The city of Flossenburg showed no damage from the war. Movement about town was hectic, people everywhere. Many soldiers on furlough strolled about with their girlfriends in the streets, smiling happily. Some people showed us contempt and derision as we passed them by. A few onlookers even yelled at us, "Verdammte Sau-hunde!" ("You damned pig-dogs!"). I searched for signs of remorse or shame on people's faces, as I walked in the lead. I found none.

Suddenly German SS officers arrived. Our keret's Hungarian commander stopped our column and, with a viciousness he never expressed before, yelled, "Bipchik! Now you're going to what will be your Palestine." He was trying to impress the German SS that he also knew how to hate Jews.

The SS went to work. Surrounding us, they barked, "Schneller, schneller!!" to make us walk faster. They marched us up a hill on the outskirts of Flossenburg. "Faster, faster, you Israelites, go up the hill!" It felt bizarre to hear the Germans use the word Israelittishevolk because their habit was to call us verfluchte Juden, accursed Jews. At a certain point, we saw a huge sign over a gate: Kriegsgefangen Lager (Prisoner of War Camp). That calmed me down somewhat and made me less afraid. I naïvely told myself, "If this is really a prisoner of war camp they're putting us in, they'll treat us according to international law."

At the camp gate, we were told to halt. Out came the camp commandant in SS uniform, a huge, plump SS redneck. His red face had a beastly expression on it. One of the German soldiers saluted him and reported that he was delivering 800 Hungarian Jews. Immediately, he gave the order to line up in fours. More SS came out and with sticks in their hands started to rearrange our lines, clubbing us over our heads as they did so. We were stunned and didn't know what to do; some boys, particularly ones at the end of the rows, were bloodied right away. Right off, we trembled at the sight of these SS. The gates opened and, as we passed through, the SS counted each of our rows. The Germans were very meticulous and had to see if their "new merchandise" checked out.

They herded us into a huge hall where a dreadful picture awaited us. There for the first time we saw so-called war prisoners: häftlinge (detainees or prisoners), as the Germans called them, half skeletons, dressed in striped black and white uniforms with a red and white "K/L" painted on their backs. On some of their lapels were triangles, some red, some green, and some yellow. Later we learned that "K/L" stood for koncentration lager (concentration camp) and the triangles were signs to classify the inmates: green triangles denoted criminals (mostly German), red triangles for political prisoners, and yellow for those of us who had transgressed German sensibilities by being Jews.

The hall was filled with people speaking different languages. Some had weird hairdos: a buzz-cut down the center of the scalp, with the sides left long. This made for easy identification. If someone tried to escape, his weird hairdo would easily give him away. To anybody seeing him, he was definitely an escaped prisoner. These men had sticks in their hands and shouted at us in many languages. At first we had no idea what their role was, but they certainly were acting like kapos.

The hall could easily have been the setting for an insane asylum - or a different planet dominated by aliens. There was not one normal face in the bunch; all looked like zombies, barely alive. Their dead eyes protruded from two slits, expressing a fear of death and great hunger. It had to be that those men were driven mad by the horrible conditions in this hellish place.

Through the windows we spotted a group of young women marching by. All had their hair shaved off and were dressed in the men's striped pants and jackets. Their agonized Jewish faces made an awful impression on us. Now we knew for sure that this was not a prisoner of war camp. With such women here, this was a real concentration camp.

A few hours later they let in about 10 so-called barbers who were inmates also. They had orders to completely shave our heads. They all spoke different languages, and some broken German. We barraged them with questions, but nobody wanted to talk. They either responded, "You'll see," or asked us for something to eat and for cigarettes, both of which we still had in small quantities in our backpacks. So desperate were the barbers for cigarettes that they picked butts up from the floor. (Little did we know we would be doing the same a few months later.) Perhaps their only sign of hope showed through in their questions concerning the area we had last been, and in trying to discern the battle lines and where the war was headed.

As night fell, the barbers, having shaved off everybody's hair, returned to their barracks. Outside it was very cold, and a howling, cutting wind made it feel even colder. On the hill all around us was a white sprinkle of snow. The watchtowers were lit up. A huge decorated Christmas tree was erected inside the compound, close to the entrance of the gate. The SS soldiers who stood guard on the watchtowers wore winter or fur coats and carried machine guns on their shoulders.

Then our group was rounded up and marched to another barrack, another block. More yelling. More clubbing. More screaming This was their method of dehumanizing people and robbing them of their human dignity immediately. They chased and clubbed us like cattle; but, then, not even cattle are clubbed. We entered another barrack, again in a huge hall. We had to undress completely. Every one of us wanted to lay out his clothing and shoes with his backpacks, as we were used to doing for the past few years. But then they clubbed our heads again, and screamed wildly, "Schneller, Schneller." The hail of blows intensified because we couldn't move fast enough, not knowing what they wanted from us. To avoid getting clubbed, we quickly tore our clothing off and threw it down. Naked, we were driven in to another room. In this room, there was only a window; everybody had to leave the room via the window. Two SS men, one at each side of the window, screened everyone to make sure we had nothing hidden anywhere on or in our bodies.

They even checked our mouths for such things as gold rings or any other valuables that we might have had. One of the SS by the window spotted the silver chain around my neck given to me by my cousin, and ripped it off, clubbing me again for good measure. I had totally forgotten about it. Intentionally, though I deeply regretted it, I left my father's silver Swiss pocket watch, of priceless sentimental value, in my clothing. Those who had wristwatches and forgot to take them off received extra clubbing for that. We all had to run naked about 150 meters in the bitter cold Bavarian winter to a cellar shower room. A hanging sign identified it as "Entlausungsanstalt" (Delousing Facility). It was just as well that we didn't know yet that in these rooms the Germans also showered people with poison gas.

Since the Germans still wanted to use us for the hard work ahead, it made sense for them to save the gas for a later time. After the shower, they handed everyone a shirt, a pair of pants, a long jacket and shoes. Never mind the size or the fit. Everything was done to the tune of wild screams, "Schnell, schnell!" Again we were chased barefoot onto the frozen ground sprinkled with snow, again 150 meters to Block No. 20. There, we exchanged the uniforms and shoes among ourselves. At my size, I was very lucky to be able to switch with someone and find shoes I could wear.

Inside the block, we found a group of old inmates who were a bit more talkative. One Polish Jew had been in different camps for two years, and he responded to my questions. He replied in Yiddish. "You want to know what's going on here? Here death reigns supreme. Here is hell on earth. Hell. Have you ever heard of Dachau? Here it is a thousand times worse. Do you see?" He grabbed me by the hand and took me to the window. "Do you see the smoke coming out of that chimney? That is the crematorium. That's where you're going to end up. You and all the others. Here is only death. Even those who are still alive are already dead."

From such a welcome, I became terribly depressed. I didn't expect a Jew to express such open hostility to another Jew. Yet, despite his frankness, I refused to believe him. Even when the Hungarian commander of my labor group threatened to make soap out of us, even in my wildest, darkest fantasies, I denied it. I wasn't the only one in our group who felt that way. We wanted desperately to believe that even the Hitler beast (I'm sorry to insult the animal world) could not do such a thing.

Such anger I felt in my heart toward that Polish Jew! Why did he have to speak to me like that? For a long time, I considered him a murderer - trying to destroy my hope. Even if he spoke the truth, he didn't have to be so outrageously cruel.

Bewildered and despairing, I turned away from this man; I didn't share his bitter remarks with my friends; I dared not. We tried to lift each other's morale, not bring each other down. "It won't be very long," we would say. "Hitler's demise is near and we will overcome it."

Block 20 had a large hall. Inside were rows and rows of wooden bunk beds stacked three to four high and only 20 to 25 inches wide - barely fit for animals. Close to the entrance on the right was a small room. That room was for the block ältester. He happened to be a German, with a green triangle on his lapel. Close to this small room stood a decorated Christmas tree. When we were all assembled in the big hall, the block supervisor barked, "Ruhe! Ruhe!" ("Shut up"). We became still, and then he began speaking. He gave a so-called orientation lecture. But first he asked who among us spoke German as well as other languages spoken by us newcomers to the block. A Jewish doctor from one of the szazods volunteered to translate his German speech into Hungarian for us, and the block supervisor began reading his riot act.

"You are all very lucky people," he said. "Because tomorrow night will be Christmas night and you will get a good meal to eat. Potato soup and macaroni with marmalade." Then he enumerated the laws of the concentration camp: "Here, for the slightest transgression, the punishment is a death-sentence. And here in this camp, we have our own crematorium that operates daily." He told us what time in the morning we had to get up for the roll-call, get inspected for work assignments, and when we got our breakfast coffee. He told us where the outhouse was located, along with some other regulations. After this speech, the doctor added his own words from the familiar psalm, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil because you, G-d, are with me."

A strange feeling suddenly came over me after I heard the doctor reciting this verse. Despite all the horrible experiences of this tragic day, I somehow felt salvation was near and that Hitler would soon be defeated.

A while later, they brought supper in for us: potato peel soup. It was so bad we gave our soup to the older inmates. After this miserable day, we suddenly lost our hunger. But the other guys lapped it up like dogs. Slurping the soup down, they said, "In a day or two, you too will eat that soup."

Later, the kapo screamed out, "Schlafen gehen" - Go to sleep - and everybody squeezed into their chicken coop bunks. Probably none of us newcomers slept that night; and we could hear disheartening groans from time to time.