I Shall Live by Henry Orenstein

Author:Henry Orenstein
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Seven Ox Press
Published: 1987-10-16T21:00:00+00:00

Budzyń

They marched us toward what was obviously a prison camp; in the distance we could see guard towers and rows of barbed wire. This looked like a labor camp, not an extermination camp; so far the Gestapo chief had told us the truth. SS guards in green uniforms and Ukrainians in black uniforms were standing at the entrance gate. Over the gate was a semicircular sign reading Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes You Free).

In the yard we could see prisoners in civilian clothes. As we lined up at the gate, we came near enough to see their faces. A cold fear seized my heart. I had never seen human beings looking like that. Many of them were emaciated, with hollow eyes; their hands were covered with scabs. They didn’t walk; they shuffled. They had a look of degradation, stupor, and despair.

The fear I had known before, during the hunt, was a different kind of fear from this. Then it had been the fear of getting caught and shot, of instant death. And in Jatkowa we had expected every day that they would surround and kill us; we were used to living with the fear of violence against us. This was a new kind of fear—a fear of slow death from hunger, of filth and sickness, of a life of hell on earth. “I won’t last a month in this camp,” I remember thinking. I had always been considered something of a “softy”; I was never one of the tough athletic types who might have a chance in such conditions.

But then I noticed that there were some prisoners who seemed to be in somewhat better shape than the others. “Maybe there’s a way to buy food here,” I thought. After all, we did have some money with us.

We marched through the gate in rows of five, two SS men counting us as we passed. As soon as we entered the gate we were met by several men in Polish army uniforms. They were Jews—like the other prisoners, they wore yellow patches—but they looked well fed and strong. One of them, whom the others called Szczypiacki, had a pinkish face and a big mustache. He looked us over with great interest. Compared to the Budzyń inmates, we looked good. In the Jatkowa camp food had been plentiful, and we wore decent clothing.

“You guys really had it good in Hrubieszów. We’ll show you how different it is here,” declared Szczypiacki sarcastically. Without warning he hit the man nearest him with a stick. “Let’s do a little exercise now,” he shouted. “Let’s see how fast you can run. Let’s go, run, run, run!”

Bewildered, we started running. “Down!” screamed Szczypiacki. Some of us followed his command and threw ourselves to the ground. Others, who had never done this sort of thing before, stopped and stood still, confused. Szczypiacki started hitting them with the stick, and soon had us all running and falling all over the camp yard.

The SS guards and the Ukrainians watched this with delight, laughing and shouting obscenities at us.

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