(8) Saved by the skin

In the beginning, the whole family was really nasty to me, I was just a slave. There were about 16 or so dairy cows on the farm, so one of my jobs was to work the little cutting machine that was used to cut up Turnips, and similar to make cattle feed. I had a pitchfork, and just pitched the turnips up and put them in the grinder.

Well, old Rottlander didn't think I was doing this fast enough, and he regularly beat me with the yard broom, shouting "Faster, Faster!" Well after four or five days of this I was hating the man and looking for an opportunity to get him back, but I knew if I retaliated they would hand me over to the SS. I was given the job of looking after the cows as his two cattlemen had been called up for the forces. I had to feed the calves, fattening them up so that they could be taken to the market.

One day, Rottlander came to me and told me that I should not feed one particularly fat calf that day, as someone was coming to collect it for market. In those days, all the cattle from the farm were sent to market, to "feed the Reich," and the farmers were paid. No farmers were allowed to sell or trade any of their own.

Later that evening I watched him heading out to the forest with a spade in his hand, and as I watched, he began to dig a hole. I though to myself,

"what's he up to?"

I started making connections. "Don't feed that calf today" Well after midnight, I heard a noise again, and I saw old Rottlander heading out towards his hole with a bundle under his arms. Suspicion got the better of me, I just had to know what he was carrying. I crept downstairs to the outside toilet.

I walked over the cowshed, and saw as I suspected the fat calf had gone. I realised that Rottlander must have killed and skinned the calf to sell on the Black Market. In Germany at that time things were very strict, and you had to have permission from the government to kill animals. If you did it without permission, they'd most likely hang you or put you in prison.

He was burying the skin! Now I had something on the nasty little man!

I carried on with my work with the cows, milking morning and evening, getting up at 6am to milk the cows, taking the big milk churns out to the main road for the collection lorry, in the morning.

Rottlander was a slight man, I think if you kicked him he would blow away, but his temper tantrums continued, urging me to go "Faster, Faster". One particular day, I think someone had upset him down in Overath, and he was looking for someone to take his frustration out on. He came up to me shouting,

"Faster, faster"

and took his yard broom to me in a way he'd never done before.

"Swine Pole! When we've won this war, you're all finished!"

Well he was beating me so much, I think the survival instinct kicked in, and I lashed out at him with my pitchfork and knocked him to the ground. I hit him two or three time more, and stood over him.

"You Bastard"

he shouted, and got up and went back to the house where his telephone was.

Well I knew what was going to happen now, and sure enough, in 20 minutes the police van arrived, and three SS men got out. Black uniform, death's head on the lapels, the genuine article.

"Come with us!"

One grabbed me by the collar, kicked me in the small of the back and bundled me in to the van.

"You are under arrest for trying to kill a citizen of the Reich"

They took me down to the SS headquarters in Overath, and threw me in a filthy, tiny concrete cell with water dripping from the roof.

"In three or four days you'll be hanged. Not shot, because the rope is cheaper than bullets. We need bullets for the war, but a rope can hang many people, it's cheaper."

"Well at least it will be quick and finish my suffering", I thought

I was wet, cold and hungry and I was wondering where Jesus was now? I prayed; I've always prayed throughout my life.

After 3 days in the cell, The SS called Rottlander to come in and sign a statement saying what I'd done, so that I could be hanged. The Germans never did anything without the correct documentation. The Guard came up to me and joked with me

"Your boss is here to see you!

Rottlander and I stood in the cell while the two Gestapo men, were just outside the door. I realised that I'd nothing to lose now, so I leaned over to him and whispered in his ear.

"Hey, Mr Rottlander, what about that calf skin? We'll be all hanging together if I tell these men what I saw!"

Well, his face went white, and I'm sure I saw the sweat burst out on his brow, I thought he was going to collapse. He knew that he would be hanged or shot as well.

"That skin will be there, in that hole"

I went on,

"You might have put a few leaves over it, but I could take them to it and show them."

At this point one of the Gestapo men came in with the statement in his hand.

"Please sign here Herr Rottlander"

I looked at Rottlander, and he spluttered,

"I've changed my mind! I'll take him back on the farm, I need the workers"

The Gestapo man looked at him, then at me and said,

"What if he tries to kill you again, he's a Pole! These Poles are rough people!

"No, Sorry for wasting your time, I'll take him back."

We went back in the car to the farm without a word. He dropped me off, told me to get back to work and walked over to his wife, Maria, who had come out to meet us. He told her what had happened, and Maria came over to me looking angry. This big woman stood in front of me, hands on hips and said,

"Czeslaw, how could you tell those lies about my husband?"

"It's not a lie, it's the truth", I replied, "do you want me to go get a spade and dig it up to show you?

Maria told me to go in to the room where us foreigners eat our food, and she came back a few minutes later with a sandwich and sat down next to me. She could see that I'd not eaten properly for days. Rottlander came in and sat down and we talked small-talk for a while until Rottlander looked at me and said that we should agree to say nothing more about the incident, unless I wanted both of us to be hanging from ropes together.

Well from that day onwards, I was treated much better on the farm. I was a good man from then onwards, "Chassa" they called me.

No more "Faster, Faster" no more beatings, and I turned a blind eye to Herr Rottlander's black market activities.

(7) Farmer again

I was eventually evacuated from Krupp because of the intensifying allied bombing of the factory. They sent me to Overath, a nice little town surrounded by farms. About 1km away was an Aluminium mine where many prisoners of war and forced labourers were working. I decided that I should try and get a job on a farm, as I'd heard about the conditions in the mines, and you were usually guaranteed better food there.

At Overath I was chosen for work by a farmer, Herr Rotlander, a member of the SA, I remember him going off to the Camp at Overath every second day or so in his yellow uniform. He was going to select more prisoners to work on the farms, because of course, by this time, all the fit working men were in the army. The French prisoners there were regularly picked up in lorries and taken out to work on the surrounding farms.

Rottlander was married to a big woman, Maria who had three children, two girls and one son. She used to say "When we win the war, all you foreign men will be castrated, and we'll build a little hut on the farm for you to live in" She showed me the place, it was near the main road, in some bushes, and close to a well.

Chroniclers' Diversion - thoughts on a visit to Auschwitz, 1997

Words are really not enough to express the feel of this place, you have to experience the faces of the dead looking down on you from the photographs on the walls of the Auschwitz museum, carefully numbered and catalogued and see the piles of belongings; shoes, spectacles and human hair.

Our guide to the museum was a rather stern, sad-faced Pole of 66 years who explained that he was a retired chemical engineer whose mother-in-law had died in the camp. He began by telling us the grim statistics of this place. 1,500,000 people killed here, not in an orgy of emotion, like a battle, but by an efficient, planned, killing factory, designed with the sole purpose of disposing of unwanted people, and using the remains in an effective way. Being an Engineer, a designer of machines, and hearing it coming from an Engineer, I found this thought particularly chilling.

To visit Auschwitz 1, where so many came back from a day’s work and died, you must first walk through the gate with the cynical motto over it, “Arbeit mach Frie” (Work makes you free). The initial feeling is one of visiting a tourist attraction, the sight is so familiar. Then you remember the grim statistics, look down the double line barbed wire electrified fence and you begin to feel the horror creep under your skin.

The museum is housed in the original brick barrack buildings, the tour takes you in to a number of these, each one focusing on a different aspect of life and death in the camp. The tour is cleverly designed to give you an increasing level of horror as it progresses. Blocks 12 and 14, -Dr Josef Mengele’s former experimental medical hospitals are closed to the public.

The tour starts with maps of the places where people were taken from, and you see the convenient central location of Auschwitz. People from as far apart as Norway and the Greek Island of Rhodes were “resettled” in this place. It then moves on to show the living conditions in the camp, down corridors of numbered and named portraits of the camp inmates, each with their date of entry and date of death. Dates in most cases separated by 2-3 months.

The rest of the tour passed through pathetic piles of the day to day items of people’s lives. Suitcases, spectacles, shaving brushes, and shoe polish. Each reminds you that these people really did not know their fate. Would you bother to bring shoe polish unless you really believed that you were being re housed?

Nothing was wasted here; useful belongings were given to the good people of the Reich. The soldiers made sure that all belongings were taken and not misplaced on the trip. Everyone knows about the recycling of gold teeth and jewellery, it is almost a symbol of the Holocaust, but what about the recycling of hair to make cloth? The recycling of the ashes of the dead to make fertiliser, shoes to make artificial leather? This was a factory for recycling people.

The wall against which thousands were shot is now a shrine, as if scripted by some director the heavens opened and it snowed violently.

None of the visitors seemed to care.

We moved on to the very place where Father Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish Catholic Priest, now beatified, made the ultimate sacrifice by asking to replace a family man who was sentenced to die by starvation. We visited the cell where he finally starved to death.

The tour ended inside the gas chamber, a converted underground munitions store, our chemical engineer explaining the process in graphic detail.

We were left with the words of Pastor Niemoeller, a Holocaust Victim

“First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists and I did not speak out - because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics and I did not speak out - because I was not a Catholic

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me”

(6) Otto

Around this time, the Allies began to bomb the Maginot line, close to the Stassen farm, so eventually we all were evacuated East and I was sent to work at the Krupp factory in Essen.

I remember I cried when I said goodbye to the Stassens.

At Krupp, I was put in a drawing office. I remember that there were six work booths, all made of glass so that the draughtsmen could see each other, each with a drawing board.

Now I'm a pretty smart fellow, I usually get chosen as the leader, but this time I volunteered for the job just because it was inside, in the office.

"Can you draw?"

"Why of course can!"

My motto was becoming, "If they ask for a hairdresser, you're a hairdresser!" Anyway, I thought I'd done my stint outdoors on the farm, on the straw mattresses and the gritty soup.

One small problem, though.

I lied.

I just did not have a clue about technical drawing!

They sat me down at the drawing board, gave me a plan and told me to transfer the plan over on to sheets of tin-plate. You laid it out on the table, got a paper drawing and you had to take the paper and copy it on to the material, and afterwards, when you'd done it properly, that material had to go under a cutter.

Well, I just hadn't a clue! I was not sure how I'd be able to get out of this. If they found me out, I'd probably end up hanging, or at worst working myself to death in somewhere much worse.

I sat and stared at the drawings, the instruments, rules, dividers, compasses, and for the first time in my life, began to panic. But, like many times before and since, I prayed for guidance.

I'd noticed an old German next to me, watching me. He obviously could see that I was in trouble. He looked furtively around, then introduced himself as Otto. I think Otto was a Catholic, he could see that I had no clue and he knew what would happen to me if I was found out.

He looked round and out of the view of the manager, came into my booth and started showing me what to do; he helped me, and even did my work for me for a while. The foreman would come along measure up my work, and said what good work I was doing. Otto was taking a great risk himself because he was not doing his own work while he was helping me, but within a few days, under his careful guidance, I began to get the hang of the job. After a week or so I was a skilled draughtsman!

May God bless that man!

(5) Farmer

Later that day, farmers and factory owners came to the camp to choose their workers. We lined up in the yard, while the German camp staff allocated groups of men to each farmer and factory boss. A farmer called Gustav Stassen chose me. He must have thought I looked like a strong lad, and would work well for him. He seemed kind enough, and I remember he gave me a sandwich to eat. I was grateful for this after the long train journey and the "interview" with the SA man. I was later to learn that Gustav Stassen was a very important farmer and he was known for looking after his workers very well.

"Very well" turned out to be something of a relative term, because after a few days I began to wonder what was happening to the men who were not as lucky as me.

The work was hard, we worked long hours in the fields. We were fed on a really bad, thin, gritty soup. Our sleeping quarters were no better than a barn. I remember looking at my "mattress" and seeing it moving, it appeared to be alive. Alive with bugs. If they had been mice, and rats, at least you could eat them. In fact, if you happened to find a mouse or a frog in that soup, you couldn't eat it by yourself, you had to share it with the others!

Stassen had around 40 breeding sows, about 1000 chickens. The pigs, really weren't doing very well, they were not fattening up the way that he wanted. Close by was a factory that produced cheese and other dairy products. One of the by-products was whey from the milk. Well I knew a little about farming from my father; we had some pigs in Poland on our smallholding, so I went to Stassen and asked him if we could get hold of some of this whey. I explained to him that we could boil it up with wheat and feed it to the pigs. Well my father's old recipe really worked and the pigs fattened up nicely. He sold those piglets, and he even gave me 5 pfenigs in payment!

Stassen was very pleased and I think he had decided that I would make a good farmer, so he thought it would be a good idea to made me responsible for the chickens, as the previous man was stealing the eggs to eat himself.

On almost every farm I've worked at over the years, the farmers always seemed to have one boy that is a bit "simple". On Stassen's farm his name was Peter. Peter used to smoke a lot, not take any notice of women and was only interested in his work.

Before I got the job, Peter gave me an egg, and told me to eat it raw. Well I thought, if I show I like this, he probably won't give me the job. So I took the egg and put it in my mouth, only to spit it out dramatically, pretending I didn't like it.

Well it worked, I got the job, and Peter went to his father and said,

"Czes is the man for the job, he won't eat any eggs!"

Well those eggs kept me alive and healthy, I used to eat them whenever I could.

I was happy on the Stassen farm, he was a good man and looked after me as best he could. It was winter 1940, a cold hard one. Our poor living conditions and meagre food caused me to catch pneumonia. I was so ill, I could hardly move, but rather than just let me die, Stassen took me to hospital. One of my lungs was just completely gone, they cut me open and drained the other one.

Slowly I recovered. A Polish couple visited me regularly from a nearby farm. The Goralczics had been in this part of Germany since the First World War and had their own farm. They brought me food to help me builds up my strength. I got to know them so well, they even hoped that one day I would marry their daughter! She was not my type though, I had my own ideas, so it was not to be!

(4) Interview

After a long, long journey, we finally arrived at our destination station, somewhere.

By the length of the journey, I would think it was near the Belgian border. We were taken by German soldiers to a camp surrounded by high wire fences topped with razor wire and inside were long barrack huts. Not the sort of place I would choose to work.

No time to settle, we were herded in to a room, and made to queue outside two doors to offices, one marked "Germans" one marked "Poles" We were told to line up outside the door for our nationality and I couldn't help noticing a number of Poles I knew queueing outside the "Germans" door. Being of pure Polish blood I went to the "Poles" door. When my turn came, I sat down in front of a SA officer who asked me

"Do you speak German?"

"Yes", I replied, "just enough!"

"So why are you in the Polish room?"

"Because I am Polish, born and bred," "My Father and my Grandfather were Polish"

Yes, he said with a conspiratorial wink,

"but you come from Kalisz, in the West, are you you really sure you are not German?....."

"No" I said, "Polish from the top of my head to my feet!"

I think he thought I was a fool. By saying I was German I'm sure I could have got an easier time, and I now realised why some of my Polish compatriots were queuing by the "German" door.

Now the SA man changed from a smile to anger and drew his side-arm.

"So tell me why I shouldn't just shoot you like a dog, Polack?"

I just stared him out and said "Better to be a dead Polack than deny my birthright!

At this, he holstered his gun and shouted,

"Get out"

As I was bundled in to another room full of people, I smiled and thought

"I am and always will be, Polish and I am prepared to go to my grave Polish."