Emil landau, surviving the third reich

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Emil Landau Surviving the Third Reich As told to David S. Swanson

Copyright © 2013 Skidompha Press Library of Congress Control Number 2013940631 ISBN 978-0-615-81908-2 All rights reserved under international and PanAmerican copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission of the author.

Published by The Skidompha Press Damariscotta, Maine 04543 Cover photograph of Emil Landau by Jack Montgomery, South Freeport, Maine.

Emil’s photo and the photos (by Jack Montgomery) of other Holocaust survivors living in Maine are part of a permanent mixed media exhibit “Were the House Still Standing” at the Michael Klahr Building of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center on the University of Maine campus in Augusta.

Emil’s photo was chosen to hang in the State House in Augusta outside the office of Governor Angus King.

Graphic Design by Al Trescot • Rocky Hill Design Damariscotta, Maine RockyHillDesign.com Printed in USA

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Contents Preface

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Map, Europe 1930

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Early Life: 1925 - 1935

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The Turning Point - 1935

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Herrlingen: 1935 - 1938

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Kristallnacht - November 9, 1938

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Return to Witten - January 1939

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Dortmund: 1939 - 1941

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Theresienstadt: 1942 - 1944

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Auschwitz: Spring 1944

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Czechowitz: Summer 1944 - January 1945

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Buchenwald: January 1945

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Liberation

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Convalescence

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Reunion

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Stateside

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Postscript

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Emil’s Life and Work in the United States

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Credits and Acknowledgements

92 -93

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Preface This is the story of Emil Landau, a good friend and neighbor who survived the horrors of the Holocaust that were inflicted on the world by the German Third Reich during the years 1933 – 1945. It is recalled for us through the eyes and recollections of a teen-aged Jewish boy whose courage, ingenuity, persistence, and will to live combined to help him and his family resist and eventually outlive the brutality and evil threats of the Nazi regime.

Like many survivors of the Axis scourge, Emil elected after the war not to share his wartime experiences with family and friends in the interest of “moving on” — doing everything possible to put the nightmares of imprisonment, starvation, torture, and murder behind him. Instead, he sought to make up for the seven-year loss in his education and development by focusing on his family, his physical and mental recovery, and how he might take advantage of the opportunities that “AWESTRUCK: Mountain Valley High School students were developing cluster around Emil Landau, 79, of Damariscotta as he shows in the recovering them the concentration camp tattoo on his forearm after his societies that were presentation Wednesday about the consequences of hate. His presentation was part of diversity week at the Rumford school.” being defined by freedom, justice, equality, and peace.

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In fact, it wasn’t until the late 1980’s (40-plus years after the liberation) that Emil’s son, Alex, and the chaplain of his private school in Connecticut were able to persuade Emil to share some of his thoughts and wartime experience publicly with students who were studying World War II. The response to his informal remarks at that school had been so profound both for the class and for Emil himself that the story and its impact spread rapidly through the local community and well beyond. By the time I got to hear him give the talk in 2002, Emil was being called upon by schools, colleges, libraries, historical societies, and Holocaust centers across New England to present his story, answer questions, and invite discussion.

Despite this full schedule of presentations, Emil had never written down his remarks or prepared an outline of his key thoughts and conclusions. He liked the informality and the freshness of an off-the-cuff delivery, even though he invariably had difficulty covering all of his material in the time allowed. More importantly, he had nothing in writing that he could give to the many people and organizations that were unable to attend one of his presentations.

After I had listened to three or four of Emil’s regular presentations in and around Damariscotta, Maine, it occurred to me that the Landaus might be interested in having someone write the story down so that it could be easily circulated and preserved for the future.

I volunteered to Emil and his wife, Carolyn, that I would be happy to undertake such a project if they were interested. I viewed it as an opportunity to provide a service not only to them but to the community as a whole. I was delighted when they enthusiastically accepted.

After several years of research and preparation, Emil’s story, Surviving the Third Reich, is now complete, and its distribution is being managed by Skidompha Library in Damariscotta, Maine.

David S. Swanson March 22, 2013

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1. Auschwitz 2. Basel 3. Bremen 4. Bremerhaven 5. Buchenwald

Europe 1930

Key

6. Czechowitz 7. Davos 8. Dortmund 9. Glewitz 10. Herrlingen

11. Konstanz 12. Stuttgard 13. Theresienstadt 14. Witten

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Early Life: 1925 - 1935 I was born and grew up in Witten, Westphalia, Germany, a small, bourgeois town on the Ruhr River, not far from Essen. While Witten lies at the edge of Germany’s heaviest industrial center, it is only a few miles from the countryside and lots of very pretty scenery where our family spent many happy weekends.

The town had a population of something over 75,000 in the early 1930’s of which a small minority was Jewish. The Landau family was a part of this small minority who had lived in the Witten area for almost 400 years.

My father, Alex Landau, was born in Witten in 1891 and lived there all of his life except for a period when he had gone away to school and later when he served in the German Army during World War I. In that war, he had worked as a medic, probably because of his interest in medicine and his plan to attend medical school after he got out of the Army. However, these plans were set aside when he was captured at Verdun in 1915 and spent the balance of the war as a POW in France.

As a prisoner, his medical interest and experience again led to his being assigned as a medic, this time in a French prison camp, a job that apparently suited him so well that he became known as “Dr. Landau” and ended up staying at the camp in his own small house for Emil at home in Witten with his father, Alex, and mother, more than two years Sidonie during the late 1920’s. The Landau family had lived after the war was happily in and around this north German town of 75,000 over. Indeed, when people for many generations. he finally returned to Germany late in 1921, he brought with him quantities of fine French food and other products that the Germans had not seen or enjoyed since before the war.

Upon his return from France, my father went to work in the family business 7

in Witten, The Karl Landau Company, a wholesale textiles company that specialized in supplying the three layers of lining that were common in the better grades of men’s suits before the war. While the company had been founded by my grandfather, Karl, it had not been very successful until my father took it over sometime before I was born. He kept the company name in honor of his father.

Early in 1925, Alex Landau married Sidonie Katz, who had been born in 1902 and lived with her family in Barntrupp, a very small rural community near Hanover that was noted for its manufacture of fine cigars. The Katz family had lived there for at least four generations, probably more, and were close friends of the Landaus since my father’s sister was married to one of my mother’s brothers. At any rate, my father and his new wife settled happily in Witten.

Over the years my mother became an important contributor to the family business, although she always worked behind the scenes and gave all the credits for success to my father.

On November 9, 1925, I was born in our family home on Johannes Strasse. I got my name from my father’s brother, Emil, who had been a Lieutenant and a Company Commander during the First World War, but was killed sometime during the final three months, just before the armistice was signed. Three years later, in 1928, my sister, Helga, was born in the local hospital.

Up until 1935, life in Witten was pleasant and peaceful. Our home consisted of two large adjoining apartments with a total of about ten rooms on the third floor of a building in the middle of the city, above a bakery and tobacco shop. We had two maids, we owned a car, and we took nice vacations, including skiing holidays in the nearby mountains and weekend trips to the Baltic. In those years, my grandfather, Karl, lived with us, and the thing I remember most about him was that he taught my sister and me all of the English he had learned in the United States during a visit he and his brother had made there just before World War I. While those around us in the community were aware that we were Jewish, we were very comfortable with and proud of our religion, as all of our family members had been before us. We were Germans first and foremost: our faith just happened to be Jewish. Our situation was probably quite typical of the approximately 600,000 Jews who lived in Germany at the time (less than one percent of the total population). This was the period of cultural and social “Enlightenment” in western Europe, following centuries of violent anti-Semitism, and in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s Germany was the most advanced of the European nations, including the acceptance and integration of its Jewish citizens.

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My immediate family was only moderately active in religious life. Although we attended synagogue with some regularity, it was primarily on the holidays, and I went mainly to please my parents. I recall the segregation of all the women in the balcony, while all the men sat together on the main floor. I remember too that, while I attended a Roman Catholic grammar school and was always excused from Saturday classes so that I could attend synagogue, I occasionally took advantage of the excused absence from school without putting in an appearance at the synagogue.

We observed the major religious holidays in our home, such as Yom Kippur and Hanukah, but we did not keep a kosher home, and, of course, we did not wear any of the symbols of Orthodox Judaism --- hats, long coats, and beards. Although I received some early training for Bar Mitzvah at boarding school, this was never completed because of the events that enveloped us late in 1938. In any event, if I had completed the training, the ceremony itself would have been much simpler than the ones that take place today.

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Adding to my parents’ concerns at the time, I’m sure, was the growing impact on our lives of the extensive new and ominous legislation that was emanating from the Third Reich.

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The Turning Point - 1935 We all lived happily and peacefully in this manner until Hitler came to power in 1933, following which, the impact of his program and his many new laws began to change our lives in ways we could never have imagined. I was not actually aware of the growing “problem” for Jewish people in Germany until about 1935 when anti-Jewish signs began appearing in store windows.

More important from my standpoint was the intimidation I personally began to experience from the local bullies in our grammar school, as they harassed me for being Jewish. This treatment was particularly hard for me to understand since there was a large plaque displayed prominently in our school lobby honoring my Uncle Emil amongst the fallen heroes of the First World War. While we had long considered the possibility that I might go on to the local public high school (gymnasium) in Witten when I had completed grammar school, my father had also been considering a private school education for me, where he felt there would be a more rigorous academic environment, a wider choice of subjects, and more individual attention to students.

Moreover, he wanted no part of the anti-Semitism that was starting to emerge in all of our local public schools, a condition that was not only being tolerated, but seemingly encouraged by the federal government and some of the local non-Jewish citizens. As a consequence, in the fall of 1935, when I was ten years old, Father insisted that I go away to an all-Jewish boarding school where I would be free of abuse and able to concentrate on my studies.

Adding to my parents’ concerns at the time, I’m sure, was the growing impact on our lives of the extensive new and ominous legislation that was emanating from the Third Reich. Ever since Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany early in 1933, there had been a steadily increasing number of restrictions placed upon “enemies of the state” --- Socialists, Communists, Jews, Gypsies, people with disabilities --- essentially anyone who was a non-Aryan, who was deficient in mind or body, or who was not a supporter of the Nazi regime.

In Hitler’s first year alone, for example, laws had been written that established special courts to prosecute political enemies and prohibit Communists from taking seats in the new Reichstag. All German labor unions had been 11

dissolved and strikes of any kind had been strictly prohibited. An official boycott had been issued against Jewish professionals and businesses, and Jews had been banned from holding all professional civil service jobs. As the year went on, Jews had been banned from many public schools and there had been overt efforts to eliminate them from all aspects of public and cultural life.

Most significantly, at the end of 1933 the Nazi Party had won 93% of the vote in elections for the Reichstag — a landslide that was repeated in a national election the following August, 1934, when all of Hitler’s new powers, including his dictatorship, had been approved by 89.3% of the voters. Hitler had fully established himself as the supreme leader of Germany. Never in history had a new, radical political ideology captured the attention and support of a successful, culturally sophisticated nation in such a short period of time.

As I approached my tenth birthday in 1935, and as I prepared to leave for boarding school, the deluge of new legislation continued. Germany introduced universal military conscription (in direct violation of the Versailles Treaty); Jews were forbidden to enter most restaurants, shops and many public buildings; and the Nuremberg Laws were passed “for the protection of German Blood and Honor” which prohibited marriage and extra-marital sexual relations between Jews and Germans and stripped all Jews of German citizenship. It was at this time that signs appeared in the windows of the first floor shops of our apartment building, reading, “Jews Not Allowed.” Many years later, I learned that during this period my mother’s brother was arrested and jailed briefly for courting a Gentile woman.

Despite all of the abridgments of freedom that had been officially imposed by the Reichstag between 1933 and 1937, the practical consequences of these new laws were affecting daily life in the large cities much more than in relatively small towns like Witten. Thus, there was a tendency on the part of most of the Jewish people we knew to accept and rationalize what was happening to them. Somehow they wanted to believe that the hardships were not being imposed to punish or control them, but rather to “protect the country from “Socialists, Communists, Gypsies, Misfits, and Avowed Enemies of the State.” I can remember clearly my father’s non-Jewish friends saying to him that “They don’t mean this for you, it’s for those people in the 12

East.” Moreover, the members of our immediate family drew strength from the assumption and the hope that, because my father was one of the 10,000 Jews who had fought for Germany in World War I and because his brother had given his life for the Fatherland, we would somehow be granted special treatment.

In spite of such wishful thinking, I’m sure that Hitler’s announced agenda and its growing effects upon our town had a strong influence on my parents’ decision to send me away. It also stimulated what was to become a continuing effort on my father’s part to find a way to get our family out of Germany, preferably to the United States, a preference that eventually gave way to his seeking asylum in any country outside of Europe that would let us in. Initially, my father believed that he had developed several promising contacts in New York who would vouch for us and help us secure visas.

Unfortunately, all of these early efforts failed to materialize as our potential helpers chose not to get involved when actually asked for specific assistance.

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In many ways, Herrlingen was well ahead of its time. Students were not required to wear uniforms or adhere to a dress code; considerable emphasis was placed upon equal treatment of and opportunity for both sexes.

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Herrlingen: 1935 - 1938 The private school to which I was sent early in 1935 was Herrlingen, a progressive boarding school for about 120 Jewish boys and girls from all over Germany.

It was located in the southern part of the country, southeast of Stuttgart --about 8 km outside of Ulm, the birthplace of Albert Einstein, whose nephews attended the school. It was tucked away in the hills, isolated from the big cities and from the harsh realities of the Third Reich.

In many ways, Herrlingen was well ahead of its time. Students were not required to wear uniforms or adhere to a dress code; considerable emphasis was placed upon equal treatment of and opportunity for both sexes, an unusual condition in Europe in the 1930’s. In addition, faculty members participated actively in student programs, including athletics, and were addressed by their first names.

Herrlingen had actually been modeled after a prominent private school in Scotland, Gordenstoun, whose founder had also initiated the now famous Outward Bound program. Thus, our school placed heavy emphasis on the development of self-confidence and mental toughness: we were drilled continually on the importance of making our own decisions and sticking with them. We waited our own tables and cleaned our own living quarters. There was a high priority placed upon physical fitness. We ran a mile every single day that weather permitted, we were required to learn how to ski, and we followed a survival regimen that closely resembled “Outward Bound” as we know it today.

On the academic side of things, I was in one of the first classes at Herrlingen that was required to study English as a primary second-language, whereas historically, the school had required only Latin or Greek.

In the years that followed, I had many occasions to reflect on and appreciate the Herrlingen experience, as my mental and physical capacities became stressed beyond anything I could have ever anticipated — and as English eventually became my working language.

Since Herrlingen was less than a half-day train ride from Witten, I had many opportunities during the ensuing three years to visit my parents in Witten, and on each occasion, it became more and more apparent that the restrictions on their freedom and the interference with their former way of life were increasing rapidly. For example, on one of my trips home I discovered that our local community swimming pool had posted signs prohibiting use by Jews, a warning that I took silent delight in ignoring, as I continued using the facilities whenever I pleased.

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Early in 1938 I built myself a small crystal radio set as one of my class projects and, contrary to school rules, I began listening to some of what was happening in the outside world --- at night, under the covers, after “lights out.” Of course, I was not able to share much of my illicitly gotten information with classmates as a means of getting their opinions, but it seemed clear to me that the state of affairs in Germany was deteriorating rapidly and stood a good chance of spreading to the rest of Europe in the near future.

Among the news reports that I would have listened to during this period were the following: In March of 1936, Hitler had ordered troops into the demilitarized Rhineland (the industrialized area west of the Rhine River in northern Germany) in direct violation of the 1925 Locarno Pact, an action that was promptly condemned

by England, France, Belgium, and Italy, but one that prompted no public statements or defensive reactions whatsoever from the Pact members.

In December of 1936, official recognition had been given to the Hitler Youth Organization as a State agency. This act supported Hitler’s conviction that his plans for world domination would depend importantly on the malleability and absolute loyalty of young Aryan minds and bodies throughout Germany.

During 1937, Hitler declared the Versailles Treaty invalid as he revealed to the world that he had reconstituted the German Air Force and was in the process of rebuilding the Navy — to which there was virtually no response by England, the other European countries, or the United States.

And the event that I most distinctly recall hearing on my radio was Hitler’s order, on March 12, 1938, for German troops to occupy and annex Austria, the “Anschluss.” This was followed quickly by a decree that required Jews throughout Germany and Austria to make reports of all their assets and deliver them personally to the local state tax office. I learned later that it was at this point my father, in anticipation of these search-and-seizures, had succeeded in smuggling some gold out of the country into Holland where it was eventually sent on to relatives in the United States. The cost of these illegal transfers was very large, but my father felt that he had no choice, and we had many occasions thereafter to be grateful for his foresight.

In July 1938, thirty-two nations of the free world met at a conference in Evian, France to discuss the problem of racial, religious, and political refugees from continental Europe. The principal purpose of the gathering was to consider helping Jewish refugees resist Nazi aggression and assist their resettlement in countries that were allowing permanent immigration. The conference had 16

been conceived by President Roosevelt in response to pressure by influential American Jews. However, a poll of all U.S. citizens at the time indicated that 77% were opposed to American support. As a consequence, the conference was attended by neither U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, nor his Undersecretary Sumner Welles. After three weeks of deliberation, the conferees as a whole decided not to get involved.

Then in September, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain held his infamous meetings with Hitler, Mussolini, and French Premier Daladier and did nothing to dissuade Hitler from pursuing his plan to take over the Sudetenland in western Czechoslovakia. Following these meetings, Chamberlain returned triumphantly to England, proclaiming, “Peace with honor” and “Peace in our time.”

During this period many additional laws and constraints were imposed from Berlin, indicating that Hitler was focusing more and more on getting all of the Jews out of Germany. We knew from his speeches and writings that he believed the Jews had betrayed the country in World War I, and he therefore wanted them gone before the next war began. All Jewish newspapers were banned. All Jewish organizations of a political nature were dissolved. All Jewish lawyers were forced to retire. All Jews were required to carry identification cards. And all men had to add the middle-name “Israel” to their official identifications, while all Jewish women were required to add the middle-name “Sarah” to theirs. As far as the Nazis were concerned, I became Emil Israel Landau.

At the same time, it was decreed that all Jewish stores and businesses would be sold to Aryans. This required my father to “sell” his clothing business for what turned out to be less than a nickel on the dollar. It was during this period that Jews were prohibited from owning or driving cars, which led to the confiscation of our family automobile. It was also during this period that Jews were forbidden to employ non-Jews, which forced us to discharge our maids, who over many years had practically become members of the family.

Most threatening of all, it was during this period that deportations of Jews out of Germany began. At first, this forced exodus was limited primarily to Polish Jews, but we feared that others would soon be included, as indeed was the case, starting about one year later. These actions caused my father to make a second serious attempt to arrange for our emigration to the United States.

This time he went to Stuttgart and succeeded in getting the American Consul to put our name on the waiting list for visas to America. Unfortunately, the U.S. immigration quotas for Germany were very limited, and we estimated that our 17

assigned number 1,508 would have no chance of being considered until at least 1943. At the rate things were deteriorating, this would clearly be much too late to do us any good.

A few members of our family, however, were more successful. My mother’s two sisters, Hanna and Heda, had married two brothers who owned and bred horses and made a good living selling them at market and to a local race track in northern Germany. These men, my uncles, were able through their connections in France to obtain visas to Argentina. I was never certain how this deal was worked out except that I do know they paid a lot of money to the largest bank in France in return for which they were provisionally given land in Argentina that would become theirs after a stipulated number of years. They had to agree to use the property for agricultural purposes, and I must assume that the raising of horses satisfied these requirements. The two families left Germany sometime during 1938 .

We learned after the war that South America had been one of the very few places in the world that had permitted the immigration of Jews and in total had allowed the entry of almost 40,000 during the period 1933-1944. As far as I know, there were no other members of our immediate family who were able to escape from Germany until after the war.

Despite all of these ominous events, life at Herrlingen continued in a fairly normal fashion and the school itself seemed to have attracted little attention from the Nazis — perhaps because of its remote location and perhaps because it was an all-Jewish private institution, the only one in Germany. At any rate, whatever good fortune had allowed us to continue our education long after many Jewish children had been forced out of the public schools, the Nazis finally ordered Herrlingen to close in late 1938, an action that was accompanied with an offer from the school to transfer at least some of the students to Gordenstoun.

After careful consideration, I rejected this offer to continue my education in Scotland because of my strong desire to remain with my family in Germany.

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Kristallnacht - November 9, 1938 Toward the end of my stay at Herrlingen and my return home, the gradual buildup of prejudice, cruelty, and destruction that we had been witnessing or hearing about since 1933 exploded on the night of my thirteenth birthday, November 9, 1938. It was nothing less than a brutal assault on Jews and all of their institutions throughout Germany, Austria, and parts of Czechoslovakia, carried out primarily by the SA (Storm Troopers), members of the SS (Schutzstaffel or elite guard), and the Hitler Youth Organization.

In that night of horror, “Kristallnacht,” (The Night of Broken Glass – which came to be known November 9, 1938) The first overt, state-sponsored demonstration of Nazi hatred and intention to as “Kristallnacht” or “Night annihilate all Jews. 1000 Synagogues were destroyed. of Broken Glass,” Jews were attacked by Nazis in their homes: over 100 were killed outright, more than 30,000 were injured, arrested, or sent to concentration camps. Approximately 7,500 Jewish shops were looted and almost 1,000 synagogues were destroyed.

Following three days of unrestrained announced that the Jews were responsible and liable for all of the damages and imposed a one billion mark fine on the Jewish community for reparations. These reparations were then forcibly collected by members of the SS who invaded Jewish homes, demanded a declaration of all valuables, and generally helped themselves to the personal treasures of the Jewish people. The event itself was declared by the Nazis after the fact to have been triggered by and in response to the assassination of a German diplomat in

chaos and destruction, the regime

Kristallnacht,” 7,500 Jewish shops were destroyed and 30,000 Jews were injured, arrested, killed, or sent to concentration camps.

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Paris by a Polish Jewish student. This was a transparent excuse for an atrocity that had clearly been carefully orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, SS-Gruppenfeuhrer Reinhard Heydrich, and other Nazi leaders.

My father had been brutally beaten in the presence of my mother and sister and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

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Return to Witten – January 1939 When I returned home from Herrlingen in January 1939, I found that the rest of the Landau family, my father, mother, sister and grandfather, had been personally subjected to the harsh realities of Kristallnacht. Our home had been broken into, wrecked, and robbed. My father had been brutally beaten in the presence of my mother and sister and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

My sister, Helga, who witnessed all of the carnage, was deeply affected by the experience and carried the emotional scars with her for the rest of her life. My mother, on the other hand, seemed to cope with the situation rather well and carried very little of the experience with her into later life. In many respects she proved to be the strongest one in the family.

After about four weeks in captivity at the Oranienburg prison near Berlin, my father had been released and had come back to our home in Witten, just before my return from Herrlingen. We never learned what had actually happened to him during his brief incarceration, but it was clear that he had been seriously hurt both emotionally and physically. He became very quiet and withdrawn.

And, shortly after this, he visited a hospital in nearby Cologne because of recurring headaches and dizziness, probably a consequence of his beatings and imprisonment. He returned home several days later with the diagnosis of a brain tumor.

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It became clear that more immediate and more direct measures were going to be required, especially as Hitler contemplated near term plans to broaden the war.

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Dortmund: 1939 - 1941 Up to this point, Hitler’s principal goal seems to have been merely to drive the “objectionable elements” out of German society: Gypsies, Communists, subversives, criminals, homosexuals, and disabled. His initial strategy as far as Jews were concerned was to encourage emigration, preferably to locations outside of Europe. He tried many approaches, including inducements for German Jews to join the Zionist movement and relocate to Palestine. He provided favorable treatment of the money and possessions of willing émigrés and generally encouraged all activities that promoted Jewish migration to other countries. At one point, the island of Madagascar was identified by the Nazis as a suitable refuge for all of the world’s Jews and incentives for emigration were briefly discussed. The Madagascar scheme, however, became impossible when war broke out in 1939 and was abandoned in the spring of 1941.

But all of this effort had depended upon voluntary departures by people who loved and felt great loyalty to their country, people who continued to hope desperately that the nightmare being imposed by the Third Reich would pass and that life would return to normal. Moreover, as demonstrated by the failure of the Evian Conference in 1938, most countries were not interested in receiving immigrants during the depths of a worldwide depression and widespread unemployment. The United States, for example, consistently under-filled its quotas from almost all countries during the late 1920’s and early 1930’s.

This was especially true of immigration by German Jews. Great Britain also contributed to the problem during this crucial period in mid-1939, by placing severe restrictions on all Jewish immigration to Palestine.

As a result, by late 1937 only 135,000 of the approximately 600,000 Jews had been encouraged or coerced to leave Germany, and with the annexation of Austria in 1938 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1939, Hitler found himself with almost three and a half million more Jews to displace from what was now the expanded Third Reich. It became clear that more immediate and more direct measures were going to be required, especially as Hitler contemplated near term plans to broaden the war.

In the years leading up to 1939, Hitler proclaimed that Jews throughout the Reich were to be isolated and prevented from further “contamination” of the Aryans.

This necessarily meant that they had to be brought together (“concentrated”) so that they could be registered, controlled, and put to work for the State. This in turn meant that Jews had to be moved out of small towns, such as Witten, where they were a small minority, and assembled in larger groups in centers of 23

population. Thus it was that we were forced, some time in the first part of 1939, to abandon our family home and leave almost all of our possessions behind as we were moved to nearby Dortmund, a city of more than 500,000 that was about 25 miles away. While we didn’t know how to interpret this move, the uncertainty gradually became a major source of speculation and anxiety.

However, our move to Dortmund was uneventful. We made the trip in just a few hours on a regular civilian train, and upon arrival, were provided with space in a four room flat where my grandfather had a room, my parents had a room, and my sister and I shared a room. We were never told how our quarters had been selected and assigned, but it appeared that the Gestapo may have given the task to one of the groups of local Jewish Elders. In any event our relocation was well planned and bore the Nazi trademark for detailed planning and efficient execution.

Actually, the move to Dortmund did not represent such a great change in my routine nor that of my sister, since we had already been commuting to a Jewish school in Dortmund for a number of months following my return to Witten from Herrlingen. I remember only two things about those particular schooling experiences. First, I didn’t get along very well with my authoritarian teacher, who represented a sharp contrast to my progressive professors at Herrlingen.

He objected strongly to my independent ways and my obvious distaste for being ordered around. Indeed, following an incident in which I reinstated a hike that had been planned for our class but had been cancelled by our teacher at the last minute because of bad weather, I was brought to account for my insubordination. I had to write the following phrase 1,000 times: “Vorgetan und nach bedacht hat manchen in grosses leid gebracht,” which roughly translates to “Acting without thinking can get you into trouble.” At this stage in my life, 65 years later, I can agree with the aphorism and the means by which it was emphasized.

My second recollection regarding our schooling in Dortmund is that my parents encouraged our whole family to take Spanish lessons, the thought being that facility in this language could represent a potential advantage for us in the event that we should eventually arrange for emigration to South America.

The only thing I can remember about this experience was that my mother and father had a different instructor than my sister and I --- which is to say that I recall very little about the Spanish language itself.

Formal schooling, however, soon had to be abandoned as we were forced to go to work for the State. I was assigned to a local tiefbau, a term that refers 24

to a construction company which provides excavating services and specializes in underground projects such as foundations, sewers, pipelines, mining, and railroads. The name of the particular tiefbau company to which I was assigned was Duwe, and I performed many different tasks for them --- initially, mostly with a pick and shovel, cleaning out water conduits that connected the canals and rivers in Dortmund. Occasionally I was assigned to drive a tractor that pulled trains of sand wagons to and from the various construction sites. I also served on the crews that were assigned to clean up wreckage and debris following the frequent British air raids that had begun shortly after Great Britain and France declared war on Germany in September 1939. I was paid a small stipend for my work during this period, barely enough for subsistence. However, I was assured that the balance of my wages were being placed in escrow and would be delivered to me “later.” Not surprisingly, I never saw a penny of it.

I was eventually assigned by the Duwe Company to work in their central office, performing various menial tasks for the owners and managers. These men were obviously well connected with members of the Gestapo who visited them frequently, and I got the opportunity to observe these people interacting with each other as I performed my duties at both their official business functions and their social gatherings. (For example, one of my “office” jobs that sticks in my mind was to round up and kill the chickens that were to be served at company dinners and celebrations.) While the work was far from stimulating, it was warm and safe.

Emil during the Dortmund years (at approximately age 14). He was forced into slave labor, repairing sewers and water systems, while cleaning up debris from nightly air strikes by the RAF. The family was under close surveillance by the SS and was forced to move many times into smaller and smaller quarters.

While I was thus engaged at Duwe, my father had been assigned to a different tiefbau company, a separation that I initially regretted but later came to view as a better arrangement. It was during this period that the effects of my father’s tumor began to interfere with his ability to work, and being separated from 25

each other during the work day made it easier for us both, neither having to worry the other until we met at home after work each evening. Fate, however, soon intervened, as my father’s physical condition deteriorated to the point where he had to stop working entirely.

Meanwhile, my family and I were being exposed to all of the hazards and deprivations of wartime, conditions that were especially harsh for displaced Jews. We were subjected to a nightly curfew. We were required to display on our external clothing a yellow Star of David with the word “Jew� (Jude) written on it. We were not allowed to leave the city. The overall food shortage that existed in Dortmund and indeed in all of Germany affected us most acutely because rations had been reduced for all Jews and our shopping was restricted to a very short period at the end of each day when store shelves were depleted and the leftovers were practically inedible.

At the same time, we were being subjected to almost nightly air raids by the Allied Forces. These bombardments caused extensive damage to both industrial and civilian areas and intensified the overall housing shortage that had developed in Dortmund as a result of the influx of outsiders from the countryside, such as ourselves. Consequently, we were forced to move frequently to smaller and smaller quarters: first to a three room flat (at which point there was no longer any space for my grandfather and we had to send him to an old folks home), and finally to a two room apartment with just a single bedroom for all of us. Fortunately, during each of these moves, we were lucky enough to have sympathetic landlords who allowed us to use their basements as air raid shelters rather than our having to rely upon the public shelters that were grossly overcrowded, quite unsanitary, and in some cases very distant from where we lived.

As we were moved from place to place in Dortmund, we, along with all the other Jewish families, were visited regularly by members of the Gestapo. These were not hostile or threatening visits, but we were never able to determine their purpose. Perhaps they were looking for valuables that we had not declared or surrendered, or perhaps they were trying to make certain that we were not hiding refugees or colluding with others in planning an escape. Whatever their other objectives may have been, it was clear that they were very interested in ascertaining our backgrounds, especially our Jewish lineage. This may have been related to decisions that were being made about the destination to which we would be sent when we were eventually deported from Germany.

The Gestapo paid particular attention to the pictures of our relatives that were 26

hung on the walls of our apartment and they remarked frequently at our Aryan features (blue eyes, light hair, etc.). At one point, one of the inspecting officers declared that he would “never have guessed that we were Jewish.�

During our long evenings together there were lots of opportunities for conversation and for practicing our Spanish. There was, of course, speculation about what was really happening to us and when it would end. We wondered how the German people as a whole could allow this to occur. Why doesn’t somebody or some group do something? We talked frequently about what we would do after the war.

Some time in 1940, my father made what turned out to be his final attempt to get us out of Germany. At considerable expense, which probably consumed most or all of what little gold he had been able to hold onto and hide, he bought visas and tickets for us to Chile. He also encouraged me to get some training in a skill that would make me more acceptable to other countries as we continued to seek refuge outside of Germany. Accordingly, I enrolled in a small trade school and for several weeks studied metal-working under the direction of a kindly Aryan craftsman.

But it turned out to be too late for an escape to Chile or anywhere else because the War had caused the closure of all borders and ports, including our intended point of embarkation in Portugal. Moreover, virtually all commercial passenger vessels had been commandeered for military service. In point of fact, my father would have had great difficulty traveling anywhere abroad at that time because of his worsening brain tumor and his loss of balance. My own mobility was also substantially impaired at this time, as I had just broken my leg in a skiing accident and was disabled in a plaster cast. Years later, we discovered that the Chilean tickets my father had purchased with some of his last hard currency were probably bogus and would not have been honored even if we had been in a position to use them. In fact, we learned later that there were many such scams during this period that were designed specifically to take advantage of Jewish fear and desperation.

27

By the end of 1941, the urgency to deport Jews had grown considerably as Hitler’s continued conquest of Europe had brought more than ten million Jews under Nazi control.

28

Theresienstadt: 1942-1944 By the end of 1941, the urgency to deport Jews had grown considerably as Hitler’s continued conquest of Europe had brought more than ten million Jews under Nazi control. This caused the Nazis to begin moving Jews out of German cities such as Dortmund and the other countries of Western Europe to camps and ghettos in the East. Each day, in fact, we witnessed the departure of more and more displaced people like ourselves to Czechoslovakia and Poland. While we were only beginning to hear unsubstantiated rumors about the startup of death camps in the occupied countries, we had learned enough to make us very, very anxious.

It was against this background, therefore, that we breathed a sigh of relief when we learned that my mother, father, and sister were going to be sent to Theresienstadt (“Terezin” in Czech), a walled garrison built by Hapsburg The Nazis referred to Theresienstadt as“Paradise Camp” Emperor Joseph II for because its prisoners were selected from among so-called “prominent individuals” in the Jewish community: leaders, about 7,000 Austrian scholars, artists, and professionals who had been told that cavalrymen. It had they would be enjoying a rich cultural life. The passengers shown here are moving briskly along the station platform to been named in honor insure good seats for their 2 day train trip from Germany to of Joseph’s mother, Czechoslovakia.

Maria Theresa, the renowned empress.

The fort had been reopened by the Nazis in October 1941 as a showplace to demonstrate to the outside world that Jews were being well treated under German occupation. In June of 1944, representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross visited Theresienstadt and praised the conditions there. It was officially referred to by Hitler and his people as a camp for “the German-Jewish War Veterans of the Front and for the Prominenten” (i.e. for those Jews who were so famous that they were likely to be known abroad).

We, of course, interpreted our move to this location as an indication that our 29

family was being given special treatment because of our father’s Army service.

As things worked out, this preferred assignment probably contributed more to our eventual survival than any other single factor.

For some reason my name had been left off the transfer list for Theresienstadt.

When I carefully inquired of my employers at Duwe as to why I was apparently not being transferred with my family, I got no direct response. I did get the impression, however, that they didn’t want to let me go because I was familiar with their work and was one of the few young men in good health who had not been transferred.

Hoping that there might be some chance that this decision could be reconsidered, I asked my bosses whether there might be some way to combine my departure with that of my mother, father, and sister because of our very close family Trains departing from Dortmund and many other European ties and my father’s centers transported prisoners to Theresienstadt in convendeteriorating physical tional civilian rail cars. “We were only allowed one small piece of luggage: all of our other belongings were collected condition. While I and distributed to “friends of the Reich.” got absolutely no reaction or response to this request, I was overjoyed within the next few days when a new, revised list of the exports to Theresienstadt was posted and my name was on it, along with the rest of my family.

Our trip from Dortmund was reasonably comfortable. We rode in conventional third class carriages and the journey lasted something over two days. Each of us was allowed to take only a single suitcase with us to our new destination.

Everything else had to be left behind in Witten or Dortmund.

I can only remember a few things about this 300 mile trip to the east. Even though my father was becoming quite ill from his cancer, he continued to counsel me as a son to “Stop putting your head out of the window. You’ll catch your death of cold.” He also used the occasion to remind all of us, “never to act the way they expect you to act. You’re better than they are. Don’t let them get to 30

you. You can handle it, and that’s the way you will beat them.” We all took these opportunities to reaffirm our determination to remain together as a family and get together again in Witten after the War if we should get separated.

The trip took us through Leipzig, south of Berlin, soon after which we pulled into a small station on a side track on the outskirts of Theresienstadt where I watched our German guards, who were regular Dortmund policemen, unload their rifles as they turned us over to Czech policemen who were to be our new guards. I saw real bullets being handled for the first time, bullets that could be used on us. It was my first recognition that we were prisoners of the State and that our captors were dead serious about our confinement.

We disembarked from the train and then marched for about an hour to the camp, which we found to be populated by far more than the 7,000 people for whom it had been designed. As we entered, we were not subjected to any searches or interrogations, and we were not issued uniforms: we kept our own clothes. We were, however, separated into different barracks by age and by gender, and my father was examined by a Czech doctor who immediately sent him to the camp hospital. Also, my sister’s accordion (which she had brought along instead of the single suitcase that she was allowed) was taken from her for use in the camp orchestra.

We were now exposed for the first time to a group of special prisoners, who in the larger camps and prisons were called “Kapos.” These men and women were given special privileges throughout the Nazi prison system in return for assisting the SS officers in their guard and disciplinary duties. They were selected from the ranks of the prisoners primarily on the basis of their size, their toughness, and their cruelty --- characteristics they displayed regularly in most of the camps and ghettos throughout the Reich. We didn’t see this kind of behavior very often at Theresienstadt, but it is fair to say that, as a group, the Kapos were universally hated by the inmates of Nazi prisons and were the objects of manhunts and reprisal killings by survivors after the war.

As expected, conditions at Theresienstadt proved to be better than at most of the other camps and ghettos, especially those we had heard about in Poland.

Although we were under armed guards for the first time (Czech police), we had reasonable freedom to visit among family and friends. There were no signs of mistreatment or brutality, we never saw the guards use their weapons, and we had our own clothing as well as reasonable sleeping and sanitary conditions.

While food was in short supply and was probably not sufficient to sustain a vigorous, physically active life, it was enough --- at least for the time being.

31

Monthly visits from representatives of the Red Cross, who brought food that included special treats such as cans of sardines, helped relieve some of our hunger.

Actually, we soon found ourselves leading fairly normal lives. There were marriages, births, deaths, and funerals. There was a hospital where my father was treated for his cancer. There was a school with a rigorous routine of classes, athletic activities, and art. And there was recreation --- music of all kinds and a functioning theater. (My sister’s accordion had been turned over to the “Jewish Stage” which was presenting “Three Penny Opera” with the original Berlin cast at the time of our arrival.) There was a library supplied by the Red Cross, with over 60,000 books. I spent many, many hours reading whenever I had the opportunity between work details. A number of the teen age boys found girl friends, but I was a shy 16 year old when it came to girls and sought my companionship among the boys of my age and, of course, my family. (I did notice, that most of the boys who got involved with girls had been separated from their families and seemed to be looking for support and affection.)

As had been the case in Dortmund, there was plenty of time for conversation with family and friends. We were living in close proximity to and working with many interesting and talented people: physicians, lawyers, artists, scientists, musicians, diplomats, professors: people with knowledge, ideas, and opinions that they shared with us and we in turn shared with each other as a family.

While my “formal” education had been interrupted, I was still a receptive teenager who learned much from these conversations.

Within the family, we talked mostly about my father, his deteriorating condition (he was now having great difficulty with his balance) and about who was going to visit with him each day in the infirmary. We wondered together about why all of this was happening to us. Why wasn’t someone, somewhere, doing something? We speculated about the future, and we returned again and again to our pledge to stay together as a family.

In summary, while we were being denied our freedom, Theresienstadt in the early years was probably the safest place in Europe for a Jewish family to be. And the consensus seemed to be that the overall experience would be survivable just as long as one remained healthy and was able to work. But this did not mean that it was a pleasant existence, especially for those who were infirm or became ill after they arrived. Such people invariably became weaker as food supplies dwindled and as beds in the infirmary were taken by those who showed some promise of recovery and an ability to work. The overall death rate in the camp 32

was high. Even at the time of our arrival the camp was experiencing a number of suicides by those who had given up hope of recovery, or feared deportation to one of the concentration camps, where it was rumored that weak or disabled people were being eliminated. These places quickly became known as the “Killing Centers.”

For those who remained strong, of course work was required at Theresienstadt in order to operate and maintain the camp. The older people were typically given light tasks to perform such as house cleaning and peeling potatoes, whereas those of us who were stronger were assigned more strenuous jobs. One of my first work assignments was to the burial detail, where boys and younger men were given the task of burying the sizable number of people who were dying of illness, overwork, or old While living and working conditions at Theresienstadt age. were much more favorable than we had heard about in the large prisons and killing centers to the east, it was not an easy life. Everyone had to work: women produced military uniforms, while men and boys took care of the camp and “chipped” coal from the nearby mines. Slave wages were promised but were never paid.

It was our job to place twenty coffins in each grave; ten coffins on the bottom, ten coffins on the top. The problem was that our burial ground was right next to the Ohre River and the graves we dug invariably got flooded with water, such that the first coffins in the grave would typically float and interfere with the placement of the rest. This meant that someone had to go down into the hole and position the first coffins so that there would be room for the others. So we drew straws, and for some reason I always seemed to get the short one. Needless to say this was not pleasant work.

I was typically standing in water up to my waist, soaked to the skin. The stench from the oozing coffins was overpowering. The only relief was provided by the strong disinfectants we were given that were probably useful in minimizing odor and disease but were dangerous to breathe and very unpleasant to handle.

I spent approximately six months on this detail, counting the days until I could find a way of getting assigned to something else. As good fortune would have it, 33

I got relieved of this work before my own father died of his cancer on January 17, 1943. He was fifty one years old and had spent ten of these years in prison --- first in France during the First World War, then in Germany following Kristallnacht, and now in Theresienstadt. But at least he was to be spared the final indignity of a watery burial in Czechoslovakia because a crematorium had been constructed at Theresienstadt shortly before he died.

Within a few days, there was a small memorial service held for my father and several other prisoners who had recently died. The bodies of the deceased were to be taken by one of the work details directly to the crematorium and I convinced one of the boys on the crematory work gang to trade places with me so that I could accompany my father’s body to its final destination. We loaded the bodies onto a farmtype wagon. As we rolled it to the crematorium several of the men on the detail began to describe how the new facility operated. They told me that the furnace had a daily capacity of 190 bodies (69,000 per year), Despite the relatively favorable working and living conditions at Theresienstadt, the death rate was high which was already close primarily from overwork, malnutrition, old age and to being fully utilized, as disease (typhus and pleurisy). These new cremation the death rate continued ovens were installed to help accelerate the disposal of corpses while improving sanitation. It would not be long to climb. before they began serving a much more sinister purpose.

When we got inside the building, we continued our discussion during which they showed me a thick glass peep-hole on the side of the burner that looked into the fire box. They told me not to look in but I did anyway - and I was horrified by what I saw. My very own father being incinerated! I will never forget that sight --- how easily the bodies burned, how extreme the heat was, and the fact that the corpses seemed to jerk up into a sitting position as they were consumed in flame. My hardened friends on the work detail called it “the dance macabre.� While I would later become quite accustomed to seeing dead bodies in great numbers and in all kinds of conditions, I was at this point haunted by the sight and had trouble sleeping 34

for a number of nights thereafter. Moreover, this was my first exposure to the smell of burning flesh, an odor that was to be reinforced many times later at Auschwitz. It would eventually cause me to conclude that, for me at least, the sense of smell is the most acute and has the longest “memory” of all the human senses.

Following my work on the burial detail, I then had an assignment of three or four months in which I had to deliver large cauldrons of soup from the kitchens to the various barracks. Other inmates were assigned the task of ladling out the liquid to the individual food lines. On one occasion, we were carrying our cauldron close to one of the outside barracks walls when an elderly prisoner threw himself out of a third story window overhead and landed on the pavement right next to us. It was an ugly scene, and some of the splatter from the body’s impact went into our soup. When I asked the servers where we should get rid of the contaminated brew, the answer was, “We will serve it anyway.” This was one occasion when I did not ask for any extra ration.

The opportunity to substantially improve my work situation finally came in the form of an opening for an apprentice in the bakery. I don’t know how I got this job except that my mother’s cousin, Karl, who was one of the elders in the Jewish community, seemed to have a fair amount of influence with those who were in charge of assigning work. But I never asked and was never certain. At any rate, this new job provided me with a warm dry place to work and more importantly gave me the chance to smuggle bread out for my family and friends whenever possible. Great care had to be taken on such occasions, however, so that our actions would not be deemed as “stealing from the state,” a crime punishable by death. Instead, we referred to such actions among ourselves as “liberating the loaves.”

While I worked in the bakery, I became good friends with the master of the works, a man named Mange who had owned and operated a number of small bake shops in Cologne before he was taken prisoner. I also was a good friend of his son, Rolf, who had a disfiguring disability, a dent in his forehead from a childhood fall. As it happened, young Rolf and I later ended up together in Auschwitz where he was sent to the gas chamber. His father was more fortunate, having been sent to Switzerland under a program wherein the Swiss offered money to Himmler for the release of specific prisoners.

By the end of 1943, conditions at Theresienstadt had begun to deteriorate rapidly. There was a huge influx of Jews into the camp from Holland, Denmark, Germany, and Czechoslovakia, as well as a number of non-Jews, most of whom 35

were destined for transfer to the gas chambers in Poland. The Nazi strategy for dealing with the “Jewish Problem” was no longer to humiliate, imprison, torture, and deport Jews, but to kill them all as soon as possible wherever they might be. This broadly announced policy was called “The Final Solution,” and it caused the population in Theresienstadt to increase rapidly to almost 60,000 prisoners. It was grossly overcrowded, food was in very short supply, and we were now surviving on a single daily serving of thin soup and one small ration of bread.

Old people were dying like flies. Sickness and disease were everywhere and, despite my occasional extra rations and favorable working conditions in the bakery, I contracted hepatitis which weakened me significantly.

Worst of all, we began hearing rumors that even those of us who had thought of ourselves as somewhat privileged prisoners were going to be sent to Auschwitz.

Theresienstadt, which had served as the showplace for Nazi humanitarianism, had now apparently become just a way-station en route to the killing centers.

Suicides amongst the elderly increased dramatically, as the vulnerable took their own lives rather than having to leave the relative safety of Theresienstadt and face the probability of murder by starvation, hanging, firing squad, torture, or gas.

36

Auschwitz: Spring, 1944 Unfortunately, the rumors turned out to be true. One morning during the early spring, we were ordered to assemble and were given our daily ration of weak soup and a single piece of bread. We had no idea where we might be going. I stayed close to six friends I had made at Theresienstadt, one of whom was my friend Rolf from the bakery. But, my mother and sister were nowhere in sight.

It was the first time we had been separated from each other in the almost five years since we had first been placed under direct Nazi control in Dortmund.

It turned out that my mother and sister were not included in my “transport.�

They were lucky enough to stay in Theresienstadt for another six months before shipment to Auschwitz.

The guards kept us moving at a brisk pace for over an hour until we reached a railhead where there was a long line of dilapidated cattle cars being connected to several ancient steam locomotives. As we approached the train, we were met by an echelon of smartly dressed SS men who rolled open the car doors and ordered us to board. While the floors of the cars were only about three feet off the ground, this proved to be an almost insurmountable height for many of the people in our condition. It caused the SS guards to begin pushing us into the cars, using their rifle butts for encouragement. By the time it was my turn, the cars were full to overflowing.

Thanks to the outstretched hands of my friends who had boarded ahead of Transportation of prisoners between camps was carried out mostly in worn out cattle cars that were loaded to overflow- me, I was able to pull ing and were supervised by threatening SS guards who were myself up as more assisted by Kapos (in striped uniforms) who were chosen bodies were shoved from among the inmates for their toughness and meanness. in behind me. Finally, when we were all packed in so tightly that it was almost impossible to move, the doors were rolled shut and were locked behind us.

37

The cattle cars were about 8 ft. high on the inside. About seven feet up from the splintered board floors there were four very small windows on the side walls, two on each side of the car with iron bars and a string of barbed wire across each one. They were to be the only source of ventilation for what I would guess amounted to at least sixty people in the car. We could hear the SS men laughing and talking leisurely outside on the platform, and their conversation created fear in most of us, anger in a few. Soon the heat from our bodies became intense and it became very difficult to breathe. Tempers quickly wore thin and I heard cries such as, “We’ll all die here. Give me a little room, I can’t get any air.” And “Where are you, God?” People begged each other for space that did not exist, but it was of no use. Surprisingly, in spite of these conditions, the situation never deteriorated into panic or hysteria.

Finally we heard a locomotive whistle and the clanging of car couplings as we slowly began to move. We now became a swaying mass of humanity. Each time the train slowed or banked on a curve we were jostled from side to side and squeezed even more tightly together. A few inmates who had been supported by the tightly packed bodies fell to the floor where it was almost impossible to help them up due to the congestion. Some of those who fell died from suffocation or exhaustion.

Our progress was painfully slow, the car grew hotter, and the smells became more and more foul. Only the tallest prisoners who were closest to the small windows were able to get up on their toes and get an occasional breath of fresh air. The time passed slowly as the train jerked along, occasionally pulling onto a siding to allow military or civilian trains to pass.

The rhythmic sound of the wheels on the track eventually put me to sleep on my feet, supported only by my comrades and the crush of bodies. When I awoke, it was dark. I tried to move to the window to get some air, but it was impossible. At dawn I tried again. This time, I pushed hard and my persistence was rewarded, as I got close to one of the windows. I was only a little over 5 ft. 7 in. tall, and a fellow prisoner had to boost me up so that I could get a few deep breaths. It wasn’t much, but it helped.

Meanwhile, our other physical needs were becoming unbearable. Our rations were gone, our hunger and thirst had become intense, and there were no toilet facilities whatever. Everything that we once did in private, now had to be done in public --- men, women, and children together. After two days, those of us who were still living were standing in a wall-to-wall open latrine --- a living hell.

38

Late one afternoon, the train made an abrupt stop and the doors were suddenly rolled open. Since I happened to be close to the door, I could lean out briefly to get some air and have a look around, being especially careful not to lose my grip or my balance.

We had stopped on a sharp curve so that I could see both the engine on one end and several passenger cars that had been attached to the rear, which I assumed had been The prisoners’ first view of their destination: the track added to the train into the main gate at what appeared to be a very large concentration camp to accommodate the guards. It appeared to me that there were about fifty cattle cars on the train, which I estimated would be carrying somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 prisoners. No wonder we were moving so slowly!

Although we had been told that it would take two days to reach our destination, we did not know where we were going, and most of us, including myself, had completely lost track of time. It seemed to me that we spent at least one more night and another day, during which time several more inmates died from hunger or exhaustion. But just after twilight on what I will call the third day, the train began to slow down, and we could tell from the track sounds that we were moving across switches onto a series of sidings. The locomotives let out a whistle and we finally came to a screeching, banging halt.

After about an hour, during which we could hear a lot of commotion outside the train, the doors were thrown open and we heard guards shouting, “Raus!

Alle Raus! Alles liegen lassen! “(Out! All Out! Leave everything!”). After being locked in the wagons for several days, we all had great difficulty leaving the cars, our limbs having become stiff and weak from standing in cramped conditions, barely able to move after so many hours. But the SS men out on the siding shouted impatiently, waving us out of the cars, threatening and striking those who were too slow.

39

We still didn’t know where we were, but we heard one of the Kapos say, “levaja,” which I didn’t understand at the time (but I found out later that it was the Yiddish word for “burial”). We appeared to be just outside the gate of a very large, fenced camp, and we were being ordered to join a long single line which led into the camp through a gate over which was displayed a sign that read, “Arbeit Mach Frei” (Work Will Make You Free). We could soon hear someone The three awesome words of welcome, “Arbeit Macht Frei” up ahead directing (Work Will Make You Free.) confirmed what many prisoners each incoming had feared. Our new camp was to be the dreaded Auschwitz whose motto was known broadly throughout the prison system prisoner to move either to the “right” or to the “left.” It was then we realized that we had indeed arrived at Auschwitz and were being subjected to what would turn out to be the first of several lifedetermining “Selections.”

Auschwitz was an enormous complex located 37 miles west of Krakow, Poland.

It covered more than 80 square kilometers and was the largest of the Nazi concentration camps. The initial buildings had been converted from an old Polish army barracks in 1940 and had served only as a concentration camp for Russian and Polish soldiers and Jews. By 1944, however, the site had grown to include not only a prison, but a slave labor camp, a killing center, and literally dozens of smaller, outlying satellite camps as well. Birkenau was by far the largest camp within the Auschwitz complex and served as the killing center as well as the largest prison. At its peak, Auschwitz contained well over 200,000 prisoners from all over Europe and in the end accounted for the murder of more than 1.6 million people.

As the line crept slowly forward, some prisoners wept, some prayed, and others tried to muster courage so as to appear strong and healthy. When I finally got near the head of the line, I saw a group of SS men who, with flashlights in hand, were scrutinizing the men, women, and children before them. One of the Nazi officers, who looked particularly impressive in his well tailored black and gray 40

uniform was wearing what appeared to be a doctor’s badge, a serpent wound around a sword. He was tall and slim with a dark complexion.

His thick black hair was cut short, and he left no uncertainty that he was in charge.

The whispers I heard told me that this was Dr. Josef Mengele, who later became known as “The Angel of Death” because of his lethal experiments on human subjects.

The preliminary lineup of exhausted, frightened prisoners from incoming trains and trucks has been divided into two groups: men in the long line in the center and women in the shorter line on the right. Officers who are making the initial selection decisions are in the foreground. The gas chamber and furnace building is shown faintly at the top-center and the lineup below it on the other side of the tracks is the death march of those who have just failed the “Selection” and are moving toward immediate execution.

The selection process itself seemed well rehearsed, as the Kapos paraded a row of prisoners in front of the Doctor and responded to his quick decisions. It soon became apparent that those being selected to go to the “left” were the old people, small children, pregnant women, and anyone who appeared to have sickness or disease that would prevent them from working. They were all destined for the The official final “Selection” is being made by Dr. Mengele gas chambers and (“Dr. Death”) as he separates those who will be killed were taken away immediately from those who will be allowed to live and directly. Those being work in slave labor until they die of exhaustion, starvation, chosen to go to the punishment, or disease.

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“right” were being saved for the work crews.

Just before my turn, a fellow captive behind me whispered, “Lift your head and act strong.” My heart was beating wildly, but I didn’t have long to wait. With very little hesitation, I was ordered by one of the Kapos to go to the “right” --to join the worker group, where I was relieved to find that five of my six friends had been similarly selected for survival. Tragically, only Rolf, whose father had instructed him to tell the inspectors that he was handicapped and unable to perform heavy work, got sent to the “left,” which I assumed led to his subsequent execution. At any rate, he was never seen again. When his father wrote to me later, inquiring what had happened to his son, I simply did not have the heart to tell him that he himself had inadvertently doomed the boy with his bad advice.

Those of us who had survived the selection process were then led away past a long line of three-story brick buildings enclosed in a double-fenced area along which there were towers with search lights spaced every few hundred feet.

These towers were manned by Waffen SS soldiers who were low ranking members of the SS and were identified by their green uniforms. All of these guards held machine guns that were pointed down directly at us.

All of the barracks in the prison camps were sur-

As we moved through the rounded by double electrified barbed wire fences camp, we passed through that defied cutting or scaling. several more gates and fences, each of which consisted of two parts: an outside layer of heavy barbed wire and an inside layer of single wires mounted on insulators that appeared to be electrified. Indeed, we quickly learned that these inner wires were carrying sufficient current to electrocute anyone who touched them. Over time I would 42

see a number of people die who accidentally came in contact with “the wire,” or who made futile efforts to escape. In a few cases, prisoners chose this as a means of taking their own lives rather than face the horrible fate that they feared lay ahead.

We finally stopped in front of one of the largest buildings, where we were placed under the command of an SS sergeant who ordered us into a nearby cellblock.

As we entered, we were made to strip, men, women, and children alike, and were forced to walk through a brackish shower over shallow tubs that smelled of kerosene or naphtha, presumably to rid us of the lice which had infested many of the inmates. Next, we were rinsed off and scrubbed down with what appeared to be another disinfectant. After a final rinse with fresh water, we were led nude and dripping out into a kind of courtyard that had been made into a makeshift barbershop. It was full of inmates sitting on benches, where some eight to ten barbers, all of them prisoners, ordered us to “Sit, Stand, and Turn Around,” as they shaved every hair from our bodies. The barbers themselves had crew cuts and wore clean, striped prison uniforms. Many of them were quite talkative and (like barbers everywhere) seemed intent on giving us the latest news, such as the origin of incoming prisoners, the types of work crews being selected, and the unwritten rules of survival. Some of them seemed to enjoy sharing with us the high odds of our never leaving Auschwitz alive.

Still naked and carrying our street clothes, we followed one another into the next barracks, a kind of warehouse where our civilian clothes were taken and replaced with badly worn prison jackets, pants, and clogs that were thrown at us by prisoners who were working behind counters in front of a very large storeroom. There was apparently no regard for size or fit, and the men at the counters kept yelling, “If these don’t fit you, swap them with others.” But, even after swapping, the jackets were either too large or too small, and most of the pants came up to our chins. Finally, we each received a set of gray striped underwear and a striped cap. All of the clothing reeked of the same disinfectant with which we had just been scrubbed.

We were then lined up and marched out of the receiving area to the so-called “Gypsy Camp,” a separate area within the Auschwitz-Birkenau compound. It had been built specially to confine and kill a minority group that was hated by the Nazis almost as much as the Jews: the Gypsies of Europe, also known as the “Roma” or “Sinti.” While there had been more than one million Gypsies across all of Europe before the War, 400,000 of them were eventually exterminated in the six Nazi killing centers. By the time I arrived at Auschwitz in early 1944, almost all of the estimated 43

18,000 Gypsies who had lived in Germany had been sent to the gas chambers there.

The Gypsy Camp was now being used primarily as a temporary holding center from which various work crews were selected and deployed.

One of the rituals of prison life to which we were first introduced was the socalled “roll-call,” the systematic accounting for the presence of every single inmate in the camp. On a typical day, we were awakened before dawn, provided with our daily ration, and lined up at rigid attention in columns of five. If we were lucky, the headcount was correct on the very first try. But in the likely event that a recount was necessary, we had to remain at attention, sometimes for The “Roll-call” is the dreaded twice-daily ritual for all inmates. Many inmates died from exposure, exhaustion, and several hours in subharassment. zero temperatures, until the shortage was accounted for. If absences could not be reconciled, it was assumed that there had been an escape, at which point a “count-off ” was ordered wherein every tenth man in the lineup had to step forward. These arbitrarily selected prisoners were then subjected to public humiliation and various forms of torture frequently ending in a hanging. Even minor infractions such as laziness, sloppy work, and insubordination were frequently punished in this way on such occasions.

At the end of every day, these same roll-call procedures were followed, again in the dark and the cold. But now, with most prisoners close to exhaustion after twelve hours of hard labor, many fainted and others died from stress, harassment, and exposure.

By this time, I had begun to learn that it was very important to make good friends quickly in each new situation, “buddies,” I called them. Indeed it was proving to be essential to know that there were at least a few people I could trust, confide in, and from whom I could gain information. There were decisions that had to be made literally every day on short notice that were crucial to survival.

It helped greatly to have the benefit of other people’s thinking and assistance.

44

With this in mind, my five remaining best friends and I had agreed that we would try to stick together and that we would volunteer for the first work detail that was organized. Our opportunity soon came within a few days when we were told that 3,000 people would be needed for a major project and that we would be going through another “selection” process. We were ordered to line up five abreast outside of our barracks, and again Dr. Mengele passed judgment on each of us individually. But this time, my small size and skinny frame must have caught his attention, because I was promptly picked out as one of the misfits and was ordered to move to the “left.” Two of my five friends were similarly selected for what we all presumed would be a horrible death.

We were terrified. Our foreheads were marked with a red spot and we were quickly dispatched to another barracks that was jammed with 500 Hungarian Jews who had been similarly selected to die. (I later found out that shortly after this selection someone got word to my mother and sister in Theresienstadt that I had been sent to the gas chamber.)

This “Hungarian” barracks to which my two friends and I had been taken was in chaos because the inmates had been told or had surmised that their doom was sealed. This turmoil was aggravated by the fact that this barracks was located within sight of the crematoriums, which were operating at capacity, day and night. The smell of burning flesh was everywhere. It seems odd to me now that, in spite of our predicament, my friends and I actually took the time to invent a morbid little game wherein we each took turns counting the number of times flames belched forth from the crematorium chimneys. If we saw exactly eight successive spurts of flame, we said we were going to live, otherwise, we were going to die. The low odds were undoubtedly a reflection of our depressed spirits and our desperation!

Despite these fears and distractions, however, we never lost sight of the fact that time was growing short and that we were surely going to die if we didn’t take some action quickly. This was where the crying, screaming, pleading, and fighting in the barracks, which was requiring full time attention by the guards, actually worked to our advantage. It gave us the opportunity to explore the entire building for a means of escape without attracting attention.

Clearly, the front door of the barracks was out of the question. It was heavily guarded by Storm Troopers and a group of tough-looking Kapos. Upon examining the rear of the building, however, we discovered a single, small door that was only lightly guarded by one member of the SS and a single Kapo.

Recognizing that we were taking a terrible risk, but concluding that we had 45

nothing to lose, we simply walked past the guards and out onto the parade ground.

For reasons I will never know, there was absolutely no reaction by the guards, and we were suddenly free of the doomed barracks. In later years I have wondered whether the laxness of the guards on that particular evening might not have been influenced by the course of the war in Eastern Europe. The German attempts to capture Moscow had failed. The Russians had retaken Stalingrad in early 1943, which had caused the surrender of the entire German 6th Army. The Soviets had then re-entered Poland and had very recently, in July 1944, liberated the prisoners at one of the eastern-most Polish killing centers at Majdanek. They were now only 175 miles east of Auschwitz and were headed in our direction. Hence, it occurred to me that we might have been the beneficiaries of a growing awareness on the part of many Nazis that they were going to lose the war and were going to be held accountable for their atrocities.

At any rate, there was no time to speculate about our good fortune, as we stood on the grounds outside the barracks of doom. We had received a reprieve, but we were still very much imprisoned within the Gypsy Camp itself, which in turn was surrounded by the rest of Auschwitz. Our first need, therefore, was to remove the telltale marks on our foreheads, which we managed to do rather crudely and painfully with the help of some parade-ground sand as an abrasive.

Our efforts were only partially successful, as we left big red blotches on our foreheads. But, we quickly proceeded to make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible by splitting up and blending in with prisoners in several different barracks from which we believed the work crews were being selected. At this point, I lost complete track of my fellow escapees. I have never been able to find out whether they made it to freedom.

As I considered what steps I ought to take next, it occurred to me that I might press my luck further and try to escape the Auschwitz compound completely.

However, these thoughts passed quickly as I tried to envision what I would do if, by chance, I was successful. Where would I go in German-occupied territory and how would I hide in my striped uniform, my emaciated body, and my bald head? The odds of failure seemed overwhelming, and reason returned in a hurry as I reflected on the fate that had befallen those escaped inmates whom I had seen recaptured. They were invariably returned to the camp where they were hung, shot, or beaten to death slowly in full view of the other prisoners as demonstrations of what happens to prisoners who take matters into their own hands.

46

Alternatively, it seemed to me that the only real hope for survival was to continue demonstrating my ability and my desire to work. Several days later, therefore, when another work detail of about 300 men was being assembled for transport to a smaller, satellite camp, I decided to volunteer and do whatever I could to increase my odds of being selected. Accordingly, when we were again ordered to line up in a column five abreast for selection, I positioned myself between two of the oldest and weakest-looking prisoners I could find. And, while I feared that Dr. Mengele would recognize me, he apparently did not and motioned me to the “right,” presumably because I was younger and healthier than my immediate neighbors. I suppose I was also helped by the fact that, when asked about my skills, I was able to answer, “Metal Worker,” based on my brief training in Dortmund. My use of high German also seemed to surprise him.

I have never completely rid myself of the guilt feelings associated with my survival at the probable sacrifice of my fellow inmates.

As we waited for further instructions, I was approached by a Hungarian prisoner who had not been picked for the 300 man work detail and who, instead, had been marked for death in the gas chamber. He told me of his plight and pled with me to look out for his twelve year old son who, like me, had been chosen for transfer to the satellite camp but would now be left alone with no one to look after him. I told the man that I would do what I could to keep the boy under my wing.

As we prepared for transport, my relief at having been selected for the new work camp was somewhat dampened when I found that we would have to undergo what amounted to another complete indoctrination as we prepared for transport. We were told to turn in our initial uniforms; we were deloused, and every hair on our bodies was shaved off. We were issued better fitting, less worn, uniforms than before. My young Hungarian charge stayed close by me throughout this process.

At this time, we were also issued triangular cloth badges that we had to sew onto our uniforms. Jews received a yellow triangle that was to be displayed pointing upward. In addition, everyone (including the Jews) was given a triangular badge in a color that designated the reason for their imprisonment: red for political (an enemy of the State), green for a convicted criminal, pink for a homosexual, purple for a Jehovah’s Witness, and black for a Gypsy. These badges were to be worn pointing downward, and in the case of Jews, they were to be superimposed on top of the upward-pointing yellow triangles (thereby 47

forming a Star of David). We were told that these uniforms were the property of the State and that we were personally responsible for keeping track of them and maintaining them in good condition. They would deal severely with any violations.

We were then lined up and given a number that was tattooed on our left forearms by a prisoner who was equipped with a tool that looked something like a fountain pen. He used this implement to inject a blackish fluid under my skin as he inscribed the number B 12500, which would henceforth take the place of my name. Numbers were apparently easier for the Nazis to deal with because they didn’t have faces and they helped mitigate the captors’ guilt. It was a painful experience and drew blood, but the tattoo was a reassuring sign that I was to be saved, at least for now. My number is still very legible --- sixty years later.

Several days later, when our newly formed work crew had been assembled on the parade ground and was awaiting the trucks that would take us to the new work site, a very sad incident occurred. Just as the trucks began to arrive, the general emergency alarm for the entire camp began sounding unexpectedly: a cacophony of sirens, whistles, and horns that served as the unmistakable signal for everyone in the camp to stop whatever they might be doing and seek immediate cover, preferably in or under the barracks. It was the unmistakable warning of an Allied air attack.

For reasons I will never understand, the guards in all of the towers above us immediately began shooting at the prisoners, as though they knew nothing of the well established evacuation procedures and instead were assuming that the prisoners were staging some kid of insurrection. I remember seeing the dust around me erupt in little puffs as the bullets hailed from above.

The young Hungarian and I were quite far from the barracks and well out on the parade ground. The only cover I could see was behind a nearby barrel that was used for storing ashes. I grabbed for the boy, pulling him with me toward the drum. But he panicked, broke loose from my grip, and took off across the field where the guards shot him dead before he got half way to the barracks.

I can vividly recall his fingers slipping slowly through mine as I tried to stop him and as he ignored my shouts I can still hear his scream as the bullets hit him, kicking up dust on his small body. Needless to say, I was devastated by this brutal killing and by my failure to provide protection. The only thing more intense than my agony at having lost the boy was the reaction I had from an SS guard who had witnessed the entire incident and had said to me with a smirk, 48

“You shouldn’t feel guilty. He was just a boy.”

It was the closest I ever came to breaking the neck of a Nazi staff officer. I remember wishing that God had given me a gun to kill him, an act that would undoubtedly have resulted in my getting a bullet in my own head.

The very next afternoon, 300 of us were loaded into trucks and driven to a nearby satellite camp, approximately 35 miles southwest of Auschwitz, in a town named Czechowitz.

49

I can not recall a time after my departure from Theresienstadt when I was not desperately hungry and when I was not conscious of the fact that I was losing strength and significant amounts of weight. My resistance to infection had clearly been diminished.

50

Czechowitz: Summer of 1944 - January 1945 The work camp at Czechowitz had been established to support the activities of a large oil refinery and storage depot that was located just outside the town. It was a crucial part of the Nazi supply line to the East and was the target of regular air bombardments by the Russians. With the arrival of our multinational contingent from Auschwitz, the camp became a genuine polyglot of cultures, political groups, religions, and assorted enemies of the Reich. There were Jehovah’s Witnesses, Zionists, Communists, criminals, homosexuals, Hungarians, and Russian Army officers (who were treated as common criminals rather than Prisoners of War because they were viewed with the same racial hatred as Slavs and Jews).

The camp itself consisted primarily of just two large stables that had been part of a farm and were located about one-half mile from the refinery. There were 600 inmates in total, 300 in each stable, living close together in very tight quarters.

Our sleeping accommodations consisted of crude wooden bunks, three tiers high, with only two feet between layers. Like Auschwitz, we were crammed into each of these bunks, four abreast, with a fifth man lying across our feet with just a single blanket for the five of us. Our only bedding consisted of straw, so we had to rely on our combined body heat to keep us from freezing. Most of us used our boots as pillows.

By this time, our rations were very restricted, in part because of general food shortages all across Europe caused by the war, but also because of the Nazis’ strategy for employing hunger and malnutrition as a means of punishment and gradual annihilation. For example, it was felt at the time that a daily diet consisting of at least 2500 calories was necessary to sustain a man who was performing hard physical labor. In contrast, it was not uncommon for inmates in the labor camps and factories to be limited to about 1000 calories, and in many cases as few as 600 calories per day, which guaranteed the gradual deterioration and ultimate death of the worker. The Nazis controlled daily rations in the camps between these extremes, depending on the supply and demand for slave labor at any given point in time. In actual fact, however, there always seemed to be an unlimited supply of prisoners to fill jobs. And, since the killing centers could not keep up with the backlog of condemned prisoners, starvation became an important tool for carrying out the “Final Solution.” This strategy was typically referred to as “Extermination Through Work.” I can not recall a time after my departure from Theresienstadt when I was not desperately hungry and when I was not conscious of the fact that I was 51

losing strength and significant amounts of weight. My resistance to infection had clearly been diminished.

It has always amazed me that despite our diversity and our abysmal living conditions during one of the coldest European winters on record, our multinational prisoners became and remained a very tightly-knit group with reasonably good spirits. Perhaps this was because we were so physically weak and mentally exhausted that we depended upon each other for support.

Perhaps it was also due to the increased frequency and credibility of reports that we were beginning to hear about significant Russian victories over the Germans in the East and the successes of the Allies in the West, following the invasion at Normandy on what would come to be known as D-Day. There was growing hope that the Allies would continue to prevail and that the war would soon be over.

I might also interject at this point that information from the outside world, especially reports on the progress of the war, flowed into the concentration camps continuously, and most of it proved to be quite accurate. These reports typically originated with the guards who were careless about leaving radios playing and failing to dispose of newspapers. Their living quarters were routinely taken care of by prisoners who eagerly absorbed everything they heard and saw as they performed these duties. Once a single prisoner picked up a piece of outside news during one of his daily chores in the guards’ rooms, it spread like wildfire among all the inmates.

Our principal work while we were at Czechowitz was to build protective concrete walls around oil tanks at the nearby refinery. On a typical day, we were awakened before dawn for our morning roll-call, following which we were marched off to the refinery where we worked until dark. The long hours in bitter cold weather, along with our perpetual thirst and hunger, eventually exhausted us to the point where most seemed to sleep quite well in spite of the crowded, uncomfortable conditions. Indeed, most of us had learned that there was little to be gained by staying awake and worrying about what might happen to us tomorrow: those who did were the first to become depressed and eventually became victims of the system. While I had never been a sound sleeper, I experienced an additional problem in getting enough sleep at Czechowitz. It seemed as though every time I got up at night to urinate, the single barracks collection pail was filled to the brim, and I was invariably ordered by the guard to empty it outside in the latrine pit. It was heavy, smelly work in the freezing cold darkness, and despite my overall fatigue it was not easy to get back to sleep.

52

Because of the extremely cold winter, we had been carefully instructed to add salt to the concrete mix so that the enclosures we were building around the oil tanks would cure without cracking. We, of course, took delight in leaving the salt out of the mix entirely so that the walls would definitely crack open in the spring, destroying the insulation and eliminating an important shield against bombardment. During this period, reports from the Eastern Front continued to be more and more encouraging, and it appeared that liberation might well be close at hand. At this point, there seemed to be little likelihood of retribution for our sabotage.

These nascent feelings of rebellion were beginning to show up in other ways as well. I can recall one morning, on the day after the camp had undergone a change in leadership, a large number of us were being assembled for some special work. We were to unload some particularly heavy materials from rail cars, and in return we were promised some extra food and a very rare treat, hot showers. As we marched out the gate to the rail-yard, we passed by two commanding officers, the newly arrived young officer who was taking over command of the camp and the other older officer who was being relieved.

They were accompanied by a young woman who may have been a wife or girl friend of one of them. At any rate, the older officer was obviously interested in displaying his authority to the lady, as he commanded us all to halt whatever we were doing and sing for his guest.

After some initial surprise and confusion on our part, this brought forth a whole series of songs. The Frenchmen were first and they sang the Marseillaise.

They were followed by the Russian soldiers, who came forth with the Russian Socialist Hymn. And finally came the Zionists who sang the Hatikva which today is the Israeli National Anthem. All of these renditions were, of course, highly nationalistic and all were delivered in a manner that could hardly have been interpreted as being respectful of the Nazis.

We held our breath, expecting the worst for our impertinence. But imagine our surprise when there was no reaction whatever. Moreover, the promises that had been made to us that morning were kept: when we got back to camp there were extra rations and hot showers for everyone. It turned out that none of the Germans present knew the songs we had sung nor could they understand the words. They had thoroughly enjoyed the entertainment!

There was another singing incident that remains vivid in my mind from this period at Czechowitz. With the Russians getting closer and closer, the frequency and severity of air attacks on the refinery and our camp increased 53

significantly. Almost every night, our sirens would go off, following which there would be a prolonged period of silence throughout the barracks as everyone listened carefully for the drone of the incoming bombers. One of the inmates in our building was a Dutch opera singer who had appeared frequently at the Amsterdam Opera. He chose these periods of total quiet to deliver himself of familiar arias, almost all of them from “Pagliacci.” To this day, I remember these occasions vividly whenever I hear the strains of “Vesti la giubba.” I must say that I have never heard them sung as well as in those dark, fearsome hours.

It was an eerie experience to say the least.

I also recall two other experiences from this period that suggested the disciplined Nazi resolve might be softening, probably in anticipation of a forthcoming truce, surrender, or liberation. With each passing day, it became more and more apparent that the Russians were getting very close and the inmates were becoming restive. On one particular occasion, there was a loud disagreement going on among several groups of prisoners and when it appeared that there might be violence, one of the “Green” Kapos took charge of the situation.

After considerable negotiation with all parties, he was successful in putting the matter completely to rest. I was so impressed by what he had done that later that same day when he and I were standing next to each other in line, I told him that I thought he had done a fine job of settling things down. This was a highly irregular act on my part, as prisoners were not allowed to initiate conversations with guards or Kapos. But I took the risk and asked him what he had done in his former life (knowing full well from his green badge that he had been a convict). He informed me that he had been serving a life sentence for murder, but he quickly added, “We may be criminals, but we have our code of honor, just as you have yours.” It was a good lesson for me not to judge people prematurely or by outward appearances.

During the course of this short conversation, the Kapo also told me that he had some extra food that he would be glad to share with me and one of my comrades if we wanted to come by his place that evening. I was quite taken aback and was initially very hesitant about accepting such an offer. My experience in dealing with Kapos had not suggested that I could trust their sincerity. Furthermore, it was risky being seen talking to a guard or getting caught taking favors from one. But my hunger was so great and this Kapo seemed so sincere that one of my friends and I ended up spending a very nice evening with our guard and several of his fellow Kapos. During that visit, we were served some stew with real meat in it. The meat was not familiar, but who were we to complain? It was actually not bad tasting and very, very welcome.

54

Early the next day, the camp was informed that the commanding officer’s dog had disappeared the previous day. All inmates were asked to be on the look out. To this day I don’t know what was in that god-damned stew, but I always suspected that my buddy and I had something to do with the dog’s mysterious disappearance! I also know that I wouldn’t have refused the meal even if I had known: starvation is a very strong motivator.

The second experience occurred on a day when a sledge hammer was needed for our work at the oil refinery, and I was picked to go get one from the storage shed. The young Waffen SS soldier who was assigned to go with me on this chore started out in complete compliance with the Nazi rules for accompanying prisoners, specifically, walking silently three meters behind me with the safety latch on his rifle in the “off ” (or ready-to-fire) position. We were no sooner out of earshot of the others, however, when he started talking to me and walking close behind me. I could tell that we were about the same age, seventeen or eighteen, and I recognized his dialect immediately as coming from the small mining community near the town where I was born. He said that he could tell from my way of speaking that I was a “Westphalian, like him.” He wondered how I had gotten to Czechowitz: he thought that our inmates were mostly Poles and “snipers” (members of the German underground). I replied that I was indeed from Westphalia and had been born and raised in Witten. I told him briefly of my experience at Auschwitz, and we talked for quite a while about a number of items of mutual interest. When he learned that I was just a student and not a “sniper,” he became even more friendly and put the safety on his rifle in the “on” (or safe) position.

We continued this way on our return trip, walking and talking together, until we got close to the work area where we encountered a more senior German officer.

The older officer became angered at our apparent congeniality; he gave the young officer a severe dressing down and ordered him to report to command headquarters at the end of the day. I never saw the young man again, but I assumed that he had been sent to the “front,” which was the typical punishment for those Nazis who failed to follow orders to the letter.

One morning in January 1945, with the Russians now very close at hand, we were given extra rations and were told that we should treat them carefully for they had to last us for three days. That night about 550 of us were marched off into the bitter cold darkness without any idea of where we were headed. We were kept in strict formation, five abreast, and were kept moving along briskly by the SS guards who watched our every move. It was clear that we were going 55

to have to do most of our marching by night and take cover during the days in order to avoid the air raids and strafing attacks that were becoming very frequent.

We were hardly fit for any kind of extended physical exertion, let alone sleeping in cold barns and silos during the day with nothing but straw for bedding.

The situation was especially hard on me since someone had just stolen my prized possession, a pair of German military boots that I had acquired by trading away some of my food at Theresienstadt. Now I had to get by with some discarded threadbare substitutes which helped to accelerate the rapidly developing frostbite in my right foot. It also made it more difficult for me to continue my practice of giving help to those who were in the worst physical condition and were having difficulty keeping up with the march. (As an aside, it should be noted that dishonesty and theft among prisoners, while generally ignored by the guards, were usually dealt with promptly and severely by the prisoners themselves. My loss seems to have been an exception.)

Despite the increasing pain and the difficulty of remaining on my feet in the sub-freezing temperatures, it became clear over the next several nights that there was good reason to keep moving no matter what, as we began hearing the repeated “pop, pop, pop” of the guards’ Mauser pistols at the rear of our formation and quickly discovered that they were systematically shooting all those who fell behind, including those like me who tried to be heroes and give assistance to the laggards. It was during one of these shooting episodes that I recognized one of the officers who was doing the killing. He was the same officer who had gotten us all together in one of the stables where we had spent the previous day and told us that he was not responsible for his actions: he was only following orders and doing his duty. This was my first exposure to the alibis and professions of innocence that would be offered by the Nazis as they were eventually called to account for their crimes.

But, in addition to the threatened brutality, I was impelled to keep marching by another motive as well. I had managed thus far to contain the intense anger — the rage that underlay all of the fear, damage and deprivation that the Nazi bullies had imposed upon me and my family for the past seven years. But I found myself increasingly driven to achieve my revenge against the Third Reich by doing whatever it took to survive. I vividly recalled my father’s words, “You’re better than they are. Don’t let them get to you.” I was determined that I would beat these Nazi bastards by not becoming their victim, but rather by thwarting their efforts to kill me. Equally important to me was the family pledge we had 56

made to reunite in Witten after the war. This promise kept me going at a time when my body was failing and my willpower was being tested as it had never been before.

Rumors were flying as to where we were marching. Was it to yet another camp where there would presumably be some respite from the cold, or was it to a railhead for another train ride to some unknown destination? It was ironic that our condition had deteriorated so badly that we looked upon another concentration camp as a respite, a place to get off our feet and out of the cold.

One member of our group, a well educated psychiatrist who was accompanied by two of his sons, was so weakened and so disturbed by the possibility of another torturous train ride that he declared he could not survive if that were to be his destiny. When it became apparent we had indeed arrived at a railhead and were going to board a train, he fell to the ground and died on the spot.

I found out later that the railhead we arrived at on that frigid night was located in the town of Gleiwitz on the border between Poland and Germany. We had covered some 35 miles in three nights.

57

These marches would later be referred to as the “Death Marches,� the largest and most devastating of which departed from Auschwitz on January 17, as more than 50,000 prisoners were marched to railheads and loaded onto westbound trains. One out of every four of these prisoners died en route.

58

Buchenwald: January 1945 In Gleiwitz, we were joined by thousands of prisoners who had marched from other camps and had undergone ordeals as bad as or worse than ours. With the Allied forces closing in on both the eastern and the western fronts, there were literally hundreds of these marches and train rides out of the concentration camps into the center of Germany as the Nazis tried frantically to remove all evidence and eye witnesses to the horrors that had been imposed on their prisoners. There was also a critical need for slave labor in the heartland as replacements for the old men, young boys, and women who were being conscripted into the army in one final desperate effort to save the Reich. These marches would later be referred to as the “Death Marches,” the largest and most devastating of which departed from Auschwitz on January 17, as more than 50,000 prisoners were marched to railheads and loaded onto westbound trains.

One out of every four of these prisoners died en route.

The train that awaited us in Gleiwitz was a very long one and was made up primarily of old open top freight cars rather than the cattle cars that had moved us to Auschwitz. This train also consisted of some heated passenger cars for the guards who were rotated through the open freight cars in shifts. As in our previous train trip, we were so tightly packed in that there was no room to move around and no space to sit or lie down. Prisoners who tried to bend down to help those who had fallen were invariably trampled and many of them suffocated.

Guards were posted in all four corners of each car and, in order to create their own space in case they needed to use their rifles, they kept their bayonets mounted and pointed toward the prisoners. As a consequence, a number of people were badly injured by the exposed blades as the cars swayed and bumped along the uneven tracks and switches.

There was no food, no water, no form of sanitation. The temperature was well below zero degrees Fahrenheit, and it wasn’t long before people began to collapse and die of exposure. Since the train was stopping periodically to allow the guards in the open cars to change places with the guards who had been resting in the warm passenger cars, we asked if we could create some additional space by throwing some of the corpses overboard. They told us that they would shoot us if we did. They obviously didn’t want a trail of evidence along the tracks that could be used against them later. So, instead, we stacked the frozen bodies up and used them as benches.

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By this time, I was so weak and tired that I completely lost track of time. Our trip might have taken three days, it might have taken five. Again we had no idea of where we were going. To add to our misery, we were strafed by a lone Allied aircraft that came in low over the train with guns blazing. Our guards in the cars returned rifle fire at the plane and we prisoners found ourselves hoping desperately that our guards could protect us from our Allies overhead. We were confused and conflicted because we didn’t know for whom to root. It was one of the many times during imprisonment that I felt intense anger, fear, and guilt all at the same time.

On the final night of our 400 mile journey westward into Germany, it turned out that we were actually in our sixth day of travel. Our three days of rations from Czechowitz had long since been consumed: our thirst and hunger were overwhelming. Fortunately, our car happened to be positioned directly behind the steam locomotive, and the engineer took pity and gave us some very hot water to drink directly from the steam boiler. I felt at the time that it probably saved my life.

When we finally arrived at our destination (it must have been January 4 or 5), it turned out to be Buchenwald, the third oldest of the German concentration camps, having been built just outside the city of Weimar in 1937. Weimar had been the historic cultural center of Germany, the fountainhead of enlightenment, during the lives of Bach, Goethe, Schiller, and Beethoven.

As we were unloaded and marched into the camp, we passed through a gate that read, “Jedem das Seine,” a motto which meant, “to each his due,” or colloquially, “you get what you deserve.” Once again we were processed just as we had been at the previous camps, including the delousing, the showers, and the shaving of the heads and bodies. In the process of undressing and dressing, I noticed that with the loss of my German boots, my frostbitten foot had begun turning black with gangrene.

As had been the case at Auschwitz, each morning and evening we had to assemble and line up on the parade ground to be counted. It was on one of these mornings, after the daily head count, that we were given a cold shower, which was a unique departure from the usual disregard for our health and sanitation.

In the shower, however, there were three Belgian Jehovah’s Witnesses who noticed my blackened foot, and their leader told me to report to the Kleine Revier (sick bay) as soon as possible. I had not even been aware that there was a medical facility for prisoners at the camp, but knowing what happened to people who reported to the “clinic” at Auschwitz, I refused to go. The leader 60

replied that this clinic was safe and, if I didn’t get treatment for my gangrenous condition, I was going to die. After an extended argument, I finally agreed, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses helped carry me to the clinic.

At the clinic, I was treated by a Russian doctor and some German political prisoners, some of whom had been in Buchenwald since it opened in 1937.

(How they had survived in Buchenwald for seven years I will never know!)

They proceeded to strip away the blackened skin from my foot and toes and then instructed me to submerge my entire foot in a pail of hot sodium permanganate, a strong disinfectant. I told them I simply could not do it. The pain in my foot was so excruciating. I could not tolerate anything more. To this they replied that if I refused, they would have to send me back to the barracks.

There were only thirty spaces in the clinic and I needed to be under treatment if I was going to occupy one of them. They also advised me that I would lose the foot and probably my life if I didn’t receive medical attention.

I finally did what they wanted, but I thought to myself that the trip my foot took from the examining table down into the pail was the longest, most frightening trip I had ever taken. As I had expected, it was agonizing: the worst pain of my entire life. The medics then wrapped my foot in paper bandages, which quickly became saturated with ooze from my wounds and soon hardened into a stiff, smelly crust. This treatment was repeated every few days, stripping away the hardened bandages, submersing the foot in hot disinfectant, and then rewrapping it in paper bandages.

Conditions in the clinic were far from ideal. The food rations at Buchenwald had by this time dwindled to a small fraction of what was required to sustain life, especially for those such as myself who were already seriously undernourished.

As a result, my overall condition continued to deteriorate. I was fading fast, having by this time contracted not only typhus but pleurisy as well. To make matters worse, it was at this time that I had one of my most haunting personal experiences. I discovered that there was a young man located several beds away from me in the clinic who came from my hometown. When he recognized me, he told me that he was in the process of dying and he begged me to get him some water. Imagine how I felt having to tell him that I couldn’t walk and was too weak to help him, especially when he said, “Not you too, Emil!”

After about three or four weeks of treatment, my foot began to show early signs of healing. Even though my overall condition was still very poor, I was told that I had to leave the clinic because there were others in the camp who were in much worse shape than I. Today, while I can still feel occasional pain in three 61

toes on my right foot, I have been walking successfully (and gratefully) for the last fifty-plus years only because of the alertness, skill, and persistence of my fellow prisoners.

When I was brought back to the barracks, I was placed near a group of Danish policemen, who had only recently been captured and imprisoned. They were all in very good physical condition compared with the rest of us, which bothered us especially because they were receiving food packages from the Danish Red Cross on a fairly regular basis and never once offered to share any of their good fortune with those who were dying. It renewed the feelings of remorse I had felt when I could not help my hometown friend in the clinic who was in worse condition than I. The camp was now overflowing with more than 75,000 prisoners, many of whom, like ourselves, had only recently come in from the East. Then, for no apparent reason during the first week of April, about 30,000 prisoners were quickly assembled and marched out of the camp, accompanied by the highest ranking and most elite of the SS guards. This abrupt depletion of the camp population and the departure of the elite guards were our first strong indications that the end of Buchenwald as we had known it was close at hand.

Several days later we were told that another large march out of the camp was being planned for the coming week. I knew that in my condition such an experience would be the end for me since I would not be able to keep up and would probably be shot as a straggler. I decided to ignore the marching order if and when it came. I would just try to make myself inconspicuous and remain in the camp.

But this second march never materialized because on the very next day, April 9, the prisoners staged an armed revolt and took over the camp. The insurrection was led by Zionists and members of the German underground, many of whom had been inmates at Buchenwald for over seven years and had been planning the takeover for many months. In subduing the Nazis, they used weapons that had been provided by the prisoners who were employed as slave laborers in the local munitions factory. The weapons had been gradually smuggled into Buchenwald in pieces and hidden away for later reassembly and use. I was too weak to participate in the uprising, but I was aware that there were a large number of the Nazis, mostly older officers, who remained in the camp and were killed by the inmates before they could be taken as prisoners of war by the Americans. There were also a few Nazis who had consistently treated the prisoners with kindness and respect, and some of them were singled out by 62

prisoners and protected from the broad scale reprisals.

Two days after the uprising, the 6th Armored Division of the U.S. 3rd Army under the leadership of General George Patton arrived at Buchenwald and officially liberated us. The date was April 11, 1945.

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In many ways, the liberation itself was an anticlimax for me. I had been awaiting it for so long, with so many expectations, so many false alarms and disappointments, that any emotion associated with freedom was slow in coming.

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Liberation In many ways, the liberation itself was an anticlimax for me. I had been awaiting it for so long, with so many expectations, so many false alarms and disappointments, that any emotion associated with freedom was slow in coming. Of course, my concern for the fate of my mother and sister had not been relieved at all. I’m not sure, looking back, what I really expected: cheering? fireworks? marching bands? flag raisings? or speeches? But the fact was that it was none of those things. Our liberators seemed every bit as unsure of what to expect and what to do as we were.

In fact, the American forces had come across Buchenwald quite by accident, and they were totally unprepared to deal with what they encountered inside the camp. Indeed, the GI’s were mortified by what they saw: the stacks and trenches full of rotting corpses, barracks full of barely living shells of humanity, the gallows, the disease, and the stench. Many U.S. soldiers were physically sickened by the sights and the smells and had to The liberating GI’s at Buchenwald on April 11, be ordered into the camp under 1945 were totally unprepared for what they encountered inside the camp, including these threat of court marshal. Many partially incinerated female skeletons. General simply retreated to outside the Eisenhower was quoted as saying, “The things I gates and refused to return. saw beggar description.”

There was certainly no carefully prepared plan as to how we prisoners were to be treated and how we were actually going to be released.

Moreover, this was an Army on the move, pursuing an exhausted enemy, seeking a surrender, and attempting to occupy as much of Germany as possible before the Russians arrived. They were low on supplies for themselves and were in no position to spend time with, take care of, or provide food for thousands of dying prisoners. So the Third Army moved on with their tanks, trucks and guns, leaving just a skeleton force behind to round up Nazi prisoners, provide some rudimentary medical assistance, and supply us with water. My only vivid memory of those first days following liberation was that the Americans left a potable water truck parked outside the camp gate and told us that it was for 65

us. We could see it through the wire fencing. However, we were all so totally conditioned to being ordered to do everything and being accompanied by guards, so fearful of taking any initiative on our own, that no one made a move to quench his intense thirst. The few remaining American soldiers finally had to bring the water to us.

Several days later, many more GI’s arrived and began trying to deal with our needs. One of the first things that happened was that the Americans offered us food from their ration kits, much of which was rich with sugars and fats and caused many of the prisoners to become quite ill. The Americans also found some concentrated pea soup that they cooked up and served to all the prisoners.

This seemed to have an even more severe and widespread effect than the sweets from the mess kits, suggesting that the well-intentioned pea soup may have been contaminated. Indeed, it was rumored that some of the many deaths that occurred during this period were attributable to the soup. You might say that I was “lucky” during this period because I was still suffering greatly from the effects of typhus and was not close to being able to accept any of the food that was offered by the Americans.

One morning, we were surprised to see long columns of civilians approaching the camp on foot from nearby Weimar. They were being escorted by U.S. Military Police who, at the insistence of General Patton and General Eisenhower, had been instructed to give the local German citizens a first hand, detailed look at the inside of the camp. We found out later that Patton had ordered the M.P.’s to round up 1,000 German civilians and escort them to Buchenwald, but the police apparently took The U.S. generals insisted that the German civilians in the their assignment immediate proximity of Buchenwald tour the camp and verify the nightmare. Most of the visitors were horrified, sick- so seriously that they brought back ened, and claimed that they “had no idea of what was going on beyond those walls.” more than 2,000!

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Generals Patton and Eisenhower were on hand for this visit and both were reportedly sick to their stomachs from the sights and smells.

General Eisenhower later had the following words to describe his visit to Buchenwald and its satellite, Ohrdruf, in a letter he sent to This photo was taken by the first American soldiers who General George C. occupied the liberated camp.

Marshall on April 15, 1945: “The things I saw beggar description.... The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were ... overpowering ... I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda.�

I was confined to the infirmary and was still physically incapacitated so I could not directly witness the reactions of the local civilians, but I was told that the emotional and physical responses were dramatic. People gasped in horror and disbelief. Most cried openly. Many were sickened. Those of us who had been prisoners wondered how people who lived so close to the camp and saw our emaciated slave laborers marching to and from the weapons factory each day could have been blind to what was going on inside the camp. Nevertheless, it was clear that the reality of what Hitler and the Third Reich had brought to the country was far worse than they might have suspected or wanted to believe.

The epidemic of national guilt had begun.

While it was apparent that the reality of freedom was not going to burst upon me with a great flash of light from above, it soon became evident that, for me at least, the significance of liberation was going to develop gradually, an incident at a time, over an extended period. This gradual awareness began growing within me as I experienced what turned out to be a whole series of random acts of kindness by groups and individuals, acts that had been so completely 67

absent during my seven years of captivity. Never before had simple expressions of courtesy, generosity, respect, and friendship seemed so grand!

The first special thing that happened to me was that I was moved to what had been the German officers’ quarters in Buchenwald where I was treated to a real bed with clean sheets. The Army medics offered to carry me from my bunk in the prison to the SS barracks and then up the three flights of stairs to the infirmary, but I pushed them away, assuring them that I could make it on my own. I got about half way up the first flight of steps and collapsed into the arms of the medics who carried me the rest of the way. I later expressed my surprise to one of the medics that we had come up a spiral staircase to which he responded that the staircase wasn’t spiraled. It was I who was spiraling! A random act of kindness - Liberation!

Safe in my new quarters, I was then assigned one of the German POW’s as my personal orderly. He was posted with me full time to help me get around and attend to my immediate needs for recovery. We eventually became good friends, although I lost track of him after I was released.

Another pleasant surprise that came my way quite soon after liberation was that I was to be spared the experience of being declared a displaced person and either staying in the camp along with fellow prisoners and many captured Nazis or being turned loose on my own. Instead, I was visited by a delegation from the Swiss Army and Red Cross who were inviting young survivors and orphans of the war to come to Switzerland for rehabilitation. While I was being interviewed, an American Army officer came into the room and, with a wink of his eye, said, “Of course, Emil, you’ll be eligible for this program because you’re only fourteen.” (Actually, the officer knew that I was nineteen --- but he also knew that the upper age limit for the Swiss program was fourteen and his statement was just a ruse to get me out of Germany and into the program. A random act of kindness - Liberation!

All told, I remained in Buchenwald for almost two months after liberation, waiting for my typhus and pleurisy to clear up sufficiently so that I could travel.

During that brief time, I was amazed at the speed with which civilized living and the rule of law were established under the presence of U.S. troops. The camp was completely cleaned up in just a matter weeks. There was a functioning camp newspaper, and priests, rabbis, psychologists, and doctors were making frequent visits to provide care and counseling. Also, during this period, many of the prisoners who remained in the camp were interviewed by lawyers and intelligence officers who were seeking evidence to be used against individual 68

Nazis in the war crimes trials that were soon to follow.

I chose not to participate in any of these activities because I wanted to put the prison experience behind me — far behind me — just as soon as possible. I envisioned months of depositions and testimony for those who chose to serve as witnesses to the Nazi atrocities and violations of international laws. I didn’t want to do anything that might delay my departure for Switzerland, especially when I learned that a large area in north-eastern Germany that included Weimar and Buchenwald was soon going to come under the control of Russia.

I had heard much about the way in which the Russians dealt with German prisoners of war, and I wanted no part of it. Importantly, I was impatient to get on with the rest of my life.

Shortly before the camp was actually turned over to the Russians by the Americans, I was told to join a caravan of about ten American ambulances that was departing for Switzerland as a part of the rehabilitation program. I recall that each ambulance could accommodate four stretchers and eight to ten patients seated on benches. I remember that I was well enough at that point to take one of the benches. The ambulances were old and slow, and it took us the better part of a day to cover the 150 miles from Buchenwald to Frankfurt, where we stayed overnight in a hospital that had been evacuated especially for us. In the morning, we continued our journey southward toward our destination in Basel, a distance of about 200 miles.

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…when a French Army truck caught up with us and proceeded to set up a wonderful French picnic for all fifty of us, complete with tablecloths that were spread out carefully on the ground. The officer in charge said to us, “Gentlemen (it had been a long time since we had been addressed as Gentlemen), we think that you should have at least one good meal before you leave Germany.”

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Convalescence At the border between Germany and Switzerland, we ran into complications as the American ambulance drivers and the French border guards who had taken over control of the border from the Germans got into an extended argument as to whether and how our crossing was to take place. The discussion went on for more than two hours as it became increasingly apparent that the Americans understood no French and the French understood no English. However, the delay turned out to be a blessing in disguise, when a French Army truck caught up with us and proceeded to set up a wonderful French picnic for all fifty of us, complete with tablecloths that were spread out carefully on the ground. The officer in charge said to us, “Gentlemen (it had been a long time since we had been addressed as Gentlemen), we think that you should have at least one good meal before you leave Germany.” As the meal progressed, the disagreements over our passage into Switzerland seemed to disappear, and we moved on to our destination. A random act of kindness - Liberation!

Our multinational group of young patients finally arrived at the Marienspital (St. Mary’s Hospital) in Basel, where we found that we were going to be attended by a very caring order of cloistered Catholic nuns. Since I had picked up a smattering of many languages: Polish, French, Yiddish, Hungarian, and Russian during my years in prison, I was able to help the nuns communicate with the members of our multilingual group during the ensuing weeks. (As an aside, I should mention that an important element in surviving the concentration camp experience was being able to communicate with fellow prisoners, guards, with anyone who might provide help or information.) The nuns appreciated my linguistic efforts so much that they rewarded me with special helpings of raspberries, which to this day are my favorite fruit. A random act of kindness - Liberation!

Recognizing my Jewish heritage, the nuns also sought to express their appreciation by sending a rabbi to see me, an occasion that turned out to be less than rewarding for all concerned. The rabbi who answered their call was stiff, ill-at-ease, and totally out of touch with the needs of those of us who had survived the war. He and I established no rapport as he began addressing me as his “son.” I assured him that I was a son only to my father, Alex, who died in Theresienstadt in 1943. He then asked me to join him in prayer to the Lord, expressing thanks for my deliverance from danger and deprivation, whereupon I informed him that I was not a man of faith and, even if I were, I would not be asking for a blessing on anyone other than the thousands of others who had suffered and died, while I survived.

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This did nothing to strengthen our relationship, but undaunted, he asked if there was anything at all he could do to help me. And this was an offer to which I could definitely respond. While I had been rather completely outfitted with “outside” clothing since my liberation (with parts of a U.S. Army uniform and a French shirt), these clothes were most uncomfortable because all of my underwear had long since been lost, confiscated, or worn out. “Could you find me some underwear?” I asked. He said that he was certain that he could and that he would arrange for it right away. But again, he disappointed me; I never heard anything further from him or about him!

The nuns, on the other hand, brought me raspberries and continued looking for ways to express their thanks for my help. So, when two of the younger sisters asked me if there was anything more they could do for me, I again responded with my need for some underwear. The girls giggled at my request but made no specific response, which I assumed meant that they were shocked or embarrassed and would ignore what must have seemed to be a frivolous need on my part. Three days later, however, much to my surprise, they reappeared with one of those perfectly wrapped Swiss gift boxes, containing a full set of undergarments. As I thanked them for their kindness, they said that, as they were a cloistered order, I should thank Mother Superior for leaving the convent in order to buy the underwear. She had never left the convent except on the occasion of her mother’s funeral. A random act of kindness - Liberation!

Much of Emil’s convalescence took place in Davos, Switzerland where he encountered many “random acts of kindness.” Here he is showing progress in regaining the 60 pounds he lost during internment.

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I had been at St. Mary’s for only a few weeks when I was informed that I was being transferred to a hospital in Davos, Switzerland, a small town high in the Alps in the far eastern corner of the country.

Davos was famous as an all-season resort and had become known around the world as the site of

Europe’s most important sanatorium for tuberculosis. While I had not actually been diagnosed with TB, this move was being made as a precaution, given my overall rundown condition and the feeling that I would be particularly susceptible to TB because of my lengthy bout with typhus and the case of pleurisy that had subsequently developed.

I was sorry to leave Basel because the nuns had been wonderful nurses and had treated every one of us with affection and respect, despite our individual differences and despite the fact that most of us had no interest or belief in religion. However, I was now under the control of the Swiss Army and I had no choice but to follow their instructions.

Accordingly, I made the one-day trip to Davos by train and was initially housed in a very pleasant pension called Aela. It was run by a friendly Swiss couple who had converted their twenty room inn to a convalescent home for recovering prisoners and wounded soldiers. Even though they lacked sophisticated treatment facilities and diagnostic equipment such as x-ray, they employed a full time nurse and were visited regularly by doctors from the nearby sanatorium. I was very happy there and was making what I considered to be good progress in regaining my health. My starved body, which had dwindled to about 85 pounds in Czechowitz and Buchenwald, rapidly returned to more than 100 pounds, and I was gaining every day. Indeed, I began feeling so much better that I asked several of the young doctors who were attending my case whether I might join a group of my newly made friends in some downhill skiing at one of the many nearby parks. They quickly dismissed my request, indicating that I was not nearly as ready for that kind of exposure and exercise as I thought I was.

Undaunted by these refusals, the next time I heard of a group of patients who were planning some local recreation, this time a tobogganing trip on a course that had been built for the recent Olympics, I signed up and went off without asking anyone for permission. (I should point out that this was just one of the many times immediately following my liberation that I took particular pleasure in ignoring anything that even smelled like a direct order!)

As I recall, I had a wonderful time that day, frolicking with my friends in the Alps, but, as things turned out, I paid a heavy price for my brashness. I almost immediately suffered a relapse and contracted another case of pleurisy, an outcome that the young doctors were quick to point out would never have happened if I had obeyed their warning and listened to their instructions. I obviously didn’t have any excuse I could offer, but my embarrassment was somewhat tempered when an older doctor who, upon overhearing their admonitions to me, delivered a German quotation that translated into 73

something like “You Can’t Kill the Weeds in the Garden!” A random act of kindness – Liberation!

At any rate, my recovery at Aela was not seriously impeded by my temporary setback, and I was looking forward to completing my return to good health in this friendly, informal, relaxed setting. Unfortunately, those in the Swiss Army who were overseeing my case felt that several of us needed more professional care, the kind that would be available to us at Etania, the famous local sanatorium.

Accordingly, after just a few weeks in the pension, I was moved to the big hospital where I was x-rayed and thoroughly examined. While it was quickly concluded that I did not have TB, I was told that I needed the continued surveillance and professional treatment that were only available at Etania. I spent all of my remaining time in Switzerland in that institution, although I have always suspected that there were politics involved in my transfer from Etania Sanatorium in Davos has long been famous for TB the pension to the treatment and rehabilitation. The Swiss volunteered treathospital. I learned ment for recovering prisoners. that the hospital was at least partially underwritten by wealthy Jewish Swiss families, and there seemed to be competition among the several local treatment centers for Jewish patients. Imagine: competition for the admission and inclusion of Jews!!

The roommate who was assigned to me at Etania was a young man who was carrying on a regular correspondence with a girlfriend in Sweden. He and I became good friends, and we talked at great length about a number of subjects.

In the course of these discussions, I mentioned my deep concern about the whereabouts and safety of my mother and sister, whom I had last seen when I was moved out of Theresienstadt early in 1944. He then apparently mentioned in one of his next letters to his girlfriend that he was rooming with a young German named Landau from Witten who was looking for his mother and sister, Sidonie and Helga Landau.

Shortly after this, my roommate came to me in great excitement and said that 74

he had just received another note from his girlfriend in which she reported that she had just heard the names “Sidonie” and “Helga” Landau mentioned on the radio. Apparently, the Russians were broadcasting a daily report that listed the names of all displaced persons who were being moved from East to West as a part of the overall liberation and repatriation agreements.

With this news, I immediately wrote out a message that said in essence, “Emil Landau of Witten is alive and well in Switzerland and is searching for his mother and sister, Sidonie and Helga Landau.” I naturally included my address in Davos and gave copies of the message to the Swiss Red Cross and the Czech Embassy for posting in public places in Germany where thousands of people throughout Europe were trying to spread the word in search of missing friends and relatives. I knew that it was a long-shot, but it was the only action I could think of taking. I was not surprised when there was no immediate response.

Many weeks passed as my health and strength continued to return. During this period, I took part in a series of classes and interviews conducted by the Swiss Army that were designed to determine my suitability as a possible recipient of scholarship aid in Switzerland following my release. I learned that the Swiss government had established a sizeable relief fund for wounded soldiers and Holocaust survivors and that it was this fund that was covering all of my medical expenses and might be available for my further education as well. I took a series of tests that were designed to determine how well I could learn and the degree to which I would probably make good use of an advanced education. I was eventually selected along with two others to receive a full scholarship at the University of Geneva following my full recovery.

A random act of kindness Patients and Staff at Etania shortly before release. Emil is Liberation! standing 6th from the left.

It was also during this period in my recovery that I had an opportunity to begin reflecting seriously on some of the events that had impacted my life since the carefree days in 75

Witten during the early 1930’s. The impact began with the mild harassment by grammar school bullies in 1933, followed by the exodus to Herrlingen in 1935, the trauma of Kristallnacht in 1938, the loss of property and identity with the forced exodus to Dortmund in 1939, the “benign concentration” and imprisonment at Theresienstadt in 1941, the deprivation, cruelty, and murder in Auschwitz and Czechowitz in 1943 --- and finally, my physical collapse from starvation, exposure, and disease at Buchenwald in 1945.

Even though I prided myself in having survived the Third Reich with a minimum of emotional display, my memory of all the experiences that had shaped my adolescence now began to coalesce in my young mind and express themselves in the form of repetitive nightmares. According to my fellow patients, I was frequently screaming in my sleep, and while I have no recollection of these episodes, I was very conscious of the fact that I was not sleeping well (a condition that has persisted throughout the balance of my life). Many years later, I was told by one of the psychiatrists who reviewed my case that I had suffered “Post Traumatic Stress,” a condition that is treatable when diagnosed soon after a life-changing experience, but very difficult to correct later on.

Perhaps the best indication of my emotional state at the time was an incident that occurred one afternoon in the hospital while I was listening to one of the first live, post-war broadcasts of Radio Free Europe. It was a concert that was being conducted in Milan, Italy by Arturo Toscanini who was visiting from the United States. The centerpiece of his program was Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As the orchestra and chorus began the final movement, “Ode to Joy (“Ode An Die Freude,”) I suddenly found myself in tears, as I listened to the familiar words, “All men become brothers under the sway of thy gentle wings.” Some of my friends saw my condition and were quick to ask what was bothering me. I had trouble responding to this question except to tell them that I had been struck by the irony of Schiller’s lyrics that described mankind’s capacity for peace and compassion born of tragedy and struggle and had been set to music by one of the world’s greatest composers. Beethoven and Schiller had both lived in Weimar, just 3 miles from Buchenwald, the scene of one of mankind’s darkest hours. Ever since that day, the Ninth Symphony has been my favorite piece of music. Every time I hear it, I have the same uncontrolled reaction that came over me in Davos in 1946.

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Reunion One day in late spring on my way to lunch, I was told that I had a letter at the hospital post office. I didn’t think too much about this because I had received several letters from my aunts in Argentina and I assumed that this was just another of these. When I picked up the envelope, however, it bore a postmark that indicated it had been forwarded to me via the Armed Services Post Office in New York City. (There was not yet any regular civilian mail service between Germany and the rest of Europe.) When I opened the envelope, I found a letter inside from my mother, indicating that she had received my message and that she and my sister were safe in Bremen, Germany.

I quickly contacted them by phone and found that they wanted to get out of Germany, indeed, out of Europe just as soon as possible. They told me that our hometown of Witten and the building where we had lived had been badly damaged by the bombing and that reconstruction, when and if it was undertaken, would take a long time. Furthermore, it did not appear as though Germany was going to be a very safe or hospitable place for Jews to live, given the many months of deprivation that existed during the war and the recriminations that were already being directed at Jews who again were being blamed for all that had happened. Mother was seriously considering a move to Argentina, where she could join her sisters, but she was also open to emigrating to the US where she had several cousins. I told her that I wanted to join them immediately, but would only consider going to America.

We agreed that I would come to Bremen as soon as possible and that we would begin working on our passage to the United States.

I don’t remember hesitating at all in deciding to emigrate to the U.S. rather than take advantage of my scholarship in Switzerland. The long hours of dreaming and yearning to reunite with my family and the dozens of occasions upon which we had pledged to each other that we would get together after the war, hopefully

Ready for release: the end of 8 long years away from home.

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in Witten, were still dominant forces in my life. Indeed, they were probably more responsible for preserving my will to survive than any other single factor.

Accordingly, I informed the Swiss Army medical authorities that I wanted to be released for travel to the United States with my mother and sister, a request that they quickly granted.

But how would I get to Bremen? I was a German in Switzerland with no papers.

I was technically an illegal alien. I had no money at all. And, worst of all, it seemed as though everyone I talked with had a different reason why my reentry into Germany in the near term would be impossible. After several days of fruitless inquiries, the Swiss authorities finally volunteered that they had just one option they could offer me for a quick departure. They could deport me with the provision that I would not be allowed to reenter Switzerland and that my scholarship to The University of Geneva would be forfeited. I had no choice but to agree with their terms. But imagine my surprise and appreciation when, at the last moment, they gave me a two month permit to reenter the country if I decided I wanted to return and claim the scholarship. A random act of kindness - Liberation!

Within a few days, I was driven by car to the Swiss/German border at Konstanz, where I joined a group of about eight other deportees, whom I perceived to be mostly criminals, prostitutes, and illegal aliens. As I was being processed by the Border Patrol, an old German customs agent seemed determined to make things difficult for me. He spotted an inexpensive wristwatch that I had purchased for my sister in Davos and he insisted that I was not allowed to bring such an item into Germany. In all of my trials with the German bureaucracy I can’t ever remember having been as angry as I was at that puffed-up little man. I must have looked violent because a French Army officer who was also stationed at the border interrupted our argument. He declared that he was in charge of the border, not the German functionary, and he told the customs agent to let me pass. (This part of Germany was in the newly established French Zone, and thus the Frenchman was definitely in control of the border.)

But the Frenchman apparently had some reservations of his own, and before letting me pass he asked me to provide proof of my identity. I obviously had no such proof available but I told him that I had been a prisoner in Buchenwald and I showed him my tattoo from Auschwitz. He still seemed suspicious and asked me what cell block I had been in at Buchenwald. When I gave him the number, he brightened immediately and acknowledged that he too had been in that block. He became very friendly and told me that his name was Lt. 78

Solbat. He advised me how to get to the train station. He also volunteered that a section of the Orient Express would be passing though town very soon en route to Stuttgart. He suggested that I use some of the Swiss coffee he had seen in my bag in lieu of money for a ticket.

I thanked him for all of his help, and as we parted he reminded me that it was Bastille Day, July 14, 1946. As I entered my native country for the first time in more than three years of imprisonment, I thought once again about liberation and Random Acts of Kindness.

The Swiss coffee proved to be better than money as I then proceeded to buy my way onto a series of sold-out trains, several of which had people literally hanging onto cars and platforms from the outside. My “hitchhiking” by rail proved to be more successful than I could have hoped as I traveled first to Stuttgart, then to Frankfort, Cologne, Essen, and finally to my destination in just under two days.

I arrived in Bremen at dusk on July 16, just as the nightly curfew was going into effect. There was no motor transportation available, and the people I talked with at the station strongly advised me to stay off the streets. But they gave me pretty good instructions as to how to get to the place where my mother and sister were staying, so I decided to take my chances. Setting out on foot for what turned out to be a long, spooky walk through the dark, deserted streets of Bremen, I never encountered a single person. All I ever experienced was the sound of my own footsteps on the cobble stones.

My luck held out.

When I finally found the apartment and knocked at the door, I was asked by my sister to identify myself. But she wouldn’t let me in because she couldn’t recognize my voice.

It had changed and deepened considerably since last we Reunion with Helga who didn’t recognize his voice. saw each other. I eventually convinced her and my mother that I was really their brother and son. When they finally opened the door, we all embraced and broke into tears.

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There was, of course, much catching up to do. We hadn’t seen each other for more than a year, during which we had each experienced much hardship, cruelty, and indignity at the hands of the Nazis. My mother had actually thought I had been killed at Auschwitz, and I had had similar worries about her and my sister. However, first things first. As always, mother’s first concern was what she could do for me, and my response was immediate: a hot shower. Unfortunately, the curfew brought with it a shutdown of the municipal power supply, which meant there was no hot water and no water pressure for a shower. Instead, we filled a tub with water that we heated on the gas stove, and I climbed in, as we then talked and talked on into the night.

I learned that my mother and sister had had the good fortune of remaining at Theresienstadt for an additional six to seven months before being transferred to Auschwitz where they had undergone the same indoctrination I had endured —selection, delousing, shaving, etc. Then, after a short period, they had been moved to a satellite camp just as I had been. Theirs was a camp located in Marzdorf (Silesia) that was made up entirely of women, including the SS guards who were reported to be even meaner than their male counterparts. Helga and my mother were given weaving jobs in a nearby blanket factory, where they spent a little over a year in slave labor until the camp was liberated by the Russians on May 8, just four weeks after I had been liberated at Buchenwald. They had then been put on a westbound train and allowed to fend for themselves.

At that point, my mother, who was small of stature but very strong both physically and emotionally, had taken charge of several young German girls, including my sister, who had been working as laborers at the camp. Mother and another woman, who was accompanied by her own daughter, formed a group of seven, and together they shepherded the girls safely back to Germany.

It was not an easy trip, and it is doubtful that any of these young women would have escaped injury, molestation or worse in the lawless chaos that immediately followed the war had it not been for my mother’s leadership and protection. Indeed, there was so much looting and raping being perpetrated by the liberating Russian soldiers that it was necessary for my mother and her adult companion to lock themselves and all of the girls in a single room each night and persuade a Russian officer to sleep outside the door for protection.

Most of the girls eventually left the group as they joined friends or relatives in Germany along the way.

In accordance with our family pledge, Mother and Helga had first gone to Witten to determine the condition of our former home. It was their hope that 80

they could move back in and begin putting their former lives back together.

Unfortunately, they found that the building had been badly damaged during the war and was not habitable. Instead, they were encouraged by my mother’s Uncle Karl to join him in Bremen where he would find them a place to stay.

Accordingly, they moved on to Bremen where they stayed in an apartment that had been used by a Nazi officer. Since one of the girls who had accompanied my mother on the trip back to Germany had nowhere to go, she ended up staying with my mother and sister in the apartment for the better part of a year.

Sometime prior to the time I made contact with my mother and made my trip to Bremen, Mother had booked passage to the U.S. for herself and my sister.

She did this by using her cousins in Seattle, Washington, as sponsors and by paying for the tickets with some of the gold that my father had managed to export to Holland. Unfortunately, before we could arrange passage for me on the same ship, an extended longshoreman’s strike broke out in New York City and our ship was cancelled Not knowing how long the strike might last, we all tried to find temporary work that would keep us busy and provide needed cash. I was fortunate in getting a job with one of the intelligence agencies attached to the American Army of occupation. This particular unit was responsible for identifying and appointing Germans who could be given responsibility for municipal leadership jobs and who could assist in managing the reconstruction. My specific responsibility was to interview and make recommendations for the hiring of prospective village mayors. I enjoyed this work very much and believe that I made a good contribution, although I will say that I was not at all impressed by the quantity or quality of leadership that was being provided by the Allies for this very important work.

Finally, the U.S. longshoreman’s strike was settled, and we were successful in booking passage for all three of us on the very first boat to America. We set sail for New York from Bremerhaven on the SS Marine Marlin on December 9, 1946.

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After eleven full days of fighting the forces of nature, we arrived in New York Harbor on December 20, 1946.

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Stateside The Marine Marlin was one of the many hastily assembled ships that had been built in 1945 to transport U.S. troops to the battle fronts in Europe and Asia.

It was one of a number of such vessels that was now being operated by United States Lines for the purpose of bringing soldiers back to the U.S. along with refugees from abroad. It was hardly a luxury vessel and survived the scrap yard only until 1949, by which time the mass migration across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans was essentially complete.

The ship had been designed to carry 3,500 troops and equipment, a number that was clearly being exceeded on our particular crossing. Indeed, conditions aboard ship were in some ways reminiscent of the cattle cars we had ridden in during our transport to Auschwitz. Men and women were separated, with the women being assigned four to a stateroom and the men being placed in huge dormitories below-decks, consisting of at least one hundred tightly packed, multi-tiered bunks. I was assigned to a berth in the very bowels of the hull, almost at the apex of the bow and, as the ship pitched and rolled, my bunk was tossed about like a cork. The impact of the waves on the sheet metal hull sounded as though we were all entombed in a kettle drum, a condition that was exacerbated by one of the worst storms to hit the North Atlantic that winter.

It engulfed us during the entire crossing and caused the ship to make a wide detour around the normal shipping lanes, a maneuver that added at least five days to the length of the trip. Sleep was impossible and seasickness consumed practically all of the passengers, including those in the somewhat better quarters up above. The crew strung ropes along passageways, across decks, and in the stairwells so that those few passengers who were courageous or foolish enough to venture beyond their quarters would have something to hang on to. Miraculously, I escaped the sickness but not the anxiety, sleeplessness, and tossing about that accompanied us during the entire voyage. After eleven full days of fighting the forces of nature, we arrived in New York Harbor on December 20, 1946.

It was with great relief and considerable emotion that we got our first view of the Statue of Liberty and the New York City skyline. It was with joy and anticipation that we finally set foot on U.S. soil and began what we hoped and expected would be a new life: a life that would be free of the inhumanity we had endured for the past eight years. We knew it was not going to be easy; we had practically no money and we had limited English language skills. We had just a few friends and distant relatives to help us get oriented.

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In addition, we had been told by the sailors on board our ship that unemployment was widespread in America due to the end of the war and the return of thousands of U.S. soldiers. But we had survived. Our spirits were high. We were determined to put recent experience behind us and get on with our lives.

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Postscript During the six years that have elapsed since Emil’s death, his story has been circulated and reviewed by numerous local writers, teachers, historians, students, and community leaders, as well as by staff members at the Holocaust Center at the University of Vermont and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. While the feedback from these reviews has been uniformly positive, it has raised an important question about the survival process itself. “How was it that millions of innocent people were murdered or allowed to die of starvation, exhaustion, torture, or disease, while others survived the atrocities imposed by the Nazis and lived to tell their stories of bravery, mistreatment, fear, uncertainty, and horror?”

Emil, of course, was in this latter group, and he always began his stories with an acknowledgement that his life and liberation were due in part to “just plain good luck, being in the right places at the right times.” At the same time, he was quick to assert that he had never thought of himself as a victim or a casualty of the Second World War. Rather he considered himself to be a survivor of his over three year internment — by which he meant that he, not the Nazis, had been in control of his destiny as he fulfilled his father’s pledge to resist and overcome any injuries and indignities that the enemy might inflict upon him and his family. He was well aware that deep emotional depression had affected significant numbers of prisoners and was linked directly to many of their deaths through suicide or execution. With great regularity, therefore, both before and during incarceration, Emil would use his father’s words to encourage his mother, sister, and closest friends with reminders such as: “In life, things usually don’t just happen. If you really want them to happen you can’t just wait until they come to you. You have to make them happen.” And then, in reference to the Nazis, “Don’t ever let them get you down. Remember, you’re much better than they are. You can handle it, and that’s the way you will beat them.”

This unwavering determination on Emil’s part was demonstrated by his deep commitment to keeping his family together. He refused the tempting opportunity of being moved to Scotland by his German private school at Herrlingen soon after Kristallnacht, a transfer that would have allowed him to complete his high school studies at Gordonstoun but would have resulted in the break-up of the family. Later, when Jews were being deported en masse out of Germany, he took steps that helped keep the family intact such that all 85

of the Landaus got transferred together to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia rather than being split up and sent to separate and much more threatening locations. Even after liberation, he turned down a full scholarship and the offer to attend university in Switzerland rather than desert his mother and sister as they departed for the United States.

In addition to the support that Emil gave and received from his family, he benefited greatly from his own positive attitude, his self confidence, his instinctive love of people, and his ability to bond quickly with those around him — fellow prisoners, guards, nurses, and doctors. He consistently surrounded himself with friends whom he referred to as “buddies” — young men like himself with whom he could share information, evaluate risks, and make plans.

He was a good judge of people and his positive attitude regularly resulted in favorable treatment from those with whom he interacted: hot showers and increased rations from the prison guards at Czechowitz in exchange for extra work, the offer from the liberating US Army Captain to arrange for his special rehabilitation in Switzerland instead of war-torn Germany, gifts of clean underwear and raspberries from the Nuns at St. Mary’s Hospital in Basel in appreciation for his help with language translations, and many other favors that seem to have come his way. He simply attributed these favors to “random acts of kindness.”

But Emil’s greatest contribution to his own well being as well as that of his comrades may well have been his ability to outsmart his captors by figuring out their strategy and beating them at their own game. For example, upon imprisonment, he quickly noticed that one of the Nazis’ prime objectives in the prisons was to separate out the young, healthy prisoners and put them to work in factories and farms to support the German war effort while systematically murdering those who were not “selected” such as the old, the weak, the sickly, the starving and the suspected enemies of the State. Thus, he sought every opportunity to demonstrate his own health, strength, buoyancy, and ability to out-produce his co-workers as he consistently delivered high quality work that exceeded the expectations of his captors.

In this same vein, he did everything possible to keep himself healthy and on the job by finding ways to get assigned work in safe environments such as the camp bakery where he could remain warm and dry while benefitting from extra food which got overlooked or discarded. He took special care of his feet by trading food and tobacco for a pair of rugged, high quality German military boots that were much better than those of his fellow prisoners. In the work 86

gangs and during marches to and from the oil refinery at Czechowitz, he was keenly aware of the fact that prisoners with bad feet who could not keep up were systematically being shot.

In net, it was Emil’s basic intelligence, his unrelenting determination to prevail, his ability to recognize and influence those conditions of prison life over which he could exercise some control, his ability to size up people and gain their support, his positive upbeat attitude, and his willingness to take reasonable risks that combined to save his life and the lives of many around him.

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The Board elected to use these funds to create a lasting memorial to Emil by establishing “The Emil Landau Human Rights Forum.�

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Emil’s Life and Work in the United States Many who knew Emil personally or have read his story have been prompted to ask about his life after liberation and to speculate about the effect on his later life of his earlier experiences as a pre-war schoolboy and as a teenager enduring seven years of deprivation and abuse, three of which were as a prisoner in concentration camps. While much could be said about his postwar years, it will not come as a surprise that they were similar in many ways to life and career narratives of many immigrants who came to the U.S. in search of freedom and the opportunity to pursue their dreams.

Emil began that search with little in the way of higher education and practically no financial backing, but he eagerly embarked on a career in business with the determination to move ahead “the old fashioned way” (as he described it), the same determination that allowed him to survive his wartime experiences in Europe. For him this meant the selection of a career path, acquiring some basic skills, getting a steady job, starting at the bottom, learning on the job, and then moving ahead as quickly as possible through hard work, creativity and common sense, the factors that had stood him in good stead during the war years. As in all of his previous experiences, he was eager to demonstrate that he could be a survivor, not a victim.

Emil, his mother and his sister Helga arrived in New York from Bremerhaven in December 1946. There they established temporary residence in a hotel that served as the headquarters of the United Service for New Americans, the official reception, orientation, and deployment center for immigrants and refugees on the East Coast. The USNA offered unlimited accommodations at the hotel along with a small cash stipend, a clothing allowance, language lessons, job skills training, and placement assistance. They were immediately contacted by “Uncle Fritz,” a distant cousin of Emil’s father who was living in Seattle and had been designated as their official host in the U.S. Because they were unable to find employment in New York, they were persuaded

by Uncle Fritz’s encouragement to join him in Seattle where jobs were more plentiful. In January 1947, with the help of a loan from USNA to buy train tickets, they traveled to Seattle. Jobs were a necessity. Emil began by assembling footlockers in a luggage factory, his mother was hired as a practical nurse, and Helga served as a nanny for friends of relatives in Germany. Uncle Fritz could offer only temporary accommodations, so they pooled their earnings to rent a modest one-room apartment for the three of them. Emil enrolled in a full time 89

night school course in photography and soon got a job in a small photo studio taking passport portraits.

In September 1949 Emil moved to San Francisco where he found a series of increasingly challenging jobs using advanced technical camera skills in a variety of industrial and commercial applications, particularly in color printing. By the end of that year he had achieved his initial long-term salary goal – a salary of $100 per week. He also found time to make new friends who would play important roles later in his life. In 1956, Emil tried unsuccessfully to get a job with Time/Life, Inc. but the following year Time/Life offered him a position in New York to help introduce a new technology for color printing. This was the opportunity for which he had been waiting: a chance to get in on the ground floor of a major technological breakthrough in color print production.

Emil moved to New York in 1957 where he began his career in the Time/Life laboratories in New York and Springdale, Connecticut. He was a key member of a team working to perfect a process that used one of the first electronic scanners to convert color images into electronic data. Not only did Emil help pioneer the scanner, he became known for his leadership in introducing this new process to the printing industry. He demonstrated the necessary technical skills and the people skills required to minimize the emotional and financial impact of these technologies.

In 1961 Emil married Carolyn Moorhouse and began a busy social and business life in New York, interspersed with skiing and sailing trips. In 1969 they welcomed their son Alexander.

Emil concluded twelve wonderful years with Time in 1969. He, Carolyn, and Alex moved to Madison, Connecticut, where Emil started a small company that identified and marketed new products and technologies using imported specialized pre-press printing equipment. He sold his company in 1989 and for the next two years worked as a private Home at last! Alex (son), Carolyn (wife), and consultant in color printing, Emil sailing on Penobscot Bay in the 1990’s retiring in 1991.

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Emil and Carolyn moved to Damariscotta, Maine, in 1991. In his retirement years Emil had a busy schedule of public presentations about his Holocaust story throughout New England. He also had time and energy to devote to charitable organizations in the Damariscotta region.

Emil died in Damariscotta on August 26, 2007. He is survived by his wife, Carolyn and son, Alex. Following his death, the Skidompha Library Board received a number of gifts in Emil’s memory. The Board elected to use these funds to create a lasting memorial to Emil by establishing “The Emil Landau Human Rights Forum.” Its purpose is to fund projects that will continue to explore and enlighten issues that are relevant to current needs of the community.

Programs to date have been enthusiastically received and have included topics such as Housing, Hunger, Civil Rights, Transportation, and Bullying.

David S. Swanson March 22, 2013

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David Swanson David Swanson earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Yale University in 1952 and a Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from M.I.T. in 1953. For thirty five years he was with Procter & Gamble Company of Ohio. He retired in 1991 as Senior Vice President and member of the Board of Directors with global responsibilities.

He and his wife, Ann, retired to Walpole, Maine where they are involved in many community activities. He attended Emil Landau’s talks and felt Emil’s story should be recorded and preserved.

David would like to thank Professor Steven Gowler, Director of General Education, and Dr. Larry D. Shinn, President, of Berea College in Kentucky for their help.

Ronald Coleman, Reference Librarian – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. was helpful in his research.

David Scarce, Professor of German and Russian, and Chairman of The Holocaust Center, retired at the University of Vermont, Burlington read the manuscript and gave advice and encouragement.

Professor Wolfgang Mieder, Professor of German and Russian, and Chairman of The Holocaust Center of University of Vermont.

And finally, David wishes to thank his wife Ann for her patience and support.

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Notes from Skidompha Press Skidompha Public Library would like to thank the following people for bringing this project to fruition.

First of all, our thanks to David Swanson for having the foresight to realize how important it was to tell this story, which until then was a subject of short talks

by Emil based on his memories. David wrote from the interviews he had with Emil, arranging the story in chronological and logical order and telling it from Emil’s first person perspective.

Stephen Dixon, a former Skidompha Library Board member and head of the library’s Landau Human Rights Forum, learned of this and proposed that Skidompha take on the job of editing and publishing, and worked closely with David to accomplish this.

Thanks go to Pam Gormley, Skidompha Library’s Director, for enthusiastically embracing the project and making this book the Library’s first publishing effort.

The Skidompha Library’s Emil Landau Human Rights Forum deserves thanks for countless hours of work on planning, proofreading and publicizing the finished product. Forum members include Stephen Dixon, Louise Belknap, Sarah Birkett, Mary Kate Reny and Carole Fowler. Denise Rankin and Mal Gormley also lent their expertise. The group was aided by George Shaw assisting David Swanson with parts of the text and Anna Shaw, who worked closely with Emil’s wife Carolyn in choosing, scanning and editing the photographs.

Special thanks go to Al Trescot, who applied his talents generously in preparing the manuscript.

And lastly, our heartfelt thanks go to Emil’s wife, Carolyn Landau, without whom this book would not be possible.

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