Arbeit macht frei---------------- Work brings freedom
At this point in my first visit to Buchenwald, the memory fails. I have a good memory, trained for my school years to remember things I see, songs I have learned, roles in plays and opera that I have studied, verses I have memorized in my high school years. Why Is my memory so elusive on arriving at Buchenwald? Why can't I recall many events of the five or six days in Buchenwald that followed that Initial walk up the trail leading through the beech forest? I have been told that the horrors I witnessed, the pain I felt and observed, the odors of death and Indescribable visual images were more than my psyche could accept There are some events that humankind cannot comprehend, so the psyche protects as well as recalls. How does one recall, if one wishes to recall? Oh, my memory is not completely lost, for there are some images, some experiences that return, and which I am able to describe. However, there are some common, everyday activities that have moved far back Into the hidden recesses of my mind, and will not come out even after fifty years of passing time.
For example, I don't remember how we slept, how and where we ate. Jerry Hontas was my closest friend throughout the time I was with the 120th Evacuation Hospital, and we were inseparable throughout our overseas experience until his discharge from Camp Polk in early 1945. Wherever Jerry went, I went. Yet, I do not remember Jerry being with me In any memory I have of Buchenwald. I do not remember where we ate, where we washed, If we did. I do remember Jerry in Tenby, In Frankfurt, but not in Buchenwald! I recall vague images of Schloss Ettersburg, dark rooms and book shelves, littered with debris; (could it be by the escaping tenants of the building, taking as much of their necessities as they could?). I believe that in spite of our friendship, both Jerry and I felt the enormity of the need we faced, the desperate plight of the many thousands of emaciated prisoners, and the task we were assigned as liberating American Soldiers. We both recognized our primary responsibility as soldiers, as human beings, and as Americans, and we acted accordingly. That observation from the distance of 'fifty years, to be sure. How else can I explain this memory loss?
In the fifty years that have elapsed, I have become much more aware of the significance of that experience on my life and on the lives of many of those who were in my outfit'. I know that my studies in the German Language and area at Fordham University while with the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) shaped the direction of my college studies, Insofar as my undergraduate program was concerned. I know that my special interest in Goethe and other German writers was powerfully influenced by my presence at Schloss Ettersburg. I have recently become especially moved by the irony of our presence there. In the place where Goethe spent his summer vacations, where he must have thought deeply about the development of his philosophy of life which he incorporated in his masterpiece, Faust, where he formulated his philosophy of 'Gefuehl ist alles', we American soldiers encamped, pitched our tents in the shadow of Goethe's summer residence, and moved to our task of humanity.
Our first day at Buchenwald, where there were some 35,000 or more prisoners, many in advanced stages of malnutrition, amoebic dysentery, starvation and countless other deadly diseases, some 3,000 of the prisoners died. 'Time magazine wrote of the 'miracle", where through the efforts of the 120th Evacuation Hospital, on the third day but 3 inmates of the camp died ! I now have come to accept the probability that we were much more than dispensers of medications to create such a 'miracle'; that we brought with us from our beautiful homes and nation some of the spiritual weapons necessary to instill hope for the future within these unfortunate prisoners; that we brought them confidence in life and rescue, and perhaps most important, a reassurance that there continued to be human beings that do care and who can be compassionate for those in such a need of human compassion and feeling. The irony that we camped where Goethe wrote his personal philosophy of the supremacy of feeling, then we moved a short distance where human feelings were in grotesque denial through public policy, a policy established and formalized in the Nazi's final solution' becomes, at times, overpowering; a fatal contradiction that one cannot escape from reliving again and again in memory. Except for the pictures I have in my scrap books: I have two scrap-books; one the picture books of photographs taken by me and others present at the time, and another in my mind of scenes I have still, dominating my thoughts of Buchenwald. Except for the scrapbook of memories of things seen, reinforced by other sensual memories, my memory has failed me. What I can remember I write about----in somewhat fractured phrases, but necessarily so, because that is how my memory feeds the information to me from that awful past I remember--- The Gateway, arching over the entrance, supported by stone walls that were surprisingly attractive, constructed of iron with the kind of ornamentation one would expect at the entrance of an estate in France. The words 'Arbeit macht Frei' written in large iron letters, seemed a powerful and even appealing message to the casual viewer. I remember my initial reaction was quite positive, thinking that this must be a very different kind of place for prisoners! The words, 'Work brings freedom" suggest a program that would result in freedom for the workers; now there was a positive idea that I could find some merit in!
I remember--- The barracks, long rectangular structures with door access at both ends, with a short set of steps leading up to each doorway. Just outside the steps, I saw by many of the barracks a pile of bodies, some unclothed, so emaciated as to be little more than skeletons covered by skin. In one pile, said to be those that had died the previous night, I counted 80 bodies! Just outside, at the corner of each barrack, at both ends, there was a hole in the ground with a square opening with a wooden frame, the only latrine facility available. Inside the barracks with their wooden floors, I saw, at one end a kitchen facility, with huge copper vats, and a kind of porridge, which I was told was primarily water and grass---the only fare for the prisoners. How long they had been fed this kind of diet cannot determined, but the physical, condition of the prisoners suggest that it must have been for some time!
The barracks The shelves for beds The vats for grass and mud soup, cooked Just the day of liberation', a deadly gruel that turned muscle into flabby skin, creating sunken eyes, rotten teeth, distended bellies, and then,--death.
The prisoners condition The prisoners dress The prisoners' age The bodies outside--tossed from the door , piled like cordwood The wagons of bodies -- death accumulated in inhuman forms and shapes: yet, how can one escape the outrage of such human state?
I remember--- The children's barracks; the descent into hell, for it is at this point that my memory comes alive; the awful impact of smell returns. Even today, as I write about that awful exposure to the children's barracks, I shudder, and feel the back of my neck tighten for the sight, the smell, that indescribable odor made up of death, human excrement, The barracks was like all the others In dimensions. They were long, rectangular buildings with few windows, and with entrances close to the ends of the buildings. The children's barracks, however, were completely different in the interior. It appeared to me that these small children, some little more than two or three years old, had been abandoned, and had no capacity to maintain any essential care by themselves. Their frightened, colorless faces appear again and again in my memory, reinforced by the photographs I and others took. They were born of the union of no love; their parents were inmates forced into incarceration by reason of their faith or political differences from the Nazis. Or, perhaps, their fathers were guards in the camp who 'used' the women prisoners, who were forced into prostitution and who were doubly enslaved: within the walls of the camp, and within the desire of the men who force themselves on them. Their offspring were the children we saw, pathetic little beings with no parents, no heritage, no nationality, and no past except a concentration camp. Their faces continue to haunt me even today.
As I recall my exposure to the children's barracks, I remember the litter everywhere, piled one or two feet high in places, making access to several part of the barracks impossible. Everything was covered with excrement, urine, vomit---blankets, clothing, shoes, Jacket, underclothes---to call the scene indescribable is inadequate. The human urine, diseased flesh mixed with the wafting smells of the burning bodies from the ovens---all this is beyond the human capacity to forget. My memory censor failed me at this point when I descended into hell. My memory of that experience of smell is alive and vivid today as I write. On the shelves that served as beds for the children were equally littered. But beyond all else, beyond all visual horror was the overpowering odor that is for me, and I understand others who have made the same observation, the one memory that is impossible to erase, in spite of all efforts by our psyche to protect us, to defend us from the horror beyond description, that odor from the children's barracks is as powerful a force today as it was when I first encountered it over fifty years ago.The children who suffered under these conditions had been swept from the barracks by other prisoners after their liberation, and placed in cleaner more humane conditions elsewhere. All of these children were de-loused and cleaned up prior to their placement in cleaner facilities.
How frequently I have wondered about the ability of these victims of such a hell to mature to an adulthood with some hope of a normal life experience.
Adult barracks were much cleaner, and bore few of the indescribable filthy conditions that I encountered in the children’s barracks. In the adult prisoner barracks, however, there had been an attempt to maintain the barracks' conditions; the floors were swept, the kitchen sections had huge copper vats with a soup, made of grass, and mud, and the only latrine, a hole in the ground outside the building on the opposite corner from the entrance was obviously made use of, for I saw no evidence of human excrement, nor did I smell urine in the barracks of the adult prisoners
I remember--- a scientific' display, a kind of medical museum associated with the medical clinic that was another unforgettable experience. In that 'scientific laboratory, bodies were cut in half and placed in giant glass containers, and floating in formaldehyde. Some of the displays were of parts of bodies, some of the whole human form , cut in half from the front, and another form cut from the side.There were parts of bodies, of heads cut into two parts, of brains floating in formaldehyde, of babies, little more than embryos. Undoubtedly there would be some medical Justification for the teaching of anatomy to medical students. I was told, and evidence has confirmed that there were medical experiments conducted here. However, this display, it seemed to me, went beyond medical science perilously close to the macabre I remember--- the ovens, the crematorium. In our nation today, we hear about some people, some neo-nazis who believe that the ovens found in the concentration camps were for baking bread. I can attest to the inaccuracy of that belief, for I saw the ovens, three in a row, with half-burned bodies inside. I saw no bread baking; I smelled no baking bread!. Rather, I saw and smelled the pile of bodies outside the crematorium within easy access of the ovens, and more bodies in several wagons, wagons with rubber tires on their wheels, piled high with corpses which had been collected from the several barracks on a daily "body run", as the prisoners described it. If there were prisoners who died between the run of the wagons, the bodies of the deceased were piled outside the door of the barracks for easy loading on the following morning. Each barracks' membership assigned a group of men, usually the more physically able, to carry out the deceased prisoners
I remember--- Close behind the crematorium there was a pile of ashes--human ashes, nearly six feet high, covering an area some 20 feet in diameter. Of the piles of dead prisoners, stacked like cordwood outside the door of each barracks, where they were thrown, every morning a new pile was formed from the previous night. In one pile less than 3 feet high and ten feet long, I counted eighty-six bodies! ('stiffs" we called them. Now I shiver every time I think of the insensitivity of that description, and yet I do not believe I, or perhaps others of my age and Inexperience, could have kept my sanity if I had not been able to remove the "human" identity from those pitiful forms that were once living human
beings!)
I remember-- The German barracks becomes a hospital
Of the row on row of bodies in the German barracks which we set up as a hospital/morgue complex, we had to separate the living bodies from the dead by means of a stethoscope. My assignment: have all the dead bodies moved outside to be picked up by the trucks, and have the living bodies moved to the hospital facilities. I don't remember how many I worked with; nor do I remember how long I worked at the task---I don't remember---giving blood by direct transfusions to feed the living prisoners, but we did! As the reporter for the magazine "Time" wrote in his article on the 120th Evacuation Hospital, we found that the only way the prisoners with amebic dysentery could be kept alive was by giving them whole blood. They could not tolerate food; it would run right out of them, providing no sustenance whatsoever for the starving cells in their bodies. The Time correspondent wrote this story because it was the first time that amebic dysentery was treated in this manner; it was a kind of medical "first" that was noteworthy. In any event, of the approximately 35,000 prisoners in Buchenwald when we arrived, 3,000 died the first day we were there. By the third day, we lost 3 or 4 prisoners---I can't remember exactly, but the drop in mortality was very dramatic, and greatly satisfying to the men whose job it was to keep the inmates alive! A word should be said now for the use of the term "stiffs". It sounds so insensitive; almost as if there was an absence of caring. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The fact that everyone in the 120th Hospital unit worked for long hours each day was well documented. Perhaps of greater significance would be my inability to recall ever sleeping! I don't remember when or where I slept while we were at Buchenwald. I don't remember ever eating “mess" or where we did, if we did. I do remember carrying some packages of 'C rations' to the camp, and distributing them to those prisoners who were relatively healthy These were the men whom we relied on to assist in some of the necessary "clean-up efforts, cleaning the barracks. I know, also, that Jerry Hontas speaks about running back to the "mess' area to pick up some 'C rations" for some prisoners from Greece whom he met, could converse with, and whom he
wanted so much to assist in any way he could. In short, I do not know a single soldier in that hospital unit who "goofed off" during that stay in Buchenwald when manpower was need for the superhuman task at hand. We did take some pictures, toured the camp, talked with some prisoners, but only after we had completed the task facing us on arrival; to keep life in the prisoners who still had it. Period.
When we had successfully completed that task, then we took some breaths, and borrowed some relaxing (!I.) time, very much needed!
One such prisoner was the former superintendent of bridges and highways in Belgium, who was part of an underground group in Belgium, and still relatively in good health. This was the prisoner with whom I could converse, since I could speak German, and so could he. His fluency was better than mine, but he obviously was not prepared to read Goethe! He was, however, very aware of the historical significance of the camp, and the efforts of the Nazis in their abuse of human rights In their concentration camps. On the day we were to leave, he gave me a boat which he had taken from the home of Ilse Koch, the wife of the commandant of Buchenwald. The prisoners knew of the penchant for gruesome interests that his wife had: tattooes were especially appealing to her; she had wall hangings, lampshades and other articles made from human skin with tattoos. Word spread, and I heard from some of the prisoners that men who were still alive suffered the "skinning" process! That seemed inconceivable to me; (I prefer to understand its propoganda value, rather than to place high credability on that kind of information). Since his German was somewhat halting, he addressed me thus, 'Ich denke, Sie nehmen diesen mit Ihrem--ich habe von Haus Koch genommen. Diese"---(here he could not remember the word, so he pointed to the sails of the boat, and then, taking my hand, squeezed the skin at my wrist). Pointing to the sails again, he said, "Menschen, viel Menschen, tot---alles tot, alles Kaput"! Then he turned away as he began to sob. I was not prepared for this revelation, and I must confess I am not sure what I did. Now, I would know what to do, but then, I think I put my hand on his shoulder, and supported him until he regained his composure. That was the last time I was to see this gentleman, an educated engineer from Belgium. A part of the Belgium underground resistance group, who had been captured only months before. I do not believe I ever asked for his name; there was so much to do, and we needed the assistance of the able-bodied prisoners to assist us with our task, that we never took the time to be sociable! How I wish I could see him again, and to get to know him!
The significance of this gift as a historical artifact I came to understand only later, after the war was over, and I had returned home. I took the boat back to my "quarters", stuffed it into my duffel bag, and forgot about it. Shortly thereafter, in Cham, since it was cumbersome to carry, and the sails and "rigging" were fragile and already showing signs of abuse from the casual packaging I gave it, I decided to send it home. I used an empty "ammo" box, wrapped it and some other “contraband” in cloth which proved to be curtain material, and sent the box home. On arriving home after my discharge, I opened the box, took out some of the things , but left the boat in the box, and did not think about it for a couple years. Then, when the trial of the Nazis began in Nuernburg, I wrote a letter to Robert Jackson, the chief Prosecutor for the United States, telling him that I had the boat in my possession and some other artifacts from Buchenwald. His aide responded with an expression of thanks, and said that they had sufficient evidence of what Ilse Koch and her husband were about and did not need further evidence. I then put the "Santa Maria" into a kind of footlocker, and forgot it for almost 30 years! Then, in the '70's", when Milton Meltzer, Elie Wiesel and others began writing about the significance of the Holocaust and the group in Brookline, Massachusetts initiated the "Facing History and Ourselves" program for schools, I began to reconsider the historical significance of the boat. I took it out of the locker, and placed It on a shelf in my apartment, where it became the object of great interest by those who visited me.
Although I taught the Holocaust as unit in Meadowbrook Junior High School, and frequently visited the Holocaust Center in Brookilne, working with Bill Parsons and Margot Strom to widen the interest in their unit, I never took the boat to school. I felt that it was too graphic, and with the high percentage of Jewish students in my classes, could not bring myself to shock them further with such historical evidence I had plenty of pictures, and plenty of stories! I continued to teach the unit, and with the help and support of Lillian Radlo, a parent in the school and later the secretary of the Newton School Board, we succeeded in getting the Holocaust to be accepted as a core unit in the Newton High School Social Studies department.
In 1984, 1 Attended the "gathering of Liberators and Survivors" in Washington, D.C At the "Gathering", the Survivors of the Holocaust were recognized in a special ceremony at the White House, where President Reagan spoke, along with Elie Wiesel and other prominent Americans in a very emotional and moving program. Earlier, the "Liberators' were honored in a special ceremony at the Arlington National Cemetery. I attended with the encouragement of Sarah and Jim Feldman and a dentist, Jacob Birnbaum, who was a survivor of Auschwitz, and who brought his wife to this country where they raised their four sons, all of whom I had in class. All of Jake's sons also became dentists! Jake was very helpful to me, as was Sarah, and both "chaperoned" me about Washington, introducing me to some of the leadership of the "Gathering", including Benjamin Meade. I wrote to BenJamin Meade when I returned to my home, and suggested the most appropriate "home" for the "Santa Maria" would be the new Holocaust Museum in Washington, the plans of which were announced during the ceremonies. He agreed to receive the boat officially, and the next year, after having the boat encased in a heavy plastic case, I took it to Philadelphia, and officially presented it to Benjamin Meade. It was not an auspicious presentation, for BenJamin Meade suffered an emotional collapse prior to the presentation, and was taken to the hospital! However, I was assured the boat was received, and is now housed in the new Holocaust Museum in Washington. The location for a hospital for the inmates needing hospitalization were the barracks of the German soldiers and workers in the Karl Zeiss Optics factory. The prisoners in Buchenwald were forced into working at the assembly plant, where binoculars were assembled from parts manufactured, I presume at other locations around Germany. Binoculars, prisms, lenses were scattered over the benches on both sides of the factory, just beyond the location of the barracks for the German soldiers, and guards who staffed the concentration camp. At this assembly facility, American soldiers took dozens of high quality prisms and binoculars, which they used in trade for other more "desirable" items. Some were in excellent condition, some were in need of repair, undoubtedly returned to the "factory" to correct any flaws or deficiencies. I traded cigarettes for such a pair, but gave them away (or perhaps they were stolen when I was in a hospital in Cham, and where I lost so many things, as I remember)