Chapter 25

IMPRISONED IN BUCHENWALD CONCENTRATION CAMP

The Gross Breeseners, along with over two thousand Jewish men from the Breslau area, boarded a passenger train at the Breslau station on the morning of November 11. In the background was the panorama of a smoldering city and a broken community. For the students, whatever semblance of peace and security they had felt in the past two years was quickly demolished. The madness was about to begin.

Ernst Cramer, a popular teacher and assistant to Bondy, recalled what happened when the train reached Weimer:

The whole horrible episode began at the train station, in a tunnel under the tracks. We—several hundred Jews from Silesia—had been transported in a special train to Weimar. With ear-splitting shouts, uniformed guards threw us out of the compartments and drove us through the underpass, beating us indiscriminately with sticks.

After a while, we were forced through the deserted square in front of the station into waiting trucks. After a short drive, they beat and chased us again, mockingly, this time through a much too narrow gate, over piles of rocks purposely put there, and into the camp.

After having stood at attention for hours on the sodden, muddy assembly grounds, the guards assigned us to five recently built wooden barracks through which the wind blew. A total of 2,000 people lived in each building, none of which had windows or doors, only an opening in the middle. Bunk beds five beds high and less than a foot-and-a-half wide stood nailed together. The only way to reach one of these wooden plank beds was by crawling.

There were no blankets, sinks or sanitary installations. The latrine was still being dug. Nobody was given any water. Some people lost their minds that first night.

I remembered the stand on which people were beaten. I saw before me the gallows, from which a prisoner swung.¹³²

The students were physically and emotionally exhausted. The hours of standing at attention in precise lines was torture. They continually tried to gain a glimpse of their beloved Dr. Bondy. They feared that he would not be able to withstand the extreme strain. The students had been hardened by being constantly outdoors and working through the discomforts of cold and rain. They were in excellent physical condition, but the men standing next to them were not farmers, not accustomed to being exposed to inclement weather. They suffered a terrible shock to their bodies. Orders were barked to proceed to the unfinished barracks named “Operation—Jews.” Those Jews rounded up on November 10–11 were segregated from the other prisoners. In all, there were approximately ten thousand Operation Jews occupying five barracks, two thousand per building. Soon after imprisonment, each man’s hair and beard were shaved. The twenty Gross Breeseners knew one another extremely well, but after each had been shaved, they sometimes did not even recognize one another. Head shaving was just one of the ways the Nazis tried to dehumanize the captives and strip each of his individual identity. The aggressive punishment was particularly intense in the first few days of incarceration. The Nazis wanted to break the spirit of the prisoners quickly. Bondy wrote:

The prisoners had to sit for hours around two whipping racks and watch while various captives were flogged with different kinds of whips. During one of the first nights the storm troopers were permitted to vent their rage freely. Water was distributed in the night after a long period without any beverage. I suppose that a laxative was mixed in the water. The poor chaps who then ran out of the barracks were pitilessly tortured, shot at, strangled, and mistreated in other ways. I cannot guess how many captives died in that horrible night, but it was a considerable number.¹³³

A roll call of the thousands of imprisoned Jewish men over the age of eighteen at Buchenwald after Krystallnacht. On arrival, their heads were shaved to demean the prisoners. Courtesy of USHMM 79914.

One of Töpper’s closest friends and roommate, Prinz, experienced the wrath of the Gestapo officer SS sergeant Zoellner. Prinz had turned around to look at another Breesener. That was strictly forbidden, so the sergeant, with the sharp edge of the leather heel of his boot, stomped on the student’s foot and ankle with all his force. Luckily, Prinz had his work boots on, and the repeated blows did not penetrate. Zoellner repeatedly slammed his boot onto Prinz, but he did not show any sign of pain. This frustrated the Nazi officer and he lost interest, for “it was not fun anymore.”¹³⁴

Within the special camp, the prisoners could walk about freely during the day. This allowed the Gross Breeseners to find one another and stick together. Those who were not at Gross Breesen during the roundup and picked up outside the campus joined their old friends. Being able to band together fortified the students. No one felt so alone and vulnerable. They were stunned, however, at what Bondy experienced immediately. He broke down. He cried uncontrollably in spasms of remorse. He felt that all the trust the parents had placed in his hands had been destroyed. He did not fear for himself but for his “boys.” The students tried to console him, but they were unable to calm his broken spirit. Within a few hours, however, Bondy regained his composure. One could actually observe him returning from the depths of desperation. He was once again the calm, observant Bo. The boys were relieved.

The nights held the greatest terrors. Police dogs barked wildly, and screams shot through the darkness. The “laundry room” also served as a sick bay. Twenty to thirty prisoners died daily from sickness, malnutrition or the lack of needed and accustomed medications. Old people were the most vulnerable. The latrine was nothing more than a giant pit with logs stretched across it. Waiting one’s turn in a group to use the latrine was agony. Two prisoners actually fell into the pit and drowned in the sewage. No matter where one was in the camp, he could hear the announcements coming from the loudspeaker. Incessantly, throughout the day and into the sleep-deprived night, the loudspeaker played a tactical, intimidating role. For all sorts of reasons, the camp officers called out the names of prisoners or delivered orders for the general camp. In the morning, roll call was a central activity during which absolutely no talking was permitted. The process of just getting out of the barracks took hours. Chaos was the norm.

As a psychologist, Bondy observed the total breakdown of civilized behavior. “The urge of self-preservation, bestial fear, hunger, and thirst led to a complete transformation of the majority of the prisoners. The ruthless struggle of ‘each against all’ began. No one spoke in ordinary tones; every one screamed. The main thing was to get something to eat and to drink. When food was brought in, an excitement ensued which one can otherwise observe only among animals.”¹³⁵ Prisoners displayed the worst of human behavior. What remained was a “wild, ruthless, and thoroughly senseless struggle for individual survival. Every trace of reason disappeared.” Many inmates were driven insane or committed suicide by “severing an artery or running into the electrically charged barbed wire.”¹³⁶

When Bondy observed his students, he realized that they behaved in ways that were completely opposite from the majority of the other prisoners. They never lost their sense of responsibility to one another, and they did not panic. “From the beginning, they set themselves the goal of bringing their entire group out of the concentration camp without loss of life or breakdown of nerves… without having suffered serious illness or loss of sanity.”¹³⁷

But something else happened in the camp. The name “Gross Breesen” became a rallying point for other prisoners as well. The students observed intense misery all around them, but they would not be consumed by it. Instead of retreating into their own protective shells, they turned outward to the rest of the incarcerated. They ministered to the other inmates who were suffering and demoralized. Some gave up their own food rations; others accompanied the elderly to the latrine. They dispersed their own spirit of hope and strength as if it were precious medicine smuggled past the guards and the barbed-wire fences. They became living testimonials to “human dignity, determination and courage.” Through their ministering to others, they found the strength to survive. Bondy knew that his efforts to teach life lessons had taken hold. Now, more than ever before, he was certain that Gross Breesen was more than just a place, a school, a period of time in the lives of teenagers. Gross Breesen was an attitude, a spirit, a set of values to live by. Because of what he saw in his students, he once more could believe that there was a future.