On March 19, one of Himmler’s main deputies, SS ObergruppenFührer Oswald Pohl, visited Bergen–Belsen on an inspection tour.
Josef Kramer
I went through the camp with him and showed him the worst parts… He saw the whole camp and told me that what he had seen that day in Belsen he had never seen anywhere before. I told him that if they sent me nothing but sick people I would not be able to show him anything better. We returned to the office and had a conversation to try and find means to improve the situation. My proposals were to cease all new transports and to transfer all so-called exchange Jews with their families… [He] decided there and then to send a telegram, and to comply with my request…[8]
Fully aware that the noose was closing around his boss Himmler, Pohl arranged for the evacuation of nearly seven thousand in the exchange camp to the camp Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia, perhaps in the hopes that these Jews might prove useful in negotiations with the Allies even as more transports arrived[*][9]. Between April 6 and 10, 1945, 6,700 men, women, and children from the exchange camp passed through the camp gates and marched several kilometers to the railhead that many had arrived at months or years earlier. But they were not told the objective and had no way of knowing whether they were being led out to be shot in a ditch or moved on to be gassed elsewhere; Belsen had no gas chambers. Some would be murdered before reaching the train platform.[10]
Aliza Melamed was a teenage survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Aliza Melamed Vitis–Shomron
Allied planes fly above us making a dull sound and there is nothing to stop them. A few days ago, there was an air battle between English and German planes, right above the camp. I hid with the others under the bunks, not that I was afraid, but a shrewd thought was on my mind: Now, just before liberation and the end of the war, I could be killed by an Allied bullet or bomb…
I am sure there is no God—only chance rules my life. There is no one to pray to, no one to beg—maybe my lucky star that has protected me until now will continue to do so… Will I manage to survive? A sweet feeling of revenge fills me as I realize that our murderers are also suffering and being killed!
My strength has waned; my feet are swollen from hunger. I have become apathetic to my surroundings.
Irene Bleier Muskal
In accord with my daily routine, I was just loafing about by the barbed wire fence inside the courtyard of Block 36. My gaze was directed toward two important locations over the fence—the kitchen and the cattle feed pile.
Suddenly, a band of SS officers appeared on the scene. A tall officer bawled out, ‘Where is the dog?’ Soon, Mr. Fisher [the block leader] presented himself. This strange occurrence keenly aroused my interest. Does this signal good tidings as to our destiny? For better or worse, we find out in a few short minutes.
Orders from higher Nazi authorities called for a group of two thousand tormented Jewish souls—Hungarian, Polish, Dutch, Spanish, and Greek—to leave Bergen–Belsen for good. The instruction singled out large families, but those who preferred to stay and be liberated in this camp were allowed to do so, while those singles who wished were allowed to join with this, the first transport to leave. At this time, I could think of no greater desire than to walk out alive through the big open gates of the Bergen–Belsen concentration camp on my own two feet. Together with my mom, my sister Jolan, and my two brothers, I felt this was a great privilege, an immeasurable reward from the Almighty.
In less than ten minutes, two thousand ‘living dead’ stood in lines of five, as was the order of the SS Nazi leader named Kramer. Adults aged over twenty-one were given four cigarettes. As we stood in rows, my acquaintance F.F. came to my side to wish me speedy liberation from Nazi reign. In turn, I wished him the same good tidings.
With our meager belongings on our backs, we thus began marching out of Bergen–Belsen after unbearable suffering of many months. At our sides were armed Nazi guards, but now I could not care less; I just disregarded their presence. With an elevated feeling, I walked on the camp's main road, leading us toward our long-yearned-for freedom.
As we approached Block 10, the unfolding spectacle encompassed me. I saw a colossal hill made of skeleton cadavers while yet living skeleton-like creatures sat cross-legged on the bare earth or wallowed in their own filth. I dared ask the Nazi guard who walked by what would happen to the pitiful creatures in Block 10. He answered that all those creatures would shortly perish.
Aliza Melamed Vitis–Shomron
On April 6, an unexpected order came to prepare for evacuation. We heard the thunder of cannons in the distance; they said that the city of Hannover was in the hands of the Allied armies. And they are approaching the little town of Celle.
Evacuation? To where? To the gas chambers?
There was a terrible smell in the air. I was hardened, cynical, and no longer capable of feeling anything. After the terrible murders in Block 10, adjacent to us, nothing could move me. But I remembered I had to survive to tell the world about my friends who were killed in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. I hugged my mother and sister. They mustn’t separate us!
Mother consults Uncle Leon Melamed. Aunt Irena, practical as usual, is already packing the most important things. ‘There is nothing we can do,’ she says with typical decisiveness. ‘We have no choice. There is no point in staying in a camp that is no longer getting supplies of food. We’ll starve before they come to liberate us.’ We agree with her. We get into a long line, men, women, and the children who are with us, hundreds of Jews from various blocks.
The people’s faces mainly express uncertainty and acceptance of the situation. We again pass by the piles of skeletons, new ones every day. In the huge camp on the other side of the road, we see shadowy figures moving.
Mother and I take the few remaining clothes, the notes I have written in the camp and on the Aryan side, and a passport photo of father. We have no personal documents, nothing reminiscent of our previous life. Mother has only a silver fruit knife that she took with us when we went to the ‘selektzia’ in Warsaw.
Irene Bleier Muskal
At the time, our bodies were completely weakened, and we stood at the edge of the grave. Finally, we reached the huge open gate, where the armed Nazi guards at each side of the sentry box no longer frightened me. Proudly, with a sense of relief, I walked through the gate, leaving the Bergen–Belsen death factory behind me.
Agnes Fleischer was a ten-year-old girl from Hungary.
Agnes Fleischer Baker
I remember Bergen–Belsen well—the stack of dead, the stack of skeletons. My father was dead by that time. I had my tenth birthday in Bergen–Belsen, only by that time we didn't know the dates. The months before we left, I remember being cold.
Days before we were to leave, someone who could differentiate artillery fire from air bombardment said he heard artillery fire, so somebody is close. Then came that April day, the sixth, and my mother told us that the kapo said we are moving out in five minutes. We had nothing to do there, so five minutes was more than enough time for us to [get ready to] go anywhere. I was standing with my sister and my mother said to me, ‘You know, we should not go. For a piece of bread, I can arrange to stay here.’ I said, ‘No, we should go.’
It was seven kilometers from the camp Bergen–Belsen to the rail station, and it goes through a forest. We had to walk and we were close to three thousand people. It was a hilly kind of road and if you were in the middle like my mother, sister, and I were, you could see the first people in the group, the first walkers. And I kept asking my mother, ‘Are they shooting yet?’ I thought that that was where they were going to shoot us, in the woods, you know. I was sure, there were so many trees and going through the forest, that they're going to get rid of us there. At that point I don't remember being scared; it was just a matter of fact.
Ariela Lowenthal was an only child of six when the war came to Poland. Her parents had already been murdered by the time she and her aunt and uncle arrived in Bergen–Belsen; her
uncle then died there.
Ariela Lowenthal Mayer Rojek
I was born in 1933 in Poland, where I spent time in a ghetto and a prison. I then spent two years in Bergen–Belsen.
When told to prepare ourselves for the departure on the train, I was already very weak and sick. Two weeks prior I had a very high fever. I was in Bergen–Belsen with my aunt, my father’s sister, as by then I had lost my entire family.
The Germans let us know that all those who could not walk would have to stay behind. My aunt wanted to stay because she knew that I was already very weak; however, I insisted on going. I said to my aunt, ‘You know that they kill the weak and the sick. We will go with the healthy people.’ Although I was only 11½ years old, my aunt listened to me. I probably had a very strong will to live.
Before we left, they gave each of us a raw potato, and somehow we managed to bake them over a wood fire. My aunt then said to me, ‘You know that now is the Passover holiday’—we barely remembered what day of the week it was, let alone the date. On Passover, according to the story, our forefather Moses took us out of Egypt. Maybe G-d is bringing us to freedom, and maybe we will live?
You know, the whole camp was divided into small camps, and every [sub]camp had a wire fence. We had to walk to the train station and when we went out from our camp, we went on the main road. On both sides of us—[it was like we were] walking in the middle of a tunnel—on both sides were white mountains of corpses. They could not get rid of the corpses, so it was terrible, and you had to walk in the middle. I remember my aunt, to this day, saying, ‘Don’t look! Don’t look!’
We walked a few kilometers to the train, and out of weakness we dropped most of the things that we still had with us.
Seventeen-year-old Laszlo ‘Leslie’ Meisels of Hungary weighed just 75 pounds as he and his family shuffled along the seven kilometers towards the railhead.
Leslie Meisels
When I entered Bergen–Belsen, I was a strong, robust, marching 175-pound 17-year-old. Four months and three days later, I was a shuffling skeleton, 75 pounds, barely able to move.
[When we started out, we were] in the third row of the column, and we were going so slow that we ended up almost at the very end. Had we started out at the center or in the second half of the column, we would have been shot like others who were not able to keep up. Those people told the guards they had to sit down for a moment to rest, but they didn't have a chance to stand up because a bullet to the head ended it.
Fred ‘Fritz’ Spiegel was nearly thirteen and incarcerated with his young sister, with no parents to look after them in Bergen–Belsen.
Fred ‘Fritz’ Spiegel
We were a ragged group with tattered clothes, damaged even more when we pulled off the Jewish star that we had worn all those years.
The Germans did not want the local population to know who we were. Many people were almost barefoot as we no longer had decent shoes. We walked unnoticed through the town of Bergen; the inhabitants in the houses on both sides of the road had their shutters closed. Some people in our column fell and were left by the wayside. Then, suddenly a small girl fell, and a German guard hurriedly picked her up and helped her to move on. I noticed the guard was crying. I had never before noticed any German guard having sympathy for the children in the camp, even though many children were starving to death or dying of typhus. So why was this German guard crying? Did he suddenly take pity on this young girl? Or was he upset when he realized it was all over and Germany was going to lose the war?
Aliza Melamed Vitis–Shomron
My legs won’t carry me. The road seems endless; the body is weak and not used to moving. Every step calls for an inhuman effort. We crawl along slowly.
[A girl] is carrying her 5-year-old brother on her back. Her face is red with the effort. The child has no strength left, he is apathetic. Their mother walks beside them and slaps him gently on his face. Her legs are also swollen from hunger. I walk on. I can’t help them—I have no strength left.
Suddenly, a man walks up to me. I recognize him: It is my neighbor from the next bunk. Without a word, he puts his arms under my armpits and drags me along. I lean on him with all the weight of my body. I didn’t get to know him although we ‘lived next door,’ and now he is helping me!
Who can understand the depths of good and evil in the hearts of men? This small deed, the hand held out in support at a critical moment, imbued me with hope and strength to continue on my own.
People begin to drop their belongings. We also stop every fifteen minutes and sadly throw down a few things. At the end of the march my backpack only holds a little food and two or three items of underclothes.
Fred ‘Fritz’ Spiegel
After a long and difficult walk, we finally reached the train station where a train consisting of many cattle wagons was waiting for us. The floors were covered with straw and it was difficult for most of us, especially the children, to climb into the wagons. Each wagon was overcrowded, and we had only a slice of bread each, taken from the camp.
Leslie Meisels
When we arrived at the rail yard and were ordered to climb up into the cattle wagon, I had seen an open railcar loaded with red beets a few train cars away. Even though we knew that the punishment would be terrible, some people went there and got a few pieces. A piece of red beet, even raw, was enough to sustain four people—me, my mother, and my two brothers—for a day. I asked my mother to empty the pillowcase, which was our main carrying case, and give it to me. I shuffled there, put in a half-dozen or so beets, and carried it back.
When I arrived at the track next to our freight car, an SS guard with his back to me was aiming and shooting to death a 10 or 11-year-old little boy who had two red beets, one in each hand. He committed such a horrible crime that immediate execution was the right punishment, according to this hatefully-minded SS guard. While he was shooting that little boy to death, I was able to hand my bundle to someone who gave it to my mother. When he turned around, he just barked at me to get up. Had he turned around 10 or 15 seconds earlier, I wouldn't be here speaking to you now.
Irene Bleier Muskal
We march to the railway station of Bergen–Celle. We are again herded inside empty cattle trucks filled to their capacity—we can only sit. There is not enough room to stretch our numbed legs. As is our habit, no sleep will come to our eyes; hunger and thirst prevents this. As the sun rises after a sleepless night, I get up to see what is happening outside the cattle trucks.[*] I slowly walk out and discover a business exchange just opposite our transport. A group of Ukrainians guarded an open rail car of red beets and exchanged one red beet for each cigarette.
I turn to my mother with a thrilling sense and ask her to give me four cigarettes to exchange for beets. She gave me the cigarettes, but as I step off the cattle truck, I am terribly disappointed. The Swabian SS guards are now beating my fellow Jews with their heavy rifles as punishment for the exchange. They were striking my people on the head, face, and back without any compassion. I felt distressed and benumbed and was now rooted to the spot. I just leaned against the side of the cattle truck. Within a few minutes, the exchange area was clear of Jews. Sure enough, the Ukrainian exchangers are not assaulted, even though they exchanged things that belonged to the Nazi authorities while we Jews exchanged our own property.
The Ukrainians stayed close by with only the German SS guards now patrolling the grounds. The instinct of hunger does not comprehend fear and guides my legs toward one of the armed SS guards. Still numb and speechless, I show him the four cigarettes with an imploring look, indicating my plea to this murderous enemy of mine. He immediately understood and advised me to make a quick run before his commanding officer reappeared on the scene. I had hardly finished this exchange when the area once again filled up with my fellow suffering companions. The exchange goes on until the SS guards again strike out with their rifles. My mom evenly divides the four beets between the five of us, and we eat with relish.
Aliza Melame
d Vitis–Shomron
Suddenly, we see railway carriages. Surprisingly, they are normal ‘Pullmans,’ not freight cars. The exhausted people lie down on the platform. At the station we are given a little food and water. The journey has begun.
Irene Bleier Muskal
Saturday, April 7, 1945. Our transport is stranded at the Bergen–Celle railway station. Our irresponsible captors no longer provide us with food. After suffering from constant starvation for six long months at the death factory of Bergen–Belsen, the German SS leaves us now in total hunger and total thirst. We are too exhausted, dizzy, and weak to grasp how grave our situation is.
What do the Nazis have in mind?
*
July 5, 2013/ Bergen–Belsen Memorial
I scuffle along the pathways, lost in thought. On a summer tour of the authentic sites of the Holocaust with fellow teachers from all over the United States, Bergen–Belsen is the first major camp we visit. How fitting.
I am only here for a day, but it is like I have been here before. Of course, I haven’t; instead, I have been studying the Holocaust and communicating with the Bergen–Belsen Memorial administrators for years—there is even an exhibit here in the new interpretive center based in part on the work I have done as a high school teacher. I have come to know many friends who were imprisoned here, whose parents still lie here, somewhere. And some of them lived here for years after their liberation, reconstructing their lives in the displaced persons camp for the opportunity to begin a new life from the ashes of stolen childhood. And on this very day back home, a tank commander is being laid to rest in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains.
A Train Near Magdeburg Page 4
