Refuge in Hell by Daniel B. Silver

Author:Daniel B. Silver
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Sally was sitting on the floor among some of his friends and colleagues when he saw me walk through the door and felt me fall into his outstretched arms. His elation upon seeing and holding me hardly knew any bounds, neither did our belief that we were doing the right thing; that we would survive what it was that’s in store for us; we were young; we were strong; we were healthy and, most importantly, we were together!

Sometime later, to their surprise, Lustig appeared at the Sammellager and read out a list of some ten to fifteen names of detainees who were to be released and allowed to return to the hospital. When he called out Sally’s name, the young doctor, without hesitation, shook his head and announced that he wished to stay on the transport. He explained that this way he could be sure of going to Theresienstadt and of being with his sister Gisela Kozower and her husband and children, who already had been sent there. If he missed this transport, he said, who knew how long it would be—maybe only weeks—before he would find his name on the list for another transport, perhaps this time to Poland. Lustig made no effort to change Sally’s mind.

Golly stayed by Sally’s side, and the same year, the couple married in Theresienstadt. Rabbi Leo Baeck performed the ceremony. In the fall of 1944, only months before the end of the war, Sally Herzberg was sent to Auschwitz. Once again, the Nazis offered Golly the chance of following him. Believing the Nazis’ promise that wives would be reunited with the husbands they chose to join in Auschwitz, she accepted, but she never saw Sally again. He had been gassed on his arrival.

The May 1943 roundup was atypical in that the Gestapo arrived with a list of deportees apparently drawn up without Lustig’s participation. In most cases, although specific individuals were taken for deportation for specific reasons, such as punishment for an infraction of the Nazis’ rules, the Gestapo levied a numerical quota and left it to Lustig to make the selections. The aim was to make efficient use of the trains that Adolf Eichmann and his henchmen were scheduling to carry Jews to the East. Each transport had to have the requisite number of Jews to fill the train. Thus saving one person almost always meant sacrificing another. Hilde Kahan takes pride in the fact that she and her mother were released from the Sammellager without anyone else’s having been arrested in their place, but whether this really was the case is open to question. In all likelihood, somewhere in Berlin two more Jews were rounded up to fill the Kahans’ places on the transport; at least Hilde Kahan (unlike Ehrich Zwilsky) did not have to bear the burden of knowing who they were.

As time passed and the number of Berlin Jews who were left to fill the transports grew smaller and smaller, the hospital and the remaining nursing and old age

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