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19. KZ Stutthof
- University Press of Colorado
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132 THE WAR AND POSTWAR YEARS We were locked in the cargo holds of the freighter for the duration of the voyage. With the hatches covered and no sanitary facilities available, the foul, stifling air in the holds grew ever more rank. There was no water in the holds, and we suffered miserably from thirst. At one point we were “given” water by having a high-pressure fire hose turned on us. I think it was potable water, but we could not collect enough to assuage our thirst. We did not know where we were headed or when we would arrive. We were concerned that the Germans would scuttle the ship. Our anxiety grew until the fourth day, when we arrived in the port of Danzig (present-day Gdansk in Poland). Here we were transferred to river barges, bulk carriers normally intended for carrying cement or coal. Again there was no water. After being towed about half a day, we arrived at our destination: the KZ Stutthof. We were driven from the barges and herded into the camp and barracks under a hail of blows, accompanied by a steady refrain of shouts from the Polish inmates: “Ale jusz, ale jeszcze” (literally “now already, now again,” meaning “move faster, faster”). There was a large Polish presence among the inmates and Kapos, and much of the shouting was in Polish. In Stutthof my identity changed. I ceased being prisoner 10021 and became prisoner No. 96211, but unlike at Auschwitz, in Stutthof our numbers were not tattooed on our arms.* ' KZ Stutthof *I recently received information from the Stutthof Museum in Poland about my concentration camp record. Even though we were known by just our numbers, the nazis kept meticulous accounts of the prisoners. My record includes my birth date, mother’s name, and dates of arrival and departure from the camp. The records from KZ Kaiserwald and the Riga ghettos have not been found. The SS must have destroyed them when they evacuated Riga. KZ STUTTHOF 133 Stutthof was a vast camp with a large number of barracks. Kaiserwald was dwarfed by comparison. The larger size also magnified the violence and brutality. The daily routine was similar to that of Kaiserwald, except here it was frequently punctuated by violent interruptions. Public hangings and occasional selections added a dimension of terror to the monotony. I recall being forced to witness the hanging of two prisoners. Their alleged infraction was announced over loudspeakers, but exactly what they were supposed to have done was not clear to me. I understood that the men were being executed on some trumped-up pretext and that I was about to witness yet another nazi obscenity. The gallows had been erected in the central square of the camp, called the parade grounds. All prisoners were marched there and kept at attention for a long time. Just before the execution the command “caps off” was issued. Among its various facilities Stutthof had a gas chamber and a crematorium , although they were smaller than those in the extermination camps. The Stutthof gas chamber never achieved the killing capacity of Auschwitz. Nevertheless, death rates from malnutrition and disease, mostly typhoid fever and dysentery, were staggering.48 The food was inadequate and terrible : a quarter of a loaf of bread, dark brown water—called coffee—in the morning, and watery soup with a piece of rotten potato or a floating leaf of cabbage at night. It was a starvation diet, deliberately planned to kill us from malnutrition and disease. Unlike in Riga, where we had been able to get some additional food to supplement our rations, in Stutthof we had no such opportunities. I first encountered the so-called Muselmänner (literally “Moslems”), the concentration camp term for completely emaciated persons , walking skeletons. I do not recall many details of my stay in the camp, but the gnawing hunger, endless roll calls, and ever-present fear and anxiety remain irrevocably etched in my mind. Inmates were periodically subjected to selections where unfit individuals , mainly the elderly and those who looked sick, were “selected” for the crematorium or for transfer to Auschwitz. The selections were made by camp SS officers, either during routine roll calls or at roll calls held especially for that purpose. To minimize the chance of being singled out during the selections, we tried to be shaved and to look as fit as possible. Shaving was difficult. What razors we had were dull; it was more like scraping off our beards...