[Page 150]

I was a boy of about fourteen when the war broke out. At that age, I had not yet acquired any life experience, let alone the abnormal existence that befell the town's Jews. People, older, wiser and more experienced than me, were stunned and filled with bewilderment by the events unfolding in the town. Immediately after the entrance of the Germans into the town, a curfew was imposed from six in the evening to six in the morning, and it remained in effect for the Jews until the total liquidation of the Jewish community, hy”d. As for the curfew, those knowledgeable in the matter knew to explain that every occupying army declares a curfew at the beginning of its occupation. However, the Germans were not satisfied with that. They gave the first signal with fire and burned down the town's main synagogue with all its ritual articles and furnishings. (by the way, the construction of the aforementioned synagogue was completed four years before the outbreak of the war). Together with that, they imposed numerous restrictions, such as a ban on gatherings and assemblies. They also prohibited communal prayer in all Batei HaMidrash. Several weeks later, they established the Judenrat. Needless to say that the poverty was steadily increasing, and the number of hungry increased from week to week. Individual Jews were killed because the Germans were not yet trained for mass killing. The Germans initially planned to exploit the Jewish workforce and issued work orders to the Jews. Through the Judenrat, the Jews were recruited for labor in work camps, where the Germans established factories for the war effort. I also reported for work and was sent to Stutthof, a place where hundreds from the surrounding area were concentrated. I also reported for work and was sent to Stutthof, where hundreds of people from the surrounding area were concentrated. We worked hard physical labor under the German guard. They did not spare us their whips, and more than one fell to the ground, never to rise again. In those days, we still received food as well as payment for the work. We were also given time off once every two months to visit our families in the town. In early 1942, while Hitler's war against Russia was raging at full intensity, the Germans tightened their oppressive grip on the Jews imprisoned in the ghettos. In Briegel, even before the ghetto was established, up to ten Jews were shot each month. This reached the Great Aktion, as it was called then, when around two hundred people were killed in a single day. More than fifteen hundred Jews were deported from the town, ostensibly to labor camps, but in reality, they were extermination camps. A labor camp, where many from the town were held, was in Stutthof. The Germans built a large power plant powered by a natural waterfall near Stutthof. Conditions at Stutthof were steadily worsening. They reduced the food portions, and it kept getting worse. The Germans also intensified their harsh treatment of us, and more than once we were seized by the fear that they were about to exterminate us. Then unrest arose among us, and many voiced their support for an organized uprising. Suddenly, the Germans surprised us. They returned us to regular work and the standard conditions at the labor camp in Stutthof. And then, the spirit of illusion returned to us. Maybe, after all, we might stay alive. Things went on like this for months on end, each time, a different illusion, because the desire to stay alive grew stronger day by day.

On the Sabbath before Rosh Hashanah in 1942, several young men came from Briegel to the Stutthof camp. They informed the Briegel people that the Germans were about to liquidate the Briegel Ghetto and make the town judenrein [clean of Jews].

The next day we, Yosef Steinlau, Shmuel Dorff and I, decided to escape from the Stutthof camp to Briegel. We arrived in the town on Tuesday, on the Fast of Gedaliah. The vast majority of the ghetto's inhabitants had already been taken out and brought to Tarnow. On that Tuesday, there were still three hundred Jews

[Unnumbered page]

Sabina Timan (Schmukler) See the article on page 140		Leah Zucker See the article on page 147

Yitzhak Teedor See the article on page		Yosef Schieffer See the article on page 133

Tzvi Gottselig See the article on page 150		Moshe Lichtbraun See the article on page 145

[Page 151]

who hid in bunkers. The Germans had failed to discover them the day before, yet, for some reason, they went out into the ghetto's streets. Then the men of the SS arrived from Tarnow with military trucks, loaded them onto the trucks and transported them to Tarnow. Even after this operation, several dozen Jews remained in their hiding places. A few days later, they fled to the ghetto in the nearby town of Bochnia, which was still in existence.

When we arrived in the town, we knocked on the ghetto's doors and then the Jewish Ordnungsdienst [police] pleaded with us to leave the place immediately, because at any moment we would be hit by a death bullet. We fled to the fields while we were still alive. In the fields, we ran into Itchele Rosenberg. He told us everything the ghetto had gone through over the past two days and stated that he was not willing to be dragged off like an animal to slaughter. I do not know his fate, hy”d.

The three of us managed to return to the labor camp in Stutthof. We walked with a sense of shame. All human senses froze within us. The grief in our hearts and minds was so great that we were unable to think like human beings. We walked completely cut off from our surroundings. A few days later, we learned that several dozen Jews had escaped to Bochnia Ghetto. Then, the three of us again began planning an escape from the camp to Bochnia Ghetto to find out who remained alive. This time we planned everything in advance. We talked to our German supervisor who was greedy for money, and he agreed to transport us in a truck to Bochnia Ghetto. On the way back, we will stop at the liquidated Briegel Ghetto, and we will bring him things that the Jews left behind in the ghetto. He hid us in a crate, and we drove off. He let us get off close to Bochnia Ghetto, and we jumped over the fence into the ghetto. Here we met a few dozen people from Briegel, but we didn't find anyone from our own families. Shortly afterward, we slipped out of the ghetto and returned to the meeting place with the German. In Briegel, we entered the ghetto, which was open on all sides because the Poles entered it and looted everything of value. Then, we returned with that same German to Stutthof camp and remained there for many months. Our physical and mental strength gradually waned, and we turned into living “robots.” In addition, the number of deaths increased, those who lacked the strength to endure the suffering.

In my opinion, it is worth noting the act that Motel Keiner had done in the camp even before the Germans liquidated Briegel Ghetto, because such acts were extremely rare in those days:

I remember a particularly unusual incident while working the night shift. In one of the workshops' Motel Keiner worked on an automatic machine. By the machine grinding sounds, it was possible to tell whether it was running empty or with material fed into it. This Motel was an exceptionally burly man. From a young age, he was used to being the one who struck the first blow. The shift supervisor, a German named Weingart, felt that Motel's machine was running empty. So, he approached Motel confidently and gave him a rough shove. In the blink of an eye, Motel swung his hand forcefully into Weingart's face, who fell to the ground, stunned and covered in blood. Motel did his part, disappeared from the scene, and slipped out of the camp. To this day, I do not know how. In time, we learned that he had been roaming the forests of Bochnia armed with a weapon. It is presumed that he established contact with the underground unit, which was formed by members of the Akiva movement from Kraków in the Bochnia forests. We also received reports that the Germans pursued him and paid a heavy price in casualties. During the final pursuit, he was cornered in his hiding place in the hayloft. The Germans surrounded him on all sides, but he managed to position himself within the roof, woven from sheaves of straw, and anyone who approached the hayloft was shot. So he stood, all alone against many, until his very last bullet, which he saved for himself so as not to fall into the hands of the German alive. And that is what he had done. May HaShem avenge his blood.

[Page 152]

The labor camp in Mielec

The labor camp in Stutthof was liquidated a short time after the liquidation of the Briegel Ghetto, and we were transferred from there to Mielec camp. The conditions there were even harsher, because the Germans began to feel that only then, in 1943, the war has reached its peak. The Germans built an airfield and a factory for manufacturing aircraft spare parts in Mielec. They felt the tide of the war turning against them, and then they intensified their cruelty. And, as if all these troubles weren't enough, one of the Kapos (not from Briegel) took a fancy to spending time with a girl, and chose the horse stables, of all places, for the occasion. When he left the stable, he forgot to close the door. The camp commander's horse got out, approached the fence, and was electrocuted.

The next day, everyone in the camp was summoned to a special roll call due to the incident with the horse. Then, the Jewish mind went to work, as has long been the custom in the Jewish street. The, azoy viln eydn trakhtn [as the Jews think] and they began to spread a rumor that we were about to be exterminated, and that we would be saved by a miracle when they would count us in groups of ten. That is, every tenth man would be shot. As we stood in line, there was pushing and shuffling; no one wanted to be the tenth man. Then came the biggest surprise: the camp commander warned us that if another incident like the one from the previous night occurred, we would all be shot dead on the spot, and he ordered us to return to work without trouble. Calm returned, and the illusion grew, the illusion that we could stay alive, no matter what.

Over time, the Germans' confidence was further undermined. Then they moved the aircraft factory deep into the Wieliczka Salt Mine. They also moved us there. However, they soon discovered that the machines were being eaten away by rust caused by the salt. Unable to overcome this problem, they dismantled the entire camp in Wieliczka.

At the end of 1943, a great number of people from the Wieliczka camp were transferred to Płaszow labor camp. There, we were overcome by deep sorrow at our work. We cleared away high mounds of earth from above deep pits into which thousands of Jews' bodies had been thrown. When we discovered the corpses, we had to bring them up to the surface, row upon row. Then, a group of our workers came and examined the corpses to see if there were any gold items on them. They also had to remove the gold teeth from their mouths. Then came another group of workers whose task was to collect the corpses and move them onto very high piles. A layer of corpses and a layer of wood on top of them, then they poured kerosene and burned them. There were many instances when those who placed the corpses on the piles lay down among the corpses, they were covered by layers of wood and burned alive. All this work was done under heavy German guard, with the whistling of their whips over our heads. They struck out left and right, and our only reaction was to blink. Thousands were brought to the camp, and day after day, hundreds died from horrific torture. We were all struck with a deadly disease. Today it is him, tomorrow you, and the day after, me. Our entire being and existence was one thing: death.

[Page 153]

Death during the day, death by night, death when we lay down, death when we got up, and death when we went to work, death! death! death! and all this befell us simply because we were Jews. And so I remained, sinking into total apathy for many months, amidst everything that surrounded us in this camp. I will only note that by eliminating the pits containing these corpses, the Germans sought to obliterate the traces of the ongoing mass murder, carried out by shooting victims beside the trenches, that had begun with the outbreak of the war. Tens of thousands of people were buried in them before all the gas chambers were put into operation. In early 1944, several hundred people were suddenly taken away for transport, no one knew where we were being sent. We also didn't care, either. We marched to the railway station. There, we were shoved into freight cars and transported to the Gross-Rosen camp. It was an extermination camp with a crematorium, but none of us knew about it. We knew and sensed that hundreds of people were disappearing every day, yet new transports filled the void. What would have happened had we known about the crematorium? What would have happened if we *had* known about the crematorium? At the Płaszow camp, did the shadow of death not stalk us at every step? After all, we were led like herds of cattle to the slaughter. For three years! For some reason, our shipment's turn to go to the crematorium was delayed, and we remained at the camp for two weeks. Among the hundreds in our group, there were four of us from the town of Briegel. Moshe Mintz, Yakov Gotlig, Chaim Tatush and I. I am happy to note that all three are in Israel. Suddenly the entire transport was called to a special assembly, and we were informed that we had to go to the train station. We were again loaded into freight cars in terrible overcrowding, without food or water, and transferred to Brünnlitz in Czechoslovakia.

Brünnlitz, was like all labor camps. The same style, the same layout. Enclosed by a high, tangled barbed-wire fence. Yet, from the very first day of our arrival, we felt that the arrangements here were far more humane than in any of the camps we had previously been to, such as the latrines and the showers. Above all, there was the quantity and quality of the food, and the attitude of the German guards was not as cruel as in the other camps. It is clear that this helped us greatly to regain, to some extent, our human semblance. Here, we worked in the ammunition factory of Oscar Schindler, who is remembered for being the best. Although we saw him only rarely, thanks to his influence and guidance, these conditions gave us the ability to go on with our lives. Admittedly, we were slaves here too, for such was the German system of order in the camps, yet we were granted the status of slaves as in ancient times, and that sufficed for us to stay alive in this camp. Just before the end, I stole a few potatoes, and to my good fortune, I received a very lenient sentence: a sign was hung around my neck and across my chest bearing the inscription, “The Potato Thief,” and I was forced to hold a potato in my mouth and run the length of the pavilion fifty times. Towards the end, we discovered that an underground movement had existed there all along. Oskar Schindler, the factory owner, was aware of it, and the camp conditions had to be maintained as they were for the sake of cover. In February 1945, we also received weapons to defend ourselves, because there was a fear that the Germans might want to eliminate us before fleeing the camp, just as they had done in so many other camps. The Germans in our camp were denied this pleasure. We drove the Germans out with the weapons in our possession before the Russians entered Brünnlitz. We held only the German, an SS officer who had tormented us the most as a prisoner in the camp, and after a few days of hunger, we hanged him. On May 3, 1945, we were completely liberated from the camp upon the arrival of the Russian army in Brünnlitz.

[Page 154]

I make aliyah to Eretz Yisrael - Palestine Eretz Yisrael

Two days after I was released, I managed to secure a pair of mules hitched to a wagon in Czechoslovakia and fled to Krakow. There, I sold the mules with the wagon, and it was my first income after my discharge. That money allowed me to manage during the early days of my life as a free man. From Kraków, I made a detour to Briegel, where I found a handful of Jews who had managed to return to the town. They lived there temporarily because no one thought of staying and building a new home there. Since I discovered that not a single soul from my family had returned to the town, I went back to Krakow. It was here that I ran into Binyamin Burgnicht. We hugged and kissed. We told each other about the past and how we survived. During the conversation, he asked me what I was planning to do now, after liberation, and suggested that I should travel to Eretz Yisrael. I was surprised by his proposal, and I simply asked how and in what way? Then, he gave me an address in Kielce where I needed to report. The next day, I traveled to Kielce to the address. There, I found a large group of young men and women, the first hakhshara company that was preparing to make aliyah to Israel. A short while later, we set off, mostly on foot towards Austria, and from there to Italy. There we gathered, nine hundred young men and women from among the survivors from all the countries of Europe. We boarded a ship and sailed from there towards Israel. However, the British captured the ship on the high seas, and newspapers around the world reported that the British had seized a ship carrying three hundred refugees. But in fact, there were three times as many on the ship, nine hundred people. They brought the ship to Israel's shores and imprisoned us in a military camp at Atlit. The ship's name was “Enzo Sereni.”

A few weeks later, we were released from Atlit.

I have told this story so that it may serve as a mark of infamy and an eternal disgrace to the German people, and as a warning to all Jews.

  Brzesko, Poland     Yizkor Book Project     JewishGen Home Page

Copyright © 1999-2026 by JewishGen, Inc.
Updated 22 Oct 2026 by JH