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The camp was deported to Gliwice and many Jews were shot along the way. We were herded like sheep and anyone who could not run was shot on the spot, which is how Wyszogroder Zechariah Rak son of Shlomo David died according to the testimony of Itzhak Leizer Zaltsburg. Rak suffocated in a bunker hideout when he was on the threshold of salvation.

Thousands of Jews from all corners of Auschwitz arrived in Gliwice. For lack of space, many slept outside on the cold night of 19.1.1945. The transfer of people to Buchenwald began the next day. Zvi Neuman and I were sent to Buchenwald. We were loaded onto cargo train cars, 120 people in each. The cars were open and it was extremely cold. Many died of frost, hunger, thirst and crowding. One transport of 2000 Jews were taken into the forest and the majority of them were shot to death. Hirschel Taub, a fellow from Płońsk who lives now in Israel was shot in the leg and survived.

Buchenwald was pure hell. We were stripped naked and our cloths taken from us before we were led to a strange bath area where our hair was sheared and we were dipped in a small pool of vitriol sulfuric acid that burned our flesh and hurt to tears.

I received torn pants and a pair of low shoes. We were housed in sheds in the small camp, I was put in Bloc number 61. They squeezed 50 people in each chamber, 700 Jews in total. The block personnel were Russian prisoners of war. Roll calls were the worst. We stood freezing for 3-4 hours until it was done, each one we survived was a miracle.

After two weeks Zvi Neuman and I were transferred to Grunberg [a subcamp of Gross-Rosen concentration camp]. This was a real concentration camp. Here Jews were starved to death. The camp was in a forest. We slept underground in subterranean caves. Water flowed from the walls and the moisture penetrated our bones. Every night at 4 am when it was coldest, we were woken for roll call.

The work was divided between three corps: 1. Loading cement into train cars; 2. Tree sawmill. 3. Tunnel digging in the high mountains. Both of us worked in the sawmill. After two weeks we were transferred to the tent camp where I met Moshe Kuperman from Wyszogrod. The camp commander never moved without his dogs who assaulted Jews on a daily basis.

There were three work shifts. Because there were fewer beds than people, a person slept in which ever bed was free at the time. The shift between midnight and 4 am was the worst. The workers would return to camp during the frequent American night bombings, arriving at first light and there were no available beds. Not a single Jew survived more than 8 days on this shift. These Jews fell like flies. New Jews were brought daily to replace those who collapsed and were taken to Buchenwald.

All of this was done by people who clearly knew at this point that their end is definite and fast approaching.

A day before the seventh day of Pesach this camp was liquidated. All the Jews from the area were returned to Buchenwald. We were forced to parade running and 30% of us were murdered on the way because they lagged behind exhausted.

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At dawn we arrived at a forest 8 kilometers from Weimar where we were allowed to stop running and rest a bit until the SS men finished their meal. We were then forced to continue the running parade. Suddenly, there was a commotion. Someone probably noticed American airplanes. First to flee were the SS men who returned when things calmed down. At nightfall we were parked on a wide lot and ordered to lay on the ground while they surrounded us with machine guns. I was totally exhausted at this point. My spirit sunk, my body drained, and I am lonely and desolate. I was sick and tired of my life. Often during this parade I asked death to take me but this time I dug a hole with my food bowl in which I could protect myself from their bullets and stay alive.

It was a night of dread. The machine guns indicated a predictable end. Morning came and I met Zvi Neuman again. We were both happy to be reunited. Together again. That's good.

We were forced to run to Buchenwald through Weimar. I was totally whipped out at this point. I simply wanted to die. I owe my life to Zvi Hirschel Neuman, my friend in misery, who picked me up by my armpit, supported and encouraged me: “Now?!” he scolded me “now that they are close to their demise you want to commit suicide? Get over it and keep going”.

With my last bits of strength, I arrived at Buchenwald. It was total chaos there. People wallowed on the floors; people almost killed each other during food distribution. Pots spilled, the Nazis showered severe beatings. Jews fell to the floor to lick the spilt food to revive their dying souls.

This is how it was for the 2-3 days we spent in Buchenwald. The verse “ Those who die by sword are better off than those who die by starvation” was profoundly clarified there.

On 10.4.1945, the day before the liberation of Buchenwald, we were taken by foot to Weimar station. We were loaded onto freight cars, 120 people in each car, for transport. There we met two Jews from Wyszogrod. Simha Epstein was already half-dead and Liebisch David Freizinger who looked like a very old person.

We were heavily bombed along the way. We would leave the train car and disperse to find shelter in the fields. In one of the gardens we found sugar canes which we began guzzling to relieve our hunger and while doing so filling our pockets with canes to eat later and to use as barter for cigarettes. There was also one stop that landed us in a potato field. We dug the young potatoes and ate them unpeeled. Every day 20-30 people died in the train car and taken out into the fields. It was less crowded. We hoped to at least have more space but the stupid criminals did not forget even in the days of their definite and fast approaching end to keep making our life miserable by continuously overcrowding our train car.

We continued on. One time we stopped at a lot full of rafters and planks near a stream. We put pots of water over campfire and cooked unpeeled potatoes. The Russian prisoners of war ruled over us. Each Jew was given soup with 2 pieces of potato and the Russians kept hitting us during meal time. Many Jews died under their hands. Apparently, Russian antisemitism was just as bad as that of the German Nazis.

Jews died here of hunger and fatigue. A Jew filled a cup with water, brought it to his mouth and died in the middle of drinking it in front of my eyes and those of Herschel Neuman.

I carried the dead to burial along with three other Jews. When we stopped to rest after about 180 meters, a Russian prisoner of war came over, cut a slice from a dead body and ate it in front of us. I almost went out of my mind seeing this.

Zvi Neuman and I decided to escape but the SS arrived to separate the Jews from the Aryans for transport to Theresienstadt. My Kapo ,who looked Aryan, moved to the side of the Aryans with his secretary. When we separated to go, American bombers arrived, showered several bombs and most of the Aryans were killed, including my Kapo, Feder, a pure Jew with clean hands, what a shame.

30.4.1945. We arrived in Theresienstadt, to the Hamburg barracks. It was an enormous ghetto for the Jews of all diasporas. There were rumors that human incinerators will be built here to quickly exterminate the remaining Jews. It is unknown whether the rumors were true. Hunger prevailed. Food storages were full but Shtashskin, the Czech Jew ghetto manager, left us to starve and left the inventory to himself. Zvi and I discovered a pile of potato peels which we gorged and we survived. There was actually complete freedom of movement within the ghetto, there were no Kapos nor Gestapo. Only near the high barbed wire fence Czech soldiers armed with sticks stood to prevent an escape, but inside the ghetto no one stopped us from searching and rummaging. We cooked the potato peels and ate them.

Even so, starvation persisted. We organized and sent a delegation to the camp manager demanding he give us food but he bribed them with office jobs and we were left hungry. A Typhus epidemic spread through the camp causing the death of scores of Jews and the near-death of many others. We decided to send a large delegation to cut through the fence and insist the Red Cross help us. Someone informed the manager who yelled at us that were conspiring against the regime, endangering ourselves with a death penalty, and what are we doing but this was already May 7, 1945, and he knew his end was fast approaching so he referred us to the Judenrat saying that he is a simple follower of their orders. Five of us including myself went to the Judenrat. It took four hours of bargaining until they assented to release a daily ration of 400 grams of bread, a slice of cheese, and a small piece of sausage per person as well as to open a hospital to isolate the sick.

While we were bartering with the Judenrat, several Russians passed through the camp gate, saw the Czech policemen with the sticks and asked them what this place is. When they heard the answer, they yelled a Russian expletive and ordered the gates be opened. Jews began hugging the Russian soldiers and dancing around them with the bits of vitality they still had in them. With barely enough energy, everyone raided the food storerooms.

By the time we emerged from haggling with the Judenrat, the storerooms were already empty. I was able to take only a sack of potatoes.

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For some reason, the Russians as well decided to close the ghetto on us. Maybe for fear of the rampant fast spreading epidemic. Dead bodies covered the streets and we stepped on them.

I was fed up with the locked gates and along with Zvi decided to escape. We snuck out the window that night and arrived in Warsaw on May 20, 1945. Jews there told us to keep running because the Pols were massacring the remaining Jews by throwing them out of train windows in motion.

We fled on foot to Wyszogrod. On the way, we were told in Sochaczew that the Pols murdered Yaacov Schlosberg's son-in-law in broad daylight. We arrived in Wyszogrod on May 23, 1945. We found Yoskeh Levin and his wife Marishka, Itzhak Pasterniak, Efraim Buchner, and Israel Schwartsberd.

We stayed in town for five months during which I married my wife, may she live a long life. My daily routine was to go to the destructed synagogue, sit on the foundations and cry. Every other day I walked the perimeter of the cemetery asking forgiveness from the dead and saying Kadish for the ascent of the souls to the next world.

At the cemetery there were no gravestones nor memorial mention. The town was demolished and desolate, not a Jew in the street. When we reached the Vistula before entering the town, Goyim who saw us made signs of the cross on their chests saying they did not believe it possible to ever see surviving Jews returning. To our question about Jews who remained in town they answered yes but in truth only Goyim were there.

Wyszogrod was and is no longer. A graveyard, memories of youth and childhood, and vanished hopes and dreams are all that remain. The illusion of possible life in diaspora is buried there forever.

I dedicate my notes to the memory of days past so that future generations remember what has happened to past generations. So that the horrors will not be forgotten and will be believed – the Goyim are capable of sinking low down a slope. I did my best not to spotlight myself other than as a medium through which to deliver the facts that did happen to me and would have lost valuable illustrative qualities without my perspective – that is the only reason of mentioning myself.

At the end of my notes, I take the liberty of several sentences about myself as an individual. They too hold symbolic and moral lessons.

In November 1945 I travelled from Wyszogrod to Germany to make Aliya to Israel. I arrived in Israel in 1949 several days before celebrations of our state's Independence Day and I see this as symbolic of my live and our generation.

The symbolism is not coincidental, it turns out, because we were granted a miracle by God in Heaven of a swift transition between the liberation from the Nazi nightmare and the happiness in our new state and in the same way the memory of Amalek was erased so were our horrors and we all arrived at the event of our resurrection with whole hearts and innocent souls despite our battered, injured, anguished bodies.

Even while we were in the displaced persons camp in Eschwege and our common identifying mark was profound bereavement - I shook myself and focused all my energy and diligence into public activism garnering support for Israel. I did so as a member of Agudath Israel, my movement, but in the name of all of Israel and for its benefit. When we received the news mid-May 1948 of the founding of the state I was honored to have been chosen by camp management to lead a celebratory parade to express our excitement. When I roared my military commands, I finally felt an autonomous man who is the ruler of his fate and an independent person.

I pray:

Master of the Universe, guard us from horrors, grant peace to our state and strength to your people! We stood through enough! Grant that our children never know what diaspora is and that they never go to foreign countries. May our suffering be ransom and absolution for them as well. And peace upon Israel for generations and generations.

Foundations of the Demolished Synagogue

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Remember, September 26, 1939 – 16 Elul – the day the Nazi Ashmedai began the destruction of European Jewry and six million were annihilated by his impure hands damn him. Remember, December 1939 – Kislev – the Nazis began to demolish our magnificent synagogue, the Wyszogrod place of Torah study, the pride of our town and the heart of its community. Remember, March 6, 1941 – 5 Adar – the day 700 Wyszogroder Jews were deported to Nowa Slupia, amoung them our last rabbi, the Genius Rabbi reb Naftali Spivak z”l and our posek the Genius Rabbi David Zvi Lubin z”l. Remember, that only 3-4 of the Jews deported that day survived. Remember, that was also the day the savage Natzis built the Open Wyszogrod Ghetto and crammed all its Jews into half of Plotska Street, the corner of Krotka Street and Ogrodowa Street, and the corner of Knishta Street. Four families in one room. Remember, August 8, 1941 – 9 B'Av - the murderers closed the the ghetto with barbed wire and deprived our Jews all remnants of their hope and freedom. Remember, in July 1941 – the Nazi murderers squeezed hundreds of men, women, children and elderly who returned from Nowa Slupia and Warsaw into four trucks and sent them to their deaths. They vanished that day without a trace, their place of death unknown. May God avenge them. Remember, on that same day 500 additional Jews were transferred through the Vistula to Warsaw and they never returned. Remember, on Shabbat parashat Va'yetze 1941 the Nazis and their local assistants liquidated the Wyszogrod Ghetto and sent all its Jews to Nowy Dwór and Czerwińsk. They never saw Wyszogrod again. Remember, December 13, 1942 – 6 Tevet – a day of sorrow on which the Nazis and their helpers burnt the remaining Wyszogrod Jews after suffocating our holy, our women, men and children together in the gas chambers of Birkenau and Auschwitz. Remember, the Jews of Nowy Dwór, Zakroczym, Leoncin, Czerwińsk and Nasielsk who were with our loved ones in Ghetto Nowy

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I stood at the foot of the Schlossberg looking at the magnificent view, the long bridge, the flowing water. Suddenly I heard a siren. I was a child and didn't know what it was. Shining steel birds caught my eye, I followed their every movement, it was beautiful. There was an abrupt loud thunder noise and thick smoke spread all around.

Avraham Popovitch

The house was full. Our entire extended family gathered at our place. We saw a flow of people in the street from all around, some by foot some by vehicle, all spreading bad news about the horrors of the Germans.

After I returned home, preparations were completed to leave Wyszogrod. We walked. I took a bundle of clothes, father took our baby brother and we headed out. We passed the bridge on foot, it was mined by the Pols and ready to detonate.

We arrived in Młodocin where several Jewish families lived and waited there until midnight. My cousin Shlomo Yoel Rosenblum, May God avenge his blood, who owned trucks promised to take us to Warsaw in his vehicle. Father z”l told me, the eldest, to climb onto the truck first. He then began to load the other children. They were supposed to climb up after us.

The truck was full of merchandise and I sat on top. Father loaded his three children and the young daughters of my uncle Hirschel Maiersdorf, May God avenge his blood, but when he held my baby brother towards me, the last of the children – the truck began to move. Father was still holding him but the rest of us children were separated from them.

The small children began to cry. Their horrible screams depressed me but because I was suddenly made guardian of my two younger brothers and the two daughters of Uncle Maiersdorf, I tried to calm them although I myself was choking tears. My loneliness was distressing but I held on.

The children wailed awfully again and I soothed them as before. The several Zloty in my pocket consoled me because I believed they would help me reunite with our families. The night felt endless. We fell asleep thanks to the rocking of the truck. At dawn we arrived in Sochaczew.

I did not like it there. I wanted to be with my family again. I had no idea what to do and how I will manage with the children clinging to me.

I wanted to look for our parents, I was confident they arrived after we did. I tried to convince the little ones to stay alone. They just barely agreed after I promised to bring them food. I walked without knowing where to. My decision was not hesitant, I simply did not know which way to go. I followed the adults, looking for the Schlossberg family which was the only name I knew in this foreign town. The Schlossbergs were Wyszogroders and I assumed my parents would go there if they were brought here. I also assumed this is where they would stay until I arrive. Running and wandering in panic – I found the Schlossberg house.

The house was full of refugees but my parents were not among them. Everyone was served hot tea which I brank thirstily. The sight of the simmering tea reminded me of my parents' home. Here we are in our house, everything is as it was, my distress quieted. For a brief moment I thought nothing had happened but the next moment I saw so many confused adult strangers around me that I was reminded of where I was. A heavy stone came upon my heart, sobering me. I realized what had happened and was awoken by the enormous shock.

I left the tea, ran outside and dashed without knowing the direction. I searched for my parents until the evening when the bombing began here as well. Every attack I ran to comfort the children but the loneliness was weighing heavily on me along with worry over the children's mood.

At nightfall our parents arrived.

We traveled to Warsaw, to Uncle Pinchas Popovski. Warsaw was paralyzed and darkened, without water or electricity, without bread or movement. This lasted only several days but they were difficult. An incendiary bomb hit 16 Mornov Street causing panic so we escaped. I instinctively grabbed the clothing sack we bundled for the time of need and we ran to Dzika Street where we were followed by fires and bombs. As I was running, the sack fell. I wanted to put it back on my shoulder so I leaned it on a window sill. The sack got squeezed between the banister and the window and I couldn't get it out.

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I thought to lay low until the event ended but I was afraid. Eventually I freed the sack and continued running. I was alone, surrounded by heavy darkness, heart-tearing groans of pain from the wounded, explosion sounds, and showers of broken glass flying everywhere. And I am a child!

Where were my parents? I jumped up and ran to find them because we were separated. I found them by the direction of their running. They were wounded by the glass, bleeding and stunned.

Yom Kippur arrived. In the evening we reminisced about our customary final meal before the fast, remembered what we had and is no more, that we have nothing to eat and no hope for food. We spoke of Wyszogrod, grandfather and grandmother stayed there. We decided to return to our town. After three weeks of suffering and distress, we set out.

We walked 80 kilometers, walked days and nights, haunted by fear and loneliness, tired, injured and starving.

On the river there was no longer a bridge. We crossed it with a barge. Grandfather met us, out of familial emotions. He was blessed to see us at the end of his days. He passed away on Hoshana Rabbah.

My town transformed beyond recognition during those three weeks, Wyszogrod was desolate and somber. Many deserted it. Many were murdered there. The Folksdeutch confiscated everything. We who were rich, well fed, comfortable and enjoyed luxuries as owners of a button factory - were now left penniless. Uprooted from our property, destitute. The factory was disassembled, the machines were dislodged, cut to pieces, loaded on vehicles and were said to have been taken to Germany.

Our public space shrank as well. Judaism was controlled, fenced, policed. We were assigned a defined area in which to live, there were a Jewish police and a Judenrat that sent people to work… I too worked, helping my father who worked quarrying stone. At first we were paid a very small fee, later we worked for no fee at all. It was actual forced labor, with physical abuse and cruel oppression.

I was walking in the street one day when I saw the German Chief of Police yelling and hitting a Jew because the Jew did not remove his hat in respect. The next moment he hit another Jew who did promptly remove his hat yelling at him for even daring to look at him. Jews were forced to destroy their places of prayer, to sort the reusable construction material onto wagons and instead of horses - tie themselves to the wagons and pull the load to the municipality lot where the Germans opened a market for the construction material and wood for heating. The Goys came in droves to enjoy the ruin of our temples.

Father was healthy, an excellent working man since adolescence. He helped complete quotas and was first to volunteer to do so. The Jewish foreman, a devout Gur chasid, saw him helping weak people by completing their quotas which was equivalent to saving their lives. He respected father very much and recommended accepting father's request to be released from labor on Shabbat. The Judenrat also appreciated him and freed him from working on Shabbat.

From the beginning we were ordered to wear yellow badges. One on the front sewn onto the garment over the upper chest, a size that can be seen from a distance, and another like it on the upper back. Later, a Star of David was added to the chest badge and German passports were issued with the mark “Jude” highlighting the document owners.

On 9 Av, 1940 the Germans built a work camp called “Education Camp”, meaning manual labor education. The Judenrat were required to deliver people to the camp, quota by quota. One night they came to take father who was hidden at the time in Moshe Spirshtein's cellar and they were both saved that time. It was said that at some point Jews will be taken to work and will not return because that was how the German were.

On March 6, 1941, we were moved to Nowa-Słupia. Rumours of our deportation intensified the day before. We knew the Jews of Płock were already deported, even though we were not notified. Mother stayed up all night sewing satchels for us all. She argued with father what to take with us. It was a depressing discussion. I listened, it was an impossible consideration of what to be worried about and what to risk anyway. I, the child, shared their fears. My dear parents sat all night trying to figure out how to prepare for the horrible future. The only thing I understood was that we were uprooting from here because they spoke of travel towards terror and I couldn't fall asleep. At sunrise I peeked through the window onto the silent street. A dead town. Only one person on the street who went from house to house. I knew him. It was the Judenrat clerk Moshe Leib Dimant who stopped at each door only long enough to put his head in and tell the Jews the order from the Germans is to gather at the town square and to “try to obey the order”.

We, who live close to this square, arrived first. The Germans and their assistants were already there, filling our soul with fear. They pushed us while scolding and hitting. From afar I saw the admired the esteemed Rabbi Naftali Spivak standing at the head of the line. I saw a German approach him and shower him with whip lashes. He hit his head, face and his entire body but the Rabbi stood tall and straight without moving. The scene stayed with me for years as if taken from the world of Rabbi Akiva and his students. For me, our rabbi was a symbol of unwavering faith, literally. He stood in faith, otherwise how could he stand like that.

Trucks were already standing in the square. One truck for every 60 people was how the Jewish people of Wyszogrod were to be uprooted from their home town. The Germans pushed the Jews to get on the trucks. They kicked us, shook us, pushed us, yelled and hit us. Once the truck was full but had not reached its intended capacity they began to cram the remaining people in, cutting their backpacks off and throwing them to the ground. Those backpacks held the remnants of their lives and their hopes in the horrors of the days.

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The bumpy road was unbearable. We stood pressed together, leaning on each other, a mass of fatigue. All of us one mass of exhausted bodies. Hunger also exasperated us.

When we passed Ciechanów and Mława, Jews stood on the roads and threw us food bundles for the arduous time ahead. They risked their lives doing so because the Germans chased them away with blows and beatings. The Jews of Lwów – how did they know the best way to express their worry-empathy with us, how did they understand that the little food they threw into the truck would give us an encouraging sliver of hope? I was a child and I never forgot these gestures of our humble brothers.

In Działdowo we stopped and were taken to a camp near Polish barracks. We passed between two barbed wire fences and two lines of people standing on the side to receive the newcomers, ready to hit us. The clubs in their hands went up and down on us as we walked through this passageway. Grandmother could not descend from the truck as fast as required. She was forcefully hooked like a hunted dog and pulled down the height of the truck.

We went into a lone shed in the middle of the square and behind us groups and groups of armed Germans pushed their way like animals onto prey, waving their guns and demanding the last of our money still on us. They forced us to sing and dance for them and when we tired, they ordered us to collect dirt by hand from the exceptionally clean lot. We had to squint and carefully look for dirt, scrape it and bring it to them. It was “genius” abuse. Those who never did it will not understand.

Some of the Jews thought that if no valuables will be found on them on the lot search, they will be sent on their way back to the shed so they took out everything they had and hid it there. But they were not returned to the shed. The police forced them with pistols drawn to enter the shed and take everything out. A German caught me. He looked at the frightened creature and put me to the other line, where the Jews stood after they were searched. I was saved from that torture. After the search we were put into an empty barn. There were no latrines, everyone used a pit that was dug in the yard. Men and women together. Everyone saw each other. Father was opposed and led separate lines for men and for women. Habits and the traditions of modesty remained important to him. He compromised on physical needs but not on morals and purification. Despite the situation, people listened to him and fulfilled the mitzvah when he reminded them.

Father also did not touch the food we were given, for fear of the food being prepared by Gentiles. He did allow us to drink the thin soup but we did not eat the other foods. It was a Jewish aversion that was rooted in us.

At the end of the week we were loaded on a train and told we were being transferred to Kielce. When we passed Warsaw, the Red Cross handed us bread and Jam. When they were later informed that they mistook us for Pols, they stopped. Many arrived too late to enjoy this Red Cross gesture. We arrived in Kielce hungry, tired, and despondent.

The Kielce community greeted us with hot coffee. There was no ghetto there yet. From there we were moved on Purim 1941 to Nowa Słupia. The tiny town wanted to welcome us as fellow sufferers, not be thrown in the street. Everyone, whole families, were accepted into their community and housing was arranged. Their hospitality was heart-touching. We felt as guests in their few and small houses, not as refugees. We were divided between two families, slept on the floor crowded together without relief in sight. Father brought with him some buttons and threads which were sold to the Goyim for flour and potatoes to nourish ourselves.

It was the middle of winter. We were taken out in frost and snow for forced labor work cleaning roads and carving the frozen lime quarries. Local Jews set up a cheap kitchen so we were able to eat a cooked meal once a day. Many returned to Wyszogrod, several went to Warsaw. We stayed. With us stayed our uncle Avramel the matchmaker with his family; aunt Beyla Lipman, her son in law Moshe Spirshtein and his children; cousin Bluma Leah Goldman, her husband and their daughter; uncle Pinchas Grebje (who would walk in front of the ark on high holidays and was the maggid lesson of the daily page at the Gur Hassidic Shtibel) and his family; Chanoch Helmer and his family; Hadas Nanu daughter of Fayvitch Yoskeh with her husband; Yechiel Zelman and his wife.

We received a letter from an aunt in Czerwinsk that conditions are still good there because there is food and it would be best for us to come there. If not all of us, then mother and the baby for the time being. She even sent money for expenses along the way. Mother was too weak to walk. It was a 300-kilometre distance between towns who were emptied of their Jews and there was no chance of securing transportation. I wanted to leave. My parents objected but I stood my ground and they agreed. I took my brother Eliyahu and we set out. It was not easy for my parents to separate from us, but Jews went and so did we.

We were accompanied by a teacher, the daughter of Shmuel David Vega. Our parents were happy there was an adult with us.

Father and mother came with us to the nearby village. All of us cried, especially our dear parents. They were unconsolable, eyes on us and tears flowing. The torn heart felt, foresaw, that we will never meet again.

We kept crying as we walked away but the teacher warned us to stop because it could expose us and was very dangerous. We restrained ourselves.

We passed deserted villages, haunted by death horrors. The empty houses and the dreariness were scary and depressing but despite the many hazards nothing threatened our lives. We withstood everything, walking towards a target where we will be given life.

Radom was our next stop. The Judenrat fed us warm soup. We were too hungry at this point but it did warm us. Back on our trail we met Wyszogroders, four of them were headed to Czerwinsk and we joined them. In one of the villages along the way we had to rest. Despite the danger we went to the village leader. He understood our predicament and allowed us to sleep there overnight in haylofts. We clung to the adults, refusing to be separated from them fearing they would leave us, which they did not do. We continued together.

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I had 300 Zlotys that my father gave me to save us on our way which we did not use until the day we desperately needed them and they saved us. When we reached the Kampinos plains that were impossible to navigate we paid a special “transporter” who passed us walking with only our heads above water to the German Reich, to Czerwinsk. He left us at dawn by a forest to contend with the rest of the way.

It was up to us to find our way to safety through this unknown forest. We knew Germans lurked there for flour smugglers but what could we do. We walked directionless and saw them. Our blood froze. We hid in a pit. When the danger passed, we continued to the outskirts of Czerwinsk where we took yellow patches and entered town. I arrived at my aunt's, showered and fell asleep drying myself. I slept for 24 hours straight.

The kind aunt kindled a feeling of family. We relaxed but felt the atmosphere of continued looming dangers.

At first, the additional refugees were not noticed. Once when some were detected, all the Jews of the morning shift were taken and gathered in the market square. Searches and document checks were conducted and those who were found were taken to a punishment camp where they were killed in strange ways.

Our uncles were afraid to hide us because there was no way to successfully save us and they would only risk themselves. We accepted the verdict and we went straight to the Germans, two young children with our passports. Luckily for us it was still dark outside before sunrise. The commander checked our passports that said we were from Płock but he read Płońsk which was the county town of Czerwinsk and we were saved. We returned to our aunt's house only to find that our success was short lived and bound to be exposed because we did not have food certificates. It was decided that my brother stay with the uncles and I left town.

Again, I was alone.

I hid with local Pols, farming and herding cattle in exchange for meagre food. I was starved. The family probably knew who I was and knew I would work for even just a bit to eat. The antisemitic mother did not hide her hope “ to see all the Jews in a deep ditch” but her sons liked me. We slept together in the attic and they gave me apples.

On Sundays I went to visit my little brother, to receive updates from my dear parents and clean clothes. I was happy for the passing time without horrific changes.

I went once to Wyszogrod to visit my uncles Hirschel Maiersdorf and Tsvi Fucks and their families. I was drawn to my family and it was an opportunity to see my town. There was organized ghetto, Jews with no food living in dreadfully crowded conditions. Despair was everywhere. Not a glimmer of hope. They slept on stacked wood boards. Pols stood at the fence to trade bread and basic food for whatever clothing the Jews could give in order to survive another hour, another minute.

After eight days in Wyszogrod I missed my parents terribly. I looked for ways to contact them, my heart predicted the worst.

My mother, may she rest in peace, sitting on the left

My letters went unanswered. Then one afternoon a cable arrived notifying me that my mother passed away on 11 Cheshvan 1940. I knew.

I returned to Czerwinsk, glad a ghetto decree was declared because I would receive legal status, a food card and most importantly I would be with Jews again. I joined forced labor with everyone - farming church fields and paving roads.

One day the Germans, with assistance from the Jewish police, collected worker quota for Płońsk. I was taken as well. We were led. I was weak after a steep climb, I fell while walking to Płońsk and fainted. I was put on a wagon all the way to Płońsk where my cousin Tova Maiersdorf appeared and released me back to ghetto Czerwinsk.

On Oct. 15, 1942, we were all transferred by wagons to ghetto Nowy Dwór which was full of numerous people.

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Czerwinsk was Reich territory and additional towns in its vicinity were supposed to stay Juden-Rein. The Germans cleansed the area from Jews by rounding them up from all the other ghettos to Nowy Dwór which was marked as a concentration area before execution.

It was hell on earth. Extremely difficult for me to describe its horrors. Extremely difficult for me to remember how we continued living in Sodom conditions of harsh plagues, hunger, crowdedness. My uncle Hirshel Maiersdorf died of typhus, along with additional Jews.

This is where I met Kalman Pelz. He gave me his eating utensils. Meir Teitelbaum was also there, and others. Labor was excruciating, accompanied by deathblows and forced running.

Connection with my father was totally cut off. Thankfully my little brother and aunts were with me, but loneliness was the most challenging hardship added on top of all the other difficulties.

Once when the daily quota was short, the Germans came to the ghetto demanding more Jews to fill it. The Jewish police searched the apartments and brought the hiding Jews to the gate. My aunt Tova Fuchs came home and told me about the hunt for workers. I slipped away and hid under the house pillars. As if from a hidden voice, a nervous terrified Jewish policeman came in holding a stick and began searching. Miraculously he did not look under the pillars and I was saved.

More than 40 hiding Jews were rounded up, loaded with sacks of sand and forced to run just for torture and abuse. That evening, tired to death, they were forced to dig themselves graves. Twenty-nine Jews were shot. Among them Buchner and Moshe Shlomo Potterman from Wyszogrod.

One day, the ghetto was surrounded by armed Folksdeutch and the Jewish policemen inside the fence began rounding up people for a labor quota. We were living with Motil Vizshavinski, with the two brothers Ash who owned the modern olive press in Wyszogrod, and with the daughters of Chanoch Yavetz.

We went to work every day. Once on a Thursday I returned home to an empty apartment. My uncle and brother were taken to an execution transport. I was alone once again. I was stunned, I wanted to die. Loneliness was the worst torture, beyond any other cruelty.

My remaining uncles Fuchs and Maiersdorf appeared in the evening offering encouragement. I moved in with them.

On Sunday Dec. 12, 1942, after the horrible Thursday, we were all taken out and loaded onto cattle train cars; the next morning we arrived at Birkenau-Auschwitz. As we walked towards the packed train cars the Goys stood rejoicing. They knew where we were headed. They gestured slaughter with their hands on their throats.

Birkenau looked like an isolated forlorn city of dead people. The weather was foggy and wintery. Yelling was heard from the darkness and orders roared: “organize in fives”, “men separately, women separately”. The screams and cries of the departing who sensed the departures were eternal - split the skies.

I was alone once again, orphaned, isolated from the remnants of everything dear to me.

Five by five we were taken into Birkenau camp as armed SS guards inspected the process.

We stood outside waiting for our turn to enter the bath house. It was foggy, cold and damp. We were led there to be cleaned of infections. We stood in the snow-covered mud that sank under our feet. We stood there for hours, stuck in the cold mud, our bodies exposed to arrows of wintery December night frost.

At the entrance to the bath house, veteran prisoners began preparing us. They took off our warm clothes, hitting us and swearing in a jumble of languages. They then shaved every hairy crevice of our body with a blunt device that pinched our nerves and hurt to tears. They deliberately used dull instruments to cause us pain and be cruel to us in the process.

Then came another torture – the vaccine. Supposedly against epidemics. They stood us again one next to the other, naked, freezing, our wounds stinging, then poured burning Lysol disinfectant on our injured bodies. From the bath house we emerged dressed in a very thin prisoner uniform and once more we stood for hours until the needed quota was filled, only then were we taken into the block.

We were taken in one by one. Each given a number on a piece of cardboard to be tattooed. When the numbers were tattooed on our left arm, we were told we were no longer human beings. We were now numbers. Our names were written on old cards that were erased. A selection process was next. The healthy were sent to Buna camp. I was in camp block number 13 along with my cousin Yehoshua Maiersdorf.

In the block we slept on wooden bunk beds. Despite the late hour, people were not asleep. Gentle, kind, intelligent faces peered at us. It was forbidden to speak with them. The next morning during headcount we learned they were Dutch. After two weeks only several of them were left. They “disappeared”.

We stood in line for a bowl of coffee that tasted like chamomile. On our first day of work in Birkenau the Kapo asked if there was a doctor among us. One of the Dutch, a tall man, stood on his weak legs and introduced himself as a doctor. The Kapo was pleased and ordered him to come to him when we arrive at the work site.

At the work site, a camp of finished and half-finished sheds, the doctor approached the Kapo who knocked him to the floor saying: Now I am the doctor, you will soon see what medicinal therapy looks like. As the Kapo spoke he poked his fingers into the doctor's eyes and extracted them from their sockets, leaving him blind and bleeding. I was dumbfounded for a moment. I never imagined such a “surgery” could be done with fingers. Our hearts were horrified but there was nothing we could do. Our impression was that this was an urge of revenge from a man who wanted but couldn't achieve a medical profession.

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On the first day we worked building sheds, the next day I was transferred to another Kapo. A Polish Goy, with an antisemitic appetite. He took two Jews from our group, gave them clubs and forced them to hit each other. When they refused, the Kapo severely beat one of them until he surrendered and began hitting his friend. The Kapo was very amused.

Each Kapo was ordered to kill 40% of his Jews at work so every Kapo took a sled or a wagon with them because by the end of the day there were dead or dying bodies to bring back to the camp. Flogging punishment was daily routine at Birkenau. A special bench was built for the size of an average person and calculated for every detail. The prototype was probably drafted according to a German well-engineered, punctual, vicious plan. A person was laid across the bench, his head held in a vice at the neck, his legs pulled inward so that his buttocks were stretched and sticking out – a target for whippings that were inundated upon him by two Kapo holding heavy bats.

I received my first beating from my friend, the block secretary, may God forgive him. I went to get more soup for my cousin. He and the entire famished bunk told me it would involve getting hit but I could not refuse them. I went down the empty hall and asked for a bit of soup from the pot. The secretary, loyal as a dog, was there, well hidden. He ambushed me, ran after me, caught me and after horrible profanities and curses upon all things dear to me, I bore my first dose of whipping by the book – stretched out and hog-tied on the bench.

He first asked me how old I was. After I said I was 17 he ordered me to count the lashes. I counted. They were the number of my weary years on earth. He was apathetic to my suffering, but my pain was stronger than my insult and my insult stronger than my pain. I was never whipped and what exactly was my offence towards him?

Christmas arrived. The “merciful” Christians, damn them, were given two days of vacation and they wanted to rejoice in the Christian manner of the good pardon of their faith. To delve into the concepts of their religion. They took us out and ordered us to wear our shirts backwards. They began to shovel coarse sand into our clothes, the shovels hitting us each time. As sacks of coarse sand we were ordered to run in a circle with each Goy hitting us as he pleased. All the while the SS people stood on a bleacher enjoying the game. When we needed to defecate from diarrhea stimulated in this game, we were taken out to the sand pit and the person who bent down was attacked and torn by a pray-dog ordered “man catch the dog”.

Many victims fell then. I felt my powers drained from me. A thought occurred to me to ask one of the Jews to play dead and we will carry him to the camp. That is how I escaped from this game of theirs. That is how I was saved that day. Others ran to the camp sentries and asked to be shot. When they were refused, they pressed themselves on the electric fence and died.

Suicide was common. I wanted to live and restrained myself from doing so.

Of those who chose to end their lives were Moshe Boki, the father of Shmuel who fell in battle in Israel, and Krok who had a liquor store in Wyszogrod.

Rumors spread that people were being transferred from Birkenau to Auschwitz. People said Auschwitz was better “there's water for bathing”. At the time, only young people were taken for the “Construction School” and I was limping. Although it was difficult for me to walk, I ran when the German engineer tested our fitness by running several meters from him and back. My desire to move from here was so strong - I ran. Despite my pain - I ran and was accepted to the school.

We were happy to leave the hell named Birkenau.

After a three kilometer walk without food, we reached Auschwitz where we received a hot shower, clean clothes and wood clogs with tattered upper cloth covers. Still without receiving food, we slept in a cold attic. The clogs needed to be safeguarded. Anyone whose clogs were stolen from him stood barefoot in the snow and suffered 25 whippings. We were forced to sleep with open windows to the frost.

During the first two weeks we suffered severe diarrhea and 80 youth of Israel died before my eyes. We were jealous of them. We were fed up with life.

I remember a night among many that I asked for death to take me. We were sleeping in the attic, on its concrete floor, in freezing temperature of -20 to -30 degrees below zero. It was impossible to sleep. Then, when morning broke and the cold warmed a bit, our eyes closed and then…you are called to headcount. This was so day after day, no person can stand such torture. And so it happened one night. I was so weak that my only wish was to die. To die.

For body wastes when necessary at night one had to descend barefoot so as not to wake those who slept. Toes upon the freezing cold floor hurt to tears. There was always someone lurking near the stairs so that if you God-forbid descended with clogs, even without making noise, they would immediately catch you, hit you, kick you across the floor and swear. Clearly, life will not be dear to you in these situations.

The construction lessons we received were also targeted purely for torture. We built in the cold without refuge from wind or frost although the school was under the roof in the attic of block 7A. Toilets could be used only at noon under the pretense that they had not yet pass inspection approval. When the need arose it pricked and hurt many body organs and when a person could no longer hold he released on the spot in the clothes he was wearing. With time we found a trick. We relieved ourselves in the wood clogs and threw the outcome through the window. When a foreman saw stains in the snow, we were immediately ordered to roll call. I was last to arrive and first to be treated. A tall Russian caught me, tied me to the flogging bench and with the handle of a pickaxe hit me a long time.

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When I stood up, I could not stand and for weeks I had difficulty walking. We later felt this Russian often. He served his master with exaggerated loyalty and with burning hatred of Israel. That Russian caught us breaking orders when we tasted raw beetroot that was being prepared for cooking and faithfully informed his master to please him. We were then put in one of the rooms, forced to sit bent over on the tips of our toes holding a heavy chair. We sat like that for a long time, our hands were numb from lack of blood and the chair began falling, at which point the criminals kicked our ribs to force us to raise our dropped arms. When this did not work because we could no longer control our limbs, we received beatings on the flogging bench the to the point of losing consciousness and the will to live.

Luckily, we did not go out to work after that. We studied. Lessons took place in the attic and after classes we could lay down to slowly slowly heal the bruises covering our bodies. We could rest our hurting shattered bones.

During those days we were ordered to roll call to watch how they hang 12 people for attempting to escape.

The school's “instruction” format had victims of its own. Few of the students were left alive and those who survived were exploited for hard arduous work. All the remaining students still worked on buildings. I began construction work but thanks to Izik Teitelbaum, grandson of reb Shlomo Gurfinkel, I was taken to work in the laundromat and that saved me. We continued this way until the end of 1944.

In January 1945 the Russians arrived with their powerful bombardments, announcing the definite fall of the Nazis. The Germans decided to vacate Auschwitz and cover the tracks of their hideous crimes by eradicating its remaining witnesses. They took us out and led us far away from the crime scene.

We walked in the great cold, barefoot and wounded. They led us, we did not know the destination. We walked because anyone who lagged behind was shot to death and left in the field.

In Gliwice they put us on train cars and we arrived in Czechoslovakia. The Czech greeted us with loaves of bread but the Germans did not allow them to approach us. Our eyes popped out of their holes at the site of the enticing bread. But the Germans simply did not want us to eat even other people's food. I think this moment, more than any other manifestation, the extraordinary Nazi cruelty stands out as nothing more than enjoyment of the abuse itself.

We arrived at Mauthausen concentration camp in the Austrian Alps. Taken out of the train with yelling and beatings, we were then forced to climb the mountain with our failing legs, and our frail, tired, skeletal bodies. In the evening we were put into a shed for a night's rest.

We were sat on the floor of the shed, compressed and suffocated, legs to legs, a porridge of anguished bodies and lifeless. We sat that way an entire night without the ability to stretch our bones, lay down and nap a bit as humans.

In the morning we were taken out to work in underground tunnels in well-concealed secured weapon workshops. We joined the repair groups. Later we were also called during the night and forced to work. Our will to live dwindled. These last hardships were unbearable. All reason to live was taken from us.

And yet, the air felt as if these were the last days. That we will soon witness the downfall of our oppressors, soon we too will feel the taste of revenge. As if of their own power, our life forces revived. We saw the SS people stooped, their spirits low. They were busy with themselves, tailoring civilian clothes, and other such signs that the predators are preparing for their approaching demise. A friend who for some reason did not have a number on his hand - tattooed himself a number. When I asked him why, he answered me: we will survive them, this is the end and I want to leave myself a reminder from hell.

The day before their complete demise we were all taken to the central court. This time to consult with us. The camp commander stood on the table to give an important speech and said: Bombardments are increasing, I advise you for your own good to take cover in the caves on the mountain until the danger passes.

He sounded almost convincing, but we were told beforehand that they have a plan to kill us in the caves. We understood they are going to execute this scheme and decided not to go into the caves. We calculated that the guarding of the camp was left to old militia men because the young men had already either fled or were sent to the warfront and the elders will not be able to catch us.

This is how we survived, alive, a moment before victory or a moment before our general annihilation.

The end is well known: American freedom tanks, our kisses upon the liberation steel, the Jewish Brigade in Cyprus, and our final eternal return to the State of Israel.

• After evening roll call the non-Jewish prisoners would go to their blocks without unnecessary ceremonies. The Jews on the other hand were forced to stay outside, take their clothes off and stand naked in the frost and rain after which, like sheep, pass in front of the all-powerful SS man who would decide with a flip of his thumb who will live and who will die. His thumb decided the fate of human beings. These selections occurred every single night of every single day.
• Once during one of these evening selections I was after a severe injury earlier that day. I broke a bone from hard construction work carrying sacks of cement. I stood in pain and when I was called to the SS man, I gathered all my mental strength to approach him with the last of my energy. He looked at me. He felt something, hesitated a moment. I was very thin and my weakness showed from each rib of my tortured skeleton. Suddenly he broke his silence and asked:
  - Where do you work?
  - In construction group, I answered.
  - He yelled: oh – up!
  And I was saved.
• Every Tuesday we received additional bread with a piece of sausage. The routine was to go to the person in charge of distribution, show him the number tattoo, and receive the additional portion. One day the person in charge was a Polish thug from Poznan, a born antisemite named Yorik. He made up a story about me to his German superior that I deceived him and did not show him my number. I received my portion and left there unaware. Suddenly I saw him running in my direction and when he reached me, he began hitting my whole body with a stick he was holding. The bread fell from my hand and he continued beating me until I fainted. I was passed out for a long time and woke up to the ringing of the gong.
• Our uniforms were changed every Sunday. I received a shirt with too many patches. I asked the Jewish fellow who handed it out to give me another shirt. He answered that Yorik ordered him not to exchange, but he did anyway. He was a good friend of mine. At that very moment Yorik appeared and saw. I knew what was coming and indeed he approached and beat me to a pulp.

Note from Gloria Berkenstat Freund:

1. Chana Ita the button maker's grandson. Return

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