A Lucky Child: A Memoir of Surviving Auschwitz as a Young Boy (14 page)

To the delight of the Hungarian girls, we found a sewing machine, and one of them immediately sat down to make herself a blouse
with some material she had found. The men took all the clothing out of the closets and began to try on suits and pants. I
found a pair of trousers, and since they were much too long on me, I simply shortened them with a kitchen knife and found
a string to use as a belt. When I was all done, I threw my prison garb through the open window into the garden. Then I washed
myself.
No more prisoner,
I thought, but then realized that the water and soap could not rid me of the one thing that would serve forever as a reminder
of the concentration camp: the blue tattoo with my Auschwitz number on the inside of my left arm. Carefully, I dried my arm.
Papa will be proud of me,
I thought. Addressing him, as if reporting for duty, I called out, “B-2930 has survived the Ghetto of Kielce, Auschwitz,
Sachsenhausen, and Germany! We won, as you predicted we would.”

I enjoyed myself immensely in “our” beautiful house. It was very comfortable; I had a clean bed all to myself with white sheets,
pillows, and a quilt cover. It reminded me of Zilina in Slovakia, of our apartment there, and the cozy bed I had in the Grand
Hotel. Through the windows of our new house, I could see Soviet tanks and trucks and soldiers, all moving toward Berlin. One
day, while playing in the street, I noticed a Russian coming out of a nearby house. He was pushing a bicycle.
Oh, to have a bike!
I thought, and wondered whether I could still ride one. After all, I had not ridden a bike since I first learned to ride
one in the Henryków factory in Kielce. Now I enviously watched the Russian soldier and his bike. As soon as he reached the
street, he jumped clumsily on the bicycle and immediately fell off. He picked himself up and tried again and again. He started
to swear, but the bicycle was unimpressed. I began to laugh. “Should I show you how it is done?” I asked in Polish, as I helped
him pick up the bike. But he continued to swear. Finally, after yet another try, he threw the bike against the sidewalk and
proceeded to kick it. “Don’t break it, don’t break it!” I cried, pulling on his uniform. He looked at me, spat on the ground,
and walked away. That is how I became the proud owner of a bike. Of course, I jumped on it immediately and found, to my delight,
that I had not forgotten how to ride.

The evenings in our house were lots of fun. Polish officers and soldiers dropped in and brought us food and candy. They asked
about life in the concentration camps, wanted to know where we had been, told us about fighting the Germans and where they
were during the war. Marek and I served as interpreters. They spoke of the conquest of Warsaw, the battles along the Vistula
and Oder rivers, and the imminent German capitulation. Every evening more and more of them came. They told us about their
regiments, and they showed me their decorations. One day a new group of soldiers came to visit us. They spoke with Marek and
the Hungarian girls, while I was occupied polishing my bike, which I had carried into the house. The conversation dealt with
Berlin and the prospects of victory. When Marek left the room to get some water glasses for the vodka they had brought along,
the soldiers tried to communicate with the girls, but the girls did not understand Polish. I put my bike aside and asked them
whether I could translate for them. “The girls understand German, and I speak Polish,” I said.

Immediately, I became the center of attention. “A Polish boy!” they exclaimed, and before I had a chance to explain that I
was not a Pole, Marek entered the room. “Yes, he is Polish,” Marek said. “He was born in Kielce, and now I am taking him back.”
He winked at me. “Let’s take him to Poland,” one of the soldiers said. “He can come with us,” added another. “I am staying
with Marek,” I said, and went back to polish my bike. When they had left, Marek came over to me and explained that it might
not be such a bad idea to go with the soldiers. After all, they could take care of me better than he could and get me back
to Poland faster. There I would soon find my parents. I was not at all persuaded and did not want to lose the only real friend
I had.

Early the next morning, two soldiers came to visit. I knew one of them. He had been our guest the night before; the other
was an officer. They had brought some chocolate and a bicycle bell. The officer introduced himself and told me that he had
heard about me. “We are with the heavy artillery,” he said, “and if you come with us, you’ll have a great life.” “Yes,” the
soldier chipped in, “you’ll ride in military cars. What a life! No more walking.” “He’s right,” said the officer, “you’ll
have all the chocolate you want, and we’ll let you shoot the cannons.” They talked and talked. Finally, in order not to seem
impolite, I promised to think about it. Then I went out and attached the bell to my bike.

We had visitors again in the afternoon. Among the soldiers who came, I recognized the two who had dropped by earlier. They
came into the garden and played with me. They showed me all kinds of tricks I could do with my bike. One of them asked me
whether I wanted to learn how to shoot a gun. He found an old can in the yard, took his pistol out, threw the can into the
air, and fired. It was a perfect hit. Then he gave me the gun, placed the can on the fence, and showed me how to aim. I was
having a wonderful time. Another of the soldiers gave me a penknife. Again, they began to speak to me about returning with
them to Poland. This time, somewhat to my own surprise, I agreed. Suddenly, it all seemed very exciting.

The soldiers picked me up the next the morning. Parting from Marek was not easy, but he assured me that I was doing the right
thing, and I wanted to believe him. I never saw or heard from him again. My bicycle was loaded on the jeep, and while my friends
waved, we drove off. The car sped through the streets of that little German town that had become our temporary home. The jeep
stopped in front of a large crowded yard. “Here we are,” said the driver. “This is the famous Scout Company of the First Kosciuszko
Division.” The yard was full of soldiers, trucks, armored cars, and horses. “Let’s introduce him to the captain,” said one
of the soldiers who was holding my bike. We walked into one of the houses. The captain was a tall, heavyset man whom I liked
immediately. “This is Tomek,” reported the driver. “Yes, yes,” muttered the captain, “heard a lot about you.” Picking me up
in his arms, he immediately made me feel welcome. He then turned to one of the men and ordered him to get the company tailor
and shoemaker. “We’ll make a real soldier out of you,” he said to me as he set me down again.

Within a day or two, I received something that looked like a Polish uniform, a belt, and a pair of shoes. Nothing seemed to
be missing. The uniform had military buttons and even a corporal’s insignia. “If you make a good soldier,” the company tailor
told me, “the captain will promote you to sergeant.” I had become a full-fledged soldier, albeit in miniature: the mascot
of the Polish army. I don’t know exactly what date it was, although it must have been the end of April 1945. I was about two
weeks short of my eleventh birthday.

At first, the tailor and shoemaker, who had made my uniform and shoes, were the soldiers I was closest to in the Scout Company.
We ate all our meals together, and they soon noticed that I ate very little. That worried them, and they decided that they
had to find a cure for my lack of appetite. When it appeared that the remedies they had come up with did not work, the shoemaker
had an idea. “Why not try vodka?” he suggested. And out came the vodka. First a spoonful, then two, and finally half a
kieliszek
(tumbler), followed by little pieces of bacon. It worked like a charm: within days, I began to eat normally. This cure had
the further consequence that, after a while, I could hold my vodka as well as many a soldier. I retained this capacity for
vodka until my college days, when friends who had just seen the
Brothers Karamazov
movie bet me fifteen dollars — a lot of money in those days — that I could not drink a fifth of vodka, as one of the brothers
had done in the movie, and jump over a chair. I won the wager but got so sick afterward that it was years before I could so
much as look at a bottle of vodka again.

Besides showing me how to drink vodka and helping to revive my appetite, the tailor and shoemaker also tried to teach me their
trades. I was particularly drawn to what the shoemaker called the “art of shoemaking,” from the stretching, cutting, and sewing
of the leather, to the nailing down of the soles with wooden nails. My new friend was a master at it, and as I watched him
I thought that it would be fun to become a shoemaker. I still remember all the steps that went into the production of an entirely
handmade pair of shoes.

Some days after I joined the Scout Company, we received orders to move on to Berlin. Despite the fact that we were probably
stationed no more than thirty kilometers from the outskirts of Berlin, our progress was quite slow, since the company was
not fully mechanized. While we had a few trucks, one or two cars, and a few armored vehicles, our supplies and maybe even
the ammunition were transported on horse-drawn wagons, which brought up the rear and slowed down our advance. The roads were
also crowded with advancing Soviet troops, whose tanks and artillery pieces kept passing us amid a great deal of shouting
and general confusion. It was all very exciting to me, especially as I was permitted to ride in the armored vehicles, although
I had to sleep in the horse-drawn wagons.

When we reached Berlin, the fighting for the city was still in full swing. Artillery and heavy machine-gun fire could be heard
in the distance. Death and destruction were all around us. Most of the buildings along our route were burned out or reduced
to rubble. The houses that were still standing were covered with bullet holes. Bodies of dead German and Soviet soldiers and
of civilians were lying on the sidewalks and on the mounds of brick and cement that were all that remained of what had once
been private homes, apartment houses, and office buildings.

Our destination was a park area not far from the Brandenburg Gate. The park was already largely occupied by Soviet troops
with artillery pieces and
katyushas,
their rocket-propelled field guns. My company established itself in one part of the park, not far from the
katyusha
batteries, which made a terrible noise every time they were fired. I still remember one of the soldiers, probably a corporal
or sergeant, who was in charge of a
katyusha
mounted atop a truck, hurling antifascist slogans and obscenities in the direction of the German defenders of the city each
time he gave the order to release the rockets. Although the Germans seemed no longer to be firing their cannons in our direction,
I was told to sleep in the armored car at night and to stay in it or near it during the day, because no one knew how long
the Germans would continue to fight. Besides, there were still many German snipers around. A day after we arrived in Berlin,
one of our soldiers was killed by a sniper shooting at a truck that had left the park to reconnoiter some suspected German
positions.

As the fighting died down, some soldiers decided to go fishing in a nearby pond and took me along. When we got there, one
of them threw a hand grenade into the pond. Within minutes, the surface of the pond was covered with dead fish floating belly-up.
My friends scooped up some fish in a bucket they had brought along. They called it “speed fishing.” I don’t know what they
did with the fish, but if they cooked them, they did not share any with me.

I have only tried to fish a few times in my life and have never had much success at it. Once, on my first fishing outing with
my sons, who were then still quite young, I cast my fishing rod with real gusto and, to my great shock and that of my sons,
hooked the shirt of a fisherman standing on the other side of the pier. He did not look very happy when he realized what had
happened. While I was trying to disentangle my hook from his shirt, my sons, fearing that the fisherman would attack me with
the long knife hanging from his belt, kept moving ever farther away from me. But as soon as I told the fisherman that this
was my first fishing experience, he burst out laughing and wished me better luck next time. At that moment, I thought of that
Berlin pond back in 1945, which had actually been my first fishing experience — but certainly not the type of fishing I would
recommend.

The news that Berlin had capitulated reached us a day after the “speed fishing” expedition at the pond. Of course, there was
great rejoicing throughout our park, with shots being fired into the air from whatever weapons were handy. At the same time,
vodka was being dispensed to the troops. Polish and Soviet soldiers could be seen embracing each other and sharing their vodka
and cigarettes. Everybody was singing and dancing. A Polish soldier from our company gave me some swigs from his vodka bottle.
The park had turned into a veritable carnival. As it got darker and the festivities gradually died down, I crawled into the
armored car that had been my bed for the past few days and was soon fast asleep. That is how I helped liberate Berlin!

The war was still not over for about a week. My company, together with other units, was ordered to move out in pursuit of
German troops that had retreated from Berlin. That day or a day later, we reached the edge of a forest. A whole German division
was apparently dug in at that forest. Although they outnumbered us, their commanders were willing to negotiate an orderly
surrender. The negotiations continued through much of the night. By morning, what had been expected to be a major surrender
resulted in the capture of only the German officers who had taken part in the negotiations. The rest of the German division
had simply vanished into thin air. After leaving the area around Berlin, we would from time to time run into groups of German
soldiers who would surrender to us without putting up any resistance. It was quite an exhilarating experience for me to see
German officers tremble in fear in front of us, when only months earlier they had inspired fear in all who had to appear before
them.