Prisoner B-3087 Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Kraków, Poland 1939–1942

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Plaszów Concentration Camp 1942–1943

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Wieliczka Salt Mine 1943–1944

  Chapter Thirteen

  Trzebinia Concentration Camp 1944

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Birkenau Concentration Camp 1944–1945

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Auschwitz Concentration Camp 1945

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Death March 1945

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp 1945

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp 1945

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1945

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp 1945

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Death March 1945

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Dachau Concentration Camp 1945

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Munich 1945

  Chapter Thirty

  Afterword

  Copyright

  If I had known what the next six years of my life were going to be like, I would have eaten more.

  I wouldn’t have complained about brushing my teeth, or taking a bath, or going to bed at eight o’clock every night. I would have played more. Laughed more. I would have hugged my parents and told them I loved them.

  But I was ten years old, and I had no idea of the nightmare that was to come. None of us did. It was the beginning of September, and we all sat around the big table in the dining room of my family’s flat on Krakusa Street, eating and drinking and talking: my parents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins, and me, Jakob — although everybody called me by my Polish name, Yanek.

  “‘The Jews must disappear from Europe.’ That’s what Hitler said,” Uncle Moshe said, reaching for another pastry. “I don’t know how much more clear he could be.”

  I shivered. I’d heard Hitler, the German fuehrer, give speeches on the radio. Fuehrer meant “leader” in German. It was what the Germans called their president now. Hitler was always talking about the “Jewish menace” and how Germany and the rest of Europe should be “Jew free.” I was a Jew, and I lived in Europe, and I didn’t want to disappear. I loved my house and my city.

  “The British and the French have already declared war on him,” my father said. “Soon the Americans will join them. They won’t let Germany roll over all of Europe.”

  “He’s already annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia,” said Uncle Abraham. “And now he invades Poland!”

  My father sipped his coffee. “Mark my words: This war won’t last more than six months.”

  My uncles argued with him, but he was my father, so I believed him.

  “Enough politics,” my mother said. She got up to clear the table, and my aunts helped her. “Yanek, why don’t you put on a show for us? He built his own projector.”

  I ran to my room to get it. It wasn’t a film projector like the one at the movie theater. It was a slide projector I’d made by mounting a lightbulb on a piece of wood and positioning wooden plates with lenses from magnifying glasses in front of it. I could show pictures on the wall, or do shadow-puppet shows. My cousins helped me hang a white sheet in the doorway of the sitting room, and when everyone was seated I plugged in the projector and clicked on the radio. I liked to have musical accompaniment, like a movie sound track. When the radio warmed up, I found a Count Basie song that was perfect and started my show.

  Using cardboard cutouts of cowboys, Indians, stagecoaches, and horses I’d glued to sticks, I projected a shadow show about a sheriff in the American Wild West who had to protect his town from bandits. John Wayne Westerns were my favorite films, and I took all the best parts from his movies and made them one big story. My family laughed and cheered and called out to the characters like they were real. They loved my shows, and I loved putting them on for them. I was never prouder than when I got my father to laugh!

  Maybe one day I would go to America and work in the movies. Aunt Gizela would often ruffle my wavy hair and say, “You look like a movie star, Yanek — with your dark-blond hair and big eyes.”

  I was just getting to the part where the bandit leader robbed the town bank and was squaring off for a shoot-out with the hero when the music on the radio stopped midsong. At first I thought the radio’s vacuum tube had blown, but then a man’s voice came on the radio.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this broadcast with the news that the German army has reached Kraków.”

  “No!” my father said.

  “So soon?” Uncle Moshe said. “It’s been only six days! Where is the Polish army?”

  I came out from behind the sheet in the doorway to listen. While the radio announcer talked about Polish forces withdrawing to Lodz and Warsaw, there was a big BOOM, and my mother’s teacups rattled in their saucers. My cousins and I ran to the window to look outside. Dark smoke curled into the sky over the rooftops of Podgórze, our neighborhood. Someone cried out on the next street, and the church bells of Wawel Cathedral rang out in alarm.

  It was too late. The Germans were here. If I had only known then what I know now, I would have run. I wouldn’t have stopped to pack a bag, or say good-bye to my friends, or to even unplug my projector. None of us would have. We would have run for the woods outside of town and never looked back.

  But we didn’t. We just sat there in my family’s flat, listening to the radio and watching the sky over Kraków turn black as the Germans came to kill us.

  German soldiers filled the streets of Kraków. They marched in their smart gray uniforms with their legs locked straight and thrown out in front of them the way ducks walk. It was silly, but eerie at the same time. There were so many of them, all marching in time together, their shiny green helmets and polished black jackboots glinting in the sun. Each of the soldiers wore a greatcoat and a pack on his back, and they carried rifles over their shoulders and bayonets at their sides.

  I felt small in my little blue woolen jacket and pants and my simple brown cap. There were tanks too — panzers, they called them — great rumbling things with treads that clanked and cannons that swiveled on top.

  We came out to watch. All of us: men, women, and children, Poles and Jews. We stood on the street corners and watched the Germans march through our city. Not all of Poland had fallen, the radio told us — Warsaw still held out, as did Brześć, Siedlce, and Lodz. But the Germans were our masters now, until our allies the British and the French arrived to drive them out.

  “The Nazis won’t be so bad,” an old Polish woman on the sidewalk next to me said as I watched them. “I remember the Germans from the World War. They were very nice people.”

  But of course she could say that. She wasn’t a Jew.

  For weeks we tried to live our lives as though nothing had changed, as though an invading army hadn’t conquered us. I went to school every day, my father and uncles and cousins still went to work, and my mother still went to the store. But things were changing. At school, the Polish boys wouldn’t play soccer with me anymore, and no Poles or Germans bought shoes from my father’s store. Food
became scarce too, and more expensive.

  Then one morning I walked to school and it was canceled. For good, I was told. No school for Jews. The other children celebrated, but I was disappointed. I loved to read — any and all books. But especially books about America, and books about doctors and medicine.

  I wandered the streets, watching the German soldiers and their tanks, the breadlines that stretched around the block. Winter was coming, and the men and women in line held their coats tight around them and stamped their feet to stay warm. When I went home at lunchtime, my father was there, which surprised me. He usually ate lunch at work. Uncle Moshe was with him at the table. My mother came out of the kitchen and worried over me.

  “Are you sick, Yanek?” She put a hand to my forehead. “Why are you home early from school?”

  “It’s closed,” I told her, feeling depressed. “Closed for Jews.”

  “You see? You see?” Uncle Moshe said. He turned to my father, looking worked up. “First they close the schools. Next it will be your shoe store. My fur shop! And why not? No one will buy from us with Nazi soldiers telling people, ‘Don’t buy from Jews.’”

  “But, if they close the shoe store, how will you make money?” I asked my father.

  “Jews are not to make money!” Moshe said. “We have ration cards now for food. With Js all over them. J for Jew.”

  “This will pass,” my father said. “They’ll crack down for a time, and then things will get easier again. It’s always the same. We just have to keep our heads down.”

  “Yes,” Moshe said. He tapped the open newspaper between him and my father. “Jews must keep their heads down and not look Germans in the face. We can’t speak unless spoken to. We can’t walk on the main streets of our own city. We can’t use the parks, the swimming pools, the libraries, the cinemas!”

  Jews couldn’t go to the movie theaters? No! I loved the movies! And the library too? Where would I get books to read if I wasn’t allowed to go to school either? I hurried to Moshe’s side to see what he was talking about. There, in the paper, were “New Rules for the Jews.” My heart sank. It was true: no more parks, no more libraries, no more movie theaters. And there was to be a nightly curfew for all Jews, young and old. We were to be in our houses and off the streets by 9:00 P.M.

  “And armbands. Armbands with the Star of David on them!” Uncle Moshe said. “They are marking us. Branding us like the cattle in those American pictures Yanek likes so much! Next they’ll be taking all our money. Mina, tell your husband.”

  “What would you have us do, Moshe?” my mother said, putting her hands on my father’s shoulders. “We haven’t the money to leave. And even if we did, where would we go?”

  My father reached up to hold my mother’s hand. “We must not lose faith, Moshe.”

  “See how easy it is to keep your faith when the Nazis take it away along with everything else,” Moshe told him.

  My father smiled. “Let them take everything. They cannot take who we are.”

  I sat down at the table to eat, and my mother brought out a small tureen of tomato soup, a loaf of bread, and a wedge of cheese.

  “So little?” I asked.

  “It’s the rationing. The groceries are all closed,” Mother said.

  “We’ll make do,” my father said. “We were spoiled before anyway.”

  I hadn’t felt spoiled, but I didn’t say anything. I just wished the Germans hadn’t taken my lunch.

  Late that night, long after curfew, cries of “Fire!” woke us.

  I ran from my bedroom, frightened. “What is it?” I cried when I saw my parents in the living room. “Is our building on fire? What do we do?”

  “No,” Father said. “It’s the synagogue.”

  The synagogue was the place where we worshiped every Sabbath and where I was studying for my bar mitzvah. I leaned out the window and saw it down the street, engulfed in flames. My father hurried to put his coat on over his pajamas to go and help put out the fire, but a loud crack! from the street brought me and my parents to the window again. Another man wearing a coat and pajamas like my father lay dead in the middle of the street, a pool of darkness spreading beneath him, glinting in the streetlights. A German officer stood over him, his pistol still aimed at the dead man.

  “Jews are reminded that under the new rules, anyone caught outside their homes after curfew will be shot on sight!” the officer yelled.

  My father stood in the sitting room, his eyes on the door. My mother put a hand to his chest, then her head to his. Some unspoken communication passed between them, and in a few moments my father took his coat off again and sent me back to bed.

  I was twelve years old when the wall began.

  Podgórze, our neighborhood, was being walled up. From Zgody Square to the Podgórze market and down along Lasoty Place. The Nazis were walling us in.

  I went out to see it. It was nearly three meters tall and made of brick. At the top it had rounded caps like the tops of tombstones. The wall stretched from one building corner to another, right across the street, cutting us off from the rest of Kraków. In the buildings that were part of the wall, they bricked up the windows and doors so no one could escape. There were only three ways in: a gate at Zgody Square, another at the market, and another on Lwowska Street.

  I ran from gate to gate to gate, taking it all in. Podgórze was now the Jewish ghetto. All the Poles there who weren’t Jews had to move out, and all the Jews who lived outside the ghetto in Kraków had to move in.

  I watched them moving in. Wave after wave of them. Huge groups of Jews climbing out of trucks and going down Lwowska Street. There were men and women and children, families, teenagers, grandparents. They all wore Star of David armbands like us. Some of them wore the uniforms of the jobs they’d had too: policemen, postmen, nurses, trolley conductors. There were no jobs for Jews anymore. No jobs besides cleaning the toilets of German soldiers. My father and uncle had lost their shops, had their inventories seized by the Nazis, just as Uncle Moshe said they would.

  The new Jews carried their luggage with them — everything they owned in the world — and they looked around with big, worried eyes at the buildings and streets of their new home. They were probably hoping that things would be better here than wherever it was they came from, but everything that had happened over the last year had taught us that things always got worse.

  There were a few empty flats left by the departing Poles, but not nearly enough for all the new people. My parents came out onto the street and invited a family to come and live with us: the Laskis, a family of three with a seven-year-old boy named Aron. We gave them my bedroom, and I slept in the sitting room. Other families did the same.

  Then, as the days went by and more and more Jews poured into the ghetto — not just from Kraków now, but from the villages and towns outside the city — we took in a second family, the Rosenblums, and a third, the Brotmans. The Germans even made it a rule: Every flat must hold at least four families. I no longer had my own bedroom, nor did my parents. The children had one room, and the adults were divided between my parents’ bedroom and the sitting room. Only the kitchen was shared by all. There were fourteen of us in a flat that had been cozy for three.

  All I ever wanted to do was get out of the house and go play with my friends. It was far too crowded at home. But my parents wouldn’t let me go outside for fear I’d be taken up in a work gang. Any time the Germans had work to be done — like scrubbing toilets or helping build the wall — they grabbed Jews off the street to do it. Father was taken all the time. Sometimes Mother. The Nazis even took people out of the ghetto to work elsewhere in Kraków. Sometimes they never returned.

  “This will all be over by summer,” my father told us. “We’ll just have to make do until then.”

  He was my father, and I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. It was January 1941. The Germans ruled Kraków. I was twelve years old. And for the first time in my life, I had begun to doubt my father.

  I
had always thought it would be fun to have a brother or a sister. That is, until I spent a few months living in my little apartment with five other kids. The bickering, the fighting, the whining — you’d think that soldiers in the streets, and synagogues burning, and days with nothing more to eat than moldy potatoes would be more important than who got to play with the doll or who got to sleep by the window, but you’d be wrong.

  The nights were the worst. I pulled my pillow and blanket out into the hall whenever the Rosenblum girls were arguing, which seemed like all the time now. I had to sleep on the floor, but I didn’t mind so much. I would be sleeping on the floor here or there, and at least for now I had the whole hall to myself. If we had to take in another family, I thought bitterly, I’d probably have to share the hall too.

  I was sound asleep one night when a creak in the hall woke me up. In the darkness, I saw the shape of a person.

  “Who’s there?” I asked, feeling my heart in my throat.

  “Shhhh, Yanek. It’s me,” my father whispered. “I’m sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep.”

  Father had his coat on. He was going outside.

  “Where are you going?” I asked him. “I want to go with you!”

  “No. It’s dangerous to be out after curfew.”

  “Then why are you going?” I was scared. I scrambled out from under my blanket. “Are you going to leave the ghetto?” Anyone caught trying to escape the ghetto was shot on sight.

  “No, no. Go back to sleep, Yanek.”

  “No!” I wanted to help. My father had begun to look so tired lately. The work gangs and the lack of food made him look like he’d aged ten years in two. “I can help be your eyes. To look out for guards. I want to come with you!”

  “Shhhh, Yanek. You’ll wake everyone else.” My father sighed. “All right. But not another word. We must be silent, you understand?”

  I nodded and hurried to put on my coat. When I was ready, we slipped out the door and down the stairs. I had never been out this late before. The stairwell was dark and full of shadows. My heart still leaped at every little sound, even with my father there.