part0016

THE DEATH MARCH , euphemistically referred to as an “evacuation” by the Nazis, began on January 18, 1945. It would prove to be the beginning of yet the cruelest part of my war experiences. It never occurred to me to hide out in Auschwitz-Birkenau as some prisoners did. I was swept up in the mass of humanity following orders by the Germans to march.

The death march actually comprised a series of marches toward the end of World War II, from fall 1944 until April 1945. As the Russians advanced on the Eastern Front, thousands of prisoners from Nazi concentration camps outside Germany were forced to march long distances, with little or no food or water, into Germany proper and not just German territory. Thousands died of exposure, exhaustion, and dehydration. Those too weak to walk any further were executed, shot on site, their corpses littering the roadside. I was only one of 60,000 prisoners on the death march that began on January 18, 1945, from Auschwitz-Birkenau to destinations unknown to us. The intended destination, I later learned, may have been Wodzislaw (“Loslau” in German), thirty-five miles away, where prisoners were to be put on trains and sent to other camps. I was weak and disoriented and operating on little information from the outside world, a world to which I no longer belonged, and to which I had not belonged for years. I had forgotten what it was like to live a normal life. My reality had become so abnormal that I no longer knew what normal was.

It is estimated that 15,000 prisoners, out of 60,000 who left from Auschwitz-Birkenau on foot at the end of January, died along the way. Of the estimated 750,000 prisoners sent on death marches in the final weeks of the war, from numerous camps, the Germans murdered some 250,000 to 375,000. Many more died of exhaustion, starvation, and thirst. Still more simply froze to death. Thousands of bodies were heaped upon the sides of the roads as we marchers dragged ourselves on, trying to avoid that same fate.

Doors of the barracks burst open and a pile of shoes were hastily thrown into the barrack for the prisoners. I found what I thought would be a good pair, but the shoes rubbed against my thin feet. Prisoners were lined up outside, five in a row, arms linked. The Germans gave us things to carry. Of course, we also carried our menashkas and spoons. The orders were simple: “March.” Kiva and I stayed close together. It was easy to get lost among the throngs of prisoners pushing and shoving. I remained in that oppressively dark tunnel, not knowing whether any light of freedom would appear soon, but I was hopeful that leaving Auschwitz-Birkenau would portend good things to come. It was the first time I had been outside the gates of Birkenau in six months. We had no idea where we were headed, nor for how long we would be walking. It was terribly cold – the dead of winter in Poland. We were malnourished and scantily clad in our threadbare uniforms. The uncertainty made our journey even more difficult, more terrifying. As we walked and walked, one foot in front of the other, following the columns in front of us, we would alternate positions. The three men in the middle would rest, and two on the ends remain upright, supporting those in the middle. I would rest, leaning upon my neighbors when possible. My legs kept moving forward even if my mind fell away in a stupor. I tried hard to avoid being on an end, to stay out of the German guards’ sight, but we continued taking turns, physically supporting each other as best we could. Often, I imagined I was sleepwalking, delirious from the cold, the hunger, the pain in my feet. We were all but walking corpses.

That first night of the march, we slept on the snow banks. Although I was literally freezing, exhaustion overcame me, and I slept. The Germans withheld any food or water from us. The second day, anyone unable to get up or to continue marching was shot.

By the third night, we had reached German territory. My feet were afire, despite the freezing temperatures of winter, and I began to falter.

“Kiva, I cannot go any further. We have no food, no water, no comfortable shoes, no warm clothes. I have no more strength. I don’t know how much further they will make us walk, perhaps until we all die.”

“I will carry you,” responded Kiva.

“Kiva, my companion, I cannot allow you to carry me. You haven’t the strength to do so. Anyway, the Germans will shoot us both if they see that we are faltering. Go on. Save yourself. Keep going. I will take my chances, but I cannot go on. My feet are aching. They are bleeding. I am wounded, my friend. You go on.”

Kiva’s offer to physically carry me, restored me spiritually. His words sustained me, touched me to the core. How could Kiva think he could really carry me? We were freezing, hungry, tired, broken, but the mere act of telling me that he would carry me, knowing that if I stayed behind probably meant certain death, helped me keep my thoughts of hope even when the situation was hopeless. That simple act proved Kiva’s character and helped me maintain my faith in humanity, and gave me strength and courage to soldier on .

But when I fell behind, Kiva continued forward until I could no longer distinguish him from the others who comprised the slow wave of near-corpses. For the first time since the outbreak of the war, since Wierzbnik, since Tartak, the transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau, since all the near-misses we had encountered separately and together, I found myself alone, separated from the one person I had always counted on to be there for me, but I had no time to contemplate our parting. Kiva, my friend, my companion, my family, continued on without me. When his image slipped away and I could see him no longer, I felt vulnerable. I was unsure how I could continue on without my dear Kiva. My footing was unsteady, and I felt myself dragging and slowing down until I was making little forward progress.

I lagged behind with two to three hundred others. We slept again under the stars, open to the elements. I let some freezing snow melt on my tongue. I was nearly lifeless but somehow slept. The next morning, I expected that the Germans would shoot those of us who were too weak to continue marching, but rather than being shot, we were put together in a camp about two or three kilometers up the road. There, to my great surprise, I found Zvi Unger from my hometown of Wierzbnik. He was older than me by two years. It was comforting to find a familiar face, a friend, especially as I no longer had Kiva to watch out for me. We stayed at that camp for another day. When they lined us up for roll call, we could see the Germans setting up machine guns.

I turned to Zvi and said, “Soon as they start shooting, fall down and lay still. Pretend that you are dead.” It was close to the truth. We were walking corpses by then, each rib protruding from our chests. We were weak, cold, exhausted. We were starving. When we could, we grabbed a handful of snow to quench our thirst, to try keeping our hunger at bay. There is no explaining why or how some of us were still alive. Only our spirit, our neshamah, propped up our physical beings. We waited. The anticipation was excruciating.

Had I survived all these months to die here on the side of this hill? I want so much to live, but perhaps the dead have it easier. At least there would be no more pain, no more hunger, no more cold. Perhaps my soul, once released from my body, would feel nothing and I would finally be free.

We stood, waiting for the bullets to pelt us, tearing through our skin. We waited for the loud bursts of gunfire, but to our great astonishment, the Germans began taking down the machine guns.

Whatever the reason for this miracle, and even though our physical suffering was prolonged, we were thankful that we could live yet one more day. We were ordered into the barracks. The next day, we were loaded onto cattle cars. Another train. The hypnotic sound of the wheels turning over and over soothed me. Finally, I could rest and my feet could begin to heal. We passed through Czechoslovakia. When we slowed down or stopped, some charitable townspeople, who may have been Czech, gave us food and water – whatever they could. They passed what they could through the slats and through tiny windows that barely let in any light. The inhospitable train car was damp and cold, but this welcomed gesture of compassion from civilians boosted our spirits. Perhaps those civilians saw that the war was coming to an end and realized that things were changing – that the victims of the war might survive to tell their horror stories to the world, and those who had participated in the horror, or even just those bystanders, did not want to be judged harshly.

At one point, the train halted between two military trains. We heard planes flying low overhead. Someone said they were Russian planes. Suddenly they began shooting. Whether they realized there were cars full of prisoners is unknown, but we starving prisoners would have happily sacrificed ourselves for the sake of killing any of the German military or Nazis on the other trains. I heard ringing in my ears, and the next thing I knew, the roof had been blown off the car in which we were imprisoned, causing the doors to fall off. All the prisoners ran from the train. Some were shot and killed as they tried to get away and hide. As weak as I was, I ran as fast as my sore feet could carry me.

After the planes flew away, shockingly, amazingly, inexplicably, we defeated prisoners sheepishly returned to the trains. We had been psychologically beaten down. We were scared and scarred. We wore prison garb. Our feet were sore and frostbitten. Who would have helped us? What fate lay beyond the trees for us? We were likely to be killed if we continued on; we were just as likely to be killed if we returned to the trains. Yet, we returned to the trains, seeing them not as a refuge, but because the uncertainty of the woods and what lay beyond.

Had I known that the end of the war was near, or had an inkling of the horror that awaited me, I would have hidden myself, or found a way to stay at Auschwitz-Birkenau. I had no information of the outside world, no way to know when walking through those gates in those terrible wooden shoes that the Russians were to liberate the camp merely nine days later. On January 27, 1945, the Russians entered Auschwitz-Birkenau and freed those who had taken their chances and hidden in the evacuated camp.