Recently, got back from a vacation in San Diego, Australia and Hawaii so back to blogging my Dad's story!
"Later in the evening we had our first glimpse of the new arrivals who came in two big transports similar to what ours had been. In great haste, men, women and children all Jews from Hungary were placed in the barracks opposite to us. The Eichman program had started on the Reichs declaration of the final solution - which was direct and total dissemination with no pause at all!
The fires were waiting and stoked to the full for all the human fat, hair and ashes. Everything had a use in the camp!
We were put in our barracks again, safely out of view, with a 24 hour guard. Not the slightest movement was allowed not even a quick peek near the doors was permitted - many of our deceased inmates had learned their lesson the hard way and therefore nobody disobeyed the rules now!
All though the night we heard shuffling, muffled cries and weeping, interrupted by the shouting of the S.S. here and there. Death itself was among us, it was walking the perimeter in whatever form or shape you may wish to imagine. It was all around us, you could hear it, think it, and feel it, almost see it, mostly by using your senses just like animals.
Death was ever present that night, just like a thick, dirty bog full of skeletons and there was the ever present stench of human flesh. Already the column for mass slaughter was being moved towards the fires, an endless ribbon of human misery and tragedy.
At last, after an uneasy sleep, in which nightmares were unnecessary as reality was even worse! Our guards left, their mission completed and now they walked out into the sunlight and we followed them into the blinding sunlight and "Oh my God"! we looked at the chimney stacks - they were smoking!
The stacks were belching big fires close to the top. The smoke, driven by the wind, rose high into the sky and then tailed off into a thick, fat, oily looking, ball-like formation. The shape then curled off in one direction, spreading far out over the damp landscape and dissipated into nothingness.
This is what had become of the people we had heard during the night. All that remained were ashes. Believe me, this time there were tears in our eyes! In our incapacity and feeling complete desolation we stood there watching and there was nothing we could do about it - not even one grey uniform to be seen around us now, just us!
We stood there clenched fists, lost in our own thoughts, hopeless. We looked at the empty billets and again a terrible feeling of desolation swept over us! No life at all, not the slightest sign, absolutely nothing, just us!
On the double gates of the barracks were big boards on which notices were posted indicating that there had been cholera and typhus fumigations, the great lie, and so what, we knew that the Jewish Hungarians had come in alive. The notices were for our benefit to make us believe that we had imagined things and had not seen or heard anything.
It is beyond me how this action could be explained away like that by the S.S. They must have been half mad themselves to go though with such a procedure! It aggravates ones thinking of "justice", when one has witnessed a massacre of such magnitude and injustice.
We have failed abysmally, we are not capable of running things right, the wisdom is awfully lacking if what we witnessed was made possible!
We were now moving away from this gory sight, always moving further inside the camp but separate from the Jewish sections which we could see all around us.
We still had about 30 Jewish people hidden among us, nobody had squealed or showed they noticed".
To be continued ...
"Later in the evening we had our first glimpse of the new arrivals who came in two big transports similar to what ours had been. In great haste, men, women and children all Jews from Hungary were placed in the barracks opposite to us. The Eichman program had started on the Reichs declaration of the final solution - which was direct and total dissemination with no pause at all!
The fires were waiting and stoked to the full for all the human fat, hair and ashes. Everything had a use in the camp!
We were put in our barracks again, safely out of view, with a 24 hour guard. Not the slightest movement was allowed not even a quick peek near the doors was permitted - many of our deceased inmates had learned their lesson the hard way and therefore nobody disobeyed the rules now!
All though the night we heard shuffling, muffled cries and weeping, interrupted by the shouting of the S.S. here and there. Death itself was among us, it was walking the perimeter in whatever form or shape you may wish to imagine. It was all around us, you could hear it, think it, and feel it, almost see it, mostly by using your senses just like animals.
Death was ever present that night, just like a thick, dirty bog full of skeletons and there was the ever present stench of human flesh. Already the column for mass slaughter was being moved towards the fires, an endless ribbon of human misery and tragedy.
At last, after an uneasy sleep, in which nightmares were unnecessary as reality was even worse! Our guards left, their mission completed and now they walked out into the sunlight and we followed them into the blinding sunlight and "Oh my God"! we looked at the chimney stacks - they were smoking!
The stacks were belching big fires close to the top. The smoke, driven by the wind, rose high into the sky and then tailed off into a thick, fat, oily looking, ball-like formation. The shape then curled off in one direction, spreading far out over the damp landscape and dissipated into nothingness.
This is what had become of the people we had heard during the night. All that remained were ashes. Believe me, this time there were tears in our eyes! In our incapacity and feeling complete desolation we stood there watching and there was nothing we could do about it - not even one grey uniform to be seen around us now, just us!
We stood there clenched fists, lost in our own thoughts, hopeless. We looked at the empty billets and again a terrible feeling of desolation swept over us! No life at all, not the slightest sign, absolutely nothing, just us!
On the double gates of the barracks were big boards on which notices were posted indicating that there had been cholera and typhus fumigations, the great lie, and so what, we knew that the Jewish Hungarians had come in alive. The notices were for our benefit to make us believe that we had imagined things and had not seen or heard anything.
It is beyond me how this action could be explained away like that by the S.S. They must have been half mad themselves to go though with such a procedure! It aggravates ones thinking of "justice", when one has witnessed a massacre of such magnitude and injustice.
We have failed abysmally, we are not capable of running things right, the wisdom is awfully lacking if what we witnessed was made possible!
We were now moving away from this gory sight, always moving further inside the camp but separate from the Jewish sections which we could see all around us.
We still had about 30 Jewish people hidden among us, nobody had squealed or showed they noticed".
To be continued ...
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