Labor Group 104/108

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=110 BGCOLOR="#666699" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="04200840erlcjm.gif"> <div> <B>Head of the Line</B><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#FFFFCC" FACE="Arial" ><B>     |    </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#FFFFCC" FACE="Arial" ><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Head of the Line"><U><B>Home</B></U></A></FONT></div> <div> back to<B>  </B><A HREF="id3.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Excerpts"><U><B>Excerpts</B></U></A></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=190 BGCOLOR="#CCCCFF" TEXT="#080000" background="03c11c00egdysm.gif"> <div> <A HREF="id10.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Shtetl"><U>'Shtetl'</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id8.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Deportation"><U>Deportation</U></A></div> <div> <B>Labor Group 104/108</B></div> <div> <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Flossenburg"><U>Flossenburg</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id30.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Allentown"><U>Allentown</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id42.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contents"><U>Contents</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="83" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#3333CC" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" BGCOLOR=#FFFFFF > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 16 WIDTH="71"><div> <A HREF="id36.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ordering"><U><B>Order</B></U></A></div> </tD> </tR> </TABLE></B></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=370 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>Labor Group 104/108</B></div> <div> We toiled on railroad lines until November 1943. Then we were ordered to pack up because we, the Carpathian and Hungarian Jews, were being shipped out to the eastern front in Poland and the Ukraine. For us, this was a very heavy blow. We'd heard that the conditions for the Jewish labor camp work units were much harder and more dangerous at the eastern front. Lately, terrible news had seeped through about the conditions of the Jewish labor battalions there, and unfortunately we were told we were to replace them.</div> <div> Despite all this, we Carpathian Jews couldn't resist having a little fun with the Hungarian Jews. In a teasing way, we asked them why they worked so hard and so quickly to finish the railroad. As the Yiddish saying goes, "Revenge on the bedbugs when the house is on fire." In other words, we were really all in the same boat. They thought their hard work would save them, but it didn't. Of course, our sarcasm didn't do us any good either.</div> <div> We loaded up as always on a freight train. Typically, it was a very cold day, and it goes without saying that the freight coach boxes weren't heated. When we reached Sevlush - approximately 100 kilometers from the former border of Poland in the Carpathian - we were suddenly and unceremoniously unloaded. To this day I don't know why they stopped there. All of us kept hoping we wouldn't have to enter the war zone, after all.</div> <div> In Sevlush was my alma mater, the Yeshiva Yitz<U>ch</U>ak Bais Yoseph, where I had spent two semesters in 1932 and 1933, so I knew the city well. My father's married sister Faiga lived in Sevlush, as did my brother Moshe with his family; he'd moved from Sokmar. In Sevlush, Moshe obtained work in a barrel factory, although exactly what he did and how he landed this job, I don't know. Barely did he scrape a living together from the job. Sevlush was a wine-producing city and there was still a small Jewish community at the time.</div> <div> We remained in Sevlush for four or five weeks. We did no work, but the <I>keret</I> marched us around like soldiers, back and forth every day for about 15-20 kilometers. I received permission for a few hours' leave, so I went to visit my brother Moshe and his family.</div> <div> Every day, news reached us from the eastern front that the Russians continued pushing back the Germans and their allies, the Hungarians and Romanians. That December, they suffered bitter defeats. The Russians broke through the lines at the Don River and later at the Dnieper River; they were more accustomed to the cold winters than the Germans or Hungarians.</div> <div> Atrocities the Hungarians perpetrated against Jewish slave labor units started right after January 1943 when the Soviets dealt a crushing blow to the Hungarians at the Russian city of Woroniesh. A total disaster for the Hungarians, it also spelled catastrophe for the Jewish labor units because the Hungarians vented their frustrations on them. Inside Hungary, we weren't aware of these atrocities right away. Only in the summer of 1943 did news gradually filter through from some soldiers who were wounded or sick and sent back to Hungarian hospitals. From them, we learned what was happening to our Jewish labor battalions. </div> <div> The Hungarians made us their whipping boys. Almost a hundred thousand young men, the cream of Hungary's Jewish youth, were subjected in 1942-'43 to hard and dangerous work, such as digging trenches on the front lines, building bunkers, repairing roads, and loading and unloading war materiel.</div> <div> Terrible reports reached us of groups in which commanders starved the Jewish men to death. In one, a great proportion of the boys became very sick from typhus and other illnesses. They were kept in an unheated barn in the dead of winter. The commander ordered the <I>keret</I> to torch the barn, and hundreds of Jewish boys were burned alive. Those who tried to flee the barn were gunned down by the <I>keret</I>. All such commanders made every effort to erase any traces of their crimes by ensuring that no witnesses would survive to testify against them.</div> <div> When these reports reached our labor camp, fear and anxiety engulfed us all. We continued to hope our own commander would remain a reasonable person, which he seemed to be. We knew that we were going to the war territory where the situation was "without justice or judge." Moshe tried to comfort me by saying that the war would soon end, that by the time we'd get out to the battle lines, it would already be January 1944, and that salvation would soon arrive. That Hitler would soon be defeated sustained us during those frightening days and nights.</div> <div> Anxious as we were, we were proud that we were spiritual heroes, and in some cases spiritual heroism is of greater merit than physical heroism. At the end of December 1943, one week before we were to be shipped out to the war zone, two messengers arrived from Budapest for us. One was Jewish and was from some kind of church, with a proposition that if we'd convert to Christianity - heaven forbid! - we would be removed from our group and transferred to one made up of converts. There, people wore white armbands (not the yellow bands identifying us as Jews), and, the messengers contended, they wouldn't be sent to the war zone in the Ukraine and Poland. In spite of our great anguish, only one boy out of the 230 fellows accepted the proposition, at the urging of his sister who had come from Budapest to convince him to convert. Of the 230 boys in our group, half of them hailed from around the Carpathian, Slovakian region, the other half were Hungarian. According to Maimonides, even under penalty of death, a Jew must not convert. With great scorn and contempt, we rejected their proposition, and bade good riddance to the one who accepted it. The rest of these young men, in my opinion, were spiritual heroes.</div> <div> On a very cold day in January 1944, we were again loaded on a freight train and boxcars. This time there was a little coal oven in each car. The oven was put in there not for us, but to warm the soldiers, who were on board to prevent us from jumping out of the car and fleeing. In each car were 25 to 30 fellows. Inside were long benches, so we could sit. Expecting the worst freezing scenario, we brought along good woolen clothing and winter shoes.</div> <div> My fear and anxiety were unbearable. Since I'd been in Poland, I knew firsthand what was going on there, but now we were heading into the unknown. My cousin, Esther, came to the station to say goodbye. She already had one brother and two brothers-in-law who were in the Ukraine for more than a year, with no sign from them for a long time. As it turned out, we learned later that they perished during that winter of '43 when the atrocities directed at the labor groups took place. Esther was very worried about me; she'd heard in the summer that something very bad was going on and that her family had not been getting any postcards. Around her neck she wore a silver chain with a Star of David; suddenly she took it off, gave it to me, and said, "I'm giving you this necklace for a good luck charm, and it will protect you from trouble. But I want it back. You will come back and give it back to me."</div> <div> We kissed each other good-bye; both our cheeks were tear-stained. Thank G-d Esther survived the <I>Shoah</I>. Today she lives in Israel and established a fine family there. But I couldn't keep my promise to return her necklace because when I got to the concentration camp in Flossenburg at the end of 1944, we had to undress completely and leave all our possessions behind.</div> <div> <A HREF="id9_m.htm" TITLE="Labor Group 104/108"><U><I>Back to top</I></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="469" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#0000FF" BORDERCOLORDARK="#FFFFFF" FRAME="VOID" RULES="COLS" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 16 ><NOBR><div> <A HREF="id15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Reviews"><U>Review</U></A></div> </NOBR></tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP><NOBR><div> <A HREF="id16.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Photo Gallery"><U>Photo Gallery</U></A></div> </NOBR></tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP WIDTH="27"><div> <A HREF="id48.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Map"><U>Map</U></A></div> </tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP><NOBR><div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Holocaust Resources"><U>Holocaust Resources</U></A></div> </NOBR></tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP><NOBR><div> <A HREF="id2.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Giving Testimony"><U>Giving Testimony</U></A></div> </NOBR></tD> <tD VALIGN=TOP><NOBR><div> <A HREF="id36.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Ordering"><U>Ordering</U></A></div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>