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186 25 Deadly Slave Work in Ohrdruf Early the next morning we were ordered to get up; it was still dark and very cold. The camp ground was crowded with men busily running around to line up in different work groups; many seemed to know already where they preferred to go and pushed their way through. When a unit was complete, the rest were told to look for another formation. The KAPOs, with whistles and loud voices, left no doubt that there was only a limited time to arrange for a work place. I stayed with those with whom I had shared the barracks the night before, despite not knowing anyone; most of them spoke Hungarian, a few spoke Polish and between the two ethnic groups was an instantly inflammatory antagonism. The Hungarians, mostly Jews, had recently come from the selections in Auschwitz, where many of their families had been killed. They were the younger and healthier men who had been deported here to the west to be used for slave labor, as was my transport. There were also some Jews among the Polish-speaking men. Most had already suffered in concen-tration camps in the east. They were experienced and tough, but like many veteran prisoners, were also impatient, tense and irritable from their prolonged exposure to the stresses of imprisonment. They had witnessed so much violence and had suffered so many losses of people dear to them that they learned how not to take in the pain and misery of others. They sneered at the helplessness and naiveté of the Hungarian newcomers, who had been, only a few weeks earlier, Jews living a normal life. The very sound of their language caused hostile , mocking responses from their Polish or Russian-speaking fellows in misfortune. There were also prisoners from other countries but it was difficult to identify languages, especially when they were spoken in slang or dialect. 187 Varieties of Yiddish became the bridge for communication among the Jewish prisoners. I spoke German and Czech and learned to understand enough Yiddish to get information from those who had been there longer. They sketched the situation in gloomy terms. The work was hard, living conditions bad, the food poor and getting worse. Only those in privileged positions could last longer than a month while most others were sent to one of the bigger barracks where they vegetated with reduced food rations and no medical care. Many died. Truckloads of sick and debilitated men were sent from there to another camp, which was supposedly a hospital. Every experienced prisoner knew of the gas chambers in the east. We wondered if there were similar installations here in the west. I understood , as did the others, that for me to continue to live depended upon my usefulness to the German war machine. There was a steady stream of newcomers replacing those eliminated by exhaustion, injury or sickness. We again heard rumors about a tunnel that would be used for the construction of the “new weapon.” We were sent to the hills and into the forests of the Thuringian Woods where our daily units prepared the ground. We worked at hard labor removing rocks and undergrowth, digging ditches for drainage of the water that came down the hills after the heavy rain and melting snows. As we worked, we embroidered pictures in our minds of an elaborate network of factory buildings erected inside these mountains. One of our foremen, an outspoken fellow claiming to be a Russian, explained to us in his simple broken German the importance of quality and speed in our work. I did not trust him and thought he might be one of the Ukranian collaborators whom we had encountered before. The winter was growing more severe, at times the rain and snow made it nearly impossible to work. On other days it was easier and for a few hours I could even feel the sunshine in the middle of the day. Our daily schedule was rigid and repetitive. We were torn from sleep by whistles early in the morning, still in darkness. I would jump up, ready to leave. If the night had not been very cold, I would have used my jacket as a pillow for my head. My only dressing was to grab it on my way out. It was usually too cold and there was not time enough to go to the washroom, where there were only a few faucets providing a weak stream of water...

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