Mr. Gavriel Blau – Part X

Your family was deported to Auschwitz, where your mother and two younger brothers were murdered.  Shortly afterward, you and your brother were marched to Mauthausen and from there to the concentration camp at Ebensee. What happened to you there?

We traveled to Ebensee by train. It took a few days, but we couldn’t keep track of time. When we arrived we were not given any food. We were put to work immediately, carrying boulders. We worked until nine in the evening. At nine, we were told that work for the day was over and we were finally given some morsels of leftover food.

The next morning, we were woken up at five o’clock and sent out to the apel platz to be counted. Then, we were sent to a brick factory in Steinbruck. I was lucky that I didn’t have to go out to work that first day, for they needed people to clean the barracks.

My brothers and I remained together for six months. My youngest brother was assigned to a separate barrack especially for youngsters in the same camp. Since the youngsters could not go out to work, however, the camp commander sent them back to Mauthausen. I tried to intervene on my brother’s behalf, but the commander refused, He wanted to trade the youngsters for more workers.

“In any case,” he said, “There is no guarantee that if your brother stays here, he will remain alive.” That’s when we were separated.

I witnessed many horrible episodes. It was my job to make sure that everyone was lined up properly to receive their supper ration. Once, a father and son were on their way back to the barrack when the son died.  The father dragged his son’s body into the line with him, in order to get his son’s ration of food, so that the father could have a double portion that day. The officer noticed, but he still gave the father the extra piece of bread. Unfortunately, the father did not survive either.

Another time, I saw a man who slept in the bed opposite mine get shot. I had to take his body to the crematorium.

Still, we tried to hold on to what we could. My older brother worked in a group with twenty people. Their job was to dig down 20 feet (6 meters) and take out all the dirt. One day he came back from work at four o’clock. He held up his food and said, “Yaakov, I didn’t eat this because today is Yom Kippur.”

There was one barrack that had a Gypsy for a supervisor. When the prisoners arrived back from the night shift, they were usually given supper. That day, he told them that the Jews were not getting any food since it was Yom Kippur.

Do you recall witnessing any nissim in the camps?

There was a man named Mr. Hirsch in my barrack. One day, I overheard the
following conversation: The father approached the block supervisor and said, “I have three gold teeth in my mouth. I will take them out and give them to you if you promise to get me a job that will keep me alive.”

The block supervisor gave him a job where he had a chance of surviving. It was to put the bodies of the dead into the ovens. Mr. Hirsch indeed survived the war.

Just before the liberation, the crematoria couldn’t keep up with the number of dead. The workers would pile up the bodies like lumber in six-foot stacks. It could be up to two days before the bodies got burned.  Once, Mr. Hirsch had a body was on the metal shovel they used to put the bodies in the oven and the “body” began talking.

“I am still alive, don’t throw me into the oven!” the man begged.

Mr. Hirsch took him off the shovel and gave him a drink. That man survived the war.

I had quite an interesting episode myself. One morning, I was chosen to go out to work with a group of 4,000 others. While we were working, an alarm went off in the camp. We were told that the Americans were nearby. The guards pushed us into tunnels. I sat in the tunnel and rested my head on my arm. Ten minutes later the all-clear sounded. A German officer approached me and accused me of sleeping in the tunnel. I insisted I had not slept but he refused to listen. The punishment for this was 25 lashes. I don’t know anyone who survived the whipping.

He started leading me in one direction to get whipped. I don’t know where I got the courage from but I said to him that I wanted to walk in a different direction. Luckily he didn’t just shoot me; he gave in and we began walking.

As we were walking, we came upon the head kapo who was in charge of the group of 4,000 people. The officer told him that I’d slept and he was taking me to get whipped.  The kapo told him to return to his post and he would oversee my lashing.

As soon as the officer was out of sight, the kapo said, “Don’t you dare go back to your job — just get lost. Come back here at four o’clock and I’ll send you home with the others.”

I never saw him again; he was obviously a malach.

To Be Continued.