Letters From the Lost (28 page)

As many as ten to twenty people of the same sex slept, lived, and managed in a single room. Usually these were old people. The young lived in barracks where the dark, musty old rooms were filled to the last nook and cranny with bunk beds—wooden tiers filled right up. As could be expected, things went on there just like in an (undisciplined) Jewish school. The concept of a private life lost all meaning in this massive overcrowding of people. One was always surrounded by hundreds of smelly Jews, and the longing for a bit of peace and solitude was often strong.

I could write a whole book about Theresienstadt, and it certainly would not be boring. However, I will leave that to more professional pens.

What was realized in Theresienstadt was a matter of a bold and grandiose project unlike any other. It was a mass colonization of unusual dimensions, a communistic community unlike any that had ever been attempted in central Europe. Sixty thousand people who obeyed a single authority in all their activities and functions, all nourished, as it were, from one and the same kettle, a gigantic machine with but a single direction and a single will.

Everything swelled to the gigantic in this mass conscription. Included were not only the 60,000 inhabitants then living in this city, but also the hundreds of thousands of Jews from all over Europe who passed through.

The cooking was done in a dozen kitchens in the big barracks, usually for three to six thousand people at a time. The distribution of food, which took place on the basis of ration cards, lasted several hours. A single centralized warehouse stored all the food supplies, utensils, equipment, etc. An economic advisory council decided the daily menu based on the supplies in stock. Clearly, even the smallest seasonings like pepper or marjoram amounted to kilos.

The repair workshops for clothing and shoes were major enterprises with six hundred workers and thirty office clerks.

The central bakery baked 12,000 loaves of bread a day, and the most modern crematorium in Europe in which one corpse burned the other with its impressive achievement of one hundred corpses a day was by far unable to meet the daily demand, for the number of the dead each day ran from one hundred and forty to one hundred and seventy. Everything on a large scale, as you can see.

In other ways too, the city was interesting. Even the traffic in the street was more like that of a major metropolis. At certain times of the day, there were so many people together in a small space that no city in the world can point to such a multitude of traffic. The issue was particularly interesting from a technical perspective and in terms of political economy. Here, right from the very beginning and all the way through to the development of the city as a showpiece and display case to the world, everything was created by Jews. By Jewish brains and by Jewish hands.

In addition, we experienced our miracles here. Often we could not believe our eyes. What wonders were created here by the Jewish artisan, by the Jewish engineer, by the Jewish genius! Here, beyond measure, we demonstrated the nonsense of the inferiority of the Jewish race.

It was not just the Jewish bricklayer, the Jewish carpenter, the Jewish locksmith and the Jewish painter who wrought their miracles of art and craftsmanship here. It was also the Jewish chimneysweep, the Jewish drainpipe cleaner, the Jewish well digger, the porter, the railroad worker, the wagon driver. The most menial farmhand and the former estate owner did their duty, and together, they accomplished results that could not have been better.

And beyond this, Jewish manufacturing arose on an industrial scale. Even though the work had to be done without pay, dozens of workstations were created where work took place not just for the Jewish community but also for the Germans, and especially for delivery to the German troops. We excelled in every conceivable
branch of production, including paper, cardboard, leather, mica, iron, metal-ware, toys, ink, products made of fur and much else that was in no way inferior to products made in comparable factories in the hinterland.

Many famous artists, especially painters and illustrators were at work in large studios. They produced hundreds of pictures that were then sold privately for millions by the gentlemen of the S.S. One of the best-known artists was a distant cousin of ours with the name Waldstein whom I got to know there. The ceramic workshops also created unique and valuable pieces of art that, like everything else, illustrated the absurdity of the shibboleth of the inferiority of the Jewish artist.

Technology also wrought its wonders that are worthy of standing next to the aforementioned. You must not lose sight of the fact that, overnight, a city of 7000 inhabitants was transformed into one of 60,000. The need for water, electricity and the like suddenly increased tenfold, and help needed to be immediately at hand. A new waterworks, an expanded electrical station, a dozen new artesian wells, a huge cemetery, later on, the aforementioned modern crematorium, garbage disposal areas, a mighty industrial plant with 4500 workers, a large agricultural enterprise, large scale pig farming, gigantic sized manure heaps and thousands of window beds, all these and more sprang forth in the shortest possible time.

From Bauschowitz to Theresienstadt, we quickly built a new stretch of railway. There is nothing to indicate the fact that from the first stroke of a pencil to the last cut of a spade, the railway was built by Jewish brains and Jewish hands. The tracks lead right to the streets in the middle of town.

One fine day in the middle of the Ringplatz at the town centre, a gigantic modern installation for shipping goods to the troops was erected. Soldiers set up huge tents and disappeared again. Within a few days, Jewish engineers in these tents created a major manufacturing complex that reflected the most splendid modern technical
achievements. It even had an assembly line that employed a thousand workers.

Various parts were delivered from German factories, assembled here, and then packed into crates under very precise directives. Because of their manual dexterity and because they worked so very hard, women particularly shone at these tasks. People could not believe their eyes when they saw these soft, formerly so well-tended, manicured, delicate hands tackle this difficult, dirty, greasy work, or when they saw frail women drag the heavy cases. A million cases were supposed to be shipped out within three weeks, and this target was met. Overnight, the tents disappeared again and the Ringplatz reappeared.

Our Cousin Martha Fried emerged as a model worker in this enterprise, with a real flair for industrial manufacturing, a talent to which she later remained true. Of course, all who were connected with this enterprise had received certain advantages, especially in regards to food.

I could spend hours more telling you interesting things about Theresienstadt. For such descriptions, however, there is neither enough room nor enough time. I would rather go back to events that I have personally experienced.

Like every beginning, it was hard at first. Whereas the women were still left more or less in peace, or forced only to do cleaning and the like, we men had to do hard labour right from the start, usually with pick and shovel. It was especially hard for those of us who were not used to it. Such days absolutely refused to end, and the hours crept by at a snail’s pace. At the same time, Hunger gnawed at our guts and grew ever stronger until it was an unending pain. Because they were ludicrously spare for someone doing hard labour, even the meals did nothing to soothe the pangs.

We (I walked hand in glove with my brother-in-law Eduard in those days) deliberated long and hard about which measures to take. Simply folding our hands in our laps and waiting for events to unfold was not in our nature. Something had to be done, and
somehow, we had to get out of this precarious predicament. For lack of other options, we therefore reported for railroad building duty where the work was equally onerous, but was rewarded with double the share of lunch.

Our ploy did not succeed because there were no available spots, but at least in the process, I attracted the attention of the head of the Labour Office who asked me to work with him. This was an unheard of stroke of luck, and an advance in rank such as had never before occurred, this move to a respected office position after only a week of hard labour.

I then became division leader, the commandant of a work crew consisting of fifty men. My main responsibility was to select people for individual jobs for which we received daily written orders from the central Bureau of Labour that controlled over 30,000 workers. You can best picture the latter as a ministry that reported directly to the S.S.

My responsibilities were far from onerous. Aside from the dispatch of workers morning and afternoon, I only had a few entries to make and various lists to keep up to date. The rest of the time, I could idle away.

Aside from this influential role within the barrack, there was another great advantage connected to the position. I had a permanent overtime pass because I had to be available in case of necessity to work at any hour. Since the night hours were figured into my working time, this gave me the highest claim to premium bread. That was a huge benefit because this premium amounted to as much as an entire normal ration of bread. In other words, I got a double portion of bread.

Then, after a while, when I advanced to division leader for a hundred men, another very valuable advantage was added. I was officially authorized and registered with the S.S. and was thereby sheltered from being on the transport list.

Despite all these advantages, I gave up the job. When the opportunity presented itself, I threw myself into the social domain
within the same Labour Office, because the job as division leader had also had its huge drawbacks. There were jobs that were positively a pleasure and where people even got presents or food. There were easy jobs, hard jobs, and extremely hard jobs. There were jobs that were absolutely awful, like standing in water all day, and there were some jobs that were life threatening. The latter was especially the case in the so-called Small Fortress. Located about two km from the ghetto, this old fortification dated back to the time of St. Theresa. It had been converted into a small but all the more gruesome concentration camp where five thousand men had been quartered.

Our people worked in the garden there under the surveillance of S.S. gardeners who were known for the sadistic way they treated our poor boys. Countless blows, sometimes with wooden lathes or iron bars meant that almost daily, some boys came home with blood streaming from their wounds. Others were shipped back to the ghetto, forever crippled.

On the second day after my arrival. I myself had one of my worst experiences in the Small Fortress. The S.S. supervisor put me to work pumping excrement. Under his shouts and threats, I had to work the pump for one and a half hours, smoothly and without interruption. Of course my strength often failed me, and I believed my last hour to be nigh. However, the human body can endure the unbelievable when the end seems near.

It was to such tasks and to similarly unpleasant ones that I was supposed to, and indeed had to order my poor guiltless colleagues. Often I had to send them out at night and in rain and storm, and I just could not bring myself to do these things. Thus, I used the first chance I got to do something else. When my boss was entrusted with establishing a new Office of Labour in a newly opened barrack, he asked me to become his assistant. Since he gave me free choice of my field of endeavour within the operation, I chose the area of social welfare and became the operations controller. This meant that I was responsible for supplying the workers with every
conceivable remedy, relief, and bonus, even the ordering of clothing and shoes, and above all, improvements in food.

I had to fight for all these things in the different offices and do battle for them, sometimes even with the Germans. But I got good results, and the workers everywhere were granted their first and best advantages. We managed, for example, to get an allowance for double lunch rations for those doing hard labour, and for the others to get all the leftovers from the kitchens after the allotted rations had been distributed.

It goes without saying that in this distribution of food, I did not go hungry. Nor did Vera who was my daily guest for supper. In this respect, we had all we needed.

After a few nice months, this came to an end. Still, the dear Lord did not abandon us. As always, He helped us, sometimes on the very day that we thought it was the end, the very day that the ghosts of Danger or of Hunger stood directly before us. Once, a friend whose father was at the Office of Domestic Affairs got me a second ration card. Later, Vera and I managed to share a room with a colleague in what used to be a small vestibule of a non-commissioned officer’s place. The three of us had furnished it very nicely and we lived together. This colleague was friends with everyone in the kitchen. He was able to come and go every day with so much food that all of us, finally including his mother and Vera had enough to eat. We lived idyllically in that little room where there was scarcely space for two beds, a table, and a few other pieces of furniture, which I made with my own two hands out of boards that I personally had stolen.

In time, thanks to my inventiveness and my experience of carpentry as a hobby, there were all kinds of forbidden and therefore secret and hidden luxury items like an electric stove, an electric iron, a reading light by the bed, moveable room dividers, etc. In time, we got quite used to this dog’s life despite its often-unbearable discomforts.

Among these discomforts were the vermin with which we
conducted a constant battle. We young ones were able to rid ourselves readily of lice, but we had to battle uninterruptedly against the millions of fleas and bugs that otherwise multiplied so rapidly that it was impossible even to think of sleep. During this time, I so thoroughly learned the idiosyncrasies of these dear little creatures— their habits, their breeding cycles, their loves, and their customs — that I could have made my debut as a specialist in the flea and bug business, and I could have predicted the behaviour of every single beastie.