as a reminder of the concentration camp: the blue tattoo with my Auschwitz number on the inside of my left arm. Carefully, I dried my arm. Papa will be proud of me, I thought. Addressing him, as if reporting for duty, I called out, “B-2930 has survived the Ghetto of Kielce, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, and Germany! We won, as you predicted we would.”
I enjoyed myself immensely in “our” beautiful house. It was very comfortable; I had a clean bed all to myself with white sheets, pillows, and a quilt cover. It reminded me of Zilina in Slovakia, of our apartment there, and the cozy bed I had in the Grand Hotel. Through the windows of our new house, I could see Soviet tanks and trucks and soldiers, all moving toward Berlin. One day, while playing in the street, I noticed a Russian coming out of a nearby house. He was pushing a bicycle. Oh, to have a bike! I thought, and wondered whether I could still ride one. After all, I had not ridden a bike since I first learned to ride one in the Henryków factory in Kielce. Now I enviously watched the Russian soldier and his bike. As soon as he reached the street, he jumped clumsily on the bicycle and immediately fell off. He picked himself up and tried again and again. He started to swear, but the bicycle was unimpressed. I began to laugh. “Should I show you how it is done?” I asked in Polish, as I helped him pick up the bike. But he continued to swear. Finally, after yet another try, he threw the bike against the sidewalk and proceeded to kick it. “Don’t break it, don’t break it!” I cried, pulling on his uniform. He looked at me, spat on the ground, and walked away. That is how I became the proud owner of a bike. Of course, I jumped on it immediately and found, to my delight, that I had not forgotten how to ride.
The evenings in our house were lots of fun. Polish officers and soldiers dropped in and brought us food and candy. They asked about life in the concentration camps, wanted to know where we had been, told us about fighting the Germans and where they were during the war. Marek and I served as interpreters. They spoke of the conquest
of Warsaw, the battles along the Vistula and Oder rivers, and the imminent German capitulation. Every evening more and more of them came. They told us about their regiments, and they showed me their decorations. One day a new group of soldiers came to visit us. They spoke with Marek and the Hungarian girls, while I was occupied polishing my bike, which I had carried into the house. The conversation dealt with Berlin and the prospects of victory. When Marek left the room to get some water glasses for the vodka they had brought along, the soldiers tried to communicate with the girls, but the girls did not understand Polish. I put my bike aside and asked them whether I could translate for them. “The girls understand German, and I speak Polish,” I said.
Immediately, I became the center of attention. “A Polish boy!” they exclaimed, and before I had a chance to explain that I was not a Pole, Marek entered the room. “Yes, he is Polish,” Marek said. “He was born in Kielce, and now I am taking him back.” He winked at me. “Let’s take him to Poland,” one of the soldiers said. “He can come with us,” added another. “I am staying with Marek,” I said, and went back to polish my bike. When they had left, Marek came over to me and explained that it might not be such a bad idea to go with the soldiers. After all, they could take care of me better than he could and get me back to Poland faster. There I would soon find my parents. I was not at all persuaded and did not want to lose the only real friend I had.
Early the next morning, two soldiers came to visit. I knew one of them. He had been our guest the night before; the other was an officer. They had brought some chocolate and a bicycle bell. The officer introduced himself and told me that he had heard about me. “We are with the heavy artillery,” he said, “and if you come with us, you’ll have a great life.” “Yes,” the soldier chipped in, “you’ll ride in military cars. What a life! No more walking.” “He’s right,” said the officer, “you’ll have all the chocolate you want, and we’ll let you shoot the cannons.” They talked and talked. Finally, in order not to seem impolite, I promised to think about it. Then I went out and attached the bell to my bike.
We had visitors again in the afternoon. Among the soldiers who came, I recognized the two who had dropped by earlier. They came into the garden and played with me. They showed me all kinds of tricks I could do with my bike. One of them asked me whether I wanted to learn how to shoot a gun. He found an old can in the yard, took his pistol out, threw the can into the air, and fired. It was a perfect hit. Then he gave me the gun, placed the can on the fence, and showed me how to aim. I was having a wonderful time. Another of the soldiers gave me a penknife. Again, they began to speak to me about returning with them to Poland. This time, somewhat to my own surprise, I agreed. Suddenly, it all seemed very exciting.
The soldiers picked me up the next the morning. Parting from Marek was not easy, but he assured me that I was doing the right thing, and I wanted to believe him. I never saw or heard from him again. My bicycle was loaded on the jeep, and while my friends waved, we drove off. The car sped through the streets of that little German town that had become our temporary home. The jeep stopped in front of a large crowded yard. “Here we are,” said the driver. “This is the famous Scout Company of the First Kosciuszko Division.” The yard was full of soldiers, trucks, armored cars, and horses. “Let’s introduce him to the captain,” said one of the soldiers who was holding my bike. We walked into one of the houses. The captain was a tall, heavyset man whom I liked immediately. “This is Tomek,” reported the driver. “Yes, yes,” muttered the captain, “heard a lot about you.” Picking me up in his arms, he immediately made me feel welcome. He then turned to one of the men and ordered him to get the company tailor and shoemaker. “We’ll make a real soldier out of you,” he said to me as he set me down again.
Within a day or two, I received something that looked like a Polish uniform, a belt, and a pair of shoes. Nothing seemed to be missing. The uniform had military buttons and even a corporal’s insignia. “If you make a good soldier,” the company tailor told me, “the captain will promote you to sergeant.” I had become a full-fledged soldier, albeit in miniature: the mascot of the Polish army. I don’t know exactly what date it was, although it must have been the end of April 1945. I was about two weeks short of my eleventh birthday.
At first, the tailor and shoemaker, who had made my uniform and shoes, were the soldiers I was closest to in the Scout Company. We ate all our meals together, and they soon noticed that I ate very little. That worried them, and they decided that they had to find a cure for my lack of appetite. When it appeared that the remedies they had come up with did not work, the shoemaker had an idea. “Why not try vodka?” he suggested. And out came the vodka. First a spoonful, then two, and finally half a kieliszek (tumbler), followed by little pieces of bacon. It worked like a charm: within days, I began to eat normally. This cure had the further consequence that, after a while, I could hold my vodka as well as many a soldier. I retained this capacity for vodka until my college days, when friends who had just seen the Brothers Karamazov movie bet me fifteen dollars — a lot of money in those days — that I could not drink a fifth of vodka, as one of the brothers had done in the movie, and jump over a chair. I won the wager but got so sick afterward that it was years before I could so much as look at a bottle of vodka again.
Besides showing me how to drink vodka and helping to revive my appetite, the tailor and shoemaker also tried to teach me their trades. I was particularly drawn to what the shoemaker called the “art of shoemaking,” from the stretching, cutting, and sewing of the leather, to the nailing down of the soles with wooden nails. My new friend was a master at it, and as I watched him I thought that it would be fun to become a shoemaker. I still remember all the steps that went into the production of an entirely handmade pair of shoes.
Some days after I joined the Scout Company, we received orders to move on to Berlin. Despite the fact that we were probably stationed no more than thirty kilometers from the outskirts of Berlin, our progress was quite slow, since the company was not fully mechanized. While we had a few trucks, one or two cars, and a few armored vehicles, our supplies and maybe even the ammunition were transported on horse-drawn wagons, which brought up the rear and slowed down our advance. The roads were also crowded with advancing Soviet troops, whose tanks and artillery pieces kept passing us amid a great deal of shouting and general confusion. It was all very exciting to me, especially as I was permitted to ride in the armored vehicles, although I had to sleep in the horse-drawn wagons.
When we reached Berlin, the fighting for the city was still in full swing. Artillery and heavy machine-gun fire could be heard in the distance. Death and destruction were all around us. Most of the buildings along our route were burned out or reduced to rubble. The houses that were still standing were covered with bullet holes. Bodies of dead German and Soviet soldiers and of civilians were lying on the sidewalks and on the mounds of brick and cement that were all that remained of what had once been private homes, apartment houses, and office buildings.
Our destination was a park area not far from the Brandenburg Gate. The park was already largely occupied by Soviet troops with artillery pieces and katyushas, their rocket-propelled field guns. My company established itself in one part of the park, not far from the katyusha batteries, which made a terrible noise every time they were fired. I still remember one of the soldiers, probably a corporal or sergeant, who was in charge of a katyusha mounted atop a truck, hurling antifascist slogans and obscenities in the direction of the German defenders of the city each time he gave the order to release the rockets. Although the Germans seemed no longer to be firing their cannons in our direction, I was told to sleep in the armored car at night and to stay in it or near it during the day, because no one knew how long the Germans would continue to fight. Besides, there were still many German snipers around. A day after we arrived in Berlin, one of our soldiers was killed by a sniper shooting at a truck that had left the park to reconnoiter some suspected German positions.
As the
fighting died down, some soldiers decided to go fishing in a nearby pond and took me along. When we got there, one of them threw a hand grenade into the pond. Within minutes, the surface of the pond was covered with dead fish floating belly-up. My friends scooped up some fish in a bucket they had brought along. They called it “speed fishing.” I don’t know what they did with the fish, but if they cooked them, they did not share any with me.
I have only tried to fish a few times in my life and have never had much success at it. Once, on my first fishing outing with my sons, who were then still quite young, I cast my fishing rod with real gusto and, to my great shock and that of my sons, hooked the shirt of a fisherman standing on the other side of the pier. He did not look very happy when he realized what had happened. While I was trying to disentangle my hook from his shirt, my sons, fearing that the fisherman would attack me with the long knife hanging from his belt, kept moving ever farther away from me. But as soon as I told the fisherman that this was my first fishing experience, he burst out laughing and wished me better luck next time. At that moment, I thought of that Berlin pond back in 1945, which had actually been my first fishing experience — but certainly not the type of fishing I would recommend.
The news that Berlin had capitulated reached us a day after the “speed fishing” expedition at the pond. Of course, there was great rejoicing throughout our park, with shots being fired into the air from whatever weapons were handy. At the same time, vodka was being dispensed to the troops. Polish and Soviet soldiers could be seen embracing each other and sharing their vodka and cigarettes. Everybody was singing and dancing. A Polish soldier from our company gave me some swigs from his vodka bottle. The park had turned into a veritable carnival. As it got darker and the festivities gradually died down, I crawled into the armored car that had been my bed for the past few days and was soon fast asleep. That is how I helped liberate Berlin!
A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy Page 10
