William & Rosalie: A Holocaust Testimony

eight: One hundred miles of rapists

104 The Jasna Gora monastery is not far from the HASAG plant where Rosalie now spits up blood every day. She and Mania chew their bread crusts close to the shrine of the Black Madonna in the monastery chapel. Art experts say the icon of the Virgin is the handiwork of a Byzantine master. Many Polish Catholics believe that Saint Luke painted the portrait of Mary while she was alive. By Christmas 1944, the Nazis have murdered six Polish bishops and two thousand priests. Hundreds of plundered churches have been locked and seminarians must study in secret . Half a century later, one of these seminarians will ask the Jewish people to forgive Catholics for failing to help them during the Holocaust. Apologizing for wrongs the Church inflicted on Jews throughout the ages, Pope John Paul II describes the Holocaust as an indelible stain on the twentieth century and admits that centuries of Christian antisemitism may have facilitated the genocide. Rosalie and Mania are too crushed by cruelty and cold to debate the history of hate. Frozen birds are dropping out of ancient oaks all across southern Poland and a typhoid epichapter eight One hundred miles of rapists WRStxt.indd฀฀฀104 5/9/07฀฀฀10:18:00฀AM Chapter Eight 105 demic is lending the Death Head soldiers a hand at the Czestochowa camp. More prisoners are dying in their sleep than ever and the killers eliminate many more weaklings during the morning cull. A new female officer prowls the barracks, barging in unannounced to make the women jump. “Who is sick here today?” she always yells. “Who has typhoid ? Tell me!” Nobody will give up names, so every morning she removes at least one prisoner at random. This worries Rosalie because Mania has been vomiting and having dizzy spells. One morning before roll call there was a surprise selection and the SS men were going through the barracks systematically. We had never seen so many people involved at one time. I told Mania to get up, but she couldn’t do it. So I pushed her way back against the wall in the shadows and covered her with a blanket. When the guards came they dragged three or four girls outside right away and started tearing all the blankets off the bunks. A young guard was approaching our bunk and the only thing I could think to do was give him a dirty look. I thought it might throw him off a little because I was always very obedient. If I was too offensive he’d shoot me, so I tried to make it more like a quick disapproving glance. The guard called me a whore and slapped me on the side of the head so hard I saw stars. But he kept going, thank God. We were all wasted down to nothing. On top of all the blood I was spitting up I picked up another case of dysentery, the kind where you lose blood in the latrine. So in spite of my improved attitude it seemed WRStxt.indd฀฀฀105 5/9/07฀฀฀10:18:00฀AM 106 William & Rosalie like my hunch about not getting out of this camp was coming true. Pavlovska’s personality changes as Christmas comes and goes. For three days in a row the tall woman passes Rosalie’s workstation without mocking her or hitting her. Pavlovska’s husband has also lost his swagger. One afternoon he visits the plant and pulls his wife out of earshot. She seems extremely troubled as she absorbs his communication and Rosalie can detect a new emotion on the ill-featured face. “Fear. The bullies were traumatized because they knew the Russians were coming. The next day I thought I heard thunder far away. Thunder in winter seemed strange. Then somebody said it was artillery. It kept getting closer and louder and it gave Mrs. Pavlovska quite an anxiety attack. The last time I saw her she was running somewhere and moving pretty fast for such a big girl.” On January 15, 1945, the Germans force every slave who can walk into boxcars. Rosalie can’t find Mania and lacks the strength to search. Losing so much blood has made her anemic . “Towards the end I started to faint a lot. I would just pass out and fall down and wake up on the floor with a bump on my head.” She is on the floor...