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We traveled for something like two days. We thought we are already in the Ural Mountains, in Siberia, but we were merely in Rozwadow [a small town in eastern Poland, around 100 km from Lublin] in the Kielce district. The doors of the car were thrown open, we heard them yelling, ‘Raus!' [German for ‘Out!'] and once in a while someone shot in the air. They were not shooting people, but they were shooting. Running, some of us lost what they had, a saucepan, a bag, a knapsack, or a sack. The soldiers were dressed in black trousers and khaki shirts with SS symbols. They spoke German but also ‘shibtsiey, yob tvoyu matc!' [Russian: ‘Faster, damn it!']. So we realized who they were; we called them ‘wlasowcy' [Vlasovtsy: Russian soldiers from the army of General Vlasov who passed over to Hitler's side]. Were they really from the army of General Vlasov, who supported Hitler? I don't know, but that's what we called them.
In any case, only one of them spoke German, an ‘Oberwachmann' [German: senior leader]. They were in charge of the convoy and I spent the first three months in Rozwadow camp watched by them. The camp commandant was Austrian, an SS-man, Josef Schwammberger. I went to his trial. In the camp there were two other SS-men, the others were Ukrainians, ‘wlasowcy.' The only nice thing about them was that they sang prettily in the evenings. [Schwammberger, Josef (1912-2004): a member of the Schutzstaffel (military protection unit) during the Nazi era. During WWII, he was a commander of various SS forced-labor camps in the Cracow district. From 1948 until 1987, Schwammberger lived in hiding in Argentina. In 1987 he was extradited to Germany. At his trial, which lasted nearly a year (1991 until 1992), he denied being guilty of the crimes of which he was charged. On May 18, 1992, he was condemned by the Stuttgart regional court to life imprisonment, which he was to serve in Mannheim. In August 2002, the Mannheim regional court declined a parole request. Schwammberger died in prison on 3rd December 2004. (Source: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Schwammberger)]
We spent three months there. Enough for some of us to be starved and others shot, so that only 300-350 of us were left. It's there that I found out that the saying, ‘Before the fat one slims, the slim one dies' is false. It turned out that the fat one died before the slim one. The skinny ones were used to hunger and very primitive food. Sometimes I ate from the trashcan. Every day we walked five kilometers to work in steelworks in Stalowa Wola [a city in eastern Poland, around 100 km south of Lublin]. Every night several of our group were shot. A guard would call a prisoner and shoot him so that he fell on that side on which he was not allowed. There was roll call after and before going to work. A few were killed in one place, then a few in another, because someone didn't move fast enough or because someone else didn't get in line. There were a hundred pretexts. After about 3 months, several hundred people were killed.
One day, at the steelworks, they gathered us at the gate and organized a selection. They picked around 300 of the stronger, healthier looking ones. Those did not return to our camp, because a smaller camp was created for them right there at the steelworks. The group I was in went back to our camp and we spent two days there in fear, not knowing what will happen to us. Two, three days later a group of Germans came from the steelworks and once again we were gathered and looked over. They made us run, looked into our ears, mouths, I don't know why, and everybody tried to show he is a fit short-distance runner. I ran, too, for one thought: maybe I can save myself this way? But then, one didn't know what one would be saved for.
I found myself in the group of the chosen ones. They took us to the steelworks and a group of 100 or 150 Jews remained there. We were the better ones. For the rumor had it that those who stay in the steelworks will remain in the camp, while others will be sent to the Cracow ghetto. Some of the Jews paid to stay.
My life was saved because I worked in a team with a group of Poles. I was assigned to the smelting oven. Dirty work. I looked like a chimneysweep, because we mixed water with graphite. For some reason the team liked me. Obviously they didn't call me ‘Mr. Sokolowski' or ‘Leopold' but ‘Jew.' I became ‘our Jew,' the familiar Jew. Foreman Kuczynski was a simple worker and a decent man. He would often summon me, but not as a Jew. He didn't say to me, ‘You dirty Jew' but ‘you idiot,' ‘you so-and-so, what have you done,' for mistakes happened. But there was no nationalist hatred in that. In those men, I could feel pity.
The Poles got refreshment meals and we had our Jewish soup in the camp. When they ate, we stood around like beggars, each with his canteen. We watched them: maybe one of them will not eat everything? Someone would call, ‘Get over here!' and give one of us whatever he had left. One thanked and continued standing around: maybe there will be another? Once one of them even brought me four or five raw potatoes. Those were people of the peasant working class. They had a quarter or a half of a hectare of land and worked in the steelworks. Each of them went back home after work and came back every day.
So one of them picked four-five potatoes, selecting the bigger ones, and brought them over. There was control at the gate: ‘What are these potatoes?' He said, ‘I'm going to bake them; I like them baked.' This was a human impulse: ‘I'll take some for the Jew. He is hungry, I'll give them to him.' So he brought them and said, ‘Hey, Jew, here's some potatoes.' There were fires all over the steelworks, so there was no problem with baking the potatoes: in fifteen minutes I had them nice and crisp. This is what let me survive.
The manager of the steelworks, Pytel, a man with a thin black mustache and a brisk walk, was not a scoundrel. There were no conversations, of course, no way, but at night, during the night shift, he came to me and said, ‘Here's the key to my locker. There's soup and bread. Go and eat, only make sure nobody sees you.' That was a human impulse. Obviously, that didn't happen every day, but still.
Some Jews who were run into the camp were very rich. They'd leave their estate with a non-Jewish friend or neighbor and later, when they were in the camp they looked up another Pole who was willing to risk - and I would also give those people the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations [27] - and negotiated. The Jew would write a letter: ‘Mr. So-and-so, send us a 100 or a 1000 zlotys,' and the message would reach the Pole. The proportions were not very fair: 7 to 3. The Pole took 70 percent and the Jew got 30. The Jew would say, ‘Mr. So-and-so, bring me: two loaves of bread, a kilogram of sausage, half a liter of vodka.' The Poles would bring what was on the list.
In our camp, while I was dirty and hungry, others were not. Of course, they couldn't always manage that, but for example at Yom Kippur, they prayed, fasted and didn't go to work, which meant someone else, such as myself, had to go for them. They would say, ‘I'll give you a quarter of a loaf of bread and my soup and you go to work in my place.' So I went and worked 16 hours for someone else. Do people know that it was possible to go to work for someone else? That was possible in Stalowa Wola, where there were only Jews, the rich and the poor, and the camp commandant, Goldstein, was bribed. All guards were elegantly dressed in elegant old Jewish clothes, leather boots, when I wore pants made of paper. It wasn't plain paper, but the thick kind used for sacks. They were quite strong. I made my pants out of such sacks.
I worked like that for almost two years, from the end of 1942, until July 1944, eating once out of the trash, another time from under the stable, once I stole from pigs, for they gave boiled peelings to the pigs. When the eastern front was coming close, we were moved again. Some got away, for it was difficult to watch everybody closely.
In any case, only one of them spoke German, an ‘Oberwachmann' [German: senior leader]. They were in charge of the convoy and I spent the first three months in Rozwadow camp watched by them. The camp commandant was Austrian, an SS-man, Josef Schwammberger. I went to his trial. In the camp there were two other SS-men, the others were Ukrainians, ‘wlasowcy.' The only nice thing about them was that they sang prettily in the evenings. [Schwammberger, Josef (1912-2004): a member of the Schutzstaffel (military protection unit) during the Nazi era. During WWII, he was a commander of various SS forced-labor camps in the Cracow district. From 1948 until 1987, Schwammberger lived in hiding in Argentina. In 1987 he was extradited to Germany. At his trial, which lasted nearly a year (1991 until 1992), he denied being guilty of the crimes of which he was charged. On May 18, 1992, he was condemned by the Stuttgart regional court to life imprisonment, which he was to serve in Mannheim. In August 2002, the Mannheim regional court declined a parole request. Schwammberger died in prison on 3rd December 2004. (Source: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Schwammberger)]
We spent three months there. Enough for some of us to be starved and others shot, so that only 300-350 of us were left. It's there that I found out that the saying, ‘Before the fat one slims, the slim one dies' is false. It turned out that the fat one died before the slim one. The skinny ones were used to hunger and very primitive food. Sometimes I ate from the trashcan. Every day we walked five kilometers to work in steelworks in Stalowa Wola [a city in eastern Poland, around 100 km south of Lublin]. Every night several of our group were shot. A guard would call a prisoner and shoot him so that he fell on that side on which he was not allowed. There was roll call after and before going to work. A few were killed in one place, then a few in another, because someone didn't move fast enough or because someone else didn't get in line. There were a hundred pretexts. After about 3 months, several hundred people were killed.
One day, at the steelworks, they gathered us at the gate and organized a selection. They picked around 300 of the stronger, healthier looking ones. Those did not return to our camp, because a smaller camp was created for them right there at the steelworks. The group I was in went back to our camp and we spent two days there in fear, not knowing what will happen to us. Two, three days later a group of Germans came from the steelworks and once again we were gathered and looked over. They made us run, looked into our ears, mouths, I don't know why, and everybody tried to show he is a fit short-distance runner. I ran, too, for one thought: maybe I can save myself this way? But then, one didn't know what one would be saved for.
I found myself in the group of the chosen ones. They took us to the steelworks and a group of 100 or 150 Jews remained there. We were the better ones. For the rumor had it that those who stay in the steelworks will remain in the camp, while others will be sent to the Cracow ghetto. Some of the Jews paid to stay.
My life was saved because I worked in a team with a group of Poles. I was assigned to the smelting oven. Dirty work. I looked like a chimneysweep, because we mixed water with graphite. For some reason the team liked me. Obviously they didn't call me ‘Mr. Sokolowski' or ‘Leopold' but ‘Jew.' I became ‘our Jew,' the familiar Jew. Foreman Kuczynski was a simple worker and a decent man. He would often summon me, but not as a Jew. He didn't say to me, ‘You dirty Jew' but ‘you idiot,' ‘you so-and-so, what have you done,' for mistakes happened. But there was no nationalist hatred in that. In those men, I could feel pity.
The Poles got refreshment meals and we had our Jewish soup in the camp. When they ate, we stood around like beggars, each with his canteen. We watched them: maybe one of them will not eat everything? Someone would call, ‘Get over here!' and give one of us whatever he had left. One thanked and continued standing around: maybe there will be another? Once one of them even brought me four or five raw potatoes. Those were people of the peasant working class. They had a quarter or a half of a hectare of land and worked in the steelworks. Each of them went back home after work and came back every day.
So one of them picked four-five potatoes, selecting the bigger ones, and brought them over. There was control at the gate: ‘What are these potatoes?' He said, ‘I'm going to bake them; I like them baked.' This was a human impulse: ‘I'll take some for the Jew. He is hungry, I'll give them to him.' So he brought them and said, ‘Hey, Jew, here's some potatoes.' There were fires all over the steelworks, so there was no problem with baking the potatoes: in fifteen minutes I had them nice and crisp. This is what let me survive.
The manager of the steelworks, Pytel, a man with a thin black mustache and a brisk walk, was not a scoundrel. There were no conversations, of course, no way, but at night, during the night shift, he came to me and said, ‘Here's the key to my locker. There's soup and bread. Go and eat, only make sure nobody sees you.' That was a human impulse. Obviously, that didn't happen every day, but still.
Some Jews who were run into the camp were very rich. They'd leave their estate with a non-Jewish friend or neighbor and later, when they were in the camp they looked up another Pole who was willing to risk - and I would also give those people the medal of the Righteous Among the Nations [27] - and negotiated. The Jew would write a letter: ‘Mr. So-and-so, send us a 100 or a 1000 zlotys,' and the message would reach the Pole. The proportions were not very fair: 7 to 3. The Pole took 70 percent and the Jew got 30. The Jew would say, ‘Mr. So-and-so, bring me: two loaves of bread, a kilogram of sausage, half a liter of vodka.' The Poles would bring what was on the list.
In our camp, while I was dirty and hungry, others were not. Of course, they couldn't always manage that, but for example at Yom Kippur, they prayed, fasted and didn't go to work, which meant someone else, such as myself, had to go for them. They would say, ‘I'll give you a quarter of a loaf of bread and my soup and you go to work in my place.' So I went and worked 16 hours for someone else. Do people know that it was possible to go to work for someone else? That was possible in Stalowa Wola, where there were only Jews, the rich and the poor, and the camp commandant, Goldstein, was bribed. All guards were elegantly dressed in elegant old Jewish clothes, leather boots, when I wore pants made of paper. It wasn't plain paper, but the thick kind used for sacks. They were quite strong. I made my pants out of such sacks.
I worked like that for almost two years, from the end of 1942, until July 1944, eating once out of the trash, another time from under the stable, once I stole from pigs, for they gave boiled peelings to the pigs. When the eastern front was coming close, we were moved again. Some got away, for it was difficult to watch everybody closely.
Period
Location
Rozwadow
Poland
Interview
Leopold Sokolowski