The Survivor

My life story is like money in the bank. The longer I live, the more the interest builds. I’ve collected
my share of stories, but when people ask me about my life, I know what they want. They want a story
of survival. My life before and after the war holds no interest. It’s as if the Nazis gave me the only
life worth mentioning. They took so much; it’s nice to know that they left me something in return.

I. New Shoes
When people demand a story, I tell them about the two SS guards. I never knew their names but that
was not unusual. It would have been absurd for the SS to tell us their names, just as it would be
absurd for you to introduce yourself to a chicken sandwich. Mind you, I didn’t know the name of the
victim either. Hundreds of Jews arrived at the camp from all over Europe every day. Most stayed
only a few days before going up the chimney. Who could be bothered with names?
The guards were drunk on duty. It was a hazard of their professional. Even the guards could not help
but suffer in the midst of all our misery. It was depressing to be among the thousands of dead and
near dead. The drink numbed the guards to the misery but did nothing to relieve their boredom. So
they devised a game.
Each guard took a turn stomping on the neck of one hapless prisoner. He was dead with the first
stomp but the object of the game wasn’t to kill the man. The winner had to stomp the head clean off
the body. Though these guards were members Hitler’s elite squad, they were as lazy as any other
soldier. Not wishing to challenge themselves, they picked a particularly frail looking man. We were
all thin and this man was not so remarkable but he seemed to fit the guards’ criteria. But the game did
not go as easily as the SS imagined. The man’s neck had snapped easily enough but separating the
head from the body was another matter altogether. The guards pounded the man’s muscles and
tendons into pulp but their boots just could not cut the stubborn fibres. After many frustrating
minutes, one guard stood on the man’s neck while the other attempted to kick the man’s head free.
The entire enterprise was doomed to failure as the guard’s boot broke through the victim’s skull.
Disgusted, the guards finally gave up on their unholy diversion and I was left to drag the body to the
crematorium.
During the game I noticed that the victim had pair of tattered but serviceable boots that were a damn
sight better than the uncomfortable dress shoes I had been forced to wear for many months. So before
I began the physically demanding job of moving the body, I took the time to exchange shoes with the
corpse. The secret to surviving the camps was to have a pair of comfortable of work boots.
II. The Next to the Youngest Brother
It was the next to the youngest brother who first noticed that Yossel didn’t talk. Yossel was the tenth
out of eleven children. In such a large family it was not unusual for the older children to raise the
younger children but even without this convention, it was unlikely that his parents would have noticed
very much about Yossel.
Yossel’s father was a baker. He arrived at his small shop at 3:00 each morning to begin baking the
day’s wares. At 6:00 in the morning, his wife arrived to mind the front counter while Yossel’s father
minded the ovens. Even if they were so inclined, the couple would have only about two hours at the
end of each day to devote to their children. If divided evenly, this would allot only ten minutes per
child. But they were not that way inclined. They were a product of their times, their religion, and
their community and the couple was overwhelmed by the obligations imposed by each. They believed
their duty was to discharge these obligations and arrive safely at the end of their lives. They found no
joy in living and looked forward to reaching the end of their days.

The Survivor Page: 1

Yossel was an obedient child and not much trouble. It was in Yossel’s fourth year that the next to
youngest brother began to notice that Yossel wasn’t talking. The brother was only six years old
himself and was unsure as to when a child was expected to talk. Yossel’s parents were not alerted to
the problem for another nine months. His wife cried while Yossel’s father determined that the boy
was retarded and declared that there was nothing to be done. Both mother and father accepted this
additional burden as they accepted all their burdens, in quiet misery. After all, Yossel was not their
only retarded child. Their second eldest daughter was born with a pinhead. The girl was now 17 and
would have sex with any man in the village who was desperate enough to take advantage of the poor
child.
Yossel was thereafter treated like a retarded boy which is to say that he was ignored whenever
possible. Sometime after Yossel’s eighth birthday, the next to youngest brother noticed that Yossel
could talk. He would respond to simple questions with short answers of one or two words. When
asked by his father why he had never spoken before, Yossel replied that he had never thought of
anything worth saying. Yossel’s father declared that Yossel was still retarded and his attitude towards
the boy remained unchanged until the end of his life. In later years, when asked about his silent
period, Yossel would claim that he couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t know how to talk.
Despite his new found ability, Yossel was never much of a talker and his silence served him well
throughout his long life. It was not until Yossel became an old man that he began to speak freely.
And the words that came out of his mouth led his family to believe that he had become demented with
age.
III. Six Months
I don’t blame the guards for playing their foolish game. A concentration camp is a boring place.
There’s nothing to do and not much to talk about. What could one talk about in a concentration
camp? The horror of the place was too obvious to comment upon so why flog a dead horse? It was
too depressing to talk about our lives before the war and too absurd to make plans for whatever world
would exist after the war had ended. Even if you wanted to talk, whom would you talk to? A
concentration camp is a bad place to make friends. To begin with, it was too dangerous. You can’t
trust a starving man. But even without the danger, making friends was a bad idea. People are
supposed to look after their friends. All we could do was watch our friends die. Watch and wait for
our turn.
Occasionally you would meet somebody you knew: a cousin or someone from your village. That
happened to my brother who was in the camp with me. One day he came upon Avrom, an old
childhood friend. Avrom had moved with his family to Krakow when he and my brother were just
schoolboys. While living in Krakow, Avrom had somehow fallen in love with our sister. Years later,
he returned to our village to claim our sister for his wife. My father allowed Avrom to stay in our
house while he wooed our sister but eventually he was forced to return to Krakow without his bride. I
never learned whether it was my sister or my father who had sent Avrom away.
Avrom and my brother hugged and kissed each other in the compound. My brother was desperate for
news from the outside world. News of the war usually came to us through the Nazi propaganda
machine and was considered not worth repeating. It turned out that Avrom had heard all the same
propaganda and so most of his news consisted of a list of who was dead and who was not yet dead.
Avrom however also miraculously produced a note from our sister. He had met up with her in the
Krakow ghetto. Before he had been put on the train, our sister had written a note addressed to any
member of her family still left alive. Avrom gave my brother the note.
My brother treasured that note like gold. He read and reread it, night and day until he was discovered
by the guards. Passing of notes was strictly forbidden. The SS wanted to know who had passed the

The Survivor Page: 2

note but my brother refused to betray his friend. As punishment, he was tied to the stake and given
thirty lashes.
The whip tore the flesh off his back and side. I cleaned his wounds as best I could but they became
infected anyway. I nursed him through the fever, feeding him drops of water and whatever crumbs of
bread I could find. Eventually, his fever broke and his wounds healed over but he could not find the
strength to stand up. An inmate, who had been a doctor before the war, examined him and found that
one of the lashes had broken my brother’s rib, puncturing a lung. My brother lived for another six
months. Avrom went up the chimney after only three weeks.
I never would have believed that my brother would hold his tongue. My father, never a gentle man,
had an easy time bullying my brother into betraying the childhood confidences of his brothers and
sisters. But more than that, my brother always had a meanness of spirit that made acts of self-
sacrifice seem out of character. Maybe it was that same meanness of spirit that kept him from telling
the Nazis what they wanted to know.
IV. A Bag of Walnuts and a Flat of Eggs
Yossel’s father did not permit the boy to go to school. After all, if the boy couldn’t speak, he could
hardly be expected to learn to read and write. My father often quoted an old folk expression that one
should not rock a dead baby. Yossel was also denied the opportunity to help his father at the store,
baking being a profession that required a quick wit. What Yossel needed was a profession that
required a strong back. If a slow wit could not be turned into an asset, at least it should not be a
hindrance. It was therefore arranged for Yossel to help out at Shmuel’s butcher shop.
The work was simple. Once a week, Yossel accompanied Shmuel to the livestock auction. Shmuel
would purchase a cow from a local farmer and Yossel would escort the beast back to the village
shochet who performed the ritual slaughter. Following the ceremony, it was Yossel job to haul the
carcass back to Shmuel’s shop. The rest of the week, Yossel was required to haul parts of the carcass
from one part of the shop to another.
Yossel was a small boy when he began to work for Shmuel and the work seemed impossible for one
so young. But Yossel bore his burden without complaint and in time grew into his work. Although
he would always remain a slight man, Yossel acquired great strength. The muscles in his arms bulged
obscenely; his neck grew thick and even his fingers swelled fat with muscles. But like a coiled spring,
Yossel’s strength seemed to exist more in potential than in visible might.
Yossel’s career as the village strong man began by accident. Next door to Shmuel’s butcher shop was
a dried goods store. The store received regular shipments of beans, nuts and coffee in hundredweight
bags. The proprietor, a man of modest means and thrifty temperament, usually moved these bag
himself. However, on occasion, when the weight of the shipment overcame his parsimony, the owner
asked Yossel to carry the inventory into the basement storeroom. Yossel was always obliging and
was usually begrudgingly paid with a few coins and a glass of cold water. On one particular occasion,
however, the proprietor inexplicably rewarded Yossel with a bag of walnuts. Never one to delay
gratification, Yossel immediately sat down on the curb outside the store and began to eat his walnuts.
The market in Yossel’s village was a ramshackled but functional affair composed of dilapidated stalls
and badly maintained buildings. Cats and kids were the market’s twin curses. The cats were solitary
stalkers that pilfered food and urinated in the alleyways. The children preferred to travel in packs as
they went about their pilfering and urination. Both groups were constantly under foot but it was the
children that were Yossel principal tormentors. With his compact body and great strength, Yossel
was a figure of wonder. Small groups of children often stood and marvelled at the sight of Yossel
lifting a full calf into the butcher store. But not every group of children was content merely to watch
and so Yossel was occasionally struck with a rotten tomato.

The Survivor Page: 3

The sight of Yossel eating his walnuts began to attack a sizeable crowd of children. Initially, the
children gathered in hopes that Yossel would share his hard earned treat. But within a few minutes,
the group stared in wonder at the sight of Yossel cracking nuts. Most men will crack a walnut against
a hard surface or between the heel of both hands, but Yossel was effortlessly crushing the walnuts
inside the closed fist of one hand.
As with most minor miracles, wonder too soon turned to boredom and the children resumed their
taunting hoping to elicit a reaction from the silent Yossel. Yossel’s normal reaction was to try to take
a swipe at the nearest child. The walnuts however, were too valuable and Yossel did not want risk
upsetting his bag of nuts. In an act designed to intimidate the children, Yossel picked up a rusted iron
bar that lay in the gutter near his feet. Baring his teeth, Yossel used all his strength to bend the bar in
half. And so the legend was created.
Word of Yossel’s small feat spread through the village. Adults with little else to occupy their time
asked Yossel to repeat his feat of strength. Before long, Yossel had developed a repertoire of stunts,
many unrelated to his physical strength. For example, on request and with the purchase of a flat of
eggs from Shmuel’s butcher shop, Yossel would consume 30 raw eggs.
Yossel enjoyed his notoriety and was unaware that he had become a figure of sport within his
community.
V. The Nudnik
Despite their relative freedom, the SS were no better in dealing with the horrors of the camps then the
prisoners. The Nazis, though, worked hard to fight their depression. They drank, of course, and had
sex with what woman they could find. But the Nazis were sexually repressed and the SS, in
particular, were supposed to stay pure. So sex was not the preferred way to fight their despair. The
preferred way was to eat. God, how those Nazis could eat. The sight of us starving Jews only seemed
to increase their appetite.
I was interned in 1940 and I did not sit down to have a meal until I was liberated five years later.
That is not to say I did not eat. The Nazi’s gave us a crust of bread from time to time. One could
occasionally find some potato peals in the SS garbage. Once, I found an empty 25 gallon can of jam.
Empty or not, I crawled inside that can and spent two days licking the sides for nourishment.
Many people ask how I managed to withstand the hunger. What do well-fed people know of hunger?
They fast on Yom Kipper and think that they understand what it is to be hungry. I learned that eating
is just a habit, and like any habit, the withdrawal pain lasts a couple of days and then, with the mercy
of God, disappears. And even in those few days, the pain was gentle compared to the other tortures
we were later to endure.
Hunger wasn’t the problem. The real problem was getting enough nourishment to stay alive. A
grown man needs 400 calories a day to stay alive. A Jewish prisoner was lucky to get 200 calories.
And while 400 calories would be fine for someone lying in bed, physical labour requires more energy.
And that was the root of our predicament.
The SS may have been sadists they but were still human. Like most people they respected hard work
and despised shirkers. If they thought you were lazy, they would take great pleasure in working you
to death. With the guards’ attention focused on the lazy: diligent workers were left in relative peace.
I think the Nazi’s believed their own propaganda that work could set one free. So I was left with a
choice, allow the Nazi’s work me to death or work myself to death. I chose the latter.
I was assigned to a work detail that processed the Jews who had died on route to the camp. The SS
sergeant in charge of the detail tried to turn us into a model of German efficiency. Sergeant Nudnik,
as we called him, divided us up into four groups. One group unloaded the dead bodies from the train;

The Survivor Page: 4

the next dragged the bodies to the collection area; the third group stripped the bodies of clothing and
valuables and the last group dragged the naked bodies to the crematorium. It was physically
demanding work that Sergeant Nudnik, in his zeal to impress his superiors, managed to make even
more demanding. As a member of the first group, I had to pick up a body, throw it off the train, turn
around and pick up another body and repeat the process. Climbing down off the train to drag a body
to the collection area would have been a relief.
Sergeant Nudnik, in his pursuit of efficiency, neglected to allow rest time in his assembly line. The
sight of any worker stopping to catch his breath drove the Nudnik crazy and bought the idle worker a
smack in the head. After a few hours, we began to drop from exhaustion. The Nudnik considered
collapse just another form of shirking. As an example to the workers who managed to maintain their
consciousness, the Nudnik put a bullet in the back of the head of any worker who collapsed from
exhaustion. In the end, this proved self-defeating as the surviving workers had to process an ever-
increasing number of dead bodies.
An Uberführer finally put an end to the slaughter by pointing out to the Nudnik the inefficiency of
killing his work force. So we were finally allowed to organize ourselves in any way we saw fit. Most
chose to follow a body through all four stages of the initial processing. This gave them a chance to
rest a little when they reached the collection area and again when they stopped to strip the bodies in
search of valuables hidden in the clothing and other places that proper people don’t talk about.
I hated undressing the dead. I hated it because the victims of the trains always soiled their clothing as
their last act on earth. I never liked being covered in shit so I just stayed on the train, throwing bodies
out for others to drag away. Sergeant Nudnik noticed that I had stayed at my assigned post and took
this as a sign of support of his bloodthirsty efficiency. I had gained an ally.
VI. The Apprenticeship Program
Like many poor communities, the people in Yossel’s village were not overly concerned with physical
beauty. Fashion and makeup cost money and money was hard to come by. Poor nutrition, disease,
and a harsh climate left the population with a homogeneous weathered looked. By mutual agreement,
the village children were all considered beautiful and adults were not considered at all. But even
under such forgiving aesthetics, Shmuel, the butcher, was considered an ugly man. His features were
vaguely gothic with a heavy brow, deep set eyes and a cruel mouth. Shmuel however was
unconcerned, for his harsh features and violent profession gave lie to a pleasant personality. The
same could not be said for Rivka, Shmuel’s eldest daughter. The girl was cursed with the face and
personality of a bulldog. It seemed to many that Rivka’s personality had been shaped by the years she
spent gnawing at the poor cuts of meat her father had brought home for his family to consume. At the
age of 21, Rivka’s prospects for marriage were poor. The hopelessness of her situation only served to
enhance Rivka’s unattractiveness as she acquired the bad habit of sitting in her father’s shop, putting
on weight.
Like most of her neighbours, Rivka had given little thought to the slow witted Yossel. Yossel’s new
found notoriety as the village strong man however, opened up new possibilities. Rivka believed that
it was only a matter of time before other single girls began to see Yossel as marriage material so she
acted with swift determination. She began by improving Yossel’s lot in life. At her insistence,
Shmuel promoted Yossel from schlepper to apprentice butcher. Yossel was obliged to move into a
spare room at the back of the butcher shop and take his meals at Shmuel’s family table. Rivka took
personal interest in Yossel`s apprenticeship program and demanded that it includes instructions on
grooming and personal hygiene.
Yossel took his time and did all that was asked of him. He approached the art of butchering with
great care and brute strength. And while the hygiene lessons were not as successful, at least Yossel

The Survivor Page: 5

began to bath more regularly. In short order, Shmuel presented Yossel with an offer. A job, a wife
and God willing, one day when Shmuel retired, a business. Rivka accepted Shmuel’s offer on behalf
of the happy couple.
Shmuel would not live long enough to retire.
VII. A Rich Man’s Son
After the Uberführer’s talk, Sergeant Nudnik took on a bad attitude. He spent his time slouching
inside the railway cars, complaining to me as I unloaded the train. The Nudnik loved to complain.
He complained about his superior officers, the army, his wife and the Jews. Most of all, he
complained about the Jews. My German is very poor and I didn’t understand everything he said, but I
did understand that he hated the Jews. They stank (which was true enough of the Jews on the trains),
they were weak (again, it was true that up to half of the Jews were too weak to survive the trains) and
they were greedy. The Jews stole the wealth of Europe and hid it in the lining of their clothing.
I was in no position to argue. So I did my work and listened. The Nudnik understood my silence as
sympathy to his plight and we became friends, after a fashion.
The Nudnik found ways to take care of me. One day a train full of children arrived at the camp. In
any train, unloading the children was the most sought after part of the job. Not because the children
were light and the work was easy, although that was certainly true. It was sought after because of
what one could find in the children’s pockets. Sometimes the parents put candy in the children’s
pockets. A train full of children might contain enough food to keep a man alive for weeks.
Looting was punishable by death but as long as it was only a candy, the Nudnik was willing to look
the other way. I found six pieces of candy that day. I meant to eat only 2 or 3 and save the rest for
my brother. Maybe even save one piece for another day. But I ate them all, right there on the train. I
couldn’t help myself. The first candy made my head spin and my teeth ache. The second candy gave
me a sharp pain in my gut. In the camp, I hardly ever went to the bathroom. I never had to; I hardly
had anything to eat. But when I did go, it was always liquid. I was bent over in pain but put another
candy in my mouth just the same. I did my business in a mess somebody else had left on the train and
moved on to the next child.
In one railway car, I came upon a plump boy dressed in an expensive jacket. As I picked him up, I
slipped my hand in his pocket and pulled out an embroidered handkerchief. I unfolded the
handkerchief hoping to find a candy but instead, I found a diamond. Keeping it would be dangerous,
so I made myself out to be stupid and showed it to the Nudnik. I told him that I found something in
the boy’s pocket. Was it a piece of broken glass? Maybe part of a broken toy? Yes, agreed the
Nudnik, a piece of something broken from a toy. Worthless. Should I take it to the collection area or
throw it away? No, get back to work, the Nudnik ordered; he would throw it away himself.
A few days later, I was moved to a job inside Little Switzerland.
VIII. A Suitcase Full of Money
War arrived quickly at Yossel’s village. The Blitzkrieg was followed in quick succession by army
regulars and finally by the SS Special Unit. Rumours of the Special Unit’s activities spread terror
among the Jews. It was generally believed that the SS were targeting the adult men and community
leaders. The men in each town and village reacted by fleeing into the surrounding woods in small
groups of 5 or 6.
Yossel’s group was lead by the village doctor. The doctor had assumed the reins of power by virtue
of his superior education, valuable medical knowledge and a suitcase full of money. The money was
meant to keep the group alive through the winter. The doctor was an adequate, if conservative leader.
He was undone however, by the unwillingness of the local population to sell supplies to the Jews who
The Survivor Page: 6
were hiding in the woods. Aiding the Jews was a serious crime but townsfolk did not need to be
threatened. They took pleasure in aiding the Nazis. The small group huddled desperately in the
forest, their money just useless bits of paper. Yossel accepted his fate silently but his cousin, Motty,
accepted fate with significantly less grace.
Motty was a slight man whose profession did not provide him with an opportunity to develop his
body. Motty liked to refer to himself as a trader. He would trade in any commodity but preferred to
deal in items that were hard to find. Whether these items were legally available to be traded did not
concern Motty. And unlike his fellow Jews, Motty traded with the goyim.
After a series of unsuccessful shopping expeditions, Motty recruited Yossel for an unauthorized, late
night visit into town. The pair returned in the morning with a load of supplies. News followed the
next day that a local merchant had been discovered with a broken neck. After the second such
expedition, Motty assumed control of the group and the bag of money.
IX. Little Switzerland
I didn’t mind working on the trains; it kept me out of the rain. Any indoor job was a good job, but
working inside Little Switzerland was best of all. Only the most educated and refined men were
allowed to work inside Little Switzerland. Doctors, lawyers and professors. The elite of Europe; and
me.
From the collection area, the naked bodies were sent to the crematorium. The possessions however
were taken to workers who recorded the booty in huge journals. Underwear, hats, combs, watches,
rings, hats, pocketknives, everything the Jews thought they needed for a trip to a concentration camp
were noted in the journals. Afterwards, the goods and the journals were stored in a warehouse waiting
for a train ride back to Germany to be help pay for the war effort. The warehouse was called Little
Switzerland.
What sights there were to see in Little Switzerland! A stack of hair brushes 2 meters high.
Thousands of dolls. A pile of ladies’ bras reaching to the ceiling. Most of the women’s underwear
were white and filthy but sometimes you could see something special. A red bra, maybe with lace
and more. To this day I have never seen such things on a live woman.
They say that Jews are cheap but let me tell you, no people were ever cheaper than those Germans.
Nothing was thrown away. The Nazis thought they would be able to find a use for everything. There
was a mountain of eyeglasses. I wondered how the Germans matched their near sighted people
citizens up with the proper glasses. I understand why the Germans wanted gold teeth, but how could
a box of dentures help the Nazi war effort?
The Germans were afraid that the Jews were stealing their loot so we always worked under the eyes of
the SS. We sat at long tables where workers came and dumped the goods. First we had to mark the
goods off against the ledgers brought in from the collection area. Then we had to enter the goods into
our own Little Switzerland journals. Later the SS would check one journal against the other to make
sure that there was no stealing. But everybody stole anyway. The SS most of all.
It was a good job. The warehouse was warm and dry. And they fed us. Everybody had their own
Sergeant Nudnik who would slip them some food to keep their favourite Jew loyal. I had everything I
needed top stay alive. My only problem was that I couldn’t read or write. So I just checked off each
item, in order, in the collection area journals and then copied the words as neatly as I could into the
Little Switzerland journals. Sergeant Nudnik took what he wanted and nobody seemed to care.
The goods went back to Berlin on the same trains that brought in the Jews to the camp. The Nudnik
sometimes joked that it would be more efficient if the Jews were just shipped naked to the camps.

The Survivor Page: 7

 X. Roll Call
Motty taught the group to survive at the point of a knife. With Yossel as his henchman, Motty spread
terror liberally throughout the countryside. The lessons did not sit well with the rest of the group. It
took eight months for democracy to be restored. New rumors began to spread through the partisans
groups claiming the SS Special Units were no longer limiting their actions to the adult male
population. Woman, children, the weak and the elderly were now being relocated to newly built
ghettos called concentration camps. Some said that they were forced labour camps, others claimed
that they were death camps. But in any case, the men had not run into the woods to abandon their
families. And so one by one the men returned to their villages.
Shmuel would die on the trains. Rivka and her baby were selected to go up the chimney. Motty was
caught stealing and was hung as an example to the other prisoners. Yossel survived.
XI. Liberation
I don’t know how many people died in the camp. 200,000, maybe 400,000. But I do know how
many people survived.
That final winter stole the last of our strength and turned us into the walking dead. We could hear the
Russian guns in the distance but the sound only encouraged the Nazis to speed up the killing. The
ovens could not keep up and bodies started to pile up in front of the crematoriums. The Germans
didn’t want to leave any evidence so the killings had to slow down again until the ovens could catch
up. The SS cursed us and their shortage of labour.
With the Russians in sight, the SS blew up the camp and marched the surviving Jews down the road.
A thousand of us started on that death march. We slept on the road, drank out of ditches and ate what
we could find. 800 collapsed of exhaustion and starvation. The Uberfurher was now more receptive
to Sergeant Nudnik’s methods and put a bullet into the back of the head of anyone who collapsed.
On the eleventh night on the road, the SS allowed us to sleep in a barn. As we were herded into the
barn, the Nudnik came up to me to say goodbye. This final act of kindness made me nervous and I
knew that it would be my last night on earth. We huddled in the dark, more dead than alive and
listened to the sound of the Nazis bolting us in for the night. I was reminded of the trains.
In the dark, I crawled along the floor until I found some rotten floorboards. It wasn’t hard to rip out a
hole in the floor. Four other men slipped out the hole and escaped with me into the woods. The rest
of the men stayed in the barn. They were afraid that the SS were outside the barn waiting to shoot us
down. Such things did happen but the SS usually didn’t need an excuse to kill a Jew. So I ran.
We only had the strength to run for a minute or so. We collapsed in the woods and turned around to
see the barn in flames. The last of the Jews were being cremated.

The Survivor Page: 8

 Epilogue I
After the war I became a black marketeer. I began by wandering into town wearing my concentration
camp uniform. The sight of my black and white striped uniform terrified the townsfolk. They
thought that all survivors were crazy; that we would seek revenge by cutting the throat of the innocent
villagers. It wasn’t long before I was picked up by the police or, if the town was too small for police,
the local town councilor. At the police station I was questioned. Where did I come from? Why was I
in town? I usually made myself out to be stupid. I was lost. I had come from the camp and was
looking for my mother. The local officials would give me a ration coupon for a new suit of clothes
and tell me my mother was living in the next town. I would sell the ration coupon into the black
market and show up the next day, walking down the main street, still in my concentration camp
uniform. Again, the police would pick me up and again I would make myself out to be stupid. Why
was I still wearing those clothes? What did I do with the ration coupons? Coupons? I don’t know
about coupons. A man took them. Which man? A man told me they were no good. The officials
would grill me some more but in the end they would give me another set of clothes and escorted me
out of town. I repeated this in every town and village in the district. When I had built up my capital,
I moved into more valuable goods. Gold watches cost $50 on the American side and could be sold for
$75 on the Russian side. I became big shot. I had clothes, a car and a gun.
I was in Paris when I saw the Nudnik on the patio of an expensive restaurant. He had lost a little hair
and had put on some weight but he was otherwise little changed from his years in the camps. On his
little finger was a huge diamond ring. It was morning and he appeared to be having breakfast with his
wife and a child of about 5 years old. I took a table and watched the Nudnik finish his coffee.
I followed the Nudnik to what looked to be his apartment and waited in the hallway for ten minutes
before knocking on the door. The first thing the Nudnik saw was my gun. I could see that he didn’t
recognize me but he knew that the Holocaust had caught up to him. I looked around the apartment
and saw that it was stuffed with Jewish loot. His wife screamed and the boy cried but neither the
Nudnik nor I said a word.
I put a bullet in the Nudnik’s head. His wife screamed again and I shot both her and the boy in the
head. As I stared down at the bodies, I noticed that the boy looked like the Nudnik.
The police picked me up later that day. Why I had killed the man and his family? They were SS, I
explained. The Police Captain drove me to the apartment and I showed them the Jewish loot. It was
1946 and so the Police Captain was satisfied. Before we left the apartment, I saw the Captain take the
diamond ring off the Nudnik’s finger.
The next day the Police Captain put me on a train. I was told to leave France and not come back.
Epilogue II
Yossel had one more war experience. He arrived in Israel in 1948 as a war refugee and was
immediately recruited into the army to fight on the front line. After two days on the front, Yossel
asked to see the Commanding Officer. Yossel had only one souvenir from his time in Little
Switzerland; a diamond that appeared to be slightly larger than one carat. He gave the diamond to his
Commanding Officer. The next day Yossel was transferred to a job in the kitchen.
In 1998, on the 50th anniversary of the State of Israel, Yossel was awarded a medal by the Israeli
government for meritorious service during the War of Independence.

The Survivor Page: 9