The Holocaust

The Death March

The beginning of the march did not seem too grueling. However, very soon the freezing cold penetrated into our bones, as our clothes did not suit the harsh weather conditions. The long march until late at night was beyond our capabilities as human beings. Already at the end of the first day our ranks have thinned.

We marched within the group on the lead – in its middle, not in the first row – and refrained from looking backwards. Those were the rules of survival. Although the age difference between the two of us was not too big, by the end of the first day the older among us had to support the younger one, thus avoiding him from staying behind. That was not only a matter of physical strength. It also consisted of fortitude and determination.

As we kept marching, we found out that the march actually began in various other places. Alongside the road, wherever we looked we saw a large number of dead bodies: many were lying in the ditches at the edge of the road, while others hung on nearby trees. Soon we learned that those who were unable to keep pace with the marchers in the main group and gradually moved to the end of the caravan were shot by the German guards. Men and boys who moved aside of the marching group met similar fate.

Let us try to understand and feel the January 1945 freezing cold in Poland. Each one of us marched wearing one shirt and one pair of pants, with no underwear, no jacket and no hat or cap. Evening fell by about four o’clock in the afternoon, and we kept marching until late, while temperatures fell many degrees below zero. The cold was not our only enemy: we did not know where and for how long we were to march. Whenever we saw a distant beam of light, we hoped for stopping at it, just to take some rest. But reality was different. As we arrived at the lights, we passed them by and kept marching.

Those days and nights of marching were incomparable to our previous experience. While in the past we were entirely passive and could do nothing to determine events, during the march our fate was for the first time in our own hands. We were the ones who could prove their power of will and struggle for our survival. In the camp we got orders to move from one block to another. We were subject to prevailing rules. At the march, each one of us had to decide whether to keep going, with all the suffering, or just give up any hope and collapse. While the head said: “Hold on, just hold on!”, the rest of the body, all exhausted, could hardly obey the voice of reason.

We knew that they were going to kill us, but deep in our minds that awareness was inconceivable. Therefore, while marching, we repeatedly said to each other: “We must overcome, we must continue!”

Our health condition proved to be at our side. Otherwise, any illness or physical weakness would kill us on the spot. We never reached the state of total breakdown, and never saw death eye to eye. On the other hand, we have to keep in our minds that we, the youngest and smallest, marched alongside grown-up men. The transfer of camps from Poland into Germany was their journey, not ours. We were just companions who had to demonstrate at least as much strength as they did, while around us countless numbers of people fell dead.

On the first day of our journey we permitted ourselves to eat some of the provisions we carried, but the second day was much more difficult: because of the uncertainty as to the length and distance of our march, we decided to spare our ration of bread.

Shmuel: I remember having seen a Polish peasant passing by our caravan with his horse-drawn sled. On that sled I saw a loaf of bread. What a sight it was! The bread seemed to me unreal, as if it came from another world. To my great amaze, that encounter bestowed me with the belief that normal life in a normal world still existed, and not everyone reached the bottom of wretchedness as we did in our endless march.

On the first day, we were a bit opaque at the sight of dead bodies lying on the road, but as we proceeded and encountered more and more bodies, the scene became agonizing, particularly with the earsplitting sounds of screaming, groaning and shooting.

The marchers talked uninterruptedly to each other. Some cried, because they could no longer take the suffering, and their power of resistance came to its end. Many of them were old, sick, starving, wounded, with no shoes on their legs. We, too, could hardly keep going, unable to hold our heads upright. On the first day of our march we were hit by a snowstorm. On the next day the sun shined and general conditions were much better, but we were already wrecks. We walked alongside “wise” adults, who knew our location and where were we destined to go. We did not take their assessments too seriously, and preferred to concentrate on our own efforts, step after step. Hoping for a better tomorrow did not make sense to us, although we yearned for that hope to become true. At the end of the second day’s long march we arrived in a school, for a night’s sleep. We took hold of the space near the stove, which was still warm. On the following morning, we lived through a very exciting experience: as we prepared for the march, a man from the outside came over and handed us a sandwich with goose liver. He probably lived in the area, and having seen us, he did the most humane deed anyone could have done. His gesture strengthened our faith in humanity. It also indicated that among the local population there were decent people with empathy and feelings. Although that piece of bread did not save our lives, we shall never forget that man and his deed.

The third day began. Although we did not remember who marched near us during the previous days, the faces around us did not seem familiar. Everything was blurred and mixed up. Weather was the worst we could have imagined. Clusters of human beings proceeded step after step, tired and exhausted. Sad sights of yesterday crawled into our minds. More and more people collapsed, and their disappearance was heartbreaking.

In the afternoon hours we have reached Breslau, a huge railway junction in Poland, which at that time was part of Germany. Inside the railway station we were placed in a shed, which served as a logistic center for locomotives. The shed was full of people who came in before us. We walked around searching for acquaintances, but more than anyone else we wanted to meet our dad. All our attempts had failed.

At night, in full darkness, we were taken by groups and loaded onto open train wagons. They were all filled with snow, up to one meter high. Eighty or ninety people were squeezed into each wagon. The snow and the crowdedness stultified any possibility of sitting. A number of people had died already at the time of ascending the wagon. Men who were too weak to ascend were simply thrown on the top of those who already stood on the wagon. Some of them found their way onto the snowy floor, just to be trampled by others. After a while the doors of the wagons were shut, and the train went into motion.

As time went by, a little more space was gained by the mere fact that the dead bodies were piled in one of the corners. That space was not big enough for sitting on the floor, but people were able to kneel or bend their bodies. We also should keep in mind that since the beginning of the march, three-four days before, we did not receive any food.

The journey on the open wagon train took about a day and a half. There were no stops on the way. In the meantime, more people have died, thus giving the others enough space to sit on the floor. As essential as it was in terms of positioning the body, it did not help in the struggle against starvation and the freezing cold accompanied by chilly winds, day and night. In order to ease our hunger, we took some sugarcoated medications out my improvised knapsack, and sucked them. Can anyone put in writing such an experience?

The train stopped at a station, and we were allowed to exit the wagons. Shmuel and I stepped over to a steaming pipe of he locomotive and filled a small tin can with hot water. We put into it a remaining piece of margarine, and drank the fatty liquid as if it was a tasty soup. That meal, too, was unforgettable.

Then again the wheels of the train started rolling. Having traveled days and nights, we were all exhausted, on the verge between being and nothingness. We even had a co-traveler, exposed to a similar fate: a German soldier, who was starving and frozen to death. No one knew what was going to happen. How long were we to travel? One day? Two days? More? We relieved ourselves in the wagon’s corner.

Our situation was beyond description and beyond human perception.