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11 Skarźysko B efore the train reached its destination, it halted for a pit stop on an embankment. Mama and I insisted on staying in the car to avoid the guards outside. Fredka cried and pleaded that she had to go. Not to be separated, we all got off the train. We feared separation more than death. By the time Fredka finished, the guards blew their whistles, let out a volley of rifle shots in the air, cursed, and swore. We ran frantically to the train, stumbling into the nearest car, not the same one we left. That coincidental switching of cars saved our lives. The train continued on its doomed way, until it came to a prolonged halt. Unable to see outside the windowless freight cars, we listened to loud exchanges of commands and the recoupling of our car. After more shouts, clangs, and jolts, we were off for a short and final ride. The doors flew open and we were chased out. Our train arrived in Skarźysko, a slave labor camp. Tragically, the two women with whom Mama and I had traded places in Majdanek met their end there. How many months did we stay in Majdanek? I do not remember, though the time felt endless. I do not remember the air growing warm—I was always cold. Nor do I recall any sound or sight of birds. Perhaps they flew where the picking was better. However, I re- War 70 member the green fields beyond the barbed wire fences and trees growing heavy with leaves. No flowers. Maybe the wildflowers died when we dug up the turf and moved it senselessly from place to place? Or perhaps I was too sad to see them? I calculate that we stayed in that forsaken camp from April until summer—about two months. Skarźysko had no crematoria. Jews worked there until they dropped dead, or a German soldier chose to kill them at a whim. The camp had three separate Werks (branches): Werk A, Werk B, and Werk C. HASAG, the long established German ammunition firm, operated all branches. Thanks to Fredka’s need to hop off the train for a pit stop, we boarded the wagon that went to Werk A, where bullet shells were manufactured. Had we remained sitting in the same wagon, we would have landed at Werk C, where people worked with gunpowder. This would have been worse than immediate death. The workers on Werk C turned a ghoulish yellow-green from the gunpowder, called pitrina, and looked frightening even to us. The powder destroyed their lungs, and they died after a few months of work. Fredka had saved our lives again! Our transfer from Majdanek to Skarźysko saved us from immediate death. Skarźysko had other advantages: men and women lived in the same camp, in separate barracks located on opposite ends of the camp, and people did not disappear as rapidly because their labor was useful to the war. However, Skarźysko had its own horrors. Here too electrified barbed-wire fences imprisoned us, and armed guards stood in towers reminding us that we were open targets. When the light of day grew dim, searchlights beamed down from the towers and followed us everywhere. We lived in smaller barracks, sleeping on bare planks in double bunks. I slept with Mama on the upper berth because I was still afraid of the dark. Fredka slept alone below us. We still lined up with puszkas to collect a ladle of soup and a slab of coarse bread, and for Appells. Our wardrobe remained the same: a loose caftan over a bare body and wooden clogs on bare feet. And, as in Majdanek, we could not leave the barracks after dark. Daily, like clockwork, armed guards marched us out of the camp and down a deserted road to the factory, where we worked from sunrise to sunset—or sunset till sunrise when we worked night shifts. The floor where we worked was as large and hollow as a coliseum. It had rows of troughs filled high with bullet shells. Hundreds of pathetic people, including Mama, Fredka , and me, sat bent over the troughs, our hands whirling in perpetual motion, sorting bullet shells. A short distance from the tables stood lines of giant, thundering machines with turning turbines tended by sallow, emaciated people. A few skilled Polish people, who lived outside the camp, served in limited supervisory [3.137.178.133...

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