CHAPTER 7
THE BIG SACHSENHAUSEN GATE WAS OPEN. Marek and I walked through it, under the administration building with its tower and the now-empty machine-gun nest near the area where some of the SS guards had been housed, and left the camp. We did not look back, either because we were afraid that some SS guards would suddenly give chase or because we did not want to be reminded of what lay behind us or both.
It took us a while to reach what looked like a major road or highway. It was teeming with tanks, military trucks, and horse-drawn wagons, carrying men and supplies. The men were waving to us and shouting. “Polish soldiers,” Marek said, and we waved back, calling out to them in Polish. They threw us loaves of bread as they drove past, chanting anti-Nazi slogans and singing “Long live Poland!”
We had been told to travel away from the front, which was moving closer and closer to Berlin. That meant that we had to go in the direction from which the soldiers were coming. Along the way we met inmates from other camps. There was much waving and cheering, with everybody wanting to know what camp we came from. For a while the road resembled a street carnival. A Polish military truck offered us a ride to a nearby German town. “Most of the houses here are empty,” the driver told us. “The Germans ran away because they are afraid of the Russians.” Then, acting as though he owned the town, he added, “Move into any of these houses, and take anything you find there, compliments of the Polish Kosciuszko Division.” The soldier laughed and drove away. As we walked down one of the streets, we met three Jewish girls from Hungary and two young men who had also just been liberated. They asked Marek and me to join them in the search for a house.
It did not take us long to come upon a large two-story brick house with a garden in front and a large backyard. It must have been abandoned on very short notice because the kitchen table was set, and there was even some food still on the plates. “Let’s continue the dinner,” one of the girls suggested. The cellar was stocked with canned fruit, vegetables, and even canned meat. We carried some of it up, and the girls started a fire and began to cook. What a wonderful dinner it was! My first real meal in years. The trouble was that while it all looked marvelous to me, I could barely swallow more than a few bites. Marek claimed that my stomach must have shrunk during all those years of near starvation. I did not know whether he was right; all I knew was that I could eat very, very little. Rather than stay at the table, I remembered the chickens and rabbits in the backyard; it had taken some persuasion on my part to save the rabbits from our eager cooks. I went out of the house to feed and play with the rabbits.
Wealthy people must have lived in the house, I thought. It had many rooms with fine furniture and paintings on the walls. It was hard for me to imagine, after Kielce, Auschwitz, and Sachsenhausen, that such homes existed and that families lived in them. The closets were filled with clothing. There were sheets and towels in drawers, as well as blankets and pillows. What would I not have given to have my parents with me in this house!
To the delight of the Hungarian girls, we found a sewing machine, and one of them immediately sat down to make herself a blouse with some material she had found. The men took all the clothing out of the closets and began to try on suits and pants. I found a pair of trousers, and since they were much too long on me, I simply shortened them with a kitchen knife and found a string to use as a belt. When I was all done, I threw my prison garb through the open window into the garden. Then I washed myself. No more prisoner, I thought, but then realized that the water and soap could not rid me of the one thing that would serve forever as a reminder of the concentration camp: the blue tattoo with my Auschwitz number on the inside of my left arm. Carefully, I dried my arm. Papa will be proud of me, I thought. Addressing him, as if reporting for duty, I called out, “B-2930 has survived the Ghetto of Kielce, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, and Germany! We won, as you predicted we would.”
I enjoyed myself immensely in “our” beautiful house. It was very comfortable; I had a clean bed all to myself with white sheets, pillows, and a quilt cover. It reminded me of Zilina in Slovakia, of our apartment there, and the cozy bed I had in the Grand Hotel. Through the windows of our new house, I could see Soviet tanks and trucks and soldiers, all moving toward Berlin. One day, while playing in the street, I noticed a Russian coming out of a nearby house. He was pushing a bicycle. Oh, to have a bike! I thought, and wondered whether I could still ride one. After all, I had not ridden a bike since I first learned to ride one in the Henryków factory in Kielce. Now I enviously watched the Russian soldier and his bike. As soon as he reached the street, he jumped clumsily on the bicycle and immediately fell off. He picked himself up and tried again and again. He started to swear, but the bicycle was unimpressed. I began to laugh. “Should I show you how it is done?” I asked in Polish, as I helped him pick up the bike. But he continued to swear. Finally, after yet another try, he threw the bike against the sidewalk and proceeded to kick it. “Don’t break it, don’t break it!” I cried, pulling on his uniform. He looked at me, spat on the ground, and walked away. That is how I became the proud owner of a bike. Of course, I jumped on it immediately and found, to my delight, that I had not forgotten how to ride.
The evenings in our house were lots of fun. Polish officers and soldiers dropped in and brought us food and candy. They asked about life in the concentration camps, wanted to know where we had been, told us about fighting the Germans and where they were during the war. Marek and I served as interpreters. They spoke of the conquest of Warsaw, the battles along the Vistula and Oder rivers, and the imminent German capitulation. Every evening more and more of them came. They told us about their regiments, and they showed me their decorations. One day a new group of soldiers came to visit us. They spoke with Marek and the Hungarian girls, while I was occupied polishing my bike, which I had carried into the house. The conversation dealt with Berlin and the prospects of victory. When Marek left the room to get some water glasses for the vodka they had brought along, the soldiers tried to communicate with the girls, but the girls did not understand Polish. I put my bike aside and asked them whether I could translate for them. “The girls understand German, and I speak Polish,” I said.
Immediately, I became the center of attention. “A Polish boy!” they exclaimed, and before I had a chance to explain that I was not a Pole, Marek entered the room. “Yes, he is Polish,” Marek said. “He was born in Kielce, and now I am taking him back.” He winked at me. “Let’s take him to Poland,” one of the soldiers said. “He can come with us,” added another. “I am staying with Marek,” I said, and went back to polish my bike. When they had left, Marek came over to me and explained that it might not be such a bad idea to go with the soldiers. After all, they could take care of me better than he could and get me back to Poland faster. There I would soon find my parents. I was not at all persuaded and did not want to lose the only real friend I had.
Early the next morning, two soldiers came to visit. I knew one of them. He had been our guest the night before; the other was an officer. They had brought some chocolate and a bicycle bell. The officer introduced himself and told me that he had heard about me. “We are with the heavy artillery,” he said, “and if you come with us, you’ll have a great life.” “Yes,” the soldier chipped in, “you’ll ride in military cars. What a life! No more walking.” “He’s right,” said the officer, “you’ll have all the chocolate you want, and we’ll let you shoot the cannons.” They talked and talked. Finally, in order not to seem impolite, I promised to think about it. Then I went out and attached the bell to my bike.
We had visitors again in the afternoon. Among the soldiers who came, I recognized the two who had dropped by earlier. They came into the garden and played with me. They showed me all kinds of tricks I could do with my bike. One of them asked me whether I wanted to learn how to shoot a gun. He found an old can in the yard, took his pistol out, threw the can into the air, and fired. It was a perfect hit. Then he gave me the gun, placed the can on the fence, and showed me how to aim. I was having a wonderful time. Another of the soldiers gave me a penknife. Again, they began to speak to me about returning with them to Poland. This time, somewhat to my own surprise, I agreed. Suddenly, it all seemed very exciting.
The soldiers picked me up the next the morning. Parting from Marek was not easy, but he assured me that I was doing the right thing, and I wanted to believe him. I never saw or heard from him again. My bicycle was loaded on the jeep, and while my friends waved, we drove off. The car sped through the streets of that little German town that had become our temporary home. The jeep stopped in front of a large crowded yard. “Here we are,” said the driver. “This is the famous Scout Company of the First Kosciuszko Division.” The yard was full of soldiers, trucks, armored cars, and horses. “Let’s introduce him to the captain,” said one of the soldiers who was holding my bike. We walked into one of the houses. The captain was a tall, heavyset man whom I liked immediately. “This is Tomek,” reported the driver. “Yes, yes,” muttered the captain, “heard a lot about you.” Picking me up in his arms, he immediately made me feel welcome. He then turned to one of the men and ordered him to get the company tailor and shoemaker. “We’ll make a real soldier out of you,” he said to me as he set me down again.
Within a day or two, I received something that looked like a Polish uniform, a belt, and a pair of shoes. Nothing seemed to be missing. The uniform had military buttons and even a corporal’s insignia. “If you make a good soldier,” the company tailor told me, “the captain will promote you to sergeant.” I had become a full-fledged soldier, albeit in miniature: the mascot of the Polish army. I don’t know exactly what date it was, although it must have been the end of April 1945. I was about two weeks short of my eleventh birthday.
At first, the tailor and shoemaker, who had made my uniform and shoes, were the soldiers I was closest to in the Scout Company. We ate all our meals together, and they soon noticed that I ate very little. That worried them, and they decided that they had to find a cure for my lack of appetite. When it appeared that the remedies they had come up with did not work, the shoemaker had an idea. “Why not try vodka?” he suggested. And out came the vodka. First a spoonful, then two, and finally half a kieliszek (tumbler), followed by little pieces of bacon. It worked like a charm: within days, I began to eat normally. This cure had the further consequence that, after a while, I could hold my vodka as well as many a soldier. I retained this capacity for vodka until my college days, when friends who had just seen the Brothers Karamazov movie bet me fifteen dollars — a lot of money in those days — that I could not drink a fifth of vodka, as one of the brothers had done in the movie, and jump over a chair. I won the wager but got so sick afterward that it was years before I could so much as look at a bottle of vodka again.
Besides showing me how to drink vodka and helping to revive my appetite, the tailor and shoemaker also tried to teach me their trades. I was particularly drawn to what the shoemaker called the “art of shoemaking,” from the stretching, cutting, and sewing of the leather, to the nailing down of the soles with wooden nails. My new friend was a master at it, and as I watched him I thought that it would be fun to become a shoemaker. I still remember all the steps that went into the production of an entirely handmade pair of shoes.
Some days after I joined the Scout Company, we received orders to move on to Berlin. Despite the fact that we were probably stationed no more than thirty kilometers from the outskirts of Berlin, our progress was quite slow, since the company was not fully mechanized. While we had a few trucks, one or two cars, and a few armored vehicles, our supplies and maybe even the ammunition were transported on horse-drawn wagons, which brought up the rear and slowed down our advance. The roads were also crowded with advancing Soviet troops, whose tanks and artillery pieces kept passing us amid a great deal of shouting and general confusion. It was all very exciting to me, especially as I was permitted to ride in the armored vehicles, although I had to sleep in the horse-drawn wagons.
When we reached Berlin, the fighting for the city was still in full swing. Artillery and heavy machine-gun fire could be heard in the distance. Death and destruction were all around us. Most of the buildings along our route were burned out or reduced to rubble. The houses that were still standing were covered with bullet holes. Bodies of dead German and Soviet soldiers and of civilians were lying on the sidewalks and on the mounds of brick and cement that were all that remained of what had once been private homes, apartment houses, and office buildings.
Our destination was a park area not far from the Brandenburg Gate. The park was already largely occupied by Soviet troops with artillery pieces and katyushas, their rocket-propelled field guns. My company established itself in one part of the park, not far from the katyusha batteries, which made a terrible noise every time they were fired. I still remember one of the soldiers, probably a corporal or sergeant, who was in charge of a katyusha mounted atop a truck, hurling antifascist slogans and obscenities in the direction of the German defenders of the city each time he gave the order to release the rockets. Although the Germans seemed no longer to be firing their cannons in our direction, I was told to sleep in the armored car at night and to stay in it or near it during the day, because no one knew how long the Germans would continue to fight. Besides, there were still many German snipers around. A day after we arrived in Berlin, one of our soldiers was killed by a sniper shooting at a truck that had left the park to reconnoiter some suspected German positions.
As the fighting died down, some soldiers decided to go fishing in a nearby pond and took me along. When we got there, one of them threw a hand grenade into the pond. Within minutes, the surface of the pond was covered with dead fish floating belly-up. My friends scooped up some fish in a bucket they had brought along. They called it “speed fishing.” I don’t know what they did with the fish, but if they cooked them, they did not share any with me.
I have only tried to fish a few times in my life and have never had much success at it. Once, on my first fishing outing with my sons, who were then still quite young, I cast my fishing rod with real gusto and, to my great shock and that of my sons, hooked the shirt of a fisherman standing on the other side of the pier. He did not look very happy when he realized what had happened. While I was trying to disentangle my hook from his shirt, my sons, fearing that the fisherman would attack me with the long knife hanging from his belt, kept moving ever farther away from me. But as soon as I told the fisherman that this was my first fishing experience, he burst out laughing and wished me better luck next time. At that moment, I thought of that Berlin pond back in 1945, which had actually been my first fishing experience — but certainly not the type of fishing I would recommend.
The news that Berlin had capitulated reached us a day after the “speed fishing” expedition at the pond. Of course, there was great rejoicing throughout our park, with shots being fired into the air from whatever weapons were handy. At the same time, vodka was being dispensed to the troops. Polish and Soviet soldiers could be seen embracing each other and sharing their vodka and cigarettes. Everybody was singing and dancing. A Polish soldier from our company gave me some swigs from his vodka bottle. The park had turned into a veritable carnival. As it got darker and the festivities gradually died down, I crawled into the armored car that had been my bed for the past few days and was soon fast asleep. That is how I helped liberate Berlin!
The war was still not over for about a week. My company, together with other units, was ordered to move out in pursuit of German troops that had retreated from Berlin. That day or a day later, we reached the edge of a forest. A whole German division was apparently dug in at that forest. Although they outnumbered us, their commanders were willing to negotiate an orderly surrender. The negotiations continued through much of the night. By morning, what had been expected to be a major surrender resulted in the capture of only the German officers who had taken part in the negotiations. The rest of the German division had simply vanished into thin air. After leaving the area around Berlin, we would from time to time run into groups of German soldiers who would surrender to us without putting up any resistance. It was quite an exhilarating experience for me to see German officers tremble in fear in front of us, when only months earlier they had inspired fear in all who had to appear before them.
A few days later, we learned that Germany had surrendered. The celebrations were even wilder than those that took place when we heard that Berlin had capitulated. The shooting and drinking continued for hours, into the night and even on the next day. The soldiers in my company were singing the Polish national anthem and all kinds of other Polish songs I had never heard before. Every so often, someone would raise his glass or bottle and drink to Poland and to the victorious Allied armies. Some soldiers stood around in small groups and spoke of home and of their families in Poland; others, with tears in their eyes, kept saying that they never thought they would live to see the end of the war and the defeat of Germany.
I was not sure whether to be happy or sad. Of course, I was happy that the war was over and that we had been liberated. But when the soldiers spoke of their families and of home, I was reminded that I did not know where my home was. I had no home without my parents, and I did not know where they were. I was sure that if I had survived, they must have survived too and that they would find me! In the meantime, my company was my home. But what would happen to me when all the soldiers went home? I decided that there would be time enough to answer that question, and for all I knew, it might never present itself since I was sure my parents would find me before the army was disbanded.
I had a wonderful time as we moved through Germany after its capitulation. Along the way, some soldiers from my company had come upon what remained of a German circus. There they found a beautiful pony and a miniature cart. They brought both to me, and one of the soldiers told me, “We liberated it for you. It needed a good Polish home.” Now I spent many hours combing and feeding my new companion. I would ride the pony for fun, but when the company had to move, I would sit behind my pony in my little cart and follow the horse-drawn wagons that were carrying our supplies. Along the way, soldiers from other companies would wave and shout to me as we passed. Before I got the pony, I had also acquired a small pistol of the type that women would carry in their handbags. I think it was my shoemaker friend who gave it to me. Since he had warned me that the five bullets in the magazine were the only ammunition he had been able to find for the gun, I shot it only once in order to find out whether the gun really worked. It did. From then on, I carried the pistol very proudly in a holster the shoemaker had made for me and polished it often.
We moved at a much slower pace through Germany after its capitulation than before, and we stayed for days in different towns. Many of the houses were empty, since their owners had fled in advance of the arrival of Soviet troops. We basically had the run of these towns. Some of the soldiers from my company amused themselves by breaking windows in the houses and causing all kinds of other damage. Encouraging me to follow their example, the soldiers would tell me that the Germans deserved that and more for all the suffering they had caused in Poland.
I did not see much excitement in breaking windows and preferred to play or to ride my pony whenever we stopped in a town for a few days. But one day a young soldier invited me to come along with him for some good fun. With his pepeshka submachine gun slung over his shoulder — this was a gun with a round magazine that almost all the Soviet and Polish soldiers used at the time — he guided me to a narrow street and pointed to the telephone poles lining the road. “See those white porcelain cups with the electric wires wound around them?” he asked. “We are going to try to shoot them down,” he said, as he clicked a lever on the gun so that it would shoot only one bullet at a time. He had many misses but also some hits. When hit, the porcelain would shatter on the sidewalk, adding to the noise the pepeshka made. After a while, he handed me the gun. First, he had me aim it at a nearby fence “to give me a feel for the gun.” It was not very heavy, and the round magazine seemed to help steady it. I had no trouble hitting the fence, but it took me a while to hit the targets on the telephone poles. I got the hang of it after a while. From then on, my friend and I would go hunting for these porcelain cups whenever we came to a new town. To this day, whenever I see telephone poles with porcelain cups, I recall, not without some shame, my acts of vandalism of long ago and feel a suppressed yearning to try it at least one more time.
Our meandering through Germany came to an end when my company, with all its equipment, was ordered to embark a train to Poland. The train stopped many times as we traveled, frequently alongside trains crowded with Soviet troops. We would then all get off our train and engage in friendly banter with the Russians. Poles and Russians would trade in all types of “liberated” items. The Russians would display their “czassy” (watches) — they would proudly show off four or five watches on each arm — and offer to trade some of them for other watches or jewelry. They seemed fascinated by what made watches tick. I remember one of them putting a watch under the wheel of a railroad car, while the train was being shunted about, to see what would happen to the watch when the car had gone over it. Everybody cheered when he retrieved the flattened watch and ceremoniously displayed the shattered pieces to us.
There were more cheers and much rejoicing when the train crossed into Poland. Our destination was a military garrison in the Polish city of Siedlce. There I shared quarters with a group of men from my company. The soldiers played a lot of soccer and cards as they waited to be demobilized and allowed to return to private life. There was also a lot of goofing around. A frequent pastime consisted of waiting until some unsuspecting soldier entered one of the outdoor privies near one of the barracks. A few soldiers then materialized out of nowhere, lifted the privy off its hole, and tipped the wooden structure on its side with the poor victim screaming and swearing.
At the garrison in Siedlce, I started to spend more and more time with a young soldier in my company who was Jewish. Over the years, I have forgotten the names of many people, but the name I most regret not remembering is that of this young soldier, although I still have the photograph he gave me of the two of us in our uniforms. While I imagine that many of the soldiers in my company guessed that I was Jewish, I kept that information to myself for fear, probably unjustified, that they would no longer treat me as one of their own. I did, however, tell my friend but asked him not to let the other soldiers know. Whenever we talked, he kept asking me what I planned to do in the future. Of course, I had no idea. I had not really thought about it, probably because I expected my parents to find me any day soon. He kept shaking his head, very delicately, trying to make me realize that it would take them a long time to find me, assuming that they were still alive.
Thomas Buergenthal (left) in a tailormade Polish Army uniform,with the soldier who took him to the orphanage, 1945
One day he let me know that he had to go away for a few days. He returned from his trip very excited and told me that he had found a wonderful Jewish orphanage in Otwock, near Warsaw. He had told the director about me, and she indicated that I would be most welcome to stay there until I found my parents. I would love it there, my friend assured me; I would meet many children my age who had also survived the war. Besides, our company commander had told him that a military garrison was not really the right place for an eleven-year-old boy.
A few days later my friend and I were on a train bound for Otwock.