The column of emaciated prisoners wound its way through the forest, escorted by armed guards, yelling at them to move on. The prisoners obeyed silently, knowing very well that the guards could be counted on to shoot them at the slightest pretext. It was 1945 and the prisoners had left a concentration camp in Poland for an unknown destination.
The inmates of the camp had known for some time that things were not going well for the Germans. They had realised that from the beatings they suffered by the women “lagerfuehrers” who exacted their vengeance on the helpless inmates when they received reports of their husbands’ and brothers’ fate on the Russian Front, from the persistent rumours of German losses, as well as the increasingly frequent air raids in surrounding areas. A German soldier at the camp would get his orders to report to a command on the Russian Front and he would say his goodbyes to the other camp staff. It was a final goodbye – more than one soldier told his loved one he did not expect to return. Despite their propaganda of the heroic and glorious battle ahead, they knew that there would be no victory – that they would most probably die.
While the German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden were bombed mercilessly, and with the Allies advancing towards Germany from several directions, the Nazi gas chambers and crematoria were going at full bore, in a last frenzied effort by Hitler to complete “the final solution” before the ultimate conclusion to his rampage.
The bombing raids became more and more frequent, and often came close to the camp. With each air raid warning many of the beaten and starving inmates prayed that a few bombs would land on top of them and end their unimaginable suffering.
By now resigned to their fate, the prisoners had no illusions about the march. There were many such marches in the final stages of the war, death marches, aimed at eliminating any witnesses, namely the inmates. The two sisters Raizele and Rutele whispered to each other that they must stay together now, that nothing must part them.
Over the past few years they had seen their father and brother die of hunger in the Ghetto, they watched their mother and most of their sisters segregated by the Nazis and taken to the gas chambers, they had seen their remaining sister, dainty Frymcia, trip in the snow during roll call and dragged away by the Nazis, never to be seen again. They were the only survivors of a large family who were in various ways exterminated by the Nazis, and now, more then ever they must last this out.
The Kuszer family had lived through the war by first being moved to the Ghetto along with the other Jews of Lodz. Lodz before the war had a thriving Jewish population with their own infra-structure. According to my parents entire blocks were occupied by Jews.
My mother, like many Jews then, lived in semi poverty with her father, mother, brother and several sisters, including Ruth who would survive the war and become my aunt. They operated a business that involved embroidering linen for wealthy clientele. Fortunes would change, illnesses and diseases come and go, but the Kuszer family survived, eking out their living as best as they could.
In the Lodz Ghetto they encountered starvation and other horrifying deprivations, but they stuck together looking after each other. My mother Raizele’s father, Fishel and one brother died of hunger. The daughters were selected to work for the Nazis and would depart their hovel in the Ghetto each day. For the many Jews employed by the Germans that way it was never a certainty who would return home or who would be beaten up and killed or taken away for medical experimentation. Some Jews would disappear for a while, then turn up, not being sure what had happened to them in the meantime. Sometime they would find some horrifying abnormalities in their bodies, a legacy of the “experiments”.
At one stage my mother operated milling machines making bombs, and later she worked making winter uniforms for German soldiers. Then came the "liquidation" of the Lodz Ghetto, and the mass transportation of the residents to concentration camps with the purpose of effecting Hitler's "final solution". There were roll calls, standing naked in the snow and beatings by the Nazis. Now only Raizele and Rutele were left of the large Kuszer family.
Nevertheless, there were good Germans – my mother mentioned at least one German guard who took pity on the hapless inmates and provided food and sympathy. My uncle in his book mentioned some German guards throwing food into the ghetto across the fences. One day a Russian inmate at my mother’s camp whispered to her that the end for the Germans was near. He unfolded his lapel – underneath was a red star.
The final march continued, but with Russian armies now reported almost everywhere. The increasingly panicking Germans sent a scout ahead of the march. A short time later the scout returned, reporting that there were Russians there. He was sent in another direction, but once again soon returned with news that the Russians were there too. Yet another direction for the scout - no good, Russians there as well. The guards, the lagerfuehrers, turned the prisoners around to lead them back to the camp. The Russians were already there too. The Germans had no illusions what they could expect at the hands of the Russians, and they fled. All of a sudden the inmates of the concentration camp found themselves alone. Shortly after that there was a rumble, and Russian tanks appeared. For Raizele, Rutele and the other members of this march the Holocaust had ended.
My mother ran to the nearest shrub, pulled off a flower and gave it to the Russian tank commander. The young Russian smiled and said it was the nicest gift he had ever received.
At about that time, in another concentration camp, Godel Mydlarz suddenly found himself and his inmates alone as the German guards fled in the face of advancing Russian armies. The few that stayed, begged the prisoners for mercy - not to incriminate them of any atrocities, which they knew would bring on savage retribution from the Soviet soldiers. My father Godel and the surviving inmates stripped the guards and sent them fleeing into the surrounding forest.
I know little about my father from his past. My mother told me he had a wife and two children. She told me he had abandoned them, never to see them again. Why would he have abandoned them? Many Jews fled as the Germans advanced across Poland, some males indeed leaving their families. They naively believed that the Nazis would only target adult males, and leave the women and children alone. They naively believed that other nearby places were "safe", such as different cities, some even fleeing into Germany. The lucky ones - those with foresight and, of course, with money, fled or migrated to countries far from Europe, such as the United States, South America and Palestine. The Jews who remained in Europe had no inkling what calamity was to befall them and their families.
My father mentioned to me how before the war he had spent time in a Cheder, where he obtained his religious learning. Unlike the prestigious learning facilities of today, my father's Cheder, where he spent some time, was a place of great privation - cold, damp and miserable, with an impoverished Rabbi providing the education.
There is a Nazi record of my father living for some time in the Lodz Ghetto before being shipped with the other Jews to some concentration camp. There was my father's account of one of these infamous roll calls by the Nazis - where the hapless prisoners would be told "you - this way" or "you - that way", 'this way' being to be used to provide labour for the German war effort, and 'that way' being to death - death in a gas chamber - and possible experimentation. With many survivors of the Holocaust, those orders by the Nazis "you go this way" and "you go that way" were the demarcation between surviving and not surviving the war.
It was my mother who told me about the beating my father received at the hands of the Nazis in his concentration camp - a beating which left him lying in the snow near death. It was another Jewish inmate, working as a doctor for the Germans, who secretly treated my father, saving his life.