First, I want to thank all of you who sent me birthday greetings. It was a wonderful birthday present to have so many of my MySpace friends wishing me a happy 83rd birthday. I'm a very lucky man.
Second, I have been interviewed for the very first time. The wonderful and very talented Susan Henderson interviewed me for her literary blog, LITPARK. She asked me some very interesting question about myself and my memoir. Please go to her website and let me know what you think.
Third, it's time I placed a new blog. The following is an excerpt from my memoir, Scheisshaus Luck. During my 12 months at Auschwitz III (Monowitz), I worked as a slave laborer at the nearby IG Farben plant. The plant was built to produce synthetic rubber (Buna), but I don't think they ever manufactured a drop. A couple of times during the summer and fall of 1944, the plant was the target of Allied bombers. This is what happen to me during one of those bombing raids.
They assigned me to a Kommando working close to the cement kiln where Hubert had worked before his stint in the HKB (NOTE: Hubert was a boy I went to school with in Nice who was also in Monowitz for being Jewish. The HKB was the camp's infirmary). The kiln had a towering smokestack the likes of which I had never seen before, easily over 100 meters high. All winter most of the smokestack had been hidden by fog. Now it glistened and shone red. It was constructed of concrete castings and the seams of the individual blocks made it look like a patchwork quilt.
"Do you see the second segment from the top?" A Polish yellow triangle asked as we were shoveling dirt out of a trench.
I nodded yes. The reek of kerosene told me that the Pole was spending his nights in the Kraetzeblock.
"There's a man's body inside it. While we were pouring the cement, he slipped and fell into the mold. He pleaded for us to lower a nearby ladder, but the SS wouldn't allow it. Fresh cement was beginning to pile up. I'll never forget his screams and terrified face as the mold filled. We could've lowered that ladder, but you know a machine gun would've sent us all into that pit."
A ribbon of blue carbide fumes weaved from the top of the monstrous smokestack and was swept away by the morning breeze. The red and orange basket that hung from the smokestack was at its lowest position. When the basket was raised to the top of the smokestack it signaled that Allied bombers had crossed into German territory. Because we were working in such close proximity, the squeaking of the basket's pulleys was our initial warning. The first time I heard it I thought it was a flock of birds gathering on the smokestack. The blast of the air raid sirens was our last warning and by that time the bombers would almost be overhead.
A few Haeftlinge had left to fetch our barrels of soup when I heard the birdcalls. The artificial fog began to blanket the trench, stinging our eyes and burning our lungs. We heard shrill sirens in the distance then those in the factory began to wail. We watched civilian workers race to their air-raid shelters or cling to fleeing trucks. None of us were in a rush. For a Haeftling an air raid was a game of roulette. Pick an open space away from the plant buildings or lie down in the hole you were digging and wait and see if the bombs fall on top of you. So, I gathered a few dandelions as the fog thickened.
"What are you doing, picking flowers for your funeral?" Someone laughed.
"No one else will."
The truth was that I was munching my bouquet in hopes the vitamins in the weeds would strengthen my bleeding gums. I plopped down with the others in the dirt and weeds between the kiln and some nearby warehouses. Haeftlinge working in the factory buildings joined us. If it weren't for those lying on their stomachs with their arms over their heads and those who had placed discarded planks on top of themselves it would have looked like we were waiting for an afternoon concert in the park. Someone near me mumbled a drawn out prayer in Yiddish. We laid there in the Nazi's fog for a half-hour. Some of the men even dosed off. There weren't many chances for a slave to enjoy a siesta.
A squadron of fighter planes buzzed by, Messerschmitts from the sound of their motors, then the sudden cacophony of an intense air battle. A violent opera of screaming planes, barking machine guns and thundering anti-aircraft batteries played behind the opaque curtain of fog. All at once, everything became quiet. The silence was strangely oppressive. The planes were gone. Why hadn't they bombed the plant? They had been directly overhead. Did they have some other objective?
My ears began to buzz strangely. I sat up and saw a man looking towards the sky as he placed an empty cement bag over his head. Shit, how could I have forgotten about the splinters of anti-aircraft shells and the planes' errant machine gun bullets? Someone cried out and crumpled to the ground holding his head in his hands. The lethal shower fell thick and fast. Not far away was a section of cement sewer pipe. With my mess tin as a helmet, I sprinted and dove inside. Fragments peppered the pipe. Outside, Haeftlinge were running, screaming and dropping. The fog machines were depleted and the wind had swept away any remnants of the plant's cover. I peeked out. The sky was sprinkled with little, silvery stars, a second wave of Allied bombers out of reach of the anti-aircraft cannons.
All at once the earth trembled and heaved and the air filled with a terrible roar. My shelter began to roll and skip. I felt myself lifted into the air and savagely dashed to the ground. In a panic, I pressed my arms against the pipe to prevent myself from slipping out. I caught glimpses of buildings erupting in flames. The air was choked with dust and smoke. A bomb exploded next to me and gravel cut into my face as the pipe spun like a top then rolled into the bomb's crater. My body twitched from the concussion of the blast. My hands, arms and face were covered with blood, but I felt no pain. Because everything sounded muted I thought the crater was incredibly deep. When the tinkle of anti-craft shrapnel stopped, I dragged myself out of the pipe and discovered that the crater wasn't that deep at all, four meters at the most. Everything sounded muted because the blast had ruptured my eardrums.
Crawling out of the crater I found myself in a new world. A firestorm was sweeping through a complex of warehouses. Thick clouds of black smoke rose from the butane reservoirs. Steam from the boilers hissed from broken pipes. Train tracks were flayed from their ties and the remains of boxcars were scattered along them. The sight of all the destruction filled me with joy. I knew that soon much of Germany would look like this.
You would have thought that everyone lounging in grass around me perished during such devastation, but only two Haeftlinge didn't get back up. It was the hardships in the days that followed that dropped us like flies. The camp's kitchen ran on steam produced by the factory and with the pipes broken we received neither soup nor coffee for three days. No bread either since the trains couldn't run. Seventy-two hours without anything to eat. We were starving nevertheless they made us work, clearing away the rubble. Every night we carried back scores of dead Muselmanner and each morning the pyramids for Birkenau grew higher. The camp's band should have been playing Chopin's "Funeral March" as we went out the gate. I was sure that the Allied raids were helping to bring a quicker end to the war, but with all the added misery I couldn't help but wonder how many of us would be left to see it.