The Dentist Of Auschwitz (29 page)

In the morning gentle breezes rustled the treetops. Allied planes were crisscrossing the skies above us all day. We still hoped at each turn that we would find freedom. As we moved north, the weather turned colder, and we could see more villages and towns. Germany was now nearly cut in two, with only a narrow corridor of land dividing the Americans from the Russians along the Elbe. In the north the British were at the outskirts of Bremen and Hamburg. In the south the French were on the upper Danube. The roads were unusually full, with people streaming west. Women and children and army deserters were fleeing from the advancing Red Army troops. At times we also could spot groups of prisoners like us in gray striped suits guarded by the Waffen SS.

It was cold and rainy, and it felt like winter. The Schleswig Holstein region was one of the few areas still unoccupied by Allies. It was obvious now why Max Schmidt did not leave us in Dora. He decided to keep us captive on his parents’ estate, because without us to guard, he would have to defend his dying fatherland. He ought to have known that his war was over. Having been the Kommandant of an Auschwitz camp, he could hardly expect to escape criminal charges if apprehended here. So why he chose to take us to his family estate was a big puzzle.

We were ordered off the barges and told to assemble beside the main road between Hamburg and Kiel. By then we numbered 540 inmates plus the Kapos. Some of us could barely move. My brother and I seriously considered escaping, but we asked ourselves, Where would we go?

As we began marching, the slaughter started again. As before, those unable to keep up were shot and left by the road. By the time we came to the Schmidt estate in a village called Neu Glassau, fifteen more prisoners were dead. We thought that by then the Kapos would end their complicity with the Nazis. They too had to know that they would be held accountable. But many of them, especially Kapo Wilhelm, remained hardened, hating his fellow Jewish inmates as much as ever.

It was late in the day when we came to the edge of Neu Glassau. From there we were led onto a dirt road, and five kilometers later we came to a large, weathered gray barn standing on a gentle incline. Hermann had told us that for the time being we would remain there. While the guards took up watch around us, we slumped down onto the bare, still-frozen ground, exhausted. A short while later Schmidt came up the road and opened the barn doors. Dusk had fallen when three women arrived with real bread, butter, and coffee. One of them was young, tall, and very beautiful. I immediately recognized her. She was Gerta, Max’s fiancée. She had often visited Max in Fürstengrube. She wore her long blond hair in heavy braids.

On April 13 we were awakened by a howling Kapo Wilhelm. “The American president is dead. You haven’t won the war yet, not until you all
krapiert
[croak],” he said.

“President Roosevelt dead?” echoed through the barn. We likened the president’s death to our major defeat. It set back our hopes. We each had lost a friend. We were shocked and dismayed.

Fräulein Gerta came daily with two helpers, and each time we received one thick slice of bread, butter, and coffee. This was real food, and we remembered now how bread and butter once tasted. We also got potato-turnip soup at night, but since we had been deprived of food for so many years, it only quieted some of our hunger.

Behind the barn were two straw-covered mounds. Young Mendele, intrigued, kept circling them and one day decided to investigate. Keeping an eye on the guards, he walked back and forth in a cat-and-mouse game, as if he was searching for something, until he could sit inconspicuously close to the mounds. Then he casually reached into the straw and found potatoes there. He slowly stuffed his pockets with them and returned to the barn. Then he discovered that they were half frozen. He knew that eating them uncooked would cause him uncontrollable diarrhea. He started a fire using straw from the barn. Unfortunately that’s where his success ended, because the guard came and stamped it out.

The emptier my stomach got, the worse my pain and cramping became. I had heard that the village of Neu Glassau did not have a dentist. I was motivated to find food, and I approached Max Schmidt to offer my services to the villagers. “Herr Hauptscharführer, I understand that there are no dentists in Neu Glassau? I still have dental instruments from Fürstengrube. If you permit me to go there, I could help those with dental problems. You know, Herr Lagerführer, that I will not escape,” I pleaded.

He paused for a while, thinking over my suggestion. “I have no objection,” he said, giving me the name of a family he knew there. “If you tell them that I sent you, they will let you use their house.” Then he ordered the head of the guards, Scharführer Pfeiffer, to allow me to leave the barn area.

I found Schmidt’s friends’ place and knocked. A middle-aged woman came out and looked at me with astonishment. When I explained who I was, gave her the reason for my presence, and told her who had sent me, she invited me into her living room. She was in her midforties. Hard work was mirrored on her face. She knew that her husband was on the eastern front, but she had not heard from him in more than a year and didn’t know if he was still alive. The couple was childless.

The woman was quite friendly and asked me many questions. She wanted to know about me and why we were at the Schmidt estate. I answered all of her questions except the last. I thought that responding to that one would be foolhardy and might harm my relations with the Lagerführer. She could not understand it. The Schmidts were known to be honorable people, she said. She put bread and ham before me. It was the first time I had filled my stomach since leaving Fürstengrube in January. Although she told me that she had never believed in Hitler and was not a Nazi, I had the distinct impression that she was not telling me the truth.

From then on, getting enough food for my brother and myself proved to be rather simple. The woman got her neighbors to contribute, and I was able to help some of my friends. Although the nearest dentist was thirteen kilometers away, not a single German came to see me the first week. I reduced my stay in the village, from two hours to one hour a day. One day the woman put a torte before me. The cake had more whipped cream than dough. I had not eaten anything as rich before, and I almost ate the whole cake. Then, for the first time since I had been taken from Dobra, I got sick from overeating.

In the meantime, the Allies were pounding the area with heavy artillery. It seemed as if we were only hours from freedom, but as before, it again slipped away.

O
n April 27, 1945, Max Schmidt called me aside
and in front of the barn gave me a surprising message. “The director of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte, will be here tomorrow to take some of you to Sweden,” he confided. “But he only wants prisoners who are from the West. He won’t know where any of you are from. I won’t stand in your way if you tell him you are from somewhere in the West.”

“What will happen if I stay?” I asked.

“I don’t know. No one can predict what will happen. The Kommandant of Neuengamme, a concentration camp nearby, is in charge of all prisoners here now. I know him, and I don’t trust him.” Then he added, “You would be safer out of here.”

What he said left me gasping. Encouraged, I dared to ask more. “Herr Lagerführer, actually you are still in charge of us. I mean, you could order the guards to let us go, couldn’t you?” He did not respond.

After this talk with Schmidt, my fellow prisoners immediately surrounded me. Obviously I could not tell them all that Max had said to me. I did reveal that tomorrow the Red Cross would come to take all Western nationals to Sweden. My brother and I conferred about Schmidt’s suggestion, and we both agreed to do as he said. Neither Josek nor I any longer considered Poland our country. We decided to take a chance and hoped our bluff would work. I immediately began to tutor my brother in what I remembered of my limited French. “Josek, when they ask you, ‘D’où êtes-vous?’ you answer them, ‘Je viens de la France.’ Should they ask you, ‘Quelle ville?’ you answer, ‘De Bordeaux, monsieur.’” I had picked Bordeaux because of Dr. Lubicz. I remembered that he came from there. We were both awake that night, full of anticipation about what the next day would bring. We tried to envision what Sweden would be like. Could we rebuild our shattered lives there? I wanted to see America, the land of my dreams. After our many disappointments, would this be the last day of captivity?

It was April 28, 1945, and we lay in the clothes we had not removed since we got here. At the first move of the barn doors, we dug ourselves out of the soft straw and went outside and waited. At about nine thirty, as our Lagerführer had predicted, they came. Four white paneled trucks, preceded by a black limousine with a Red Cross flag fluttering from the fender, drove up the lane to the barn and stopped. Three smartly dressed men in Red Cross outfits emerged, and we were immediately ordered by our Lagerführer to assemble.

One of the men carried an elegant baton under his arm, which made me think he must be the count. We waited, as the Lagerführer had ordered us to do, in our customary rows of fives. Before us, we thought, was our long-yearned-for freedom. Finally the “count” spoke in German: “All Western nationals step forward.” [3]

About fifty prisoners, most from France, Holland, and Belgium, stepped out in front of us. I knew most of them well. No Englishmen or Americans were among us; the Norwegians that had been with us in Fürstengrube were all dead. I tugged my brother’s jacket, and we both walked out at the same time to stand with the Westerners. Seeing this, many Eastern and Central Europeans followed, doubling the number. Everything went as we had hoped, and we were marched toward the Swedish trucks.

On their canvas tops were huge red crosses. My heart beat loud and fast. I was terrified and overjoyed. I was an imposter stealing a precious reward. We tried to mingle with the real Westerners, so as not to be detected. We were anxious. It was difficult to comprehend that all this was actually happening. Finally the four Swedish drivers lifted the canvases and dropped the truck tailgates and summoned us. “Step up,” they said.

Our bluff worked. I cannot describe the feeling. We were free of scourging, beating, and thrashing. Josek and I looked at one another to be sure it was not just an unlikely dream. Afraid that someone would order us back, we wanted to be the first to climb onto the trucks. Mendele had already found the right chum, the freckled, red-haired young Dutchman, Kopelmann.

The trucks drove slowly, in a gentle downward pitch to the sea, swaying on the rough gravel road. Offshore, only about one kilometer away, sat a Swedish freighter, its flags flapping in the light wind. The dinghies moved toward the shore. “We know that not all of you are from the West. Those who are not we cannot take,” announced the count. Then he looked around and waited. My brother leaned on my arm. I heard my heart beating and felt my knees about to buckle. What now? The memory of Schmidt’s predictions nourished my fears. A minute of silence followed, but it seemed endless. When he got no response, the count came close and looked each of us in the face. My lie covered my face like a mask. My stomach cramped, and a lump grew in my throat. The count kept walking and darting his eyes at each of us, his face expressing his thoughts: Which of you has the audacity? But he was not sure who. Not one was willing to go back to the camp. He grew impatient, and spearing us with his anger, he spoke. “As long as no one is willing to admit it, we will take you all back.” Still, no one gave us away, and not one of us talked. Could he not understand why? Could he not understand that one would do anything to be free of this suffering? After years of degradation, dehumanization, after years of living with death, we yearned for freedom.

The three Swedes conferred, and after a while the count spoke again. “For the last time, we warn you. Whoever really is a national of a Western country, step out. The rest please stay back.” That got the results they wanted. The real Westerners stepped forward. The rest of us no longer dared.

Only we prisoners and the Swedes were there. Not a single German was present. Even if rescuing the Westerners had been their initial objective, could they not bend a little? I approached the count and pleaded with him. “Can’t you take us? We are condemned. Look at the condition of some of these people. If you return us, they will be dead tomorrow.”

“I don’t have enough room on the ship,” he said. Looking at the huge ship, I could hardly believe that it would sink with the addition of a few more passengers.

“It’s only a short trip. We will stand on deck. Please take us,” I pleaded. I looked at the rest of the Swedes, asking them for help. But this did little to ease their rigidity. If they agreed, they did not say so. They remained unmoved. More desperate inmates, their limbs swollen and their bodies numb, also pleaded with the count. He remained indifferent and just ordered the drivers to take us back. Liberty and freedom were gone; it all seemed like a dream, like a beautiful dream, and we had had such a brief taste of freedom. The Swedes, however polite, lacked mercy. We felt condemned and were bitterly devastated. I never learned who gave us away. Count Bernadotte had reached an agreement with Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler that allowed him to take all prisoners except Germans. To this day I still don’t know why he did not take us.

With heavy hearts we had to board the truck that would take us back. It was one o’clock when we returned to Neu Glassau. Schmidt and Hermann were gone. Scharführer Pfeiffer and his guards were now in charge. I tried to talk my way out to the village, but Pfeiffer would not let me go, nor did Gerta come with food. We made a pathetic picture as we lay in a state of lethargy, in an existential emptiness, without hope. Starved, we raided the straw-covered mounds for the few half-frozen potatoes that might sustain us for a few more days.

On May 1 we learned that Hitler had committed suicide. But Kapo Wilhelm still proclaimed, “The war will yet be won!” We knew he meant by the Nazis. Despair shrouded us like a fog. Early on May 2 we were awakened while it was still dark. Gunfire was all around us, but once again we had to leave. I looked at the tools that had saved my life, which I kept hidden in the straw. “You can’t help me any longer,” I thought. I took the dental gold. “Only this is worth saving.” After counting us, Pfeiffer insisted that six prisoners were still missing. But in the rush there was no time for a recount. Several shots filled the barn as we left.