03 January, 1943
04:30
The whistles and screams punctuated the silent night like so many
nightmares come alive. We’d been expecting the raid for weeks, but when trying
to remain civilized, life in the ghetto continued as usual. Just that previous
evening, some of the few remaining musicians gathered and played a few songs,
lightening the mood of the Podgorze ghetto, if only for a few hours. With rare
joy in our hearts and music in our ears, we returned to our overcrowded and
dilapidated apartments, and forgot about our plight. Thus, we were unprepared.
With no time for families to hide their children or the elderly, every resident
of our block was wrenched violently from their beds and marched onto the cold,
dark street. Any resistance was met with a bullet, the elderly were gunned down
indiscriminately, and crying babies were silenced by a single shot to the head.
It was our turn to suffer the insufferable…Nazi liquidation of the ghettos.
In our apartment, shared with other displaced Jewish families,
were a total of twenty one people. There were the Hellers, Itzac and Rita, and
their three young children. Three generations of the Goldman family occupied
the largest room, Mr. Jan and his mother, his wife and her parents, and their
five children. There were also three orphans that we took care of, their
parents deported in an earlier round up. And we are the Ackerman’s, or what is
left of us. My husband’s father Abram, my five year old daughter Anna, and me.
My name is Helena…and this is the story of my death.
05:30
With lightening efficiency invoked by terror, we were bundled
along icy streets, freezing in flimsy night clothes, such was the speed of the
round up. We walked, many of our numbers dying from cold and left where they
fell, until we reached the platform of Prokocim station. In the chaos, a
father’s anger often got him shot, while mothers clung onto their children with
desperate and surprising strength, just as I was doing with my beautiful Anna
now…a mother’s arms are strong when her child is in danger.
Like cattle, we were herded into wagons that would take us into
oblivion.
Actually, we weren't at all like cattle, come to think of it. No,
because cattle are healthy and well fed...cattle have a use in the world. In
reality, we’d become less than cattle, so dehumanized that we were after
nearly a year of sickness and food rationing in the ghetto. From the darkness,
blows rained randomly upon us, from SS clubs or rifle butts, and the screams of
the guards were the screams of brain washed lunatics. Giant dogs, starved and
trained to kill, strained for a piece of Jewish meat...oh how they'd be
disappointed with this group of emaciated living dead...though it didn't deter
them, snapping and snarling amid the scent of fear and death. And then
came the worst moment of my life. Just as I was lifting little Anna onto the
wagon, I was beaten to the ground by two rifle wielding SS men. I screamed for
my baby as the blows kept coming, unable to stand and too weak to fight. I was
so desperate yet helpless to do anything. Through stinging tears I could see my
baby, crying for her mother, the tears of a thousand lost children streaming
down her pale, innocent cheeks. Through the madness I saw a familiar face, a
pair of strong arms lifting Anna into them. It was Itzac Heller from the
apartment. Over the screams and the bedlam, I heard Itzac shouting he would
take care of Anna. He smiled weakly, a smile that told me not to worry, that she
was with his family for now, and she would be safe. I was trying to stand when
the doors of the wagon were slammed shut, and my baby was gone. That was the
moment that my heart was finally broken. After months of hope and courage since my husband was taken, I finally realized that our world was being destroyed,
and the simple, happy life I had known, would never be the same again. The next
moment, I felt arms around me, dragging me from the cold concrete platform
towards another wagon, but I was oblivious now, lost in my own grief. I closed
my eyes and wished I would die, praying that this nightmare would end.
07:15
I came to my senses just as the long line of transports slowly
pulled away from the grizzly platform, a simple concrete canvas of blood and
pain, the latest in a constant flow of human cargo after continuous rounds of
liquidation. Littering the concrete were the bodies of the dying or dead,
irrelevant as it was to the psychotic SS…if you were too weak to climb aboard
the wagon, you were as good as dead to the guards, and coldly executed on the
spot. Despite the horror of this, those victims were the lucky ones, though
none of us knew that yet. I don’t know who it was that saved me on the
platform, for I would surely have been shot had I just laid there as I wanted
to. But I am not grateful, not at the moment. I wanted to die back there,
having lost everything that I have ever loved. My dear husband and my little
angel. What has become of them…what will become of me?
09:30
After a while, the screams of terror and cries of confusion
subsided, replaced by an eerie calm as resignation of the situation settled
over us. The adults in the wagon started talking in hushed tones, speculating
on our destination, discussing the rumors we had heard in the ghetto. We were
bound for Belzec labor camp, one elder said, where we would work until we died.
One younger woman suggested that we were being relocated for work, new jobs and
a new home, surely better than the ghetto, she believed. Opinions differed
greatly, and many believed what the woman had said, that we would be better off
out of the ghetto, wherever it might be. Then another man, a well known and
respected figure in pre-war Krakow, and now a leader of sorts in the Podgorze
ghetto, spoke up. “My fellow Jews,” Rabbi Lazowski began, “I believe that from
where we are going there will be no return. We will arrive there, and we will
die there. Some of us will die quickly, while others will be put to work until
death, but we will die, all of us. I suggest you take the time in this wagon to
pray for your families, and pray for the Jewish people, for we will be no
more.” One young man spoke up now, scared, his voice weak and trembling. “Where
is this place you speak of, what is the name? Surely no such place exists, it’s
just a rumor to scare us.” The elder replied, “My son, and to all of you, this
place is not a myth, it is real, and it is where we are going to die.” “And the
name?” a woman asked softly. The Rabbi, with a pained look of love and sorrow
etched across his wizened old face, replied, “My people, we are going to
Auschwitz.”
The Rabbi began softly reciting the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for
the dead. As others began to join in, speaking as tears streamed from
frightened eyes, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who believed we were saying the
prayer of death for ourselves.
It was at this time that I regained some composure. I didn’t know
where we were going, or what would happen to us, but I vowed that I would see
my little Anna again. I couldn’t imagine not ever looking into those beautiful
brown eyes one more time, eyes that so many had told me were mirror images of
my own. I have to look into those eyes again, and tell my angel that I love
her. I must stay alive long enough to do this; I will survive this journey.
Internally I spoke this mantra to myself, over and over again, whispering, ‘I
will survive; I must survive.’ This new resolve did keep me alive through the
night, I am sure of it. It would have been the easy option to give in and close
my eyes, never to wake again. It was all I lived for from that moment on…to survive
long enough to tell my baby I loved her.
14:00
Hours later, a deathly silence had descended over the wagon. The
quiet, punctured only by the occasional sobbing child and the squeal of
overworked wheels on steel tracks, was forced upon us. The fact that we were so
tightly packed in, simply breathing became our only objective. I don't know how
many of us were crammed into that wagon...two hundred...five hundred…but I know
that it was inhumane, just another Nazi ploy to terrorize the Jews. Already,
many of us were at death's door, after months of sickness and starvation due to
food rationing and disease in the ghettos. The weakest of us didn't last the
day in that wagon. By nightfall, twenty seven had died, mostly the elderly and
children. Hunger and exhaustion had taken their toll, leaving childless mothers
and motherless children. Still I recanted my mantra, forcing myself to fight
the desire to sleep, to let death take me.
23:15
Time was eternal as the hours passed like weeks. Only the crush of
those around you prevented collapse from exhaustion, with no space to sit or
stretch. That night, our transport was stopped. We were not given any food, and
were not told anything of our destination, simply left alone, tormented by our
imaginations. People spoke in hushed whispers about their families. Children
cried from fear and hunger, a mother’s soothing voice covering her own terror.
The air in the wagon was icy, and the sound of the sick coughing was the sound
of death. By around three in the morning, all was quiet and still, as if time
itself had stopped, and in spite of my own resolve, it was the longest, most
difficult night of my life.
January 4th, 1943
07:15
As dawn arrived, sufficient light entered the wagon for us to
realize that many more had died...had maybe been dead all night, held upright
by the oblivious mass. We'd not eaten or had water since the round up, and by
the time our transport began the slow roll east, half of our wagon were dead.
In total, one hundred and forty five souls had perished within that carriage
alone, one of an endless line. The stench of death and human waste was
unimaginable, and no tomb could have been more horrific.
09:23
We couldn’t see beyond the tight wooden slats that kept us entombed
within our wagon, but if we could, at precisely 09:23 of January 4th,
1943, we would have seen ourselves pass through a red brick gatehouse onto a
long, concrete platform. We didn’t know it, but we had entered the gates of
hell…Death Camp Birkenau, where the faint orange glow of death clouded the air.
That half had died en-route was no accident: it simply sped up the
'final solution,' of which many of us were still unsure, despite Rabbi
Lazowski’s tragic statement. When the SS finally opened the doors to the wagon
on the platform, some twenty six hours after being dragged aboard, I was
blinded by the daylight, and as I stumbled and fell to the stony, cold floor
below, I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. Those that didn't make it alive
were simply thrown into nearby pits, adding to the piles of hundreds of
corpses. Those too weak to climb down unassisted were simply executed where
they stood, and fed to the ravenous SS German Shepherd’s, though no shepherding
is required when your quarry is served to you on a stony plate. The remains
were tossed into the equally ravenous pits of death, shrouded by swarming
flies, despite the sub-zero temperatures.
09:45
With the SS screaming at us with loudspeakers, we were ordered
into separate lines, one line of men, and another of women and children, ready
to undergo our first 'selection,' though selection for what we didn't yet know.
I could see this same process happening up and down the mile long platform, as
more than four thousand Jews had arrived in one single transport. It’s why we
had waited the night nearby, as there was simply not enough room to enter the
gates of Birkenau, with the machinations of death in full swing.
Amid the panic, entire families were wrenched apart, oblivious to
the reality that they’d never again set eyes upon each other. Chaos and confusion
ruled our lives in those panic ridden few minutes, as we were efficiently
ordered into our groups. Anybody that showed resistance was beaten to death, or
if they were lucky, shot in the head. With incredible speed and efficiency, the
mass of humanity had been pacified, while unrestricted brutality and terror
reigned supreme. Impossible as it was to believe, an SS guard told us that
'everything would soon be alright,' though the callous smirk on his young,
pasty face betrayed his lie. This boy could only be sixteen years old, and
here he was holding wielding a rifle, apparently enjoying himself…such hatred
in someone so young…I wonder how many Jews he has beaten or shot? I couldn’t
hate him back, though I wanted to. I pitied him, brain washed as he surely was
by his Fuhrer.
10:05
In a dream like state, the women and children that now formed my
group were bullied and beaten away from the others, through a series of high,
barbed wire fences, terrifying in their simplicity, the screaming guards and
snarling dogs our constant nemeses. We were marched into a simple looking
concrete structure, frozen from the cold, and sapped of energy. Here we were
told we‘d have to have our hair cut off for sanitation reasons. As a proud
Jewish woman, I had always treasured my long, wavy brown hair, but within a
couple of seconds it was shaved to the scalp…the latest of a series of actions
to humiliate us. ‘It’s for your own good,’ the smiling SS woman guard said,
though it was the cold, heartless smile of a maniac. This though was just a
pre-cursor of what was to follow, the ultimate humiliation for a female Jew.
Under the threat of death, we were all forced to strip naked. In thirteen years
of marriage, even my own husband had never seen me naked with the lights on…and
here I was now, bald, naked and terrified under the indifferent looks of the SS
guards. Though we were naked, the male guards didn’t look at us in a sexual
way. We were Jews after all, dirty, contagious Jews, mere animals in the eyes
of the Nazis.
A few of the women around me refused to do this most dehumanizing
of acts, and were summarily beaten and then executed on the spot, their bodies
hitting the cold concrete in a flash. The young guards took great pleasure with
the beatings, cursing as they smashed the butts of their rifles into the
helpless victims. “Filthy Jewess,” they would scream, “Dirty Jewish pigs.”
Unbelievably, myself and others were ordered to strip the bodies naked anyway,
under threat of suffering the same demise. This cold hearted extermination of
innocent lives did not seem real, the whole thing like some kind of abstract
event, outside of reality, a nightmarish vision that couldn’t even be imagined,
such was the horror of it.
10:30
Despite this violence against those that resisted, the guards at
this stage were jovial and quiet, almost dignified. This in some ways was even
more frightening to me than the screaming and beatings we’d endured. You knew
that they would harm you, those psyched up guards on the railway platforms.
Here, the apprehension of what may yet follow was unbearable. It was a
deliberate ploy of course, a calculated method of pacifying the masses, who
still unaware of what was to come, may revolt from sheer desperation. We were
told that we would be showered and deloused, and afterwards, moved into our
comfortable barracks from where we would begin our new jobs…our new lives. We
were even told we should remember the peg number for our clothes, to make it
easier to locate them after our showers. This information, though not good
news…we Jews are no longer slaves…did seem to pacify the group. The crying and
wailing lessoned to sobs and words of comfort, some women even whispered their
hope of surviving this nightmare. We were slowly, gently even, ushered into a
second underground room, cold and windowless, but with hundreds of shower heads
protruding from the low ceiling. The sight of the showers lightened the mood
further, as word spread back along the long lines of filthy, walking skeletons,
that we really were about to have showers, water with which to wash away the
horrors of the previous twenty six hours, maybe even the years of the
occupation.
10:55
As the last of more than seven hundred women and children were
huddled inside the shower block, the heavy steel doors were quickly closed,
followed by a minute or two of nervous but excited chatter. As the minutes went
by uneventfully, the noise level dropped to barely a murmur, as nerves and
apprehension of the unknown grew, weighing down heavily upon us. Looking around about me at the hundreds of
skinny, hollow eyed women and few remaining children, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
There, just a few meters away and crouching by another group of ladies, head
shaved and barely distinguishable from the other kids save one feature, was my
angel…my Anna. Those huge brown eyes, eyes that could melt any heart, were
unmistakable. In a flood of tears I swept over and took her up in my arms,
relief washing over me.
I had prayed to see my baby alive again, long hours
aboard the wagon praying for this moment…and there she was, her dirty face
puffy from crying, a bewildered look dominating her delicate features. I was
confused…why didn’t she cry out ‘mama, mama?’ Of course! She didn’t recognize
me. With no clothes on, and my hair gone, I looked just like every other women
in the room. “My baby, it’s me, your mama. I’m here now, and I love you, I love
you so much.” When she realized who I was, the smile that broke on her face
seemed to light up the entire room, causing many of those around me to shed
their own tears. Finally, as she cried out, “mama, mama,” I knew that whatever
happened to us now, we would be together forever, never to be torn apart again.
I would hold her tight in my mother’s arms until the end of time.
11:03
After what seemed like an eternity, suddenly the lights went dead,
and we were pitched into total blackness. Seconds later a terrifying hissing
sound filled the room…and then the screams started. Clutching my baby even
tighter, I automatically knew that the rumors about Auschwitz-Birkenau were true…we
were not relocated here to begin new jobs and start new lives. We were at a
Nazi Death Camp, and within a few agonizing minutes, every women and child in
this room will have been exterminated, simply because we were Jewish. Turning
the lights off above us was to cloak us in a shroud of death.
11:05
I closed my eyes and sat down, and thought about the family I had
lost. My inspirational parents, who mercifully had died in the early days of
the ghetto, and did not have to endure the horrors of the last few months…I
knew now they were the lucky ones. My loving brother Jerzy, who along with his
wife Marian and their three young children, Lucia, Ester and Samuel, were taken
five months before in the first round of the liquidation of our ghetto. I
wondered what had become of them, hoping that they were okay. But now,
undoubtedly, I knew that they were dead. My wonderful husband, my dear Jacob,
kind, loving and funny. My hero. I had hoped and prayed that he had survived,
that we would be reunited after the war was over. In reality I knew that he had
not survived, I knew it in my heart and in my soul. I missed him so much, and
he would never again hold me in his strong arms. I thought about all the
friends and neighbors I’d had, from school, to growing up in Krakow, and then
the last few months in the ghetto. Strangers had become close friends, extended
family, a solidarity that could not be broken was formed in those difficult
months living side by side in Podgorze. I prayed for them now, as I know they
have prayed for me.
And, my beautiful baby daughter, Anna, so precious and precocious
at just five years old, my angel. As I looked down into her wide, innocent
brown eyes for the last time, sat peacefully on my lap on the cold, stone
floor, she looked back into my eyes and said, “Mama, I don’t feel well…my eyes
hurt.” As my heart broke into a thousand pieces, I said softly back to her, “My
baby, it’s OK, your mama is here. Go to sleep now, and everything will be all
better tomorrow…I promise.” It was the first lie I had ever told.
11:09
As I lay back on my concrete death bed, my baby in my arms, I
asked God why he had forsaken us, so many of his chosen people. When no answer
came, I simply waited for death to save us, holding little Anna close to me in
my arms, never to let go, with relief that my beautiful baby girl would not die
alone.
11:17 ..............
11:46
