Early one morning, when no guard was around, Moniek caught a Hungarian Jewish prisoner trying to steal potatoes. Moniek shouted at him to get out, but the man ignored him.
“We had to keep strict control in and around the kitchen, or all the prisoners would have been trying to steal food,” Jack said. “Neither of us spoke Hungarian, so communicating with Hungarian prisoners was very difficult. When this man would not leave, Moniek started to push him out of the room. The man resisted, and Moniek had to hit him. He yelled and made threatening gestures. After our close call with the commandant, not much scared either of us, so we did not worry.”
For two precious months, Jack and Moniek cooked the soup and served the bread from the kitchen. As Jack grew stronger and healthier, he was convinced once more that he would survive the war and be reunited with his family.
All the cold first months of 1945, rumors persisted that Russian troops were getting closer. Then one day in late March, with only a few hours’ warning, prisoners were informed the camp would be evacuated and prisoners taken to another camp. Rumors immediately flew that the Russians were nearby. No, it is the Americans coming, said someone. The British, said someone else. Hitler wants us all dead. The guards will take us to the countryside and kill us, several prisoners declared. Hitler is winning and needs our labor elsewhere, insisted other prisoners.
When Jack heard news of the evacuation, he panicked. Now how would he and Moniek get the extra food that had kept them going? If they had not become the cooks, he was not sure either of them would still be alive.
The boys were ordered to load a wagon with all the kitchen supplies. “Very little food was left,” Jack said. “Since we had no horse to pull the wagon, we prisoners had to do it.”
A drizzly gray rain began almost as soon as the group of several hundred left the camp, headed west. The guards were covered with rain ponchos and wore coats and boots. Prisoners had only their thin uniforms and wooden shoes.
“We were soaking wet and very cold,” Jack said. “The roads were mud. Those of us acting as horse for the wagon struggled to pull it through the holes on the road and up the hills and across streams. Whenever we could, we scavenged in the fields, looking for a beet or potato—anything edible. We were starving.
“The guards were also hungry. They prodded us to keep moving, but they lacked any enthusiasm. I do not think they knew what was happening with the war any more than we did. The only advantage they had over other soldiers was that as long as they were guarding us, they could not be sent to the front to fight.”
The group straggled along, stopping when it got dark, then sleeping wherever they could find a spot by the side of the road or in a field. Several days later, they reached their destination: the Doernhau concentration camp. Like all the others, this one was surrounded with electrified barbed wire and had towers where guards with searchlights, binoculars, and machine guns kept watch on the prisoners.
Hungry and exhausted, Jack and Moniek saw that this camp was more crowded than the last. Almost all the prisoners were Hungarian Jews. Unable to communicate with them, the boys could not find out about conditions in the camp. Prisoners idled about. No one had anything to do.
As Jack and Moniek wandered through the crowded camp, a group of Hungarians suddenly surrounded them. With them was the prisoner from the last camp whom Moniek had kicked out of the kitchen. He was talking loudly to the others and gesturing at Moniek.
Two prisoners grabbed Jack and held him while the others set on Moniek, beating him savagely. Jack screamed at them to stop. One of the prisoners held his hands over Jack’s mouth. Why do the guards in the towers not see what is going on and stop this? They have always been all-seeing. Why have they stopped paying attention? Jack wondered.
The two prisoners holding Jack dragged him into the main part of the camp, far from Moniek. With thousands of prisoners milling around, Jack quickly lost any sense of direction. Frantic, he searched until he finally found his way back to the spot where Moniek had been attacked. But neither Moniek nor the others were there. Where had his friend been taken?
Jack searched until dark, going in and out of barracks, calling Moniek’s name, but he could not find him. Inside the overcrowded barracks, starving prisoners lay crammed together on the platforms, their eyes glazed over, their emaciated bodies barely able to move. Jack realized that many of these men were ill with typhus, which explained why the guards did not come into the barracks or patrol the camp on foot but stayed at a safe distance in the guard towers. Gangs of Hungarian prisoners seemed to control the camp—and the guards did nothing.
That night, Jack and hundreds of other prisoners were ordered to sleep on a concrete floor in one of the camp buildings. They had no blankets. It was very cold. Around Jack, sick prisoners coughed and cried.
“We had been given nothing to eat,” said Jack, “and after our long march, my body was already starting to weaken, even though I had gained strength while I was the cook. I was very worried about Moniek. I knew he could not be in good shape—if he was still alive.”
Camp conditions were so terrible that prisoners were given one cup of soup a day, and this was really only flavored water. Several times a week, they got a little bread. Some days, there was nothing. Although roll call was held each morning, the daily death toll from typhus and starvation was quickly reducing the prisoner population. The camp crematorium belched black smoke all day and all night.
“With no work, I spent my days looking for Moniek,” Jack said. “I was so weak, I worried about fainting. At night, I worried about freezing. I was covered with lice and had no way to clean myself or to wash my uniform. I could not communicate with other prisoners; I had no friends. I could do nothing for myself or for anyone else. I was sure Moniek was dead. I had never in my life felt so alone.
“I had been in this camp five or six weeks, when one day I was sitting on a stoop and the realization came over me that I had only weeks to live. I had survived in the concentration camps almost three years, and I knew that what I was feeling was what I had seen many times in men’s eyes shortly before they died. I did not have the will to go on.”
That night, for the first time in Jack’s experience, the prisoners were locked in their barracks. They could hear Allied planes flying overhead and the occasional sound of bombs blowing up ground targets. Peeking through cracks in the walls, they could see antiaircraft fire light up the sky. Jack knew the camp could be a target and they might be blown to bits.
He did not care. He would not live to see liberation. He cared only that the Allies were bombing Germany, and that Hitler would lose the war.
But Hitler had won the game with Jack.
The next morning, he awoke to a strange void: No kapo was yelling at him or trying to beat him over the head. Weak with fatigue and hunger, he slowly sat up. He could hear nothing outside the darkened barracks. Other prisoners were starting to stir, and Jack forced himself to stand up and look around.
Two prisoners were trying to break down the locked door. They motioned for Jack to help. Several other prisoners joined in, and with great effort, they finally broke the hinges.
Rays of daylight trickled into the room.
It could be a trap. Did they dare go outside? Were guards with machine guns waiting to shoot them all?
Jack and several others stepped outside and looked around. Seeing nothing, they signaled for the others to follow. Silently, they shuffled toward the center of the camp. Jack was the first to get a clear view of the guard towers. Empty!
He began to shout and point, and instantly the other prisoners let out a cheer and began hugging one another. They started breaking the locks off all the barracks. Soon thousands of prisoners filled the center area of the camp. They broke into the kitchen—no food. Looking through the fence, they could see the guards’ and officers’ housing—all empty. The doors to the administration buildings stood open.
The war was over. It was over! Just like that. No big battle, no surrender, no foreign troops liberating them. The guards had gone in the night, taking with them not only the dogs, their weapons, and what food was left, but even the Nazi flag that had flown from the flagpole in the center of the camp.
As Jack tried to take all this in, he felt a tap on his shoulder. As he turned, he saw red hair and a freckled face with blue eyes and faintly visible bruises. Jack folded himself into Moniek’s embrace. For the first time in three years, he let himself cry.