Gita came from a very religious family; her father was the butcher of the village, her mother was a woman who used to pray a lot and took care of the household, including a goat, some chickens, and a horse. Eight Jewish families and about forty Christian families lived in the village. During the holidays, the family used to ride in a horse-drawn cart to the synagogue in the nearby town of Janow Lubelski, where Jews from all the villages in the area would gather.
She did not attend school but taught herself to read and write from her brother, who went to a nearby public school. They spoke Yiddish at home, but she absorbed the Polish language from the neighbors, a simple language that mainly consisted of curses and expressions that she did not understand.
Although the town is two to three hours' drive to Lublin, no one in her family has ever visited it.
Gita would sit in Juziek's living room in the evenings, telling them the atrocities she went through in the extermination camp as if it was not about her. As if that happened to someone else named Gita, who went through all the described atrocities. She repressed the issue of the loss of her world that had been destroyed as a defense against the collapse of her spirit. She tried to see the future and not live the past.
Violette did not urge her to talk, but Gita continued: "The SS men brought us to Camp Square, counting us several times as we lined up. We did not know where we were. We were very thirsty and begged the SS men for water. The lack of water caused a mental frenzy; people trembled and murmured as they begged for water. Finally, they brought pipes and sprayed water on us with a strong current that made many stumble while the SS men shouted, enjoying themselves. This welcome was an example of their animal culture and of what was to come.
They left us all night standing in the square, barefoot in the open air. Fate wanted that it was raining heavily, and we stood wet until dawn. People bent down and drank from the puddles. Suddenly they fired at us from the four towers in the four corners of the camp. Snipers directed the fire to hit us. Many fell dead, and I hoped to die; I envied those who were already lying motionless delivered from their torments.
They made the selection only in the afternoon, whereafter, I no longer saw my mother and my little brother Yankee, neither did the rest of the family. When they took us undressing, they rummaged through our clothes and the modest parts of our bodies; they were looking for jewelry and money. Those who had nothing were beaten with a rubber band. They did not hit me because I was small and thin, and I only got hit once in the back.
They cut our hair, and it piled up on the side of the warehouse and reached the height of the ceiling. Then they took our details and imprinted a number on our forearm with the tip of a sharpened nail dipped in ink. From now on, we didn't have any name, but we became a number. We were ordered into a long building where there were bunks with mattresses full of moldy stinking straw, and the wind and the cold penetrated from all directions."
Violette moved uncomfortably but did not ask any questions. Juziek sat stunned, and the sight of his face expressed his disgust.
"Want to hear what our day was like?" Gita asked, continuing without waiting for an answer.
"You get up at three in the morning, and you have to get dressed in a hurry and make the bed. Straighten the straw mattress and make sure that no straw sticks out of the bag. Inaccuracy with the rules would have resulted in twenty-five lashes, after which it would have been impossible to sit or lie down for about a month.
Then everyone got out into the yard in the bitter cold, where we shivered from cold and hunger. There were faucets, but no one approached them due to the cold and lack of rags to dry. We had become lower beings than animals.
At five in the morning, we received a pint of bitter coffee named by the Germans; Breakfast. We were then lined up, prohibited from moving. After that, we were led to work in the camp. We were paving roads, removing garbage, cleaning toilet pits, cleaning cabins, and digging up potatoes—all this while beaten with batons that would usually bring the weak to faint or die.
There was a popular game for the SS men. They would put two Jews, one standing behind the other and holding his collar in both hands. Then, the SS man would approach and punch the poor man's face, who was constantly being sustained; even when the battered man fainted, he still was held standing by his friend. The German would continue to hit him until he broke his jaw. The unfortunate died after some time from the inability to chew or swallow.
And there were the kapos, who were usually criminals of German or Ukrainian descent, who were also prisoners in the camp. Still, with privileges, they were given good food, ordinary clothes rather than prisoners' uniforms, and sleeping conditions in a special heated and clean hut.
To justify their conditions, they abused prisoners in a particularly sadistic way, pounding their skulls with their bare hands until they heard bone-crushing sounds. They were also executing prisoners by hanging on pillars scattered in the camp. All lazy or ill and weakened were hung.
At noon, after we heard the gong, we would get a bowl of half a liter of cabbage soup each; the soup had neither fat nor vegetables - it was our lunch, although we had wooden spoons we were ordered to drink and lick the soup like dogs from the bowls.
About an hour after lunch, we would return to work till six in the evening. Then the count would begin. Whoever was careless was stripped and received twenty-five lashes. In the winter, we sometimes stood outside for hours without being able to move. When we returned to the hut, dozens of bodies were lying frozen to death and stuck to the ground. To remove them, it was necessary to dig around them.
We would get muddy hot water and a slice of black bread for dinner. Then, on the Christian holidays, we got a piece of sausage made from horse fat.
At eight o'clock in the evening, everyone went to bed. Until the morning, it was forbidden to go to the toilet outside, and so, with stomachs shrunken from hunger, cold, and lice that sucked our blood, we had to sleep while we warmed each other back."
"I think that's enough for today," Violette said, extending a hand to Gita. "You will have children and grandchildren and plenty of time to tell them everything you went through."
"If God wills and I have children, I will never tell them what I went through; they should grow up in a world free of hatred," she replied.
"My dear friend Juziek, It is time to leave," said Violette. I have parents in New York, Sarah is on her way to Eretz Israel, Gita will stay with you, she is pleased that she has a home, she will cook for you, you will have somebody so you will not be lonely and maybe Jaroslaw will survive and come to your house to ask for me?. I'll leave you my parents 'address and of course we'll remain in contact."
The stunned Juziek stood in front of her, with tears in his eyes. "I got so used to you; you were like a daughter to me. I will miss our conversations into the night."
The parting was difficult; Violette wiped away a tear from her cheek and hugged Gita, "Create yourself a new life, go to the Eretz Israel; we have no other place, everyone hates us," she whispered in her ear. Then she walked over to Juziek, who was standing in the center of the living room, mumbling something vague. "I wish everyone were like you." She said and left the apartment, hurried down to the street.
She wanted to return to the camp in the forests to see if Jaroslaw had arrived there but was told by members of the Jewish Committee in Lublin that the base had folded and all men had enlisted in the Jewish Brigade of the Red Army and were now advancing west to Berlin.
A special Soviet-Polish commission was set up in Lublin to investigate the crimes of the Germans in the extermination camp in Majdanek. The committee determined that about one and a half million people were murdered during its four years of operation.
At the train station in Lublin where Violette arrived, she bought a ticket to Warsaw. She entered a cabin with six passengers and relaxed in her seat. When the train started moving, she fell asleep immediately.
Suddenly there was a shout; she jumped up in fear, the conductor and the man sitting in front of her started arguing, "Show me your ticket." The conductor raised his voice.
"Skurwysina - son of a bitch, go to hell, or I'll kill you with my bare hands," the man responded.
"I'll call the police at the next station, and they'll arrest you," the conductor answered.
"Collaborator, stinking Nazi, from now on, you will no longer be heroes. We will eliminate you till the last of the collaborators," replied the man, who seemed not to be afraid at all.
The conductor went out of the cabin, and the man continued cursing him for long minutes. "Scum Poles, they stole our houses, murdered our children and wives, what more do they want, they took everything from us, and he wants me to pay for a train ticket?"
Violette looked at him with admiration. "I wish all the Jews were like you. Then, maybe the butchering of our people could have been largely avoided."
" Are you laughing at me? Can you imagine all the Moishes and Yankeles with the beards, the wigs, the shtreimels, and the Torah books in hands to forcefully oppose the Germans? What could they do? All their lives, they were taught only Torah, and petty trade, peddlers, shoe shiners, they could not take a punch."
"I see you have a number tattooed on your arm, so you were at camp too," she said apprehensively.
"Yes, I was. I could not leave my children and wife, so I went with them. Still, after they were taken to the gas chambers, we organized a revolt. We managed to eliminate some Germans and escaped about twenty people to the forests, some were killed by German fire, but eight managed to join the partisans. I fought them in every way possible. I killed dozen of them myself."
The four Poles in the cell got up and left. Violette and the man remain alone.
"You scoundrels, you can not hear the truth, eh?" He laughed.
"My name is Viktor Dolewsky; I am a university graduate of four concentration camps including Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, and Majdanek."
She held out her hand to him. "Violette Michalson, a former partisan."
"Oh, beautiful, where have you been?"
"My commander was Shalma."
"Shalma Zimmerman?" He asked.
"I do not know his last name, but he was the camp commander, his deputy was Sasha, and there were also Leo and Armin, Jaroslaw, and others."
"I know him; he was killed in one of the actions against the Germans. He was a man of great courage, a real warrior."
Violette looked at him, and it was evident that he was hurting Shalma's death.
"Where are you going? Not that I'm prying, just curious to know."
"I'm from Warsaw, traveling to meet the Red Cross committee members. I heard there are lists of survivors, and many come there to look for their relatives. "If I do not find relatives, I will submit an immigration application to the United States, I have a relative in Houston, and she will send me the Affidavit Letter of support; it's an invitation certificate for the visa" he said.
"My parents live in New York, and I want to join them," she responded.
Before reaching the station in the town of Garbow, the train slowed down until it stopped completely. Violette was wondering if the train stop was related to the argument between Viktor and the conductor. She looked at him and saw no signs of emotion, he was dozing off, and his feet were resting on the seat in front of him. "Viktor, are you sleeping?" She asked softly. "What are you afraid of? Let them just come, and I will show them who they want to mess with," he replied.
After about a quarter of an hour, they heard another train coming from the opposite direction, and when it passed, they continued until it entered the station in town.
A polish couple came in and sat down in their compartment; they whispered to each other and looked in disgust at the fashion in which Viktor was lying. Suddenly he woke and sat up straight. "I see we have guests here; maybe you have vodka?" He asked the man.
The Pole did not answer him. "He must be deaf," he said with a smile. "Do you have vodka?" He shouted at him. The Pole got up and pulled the woman with him, "Let's get out of here; we don't want to get involved with a drunk."
Viktor laughed rudely. "I have not drunk anything yet; he already says I'm drunk."
Violette did not like the way he spoke. Still, she realized how frustrated the man was with human society, how much he despised people who looked the other way in the face of the atrocities towards Jews, those who betrayed Jews, and those who murdered survivors who came to the villages to ask for their property. The man came out of the inferno he entered to die with his wife and children, and when he managed to escape from there, he realized that only by force could he survive. The rules of the game had changed for him; from now on, he sets the rules. For him, the former Laws no longer exist. Those set on the Tablets of the Covenant that Moses took down from Mount Sinai and became the cornerstones of civilization. The SS men And their Polish helpers showed him the value of the sixth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," or the tenth commandment, "Thou shalt not covet," and when he ceased to believe in God and man, all ten commandments also became irrelevant to him.
Now, as the train continued to the city of Ruda, which is about halfway to Warsaw, and the conductor no longer appeared in their cabin, Violette realized that there was no concern that Viktor would be arrested. So she relaxed in her seat and asked him, "Viktor, tell me, have you not for a moment been afraid to die in the death camp of Majdanek?"
"Me, not afraid? Every moment of the months I was there could have been the last moment of my life. People died in the camp like flies. There was no value to human life. The SS leave the dirty work to the Kapos and the Ukrainian guards who willingly abused us. I'll just tell you one little story that will make you understand everything. There was a Jewish doctor named Guttman. He had a wife and two children, one ten years old and the other five years old. He worked in a clinic and treated the sick Jewish prisoners as well as the Poles. His clinic overlooked the courtyard where the daily routines were carried out. One morning he looks out of the window and sees a parade of naked people walking in the snow towards the crematorium; he witnesses among the people his ten-year-old son walking and in his arms his five-year-old brother, both walking towards the gas chambers where his wife was murdered the day before. Two SS-men stood aside watching and pointing at the two children laughing. Finally, Guttman could no longer bear the suffering and hung himself in his clinic on a rope that served as a belt for his pants."
Violette looked at Viktor; he told this terrifying story in a monotone voice and without a sign of excitement. "His heart became of stone," the thought passed through her mind.
At the Warsaw train station, porters stood outside waiting for passengers. "Ma'am, can I unload your luggage?"
"I have no luggage," she replied. Viktor stepped down after her and looked in all directions. Apparently, he had a certain fear that the conductor would indeed call police officers to arrest him, but this did not happen.
"Shall we take a taxi together?" Violette suggested. "We're going to the same place," she added. Viktor nodded and got into the car.
The "Jewish Committee" was established even before the outbreak of the war, when the first signs of persecution of the Jews began to occur, and the idea of the Jews returning to their historical homeland was born. Its purpose was to encourage Jews, mainly from the Enlightenment movement, to immigrate to mandatory British Palestine to settle there. But other organizations such as the Bond encouraged them to immigrate to America. So finally, in February 1945, the committee was reestablished in Warsaw as the Central Committee of Jews in Poland. The committee included communists, members of the bond movement, partisans, a representative of the Ha- Chalutz movement, Poalei Zion, and the Hashomer Hatzair organization, which has been active since the end of the First World War.
The committee began operating in the Jewish school, which was not destroyed in the war and has now been converted into the committee's offices.
Many stood in line for hours to enter, and boards were installed in the hall on which people wrote their names in the search section for surviving relatives; some went through existing lists. Most of the survivors had a glimmer of hope to find who of their family members were alive.
"We'll be back tomorrow morning. It looks like we'll be standing here for hours today," Victor suggested. Violette immediately agreed, "And where shall we sleep?" She asked.
Viktor shrugged, "Come on, I know a place."
Entire streets were in ruins; there was hardly a house that was not damaged. Yet, in Saski Park, restoration works had begun. They saw an unbelievable scene; German prisoners in brown uniforms cleaned the streets of rubble and demolished and rebuilt dangerous structures. Polish police officers guarded them, weapons ready in their hands.
Viktor looked at them, and his face flushed, "I would strangle them one by one with my bare hands," he hissed through his teeth.
They stayed in a building converted to apartments and was within walking distance of the committee offices. They shared an apartment, with each having its room.
After resting from their long day, Viktor offered to walk through Warsaw in the evening. It was a pleasant evening, and the sky was clear. They walked towards the old city, which was already being rebuilt, and there were already restaurants and cafes open. People were looking for a bit of entertainment and alcohol to forget, even for a few hours, the damn war that caused a lot of suffering to everyone.
They entered a club that served food and drinks. An old pianist played pleasant and quiet melodies accompanying a thick, meaty singer. The atmosphere was calm, with few guests and one waiter serving everyone. Viktor ordered a large glass of beer, and Violette requested a glass of vodka.
After having a few drinks, Viktor showed himself to be a man with an excellent sense of humor. He told her about pranks done inside the camps to distract from the stomach hurting from hunger and the cold that prevailed and especially from the death that awaited them at any moment, which made her laugh.
"What interests me most is how did you manage to escape from Majdanek?" She asked.
"Do you see my muscles? That's why they did not kill me; they needed working hands to build the ovens and buildings around the camp. For the works, they recruited 2,000 Russian POWs and another eight hundred Jews from the Lublin ghetto. Ann had already been employed in other jobs. I erected barbed wire fences around the buildings and built with carpenters the four turrets for the guards.
The foreman in the camp was called Dolphy; he was a drunken sadist and a murderer; he trained his Mastiff dog to tear Jews to pieces on his order. The Germans also enjoyed the most hanging a Jew by one leg until he died in great agony. After the construction was completed, they pretended to let all the construction workers clean up in the showers, but instead of letting them wash, they closed the doors and threw a gas tank that eliminated them all within minutes.
Our group went out every day to work outside to pave a road and parking for trucks, where about ten Germans usually guarded us, and the forest was about a hundred meters away. However, we considered that they would not be able to hit everyone if we ran in different directions, so when the signal was given, we at once started to run in zigzag to try to reach the forest unscathed. Of course, whoever was hit fell, but eight of us managed to escape."
Violette looked at his wrinkled face. He was about fifty but looked much older than his age.