I Am a Victor: The Mordechai Ronen Story - Hardcover

Ronen, Mordechai

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1459731786 ISBN 13: 9781459731783

Publisher: Dundurn, 2016

Synopsis

A man’s journey of triumph over unspeakable evil and the powerful impact of the choice to survive against all odds.

Mordechai Ronen was born in a peaceful town in 1930s Hungary. By the time he turned eleven years old, the world had gone mad. He became one of the millions of Jews to be shipped to a Nazi death camp. How he survived that ordeal and what followed is the incredible story told in these pages.

That Mordechai is alive today is nothing short of a miracle. His is an incredible story of triumph and unwavering determination to survive, which is what he did against all odds in the Nazi death camps. The journey that began in the Holocaust carried Ronen through the establishment of Israel, immigration to Canada, and finally to an emotional return to Auschwitz, this time as a guest of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who called that moment one of the most extraordinary he had seen in his four decades in politics.

About this title

About the Authors

Mordechai Ronen survived the Holocaust as a child from Hungary. He became a fighter in the underground, and an eighteen-year veteran of the Israel Defense Forces. He now lives in Toronto with his wife, children, and grandchildren.

Steve Paikin is anchor of The Agenda with Steve Paikin, TVO’s flagship current affairs program since 2006. He has written four previous books on politics, including Paikin and the Premiers. Paikin has spent more than 30 years in journalism, 20 of them at Ontario’s provincial broadcaster. He lives in Toronto.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER FOUR

TO THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS

Whatever rumours we heard in the past were now irrelevant. Now we would find out our true fate. We walked from the ghetto to the train station, and no, there wasn’t a nice passenger train awaiting us. Rather, the guards loaded us into cattle cars, pushing and kicking us like animals, squeezing as many of us as possible into the trains. They told us at the ghetto to take as many of our belongings as we could hold in our hands or stuff into our pockets. But as soon as we arrived at the train station, they took it all away. Even without our belongings, we were all crammed in so tight, there was no room to move. That cliché about sardines in a tin was absolutely true. When the cars were fully packed, the guards closed the doors with a noisy thud, and then locked them with iron bars. There was another significant difference between the ghetto and the train station. It was Hungarian troops that escorted us out of the ghetto. But at the train station, we were handed over to German soldiers. We noticed the swastikas on their uniforms and guns in hand as they patrolled the platform. Once again, we were told that we were being taken to a labour camp. Which one and where? We had no clue. The journey by train took several days and it was excruciating. Try to imagine the heat, the hunger, the humiliation. There were no stops along the way. It was next to impossible to sleep. People had to urinate and defecate on the train, crammed up against others. For some, the conditions were too much. They simply died in their places. And there was no way to remove the bodies. People were screaming, crying, and groaning in pain. There were some small openings in the walls to allow in some light and air, but barely anything. On rare occasions, the guards would open the doors and throw in some food and water. It was utterly dehumanizing. After a few days, the train stopped. We still had no idea where we were. Were we still in Hungary? Then someone from outside screamed in German: “Juden, raus! Schnell!” (“Jews, get out! Quickly!”). Some people were unable to walk. They were dragged out, and taken away to God only knows where. A German officer told us to line up in front of the train. And it was at that point that I noticed a sign that read: “Auschwitz.” Today, Auschwitz is synonymous with cruelty and death. But to an 11-year-old boy from Hungary, it meant nothing. I had no knowledge of the frightening reputation of the place. Frankly, I didn’t even know what country it was in. (Auschwitz, or Oswiecim as it’s called in Polish, is more than 700 kilometres northwest of Dej, right near Poland’s southern border with what was then Czechoslovakia). We spent the next hour walking from the train station to the concentration camp. There were thick iron gates and German soldiers standing around with guns and dogs, which terrified us even more with their incessant barking. The dogs were huge and vicious. We would frequently hear soldiers tell the dogs in German to “fang ihm,” (“get him”) then unleash the dogs who would attack prisoners. The dogs often drew blood, oftentimes just for sport. Although I didn't see it at the time, I gather I was close to what has become one of the most iconic images of the Holocaust --- the sign over the entry gate, which held out the promise of freedom, provided we worked hard enough: Arbeit Macht Frei. Were we in a labour camp? Maybe the rumours were false and we would survive this horror if we worked hard enough? It was a small shred of hope worth hanging on to. At this point, my family was still altogether: my parents, my two sisters, and me. But then, a German official started to sort us into different groups. One of them had a baton in his hand, and directed us on which way to go --- women and children to the left, men to the right. Years later, I would come to know that man with the baton as Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called “Angel of Death,” who with the wave of his hand decided who would live and who would die. My assumption was, we’re being separated into different groups in order to perform different tasks, no doubt harder labour for the men, easier work for the women. Even though I was only days away from turning twelve years old and was presumably still regarded by German authorities as a child, I held my father's hand tightly and never let it go. What I didn’t know at that moment was, that decision to stay with my father saved my life. Conversely, my two older sisters went with my mother to the left. The selection happened so quickly. Soldiers were screaming at us to move. It was such a chaotic situation, we didn't even have a chance to say goodbye to my mother and sisters. My father suspected this would be the last time we would ever see them alive again. And it was. After the selection process was complete, a group of Jews from the camp approached our group. Apparently, it was their job to inform us newcomers of the rules in Auschwitz. All the while, though, they were cursing us in Yiddish. “Farvos inem gehenem zayn`du kumen aher?” (“Why in the hell did you come here?”). One would ask. “Zayn nisht du hern der warnings? Du gants are geyn keyn oysgeyn aher.” (“Didn't you hear the warnings? You all are going to die here”). We were dumbstruck. They continued. “Du gants are geyn tsu dem crematorium. Dos iz nisht a labour camp. Dos iz a toyt camp keyner leaves dos arayngebn khay.” (“You all are going to the crematorium. This is not a labour camp. This is a death camp. Nobody leaves this place alive”). Then, pointing to the chimneys, they said, “Du vel nayert avekforn dos arayngebn fun ahin.” (“You will only leave this place from there”). Everything was happening too quickly. We were utterly exhausted after our train transport, starving as well, and barely able to comprehend our circumstances. So our minders explained it all as frankly and bluntly as they could. The selection we had just experienced wasn’t about determining who was appropriate for which job. It was a selection for life or death. All those who turned to the left were now on their way to the crematorium, they told us. They were being escorted to their deaths at this very moment, including our rabbi from Dej, who told my father to stay in the ghetto, as that represented his best chance at survival. Did we believe it? Even after everything we’d experienced, I think there was still a part of us that found it impossible to believe. Why kill us? Don’t they need us? But the reality of Auschwitz began to dawn on us. And there was an incident that took place as we got off the train that gave an indication of the hell we had just entered. As the guards were sorting people, some of those soldiers decided to have a little “fun,” no doubt bored with their circumstances. Or perhaps one of the little babies was crying too loudly, and its mother couldn't stop the child from sobbing. One soldier took the child from its mother, and began a “game” that every loving parent plays with their little kids --- tossing the child up in the air and catching it. If you’ve done it, you’ll know it can quickly turn tears into laughter. But the Germans changed the rules of the game. As one soldier threw the child in the air, the others --- all SS soldiers --- used the baby as target practice. (the Schutzstaffel or SS were Hitler’s protection squadron, responsible for most of the worst atrocities during the war). They shot the child in mid-air. It all happened before our disbelieving eyes. If we had any illusions about what lay ahead for us in Auschwitz, those illusions should have collapsed at that moment. And yet, we still wanted to believe --- needed to believe --- that somehow we would survive all this. As an aside, let me relate an incident that happened many years later with my oldest son. Moshe had to write an essay for school and the story of the SS officers killing this defenseless child was the story he chose to tell. Moshe had heard me speak of this event over the years. The teacher said the essay was fine but that there was a problem with Moshe's imagination. The teacher appended a note to the essay, saying Moshe didn’t need to so dramatically embellish what was obviously a fictitious story. I guess I could forgive the teacher for her views. All these years later, it’s still hard to believe I saw what I saw. Can human beings really be that cruel to each other? To a harmless baby? I went to Moshe’s school to meet the teacher, not to chastise or criticize her, or even to justify what Moshe had written. Rather, I needed to tell the teacher that these things really had happened. I needed her to expand her understanding of history. To this day, I really don't know whether the teacher believed me or not. If you were raised in the latter half of the 20th century in peaceful Canada, why would you believe such stories? How could you not conclude that this parent was exaggerating. But as I tell people, just because something is too horrible to believe doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. In any event, the kapos took us into the Auschwitz concentration camp. I stayed close to my father and went into the barracks. We were ordered to remove our clothes, throw them in a pile on the floor, and put on the camp uniform, all the while wondering: is my mother still alive? Are my sisters still alive? Or have they already gone to the gas chambers? Are their bodies already en route to the crematoria for burning? Such horrifying thoughts. We spent several dreadful days in Auschwitz. They seemed to separate us into our ethnic nationalities. We were grouped with other Hungarians. Eventually, our uniforms would indicate why we had been sent here. Jews had one particular symbol on our clothes; political prisoners another; homosexuals another, and so on. And the selection for the crematoria wasn't over yet. While women and young children, especially daughters, were the first to go, next came a second selection for young sons who may have been unfit for hard labour. We received instructions that all children over the age of thirteen could stay, but that anyone younger than thirteen was to be moved elsewhere to a “special camp.” By now, we knew all too well what that meant: gas chambers and crematoria. My father and I started plotting how we could keep me alive. I simply didn’t look tall enough to pass for thirteen, so we searched for whatever we could, and stuffed it into my shoes to make me look taller. When the Germans were around, I kept my shoulders back, and my neck stretched up, again to convey the impression that I was older and taller than I really was. So far, it was working. At this point, I need to tell you about a bittersweet surprise we experienced at Auschwitz. Remember, we had no knowledge of where my two older brothers were. By being at the yeshiva, they avoided the Dej ghetto and subsequent transport to Auschwitz. However, I would later learn that the boys were sent from the yeshiva to a Hungarian labour camp with other Jews. That camp was established by the regime of Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya. His title was “His Serene Highness, the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary.” Horthy remains a divisive figure in Hungarian history. His close relations with Nazi Germany allowed him to reclaim lands lost to Hungary through various treaties. But the Nazis eventually soured on him because they found him insufficiently committed to the Final Solution --- the extermination of European Jewry. By the spring of 1944, Germany lost patience with Horthy, invaded Hungary, and essentially took control of the country. In October, Horthy was placed under arrest, and taken to Bavaria, where he remained until the end of the war. To avoid one of Horthy’s labour camps, both Dudi and Shuli escaped to the bigger cities, to avoid the attention of suspicious neighbours, Dudi hid in Budapest and Shuli hid in Debrecen. For a time, they were relatively safe as the Hungarian authorities had not pursued Jews there. But eventually, their luck ran out and they were swept up in a round-up, taken to a ghetto, and then, like us, sent to Auschwitz. So, by the time my parents, sisters, and I arrived at Auschwitz, my brothers were already there, although because they came separately, neither knew the other was there. When Dudi heard through the grapevine that a transport from Dej had arrived at the camp, he began to look for us. Somehow, one day, he snuck out of his cell block, traversed the camp, and got access to our barracks. I have to confess, when I first saw Dudi, I didn’t recognize him. He looked so utterly different from how I recalled him. Remember, he left home in 1940 and I rarely saw him after that. Now, his formerly thick, long hair was all gone. His head was shaved as Auschwitz regulations required. Dudi recognized me and told me what I had to do to escape the crematorium. “Motke, du muzn oysbahaltn funem selections un alts blaybn mit tateh.” (“You must hide from the selections and always stay with father”) he told me. It was the only time I saw him in Auschwitz, but I followed his advice, and it saved my life. When the guards or kapos called us to line up in front of the barracks, I would hide and refuse to come out, or sneak into another barracks. I’d move from one to another, desperately trying to stay ahead of the authorities as they checked inside. I also scouted out other places where I could hide. During the night, I wouldn't stay in the barracks because you never knew --- there could be an unexpected selection, and then I would be caught off guard. The safest place I could find to hide was in the yard near the bathrooms, where all the dead bodies were brought and piled up, one upon another. As appalling as this sounds, I would get on to that pile, lie down next to the dead bodies and pretend I was one of them. It worked. Life in Auschwitz, if you can call it that, consisted of simply trying to stay alive for one more day. We had very little food and suffered from hunger all the time. Essentially, there was one evening meal a day and to call it a meal wasn’t quite accurate. It was a bowl of soupy mush, maybe some potatoes, and that was it. They usually gave us food in barrels, which was an advantage for a little guy like me. When the barrel was empty, it was thrown away, but it still contained some food left at the bottom that the adults were unable to reach. I could get inside the barrel, and scrape the leftovers from the bottom. In this way, my dad and I got some extra food. We were in Auschwitz for almost two weeks. My father and I worked in a cement factory with a few hundred other prisoners. I was basically the water boy. What I remember most from that time is the sense of horror and danger that haunted me every minute I was there. It’s impossible to forget the tall chimneys with dark, thick smoke rising out of them. And the dogs barking, always barking. But there were other absurdities that, for some reason, stay with me. I recall seeing two kids, probably about my age, being escorted every morning outside the camp to clean the officers’ houses. They were always escorted by a couple of armed guards. How bizarre it was to see those big guys leading two scrawny, small boys at gunpoint. With all of the death I saw in Auschwitz, why does that image stay with me? Who knows? Do you know what it’s like to spend every waking moment of your life simply thinking of how to stay alive? I hope not. No one should live under such circumstances. But that’s the way it was. I used all my wits and took advice from whoever would offer it to remain alive. And I prayed. Yes, there was prayer, even in Auschwitz. The first thing I did every morning was say the Shema, the Hebrew prayer acknowledging God's oneness. (“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”). I said it just to myself, never out loud. However, at least three times a day in the barracks, or when there was a spare moment, someone who knew the prayers by heart would sing and we would follow along. That’s another image that stays with me: a crowd of prisoners in their white and black striped uniforms, huddled together, singing, praying, and begging God to save them. Don’t ask me how, but amazingly, my father managed to sneak his tefillin into Auschwitz. If you don’t know what they are, tefillin are phylacteries --- two small, black leather boxes that are worn on the head and arm, containing verses from the Torah. Orthodox Jewish men put on their tefillin every morning (except the Sabbath) and they’re considered among the most important and holy items for praying. The boxes have long, black straps attached to them. One box goes on the arm, with the straps wrapped around the bicep, forearm, and hand in a special fashion. The second box is worn on the forehead at the hairline, with its straps going around the back of the head, connected at the top of the neck with a special knot, and hanging in front on each side. My father no doubt was risking death if his tefillin were ever discovered during one of the searches. And yet, he did it. That alone shows how much significance he placed on those items and his faith in God. Like so many of our other possessions, I have no idea what happened to those tefillin. Did I ever pray to God to get us out of this death camp? Strangely enough, I don't recall ever doing that. It never occurred to me to ask God to save our lives. I didn't blame God for putting us in this predicament, so maybe that's why I didn't ask for his help in getting us out. Near the end of our time at Auschwitz --- I’m not sure exactly when; keeping track of time was not an exact science there --- we got word that we would soon be taken to another camp, and the administration began segmenting us into new groups. But this hardly meant we were in the clear. I still feared being selected for death, and those selection teams did continue to do their “work.” So I spent another couple of days in hiding. Then, finally, the death camp gates opened up, and we walked out. Given the carnage that we had seen over the intervening two weeks, we were incredibly lucky to get out of there alive. I began to wonder whether God had some special plan for me. And yes, in spite of everything, I still believed in God. We began our next march, from Auschwitz to Birkenau. Birkenau was one of forty sub-camps in the Auschwitz complex. It was just a few kilometers away from the main Auschwitz camp, in another town called Zasole. It’s estimated that 90 percent of the prisoners who died in the Auschwitz complex were Jews --- that's one million Jewish souls that were destroyed there. And there were tens of thousands more from other ethnic groups who also perished: Poles, Soviets, Yugoslavs, French, Austrians, and Roma (called “Gypsies” then). It was as efficient a killing machine as the world has ever known. We walked, several hundred of us for a couple of hours, from Auschwitz to Birkenau, and then south to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp just east of Linz, in northern Austria. Even though I was the youngest of the group, by this point, I had stopped worrying about being selected for death. In Mauthausen, we changed clothes and I got a uniform that was actually my size. Everything I had worn before was too big for me. But once again, after just two days in Mauthausen, we were on the move. We were then transported to Gusen-I, a nearby labor camp. This really was a labour camp; the danger of the gas chambers was apparently behind us. We were placed in barracks again, and my dad and I were in Number 7. We got our hair cut in a particular way --- a line shaved in the middle of the head to show that the inmate belonged to this camp. My father and I shared a bunk bed again --- him on the top, me on the bottom. We got assigned to different groups to work different jobs. My father was in the cement brigade. I was left in the camp to clean the barracks. Every barrack had a capacity of two hundred people. In the morning, before the sun was up, we would line up outside the building and be counted. It was called the morning appel (from the French word for “call.”). We had to go out half-naked and wash under the open skies, regardless of the weather, although we were “lucky” in the sense that it was summer time and the weather wasn't too harsh. The water was ice cold and of course there was no soap. Then we returned to our barracks and made the beds with thin mattresses and blankets. The bodies of those who died overnight would be taken out and carried away. We then had to line up outside again and again. And the SS guards, clad in their gray uniforms with black boots, were so sadistic. There would be 50 of them with dogs, pistols, and rifles. If someone wasn't lined up just perfectly straight, they'd think nothing of unleashing one of their vicious dogs to attack the prisoner. I saw a dog chew open a man's stomach once. They'd also let the dogs attack you if you were caught sleeping on the job. Or if you missed your appel. We would line up literally for three to four hours at a time, just standing there, with no talking, of course. It happened day or night. If someone was missing, we'd all be forced to continue standing 'til they found him, and when they did, it was 25 lashes to the back with the whip. SS officers would come and we called out our numbers: “Block One,” “Block Two,” Block Seven,” and so on. The block leader told us to take our hats off for inspection and be ready. And after that, every group went to its respective workplace. When people came back from work, it was time for the evening meal. The food distribution was hell. We had to wait in a straight line, and if any of those very hungry people walked out of the line, the guards would beat the hell out of them. I remember one incident when a guy from my hometown, just a couple years older than me, stepped out of line. He was probably so hungry that he couldn’t wait anymore and tried to take some food. One of the kapos took a hammer and struck him with all his might, right on the head. The poor man’s brains literally fell out of his skull and blood was everywhere. His name was Nahmi. I can remember this scene with such vividness, it’s as if it happened just yesterday. It was the first time I had witnessed an adult killed right before my eyes. I had seen plenty of dead people before: on the transport to Auschwitz, in the barracks at Auschwitz, and of course, that baby killed at our arrival at Auschwitz. But even that episode --- seen at a distance, my senses numb from the long, exhausting train transport --- didn’t affect me as much as this brutal murder right before my eyes. And it was someone I knew. It was a painful reminder that, even though the gas chambers may have been behind us, nothing had changed. Life could be snuffed out at any moment. Every day, someone died in our barracks. Death was an all too familiar sight. As I recall these days, part of me still can't believe this all happened. Why didn’t more people try to escape? Well, actually, they did, although I never heard of anyone successfully making the attempt. Every morning there were dead bodies along the barbwire fences around the camp. The electrified fences instantly killed anyone who touched them. Everybody knew they were electrified and yet, they were so desperate, so hopeless, perhaps it was simply an act of suicide. Those deaths never stopped. Prisoners tried to escape in other ways too. The most hopeful approach was to slip away from a work crew outside the camp. If that prisoner was caught, we would all find out about it soon enough. They would be put to death and their bodies put on display all day long as a lesson to others. However, if someone did succeed in an escape, it meant added hardship and suffering for the rest of us. The Germans would shoot an entire group of prisoners to show us that resistance was futile, and escaping would be costly. Sometimes, a prisoner or two would pretend to fall asleep, hoping to escape when the guards left. In that case, the entire group would stand in line outside the barracks waiting for the Germans to find the “sleepyheads.” We sometimes would stand in place for hours. The Nazis took attendance twice a day to make sure that everyone was present. Their penchant for bureaucratic efficiency was well known, even when it came to putting Jews to death. (Years later, I had a chance to see just how meticulous they were when I saw documents that proved I was, indeed, a prisoner in the Nazi camps. The documents described everything: when I was taken; what camps I was in; how I was transported there; how long I was kept there; and what my duties were. It was astonishing). In Gusen, which housed twelve to seventeen thousand prisoners, two Polish gentiles actually helped me enormously and made my life better. They were political prisoners working in the camp as kapos in charge of our barrack, and they were kind to me. They asked me my name. I told them it was Moritz. When one of them asked whether I was Jewish, I confirmed that I was. They advised me, going forward, that whenever I was asked about my nationality, I should simply say I was half-Jewish. The older one of the two, whose name was Yatsek, said he had a son that was my age, and he promised to take care of me as if I were his own child. They would secretly give me extra food on the condition that I promise only to share it with my father and nobody else. They were disobeying regulations and knew they could be severely punished if caught. Nevertheless, I saw so much misery around me, I couldn’t help but share some of what they gave me with others. I suspect my stomach had shrunk from lack of food, and I simply didn’t need much to get by. Fortunately, no one found out. (Some of these concentration camp habits I actually still practice today, for example, refraining from finishing all my food in one sitting --- saving some of it for later. I can’t really explain why I still do this, but I do. I just got into the habit, while in concentration camps, of only eating half my bread, and secretly saving the rest for later). There weren’t many non-Jews who were helpful to me during my imprisonment, but I shall never forget those that were. They no doubt contributed to the fact that I am still alive today. Gusen-II was considered one of the harshest of all the German penal camps. And yet, I remember a German soldier (from the Wehrmacht, not the notoriously cruel SS) who gave me some extra food and explained he was doing so because he also had a son around my age. As a father, he just couldn't abide seeing children suffering around him without feeling compassion. By this time, I had improved my German significantly and we were able to understand each other. So there were occasional incidents of humanity in these concentration camps. But it was unexpected and rare. The labour in Gusen-II was incredibly difficult and I began to suspect my father, who wasn’t yet fifty years old, wouldn’t last long. He was so sick, and depressed at the loss of my mother and two sisters, he simply didn’t want to live anymore. He had lost the will. He felt his life was worthless and meaningless. But he told me I was young and had a good chance of surviving. “You must, for the sake of our family, get through all of this and live,” he told me. “Then find a way to get to Israel, where we will meet again.” Towards the end of 1944, I can’t remember the precise date, my father told me he simply couldn’t go to work anymore. When it came time for the morning count, he refused to let me help him come outside. I knew it was over for him and begged to join him. I just didn’t want to be left alone, to live life without him. Besides, the kapos said the regulations didn’t allow for that anyway. I asked the kapos to bring me some of my father’s ashes so I could keep a part of him with me. This wasn’t permitted either. The kapos took my father away, and I never saw him again. This was the only time I can recall myself crying. I now felt totally alone in the world. The death camps of Nazi Germany had claimed the lives of both of my parents, both of my sisters, and for all I knew, my brothers were gone too. I hadn’t seen them in months. I had two stark options: give up and give way to the worst evil the world had ever known, or somehow gather the strength to persevere. I made a decision. I decided to survive. In the days ahead, I noticed a difference in the new arrivals at Gusen-II. They came wearing civilian clothes, rather than the Auschwitz “uniform.” It suggested to us that the smooth functioning of the extermination machine was breaking down. The rumours we had heard about Soviet troops moving closer to concentration camps must have been true. I stayed in Gusen-II until February 1945. I worked as a water boy, bringing water to the work sites. I cleaned houses for German officers. My situation had improved a little as the officers let me eat their leftovers. It was much better food than the ration we had in the camp. But those soldiers also knew where this war was heading. They could see the inevitable end. What must have been going through their minds? Did they ever appreciate the horror for which they were responsible? Did they fear retribution? Once again, I experienced a rare moment of kindness as they told me they were confident I would survive. They encouraged me to hold on until it was all over. I wondered whether their compassion, so late in the game, was genuine or perhaps motivated by their own fears of what their futures held. If they weren’t afraid of the vengeance that could be coming for them for their unspeakable crimes, they should have been. But the Nazi concentration camp system wasn’t quite finished with me yet. In February 1945, I was moved to yet another camp: Gunskirchen, also in Upper Austria. Once again, death was everywhere. We had to march on foot for two days to get to that camp, and many were killed along the way, especially those too weak or sick to walk, who were simply shot on the spot. As always, I was the youngest in my group of several hundred. Gunskirchen was a terrible camp. Its construction started in December 1944 and it was intended to house only a few hundred slave labourers. However, once the so-called “death marches” from Mauthausen were undertaken, thousands upon thousands of us showed up at Gunskirchen. Some 17,000 Hungarian Jews were thought to have passed through the camp. Typhus and dysentery were everywhere. There were only German guards, no kapos and almost no food. Women also lived in the camp but in different sections. It was in Gunskirchen that I witnessed one of the most horrible sights imaginable: starving people eating human flesh. It was apparent that people had simply lost their minds. The most basic of human, moral standards had disintegrated under the yoke of months of inhuman treatment. The place was just packed. Prisoners were happy when a fellow inmate died. They’d throw the body out the window, which meant more space for the survivors. Every dead man represented a little more space, a little more air, a little more bread for the rest of us. What madness had befallen us, to the point where we welcomed death because it offered hope to the rest of us? The world was as perverted as anything I could imagine. But I hung on to the hope that this perversion would soon be over.

Edition details

• Publisher: Dundurn
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1459731786
• ISBN 13: 9781459731783
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 216