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Pierre Berg

Last Updated: 3/27/2009

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Gender: Male
Status: Single
Age: 85
Sign: Libra

City: BEVERLY HILLS
State: CALIFORNIA
Country: US
Signup Date: 6/24/2006

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Saturday, June 13, 2009

Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora@Pickii

http://pickii.com/p/ebooks-scheisshaus-luck-surviv...

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Thursday, October 16, 2008

A SOLDIER’S VIEW ON SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

Over the weekend I received an e-mail from the husband of my number one fan. I was so moved by his words that I asked him to expand on his thoughts because I wanted to share them with all my friends here.

During the struggle to find a publisher I heard over and over again that my memoir wasn't topical. Yes, it happen a long time ago, but the Holocaust, just like the killing fields of Cambodia and the ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, will always be relevant to whatever current wars and genocides that are taking place.

Justin just came back from Iraq. Here is his explanation of his job in the military:

"My job title in the navy is "Operations Specialist". Normally I would be onboard a ship operating radar systems and providing navigation information, or providing targeting information to the weapons systems. I've taken some different assignments that put me on the ground quite a bit. I spent 7 months in Djibouti (one of the hottest places on earth, often over 120F). I got out of the navy in July 2005 after serving nealry 5 years. I got my associates degree, met my wife, and was in the process of buying our first home when the Navy called me back to duty for a tour in Iraq. "Mrs. Mays" and I got married, canceled the purchase of our home, and I deployed 9 days later. The nature of my work was often times classified, but the parts I can discuss were equally interesting as those I cannot. I provided a relay between troops on the ground and aircraft in order to give the ground guys a birds-eye view of the mission. Often times the terrorists would be on roof tops and the aircraft would be able to direct troops to them in order to avoid sniper fire. Other times I would be aiding in hostage rescue, or special operations missions. My time in Africa was a humanitarian mission (win hearts and minds so as to prevent fertile ground for the terrorists ever-expanding recruitment). We were building churches, schools, helping orphanages, and immunizing the farm animals of the locals."

Here is the e-mail he sent me after reading my memoir:

"Dear Pierre,

I just finished your book, it made for a long night, but I couldn't put it down. Scheisshaus Luck would have really surprised me about 10 years ago, but after the things I saw in Iraq and Africa... well it's like you said in your book, we just seem doomed to repeat history. With most of the planet wanting so badly to pretend that the Holocaust never happened, it's sure to be repeated again. The amazing thing is, the events you personalized in Scheisshaus Luck are not some piece of a history from long, long ago; equally shocking events happen every day in the world around us.

I was stationed in Djibouti (Horn of Africa) and saw the bodies of the child armies. They were often missing limbs from the land mines, and most of these children are well acquainted with the AK-47 (it's not a rarity to see a child holding one). It's common for feuding tribes to landmine border territory and not bother to remove the mines when the fight is over. These mines often look like toys, so the children are the ones who discover them.

Poverty breeds derangement of the human mind. Police rape women, the entire Djiboutian population seems to enjoy the one leisure activity they have, the drug khat (which is a stimulant that can result in hallucinations and emotional instability). When you add to this a food shortage and the ever-abundant AK-47, it is no wonder that tragedy is the largest African export.

While in Africa, I also studied the Rwanda genocide and it just seems that the rest of the world wants to pretend these things don't happen. During the mid 1990's almost a million (or more depending on who you believe) souls were destroyed in the most barbaric ways. Families and neighbors were pitted against one another, and the fighting was often carried out with machetes. This happened and is a testament to the dangers of apathy. This same apathy is what propagates an alarming number of our population to simply wish away atrocity. We seem to think that if we wish hard enough these events will "unhappen".

While I was stationed in Baghdad I saw first hand some of the amazingly horrific things Saddam and his sons had brought on their people. I was especially disturbed by the lion's cages where they are rumored to have fed people to ravaged lions. I read about the execution of failed Olympians, raped-women, and men who were murdered based on some threat that Saddam could think up. These events are mind numbing, but it's not the events that cause me such alarm, but rather our reaction to them.

The way the human body can be nothing to someone else is troubling. Dehumanization is one of the best-kept secrets in military history. Most people have a build in resistance to killing other people. It was discovered long ago that in order to have an effective military, you must dehumanize the enemy (i.e. "Japs" "Charlie" "Commi-bastards"). How many times have we seen Iraqi bodies on TV and not batted an eye? Yet we scream and cry foul when the body of a dead American service member makes the airwaves on Al Jazeera.

As I read your book it seems like your goal was to make sure the story is told, to make sure people remember these were human beings we're talking about, not numbers. That is the impression it made upon me. It brought me to reflect a moment on the monumental number of families that were torn apart. Friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and the innocence of an entire planet were just gone... all done in the name of power. These people left shadows. These people had favorite restaurants, they told funny stories, they gave great hugs, they took first steps, they had bad hair days, they held grandchildren high, they kissed lovers, they had picnics on summer days, and they were murdered. Do we close your book and pause a minute before lying down to sleep? Do we turn the page in our mind and pretend this was "once upon a time"? We will see. As you surmised, history indicates that we will show the social memory of a goldfish.

Powerful book you wrote my friend, powerful indeed. You put a face to the shadows. I've traveled the world. I've been to some of the places you mentioned. You put a taste on the pages in the history books. We could tell stories for 20 years and never do justice to the events you recalled with such honest clarity. When I think about what we lost in those days I feel the emptiness in my chest expand a bit more. We will never know the true cost we as a society have, and continue to pay. I'll recommend Scheisshaus Luck to everyone I know. Yours is a powerful story. I hope you've found some peace.

Your Friend,

Justin"

Justin, one of the things that gives me peace these days is finding so many young people like yourself who do care, who really want to make this a better place for everyone on this planet. And sometimes it is as simple as making sure you've educated yourself before choosing the leader of your country.

12:00 PM

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Friday, October 03, 2008

ANOTHER AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR’S STORY

Another one of my long time MySpace friends is Danjrus and her father is a Holocaust survivor, too. Earlier last month she shared a newspaper article on her father with me. Now, I'd like to share it with all of you.

"The following is an article that will be published in my father's local community newspaper. It's a rather "condensed" version of what my father went through ... because, as the man who interviewed my father and wrote the article said 'I won't be able to fit everything into the article, because I am only allowed so much space - but, I wish I could include everything.'"

Danjrus

THE INCREDIBLE ODYSSEY OF MICHAEL SIEN
By Bill Kulberg

"September 1, 1939. Germany invaded Poland. That day, a bomb landed across the street from Mordecai Siennicki's home in a town near Warsaw. It was a forerunner of what was in store for the man, often close to death, always a survivor, at times by the narrowest of margins.

Michael Sien, a Concordian for 24 years, detailed incidents starting in his youth, one of 6,000 Jews in an anti-Semitic town of 30,000, through the nightmares of two concentration camps, the Warsaw Ghetto, virtual starvations, incessant beatings, forced marches in freezing weather, twice being left for dead, and a demoralizing five year post war odyssey.

Graduating from the segregated Polish equivalent of high school at 14, he became an apprentice tailor. Post invasion, he, his parents and three sisters escaped to a friend's farm. He eventually returned home, but when a townsman shot a German soldier, all men were herded into a field and told to sit. Jews were ordered to stand, but Michael wisely did not. The Jews were murdered and buried in a mass grave. Everyone else was marched for two days before being released.

He walked home and his mother, who'd been told he was dead, fainted when she saw him. The brutal treatment continued (men tied to horses and dragged) so he, a friend and thousands of refugees escaped to the Russian held part of Poland. Many were arrested and shipped to Siberia. Michael and others went back, forced to hide out, sleeping in streets, train stations and a synagogue. Captured by a German patrol and put to work unloading concrete from trains, they escaped and headed home.

He wound up in a small ghetto with his family, six to a room, scarce food and random beatings. His father was shot and the family escaped to a farm where, after surrendering their money and gold, they were thrown out. Michael remained in that ghetto and hid in the attic of a house from where they witnessed people being marched to trains and shipped out, until there were no Jews left. He finally set off to Warsaw and sneaked into the Warsaw Ghetto. There he joined work gangs while the Germans rounded up and murdered children and sent adults to gas chambers.

When ghetto commandos began killing German soldiers, tanks and artillery were sent in. Those captured were handed over to Ukrainian soldiers who marched them to the train station for transport to concentration camps. Michael was sent to Midanek concentration camp, where young and old went directly to the ovens. The rest slept and worked in bitterly cold conditions with wooden shoes and no underwear beneath their uniforms. When workers were needed elsewhere, Michael volunteered and wound up in Auschwitz, where he was advised to claim he was an experienced roofer.

Roofers received larger food rations, but the beatings continued, permanently affecting his hearing. He was once thrown off a roof and left to die, but another inmate noticed him breathing and saved him. Sent to various camps as a roofer, he found a cousin to whom he tried throwing bread, and was beaten severely. Michael went to the infirmary where a Polish doctor saved his life by slapping him and sending him out. Those remaining in the infirmary that day were killed.

With the allies closing in, Michael and others were taken to the port of Danzig, to offload cement and coal from ships. He recalled a small kindness by a Wehrmacht officer, who quietly left him a marmalade sandwich, a luxury at the time. From there they marched, day and night for weeks, toward Germany. Sleeping was mostly outdoors on the frozen ground and Michael escaped a mass shooting of prisoners when he sneaked away, trying to steal some food.

One morning, the Germans were gone, replaced by Russians. Food was brought for them by the Russians and when Michael became ill from stuffing himself, he was plied with alcohol, which aided his recovery. Michael and his friend then sneaked onto a freight train in an effort to get home, only to find no place to live and then continued west toward Germany, where they were jailed as spies by the Russians. Interrogations were cruel, being wakened in the middle of the night, to take advantage of disorientation. Finally, a Yiddish speaking Russian officer released them.

The war ended, but not Michael's odyssey. Humane organizations took over and he was sent to Hungary and Rumania, where he wound up on a kibbutz before being taken to Austria and then to Italy by Jewish soldiers destined to ship out to Palestine. He actually trained with them until a friend contacted an uncle in Brooklyn and an ad was published in the Jewish Forward, giving information about Michael. Incredibly, someone read it and called Michael's aunt who then contacted him.

After four and a half years in Italy and thanks in part to President Truman removing the quota on refugees, he spent ten days at sea, part of the time without food, until finally seeing the Statue of Liberty. His aunt and a cousin were waiting for him when he landed. That's when he became Michael Sien.

He's traveled back to Poland, visiting camps he'd been in, finding the same barracks he lived in, and The New York Times interviewed him for an article at the Holocaust Museum. As a member of a Holocaust survivor group, Michael visited and talked to students at area high schools.

There were numerous additional incidents and details that space didn't permit. Michael Sien, in a span of less than ten years, suffered more brutality, horror, anguish and discomfort than most people would in ten lifetimes. And, as they say, lived to tell about it.

Simply incredible!"

This Saturday I have my first book event. It will be at the Upland Library in Upland, California.

Inked & Book-Enders Book Clubs  10/4/2008 

Our guest speaker is Holocaust survivor Pierre Berg. Mr. Berg has co-written with Brian Brock Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora. Mr. Berg's memoir will be available for purchase and autographs.

Times: 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. (noon) Location: Carnegie Cultural Center - Great Room Cost: FREE Contact Information: Kathy Bloomberg-Rissman, (909) 931-4205.

12:09 PM

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Thursday, October 02, 2008

SCHEISSHAUS LUCK REVIEWED BY MYSPACE FRIENDS!

I first want to thank everyone who sent me birthday wishes. I tried to send every one of you a thank you, but if I missed you my apologizes. It was a wonderful feeling for an 84 year old man to see how many people remembered my birthday.

My Holocaust memoir, Scheisshaus Luck has been available for a couple of weeks now and we have received some wonderful reviews on Amazon. Three of those reviews come from MySpace friends.

Frode is one of my oldest friends here at MySpace (along with his wonderful wife, Mandisa). I am proud to be his friend. Frode is a development professional working for the United Nations in Kosovo, a country scarred by hatred and genocide. Here is his review:

60 years in the works 4 Stars Frode "World Resident"

"Scheisshaus Luck will be an expression in your vocabulary because after reading this book you really will know its significance. Thankfully few of us will ever experience even less survive the ordeal that Pierre Berg went through. Therefore it is really useful and sadly also necessary to be reminded of the consequences of totalitarianism in its most barbaric form. You will not regret getting hold of this book and the matter-of-fact unsentimental but disturbing eyewitness account benefiting from both having been written when the experience was fresh in the observant young mind and with the additional wisdom and perspective of the 60 years it took to get it published."

Mrs. May might be my number one fan. She has been leaving her review all over the internet. Her husband just came back from Iraq. Here is her review:

An amazing account from an amazing man 5 Stars Mrs. May, Amarillo, TX

I met Pierre Berg through myspace before his book was published. He is an amazing, inspiring and strong man. I cannot believe he has kept his sense of humor for so long, and through all he has endured.

This book was by far the best account of the Holocaust that I have ever read, and i have read many. Pierre is more descriptive in his writing. He explains the things we don't want to know. This is crucial because we all should know that, Yes these horrible things did happen. We should never forget how cruel humanity can be, and we must never forget how harrowing each victim of the Holocaust was.

It was refreshing to read about someone other than a Jewish survivor. While everyone knows that the Jews were inhumanely slaughtered, we all need to remember that there were many others there. Pierre describes the significance of each color of triangle that was sewn on each pair of "pajamas" so everyone will know everyone's "crime".

This is a must for everyone interested in the Holocaust.

Vera is one of my newest friends. Here is her Amazon review:

"I've read many Holocaust memoirs, and I think every single one is important in its own right; it's crucial to remember the horrors of the Holocaust so that we do not repeat the past. As stated in the summary of 'Scheisshaus Luck', we are quickly coming to a time when there will be no living Holocaust survivors. That fact alone makes this memoir even more relevant and necessary.

Arrested at the age of 18, Pierre Berg spent time at a holding camp in Drancy, was transferred to Monowitz (part of Auschwitz), and eventually to Dora. Pierre is very frank in describing his experiences, from the nightmarish train ride to Auschwitz, to becoming almost immune to all the death around him, and the indignities tolerated by the prisoners in order to survive. One story that stayed with me long after I finished the book was that of the officers using human bodies to catch eels in the river. (many argue that the officials did not have a choice in carrying out the mass murders - it was do or die; this story and many others show that their cruelty went far and above what was ordered)While the subject of the memoir is dark and depressing in itself, I felt that Pierre's message was, "Don't feel bad for me. This is what I went through, I survived, and I just want others to learn about what happened".

Pierre Berg's memoir is an effective counter attack on those who believe that Holocaust is nothing more than a Jewish conspiracy. Pierre was a French gentile, and his experiences in German labor and concentration camps confirm that Holocaust was a reality, not a conspiracy made up to advance the interests of Jewish people. All the while, his writing style is youthful, candid, and extremely readable. I found myself horrified, amused and intensely interested all in one."

Both my co-writer Brian and myself want to thank Frode, Mrs May and Vera for taking the time to write and post their reviews on Amazon. With it being such an uphill battle to get reviewed in any newspaper or magazine, I'm so glad my friends here are helping spread the word about my memoir.

Tomorrow, I am going to share with you the amazing story of another Holocaust survivor whose daughter is one of my MySpace friends.

Goodnight.

9:06 AM

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Wednesday, August 27, 2008

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR SCHEISSHAUS LUCK

I guess I'm bragging, but here is what some authors have had to say about my memoir.

"Pierre Berg's extraordinary survivor memoir is an invaluable contribution to a history we must never forget, further distinguished by the verve, vitality, and wry wit with which Berg tells his story. Paced like an adventure tale, laced with moving philosophical commentary, Scheisshaus Luck is a riveting, unforgettable read."

Jenna Blum, author of Those Who Save Us

"Part of its [Scheisshaus Luck's] power lies in the style of the telling: pulling no punches, it delivers the drama of evil in razor-sharp undertones tinged with gallows humor. The effect is blood curdling. This book is a most important, landmark addition to Holocaust literature. Besides its historical value it is a mighty weapon in the battle against Holocaust deniers. The fact that it was written by a Gentile and not by one of the half million Jewish survivors renders it unique."

Livia Bitton-Jackson, Holocaust survivor and

author, I Have Lived A Thousand Years

"A staggering voyage through the hell of Nazi death camps with a sensitive young Frenchman determined to emerge alive... Pierre Berg's day-to-day details of his slavery and survival are searing."

Richard Z. Chesnoff, columnist, The New York Daily News, and author,Pack of Thieves - How Hitler & Europe Plundered The Jews

"Berg offers his readers the fascinating perspective of a non-Jew, non-believing teenager wise beyond his years who was a witness and victim of the Final Solution. Though it is virtually impossible to say that one enjoys a memoir of Auschwitz, Berg brought me to tears, but also to laughter. A significant work that will long be read."

Michael Berenbaum, Professor of Jewish Studies American Jewish University, Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute and former Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

"Pierre Berg's amazing eye-witness account of the Nazi concentration camps pulses with rawness and attention to detail. That is was written immediately after the war when his memories were fresh comes through on every page. With dry wit, Berg relates a tale of luck, both good and bad, in a world gone mad. His riveting story of courage and the will to preserve his own humanity in the most inhuman of conditions is an important contribution to the literature of the Holocaust and the history of the twentieth century."

Andrea Warren, author, Surviving Hitler: A Boy

in the Nazi Death Camps

"Pierre Berg deserves praise for his absorbing account….An important contribution to the growing library of Holocaust testimony."

Joshua M. Greene, author, Witness: Voices from

the Holocaust

"In astonishing detail worthy of thriller fiction, Scheisshaus Luck is raw, jarring, and as agonizing as the slash of a bullwhip. Berg's exhausting daily struggle to survive the next beating, the next freezing roll call, the next gun-wielding Nazi sadist, is as real as it gets. He doesn't aim for uplift or for answers to the great philosophical questions, but offers the hard currency of an ordinary person's experience recorded while still crisply recalled. I found Berg's honesty about how he coped with physical and emotional need under unimaginable pressure - how he processed loss, pain, and the Nazis' twisted reality - reassuring."

Elinor J. Brecher, Miami Herald reporter and author of 'Schindler's Legacy: True Stories of the List Survivors'

"Berg's story is a monument to the human spirit that prevails beyond every jackbooted attempt to stamp it out. That Berg survived to tell the tale is as astonishing and miraculous as the book itself. This is riveting reading, a page-turner, an unforgettable experience."

Duff Brenna, author, The Book of Mamie

"The cinematic quality of his [Berg's] narrative takes you over an abyss into the Auschwitz that really was. Would you have made it through? Berg's talents served him well but there were many close calls. There is suspense here - a lot of it - along with irony, cynicism, loyalty, and love. Vetted against Nazi archival sources, this is the real thing with no detail spared for delicacy's sake."

Steve Sage, author Ibsen and Hitler

"This is the warts and all story of an 18-year old political prisoner's incarceration as a slave laborer in the Auschwitz abyss. Pierre Berg, a non-Jew from Nice, France, tells his story with utter frankness and hides nothing of man's bestiality to man, and what people will do to survive. My book of the year."

William Bemister, Emmy-winning Producer-Correspondent of 'The Hunter And The Hunted and 'The Search For Mengele'.

SCHEISSHAUS LUCK WILL BE AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 4TH

3:10 PM

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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

MY FIRST REVIEW

At the beginning of the month I got my first review of my memoir from the literary journal Kirkus Review. I'd like to share it with you.

"The harrowing story of Berg's time in Nazi concentration camps, related with "irony, irreverence, and gallows humor" that led co-author Brock to urge him to publish it a half-century after it was written...:

The pair collaborated to amplify and clarify the original manuscript, but retained the cocky voice of a French Resistance member only 18 years old when he was arrested in Nice in late 1943. On a train full of prisoners, Berg met Stella, a pretty Jewish girl with whom he snatched some stolen sex and happiness at the Drancy transit camp near Paris. There he also had the misfortune to encounter the Gestapo agent who had arrested him in Nice; the agent ordered him sent to Auschwitz. But the "shithouse luck" of his book's title, Berg explains in his preface, meant that he "kept landing on the right side of the randomness of life." A minor clerical error caused another Häftling (prisoner) to be hung in his stead. Berg got to carry on collecting corpses, digging trenches and cadging the occasional extra ladle of watery soup that sometimes made the difference between life and death. Like other survivors, he graphically recalls the beatings, hunger, sickness, selections, stink, despair and omnipresent death. Berg's mechanical skill and proficiency in German, English, Italian, Spanish and a bit of Russian, in addition to his native French, contributed to his Scheisshaus luck. The young Häftling was sent to the caves of Dora, where he assembled V-1 and V-2 rockets as a slave of IG Farben. When freedom came, he was caught between the retreating Wehrmacht and the advancing, marauding Red Army. He was searching for Stella, never forgotten during his 18 months in the camps, and the randomness of life proved itself once again.

A worthy supplement to the reports of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel."

Hopefully there will be a few more positive reviews in newspapers or magazines come September. The reviews I really can't wait for are from my friends here on MySpace. I've already got a couple messages from friends that they have pre-ordered a copy of Scheisshaus Luck on one of the online book sellers. Thank you so much!!

I'm luck to have another one of my MySpace friends, Amy, sharing her photos from her trip to Auschwitz. Here are a few of them.

Auschwitz Camp

Auschwitz Barracks -- In my camp, Auschwitz III, all the barracks were made of wood and the winter wind blew through those walls as if they weren't even there.

Auschwitz -- Sentry Box

Each brick represents one person who was murdered at Auschwitz

Birkenau Train Tracks

Amy at the Birkenau train yard. Thank you, Amy!!

Again, if you have photos from a trip you made to Auschwtiz or one of the other concentration camps and want to share them on my blog please let me know. If you have written about the Holocaust, your experience going to Auschwitz or your thoughts on that terrible time in our history, I would love to place it on my blog.

2:33 AM

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Thursday, July 03, 2008

SCHEISSHAUS LUCK --- THE BOOK COVER

Well, it is about time I place a new blog and I do have a couple of things to share with everyone. First, the people at Amacom have been keeping me very busy, which is better than them not returning my phone calls. SCHEISSHAUS LUCK will be in bookstores this September. Galley copies were passed out at the Book Expo that was held here in Los Angeles the last week in May. A relative told me there is a copy of the galleys is for sale on Ebay…. Is that legal?

Here is the book cover of my memoir

My co-writer, Brian and myself are pretty happy with it. What do you think?

When Brian and I decided on the title, SCHEISSHAUS LUCK, I had an idea for the bookcover that Brian's oldest friend, Tom Teschner, sketched up for me. Here it is.

Shithouse Luck

Brian has a new blog on his MySpace page. On it you can read the Forward to my memoir and see an old rejection letter of mine. It's from 1954. Go HERE to read his blog.

I've now been on MySpace for almost two years and I never expected to meet so many people who would be so supportive and helpful in my quest to publish my memoir. I would love to use my blog more often for my friends to share their thoughts on the Holocaust, Auschwitz, Holocaust deniers, racism, hatred…. Or whatever you feel like sharing.

One of my favorite friends, Leah, wrote to me last year wondering if she should go on this trip (a relatively expensive trip) to Poland and Auschwitz. I told her that when you are young always take the opportunities to travel to places that interest you. She did go to Poland and she took pictures of Auschwitz that she shared with me. Now I'd like to share them with you.

Birkenau Train Yard Building… The same building on the cover of my book.

From the Glossary of SCHEISSHAUS LUCK:

BIRKENAU....

(German) Birch grove--Auschwitz II The extermination camp was built in October 1941 and located near the Polish village of Brzezinka. In the spring of 1942 the "showers" and crematoriums were operational. October 10^th, 1944 was the Uprising of the Sonderkommando. The Sonderkommando crew of crematoria IV revolted and destroyed their crematories. In November, Himmler shutdown the gas chambers and efforts were put into place to conceal the mass murder that had taken place.

This is where most of the other prisoners of Auschwitz arrived. I arrived there. As you well know, so many went straight to the gas chambers of Birkenau. Some were kept at the Birkenau Camp (Auschwitz II). Some were sent to Auschwitz I. Others were sent to Monowitz (Auschwitz III). Monowitz is where I spent 12 months of my life.

Here is a map of the location of the three major Auschwitz camps:

The Birkenau Train Yard

A guard tower in Auschwitz I

From the Glossary of SCHEISSHAUS LUCK:

AUSCHWITZ....

The original Auschwitz camp (Auschwitz I) was built in 1940 in the suburbs of the Polish city of Oswiecim. On June 14, 1940, the first convoy of Polish political prisoners, 728 men, arrived at the camp. By 1943 Auscwitz was the largest Nazi camp complex with three main camps, Auschwitz I, Auschwitz II-Birkenau and Auschwitz III-Monowitz and some 40 sub-camps. Over 50% of the registered Haeftlinge in the Auschwitz complex died. 70-75% of each transport was sent straight to the gas chambers. Untold numbers of victims of the gas chambers were never registered. The total number of Jews murdered in Auschwitz will never be known, but estimates range from one and two and a half million. The next highest groups were Poles, Russian POWs, most of them dying in the construction of the IG Farben plant and as gas chamber "guinea pigs", and Gypsies. Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet Army on January 27^th, 1945.

From the museum at Majdanek -- A Kapo's Armband

KAPO....

(German) Inmate supervisor of a Kommando. Assigned by the SS and usually a German convict.

Thank you, Leah!

I will be back next week with a new blog.

10:28 PM

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Monday, February 18, 2008

SOME BIG NEWS... SOME REALLY BIG NEWS

I was writing this blog for the last hour and I was almost finished when it disappeared. I am done swearing and will now try to remember what I wrote. (Has this happen to anyone else?)

Okay, I'm back among the computer crowd. For the last couple of months I've been fighting computer viruses and the viruses won. I now own a new laptop.

I have something to share with all my friends.

MY MEMOIR, SCHEISSHAUS LUCK, IS GOING TO BE PUBLISHED THIS FALL!!

I can't believe it myself, but it is true. Amacom Books is going to publish my memoir this fall. The contracts have been signed and for the last couple of weeks my co-writer Brian Brock and I have been busy with the editors. I was really afraid they were going to cut and dice up my memoir, but that hasn't happen. Matter-of-fact, they want me to add more to the manuscript. The head editor read the interview I did with Susan Henderson and they want me to write about the poor soul who fell into the shit trench and was shot dead by an SS guard. To my relief, they also gave a greenlight to the title SCHEISSHAUS LUCK. 2008 has started off wonderfully for me.

I want to thank all of my My Space friends for the comments and mail you have sent me. It has given me strength and encouragement when I was beginning to doubt that I would ever see my memoir in print.

A very special thank you to the following people:

Susan Henderson and Litpark - I am so lucky to have met her and to have such a wonderful author, blogger, mother and wife believing in me.

Jessica Keener - An author with a huge heart who has been a great help to Brian and I

Steven Hall - A very talented British author whose support has been invaluable.

Duff Brenna - A California author whose advice and guidance has been extremely helpful.

Kyle Minor- An author who is always on the look for ways to help me. He introduced me to Duff.

Richard Blanford - Another talented British author who has been in my corner ever since I came to My Space.

Frank Daniels - A spirited author who has always sent me words of encouragement. His passion for writing is an inspiration to me.

Simon Haynes - A wonderful Australian author who was very generous with advice and support.

Olympia Vernon - A very special author who has been very helpful and supportive.

I must also thank the following people for all their letters of encouragement and friendship.

Frode and his wife, Jacta Alea Est

darklinensuit (Jake)

I am the Publicist (Marlo)

I also want to thank all the high school and college kids who have written to me over the last year. I never thought so many young people would be interested in the Holocaust and what an old man had to say. I'm glad you proved me wrong.

My co-writer, Brian, has now joined My Space. Please go to his page and become his friend. I've known his for six and a half years. I can vouch for him.

Now that I have a new laptop, I'll be answering my mail in a timely fashion and will be writing new blogs (when I'm not busy with the editing of my book).

I am a happy old man, I'll tell you that. Thank you all for being a part of that.

Sincerely,

Pierre

P.S. I almost forgot. I found this picture last week when I was cleaning out a closet. I'm 15 in this picture. 3 years before I was arrested.

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Thursday, October 04, 2007

ME AND ALLIED BOMBS

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.

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Wednesday, July 25, 2007

A SHORT SUMMER SCHOOL CLASS

Jae Lee † <>< † left a comment on my last blog, "Revolt" and asked if there were any Africans in the concentration camps. I thought this was a wonderful question and deserved to be the subject of my next blog. Now, I never wanted to do a history lesson on my blogs. I am not a qualified expert or historian, but I felt this was an opportunity to pass on information on a topic that doesn't seem to get much attention: How the Nazi racial policies affected Africans living in Europe and Allied soldiers of African descent.

As I said, I am not an expert, but with the help of my computer tutor and collaborator, Brian, we were able to find plenty of excellent articles and websites on the internet.

We first went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website. This is what they had to say:

"The fate of black people from 1933 to 1945 in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied territories ranged from isolation to persecution, sterilization, medical experimentation, incarceration, brutality, and murder. However, there was no systematic program for their elimination as there was for Jews and other groups.

After World War I, the Allies stripped Germany of its African colonies. The German military stationed in Africa (Schutztruppen), as well as missionaries, colonial bureaucrats, and settlers, returned to Germany and took with them their racist attitudes. Separation of whites and blacks was mandated by the Reichstag (German parliament), which enacted a law against mixed marriages in the African colonies.

Following World War I and the Treaty of Versailles (1919), the victorious Allies occupied the Rhineland in western Germany. The use of French colonial troops, some of whom were black, in these occupation forces exacerbated anti-black racism in Germany. Racist propaganda against black soldiers depicted them as rapists of German women and carriers of venereal and other diseases. The children of black soldiers and German women were called "Rhineland Bastards." The Nazis, at the time a small political movement, viewed them as a threat to the purity of the Germanic race. In Mein Kampf (My Struggle), Hitler charged that "the Jews had brought the Negroes into the Rhineland with the clear aim of ruining the hated white race by the necessarily-resulting bastardization."

African German mulatto children were marginalized in German society, isolated socially and economically, and not allowed to attend university. Racial discrimination prohibited them from seeking most jobs, including service in the military. With the Nazi rise to power they became a target of racial and population policy. By 1937, the Gestapo (German secret state police) had secretly rounded up and forcibly sterilized many of them. Some were subjected to medical experiments; others mysteriously "disappeared."

The racist nature of Adolf Hitler's regime was disguised briefly during the Olympic Games in Berlin in August 1936, when Hitler allowed 18 African American athletes to compete for the U.S. team. However, permission to compete was granted by the International Olympic Committee and not by the host country.

Adult African Germans were also victims. Both before and after World War I, many Africans came to Germany as students, artisans, entertainers, former soldiers, or low-level colonial officials, such as tax collectors, who had worked for the imperial colonial government. Hilarius (Lari) Gilges, a dancer by profession, was murdered by the SS in 1933, probably because he was black. Gilges' German wife later received restitution from a postwar German government for his murder by the Nazis.

Some African Americans, caught in German-occupied Europe during World War II, also became victims of the Nazi regime. Many, like female jazz artist Valaida Snow, were imprisoned in Axis internment camps for alien nationals. The artist Josef Nassy, living in Belgium, was arrested as an enemy alien and held for seven months in the Beverloo transit camp in German-occupied Belgium. He was later transferred to Germany, where he spent the rest of the war in the Laufen internment camp and its subcamp, Tittmoning, both in Upper Bavaria.

European and American blacks were also interned in the Nazi concentration camp system. Lionel Romney, a sailor in the U.S. Merchant Marine, was imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Jean Marcel Nicolas, a Haitian national, was incarcerated in the Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau concentration camps in Germany. Jean Voste, an African Belgian, was incarcerated in the Dachau concentration camp. Bayume Mohamed Hussein from Tanganyika (today Tanzania) died in the Sachsenhausen camp, near Berlin.

Black prisoners of war faced illegal incarceration and mistreatment at the hands of the Nazis, who did not uphold the regulations imposed by the Geneva Convention (international agreement on the conduct of war and the treatment of wounded and captured soldiers). Lieutenant Darwin Nichols, an African American pilot, was incarcerated in a Gestapo prison in Butzbach. Black soldiers of the American, French, and British armies were worked to death on construction projects or died as a result of mistreatment in concentration or prisoner-of-war camps. Others were never even incarcerated, but were instead immediately killed by the SS or Gestapo.

Some African American members of the U.S. Armed forces were liberators and witnesses to Nazi atrocities. The 761st Tank Battalion (an all-African American tank unit), attached to the 71st Infantry Division, U.S. Third Army, under the command of General George Patton, participated in the liberation of Gunskirchen, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp, in May 1945."

Here is the link to that article:

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005479

The Museum's website also had some photographs and posters:

"Nazi propaganda photo depicts friendship between an "Aryan" and a black woman. The caption states: "The result! A loss of racial pride." Germany, prewar."

"Propaganda illustration from a Nazi film strip. The caption states, in German: "The Jew is a bastard." The illustration links Jews with others the Nazis deemed inferior--eastern peoples, blacks, Mongols, and east Africans."

Two survivors prepare food outside the barracks. The man on the right, presumably, is Jean (Johnny) Voste, born in Belgian Congo, who was the only black prisoner in Dachau. Dachau, Germany, May
1945.

In 2003, the Scottish newspaper, THE SCOTSMAN, published the following article:

GERMANY'S TRIBUTE TO ITS 'BLACK DISGRACE'

By Allan Hall in Berlin

"UNLIKE the Jewish victims of Hitler's Third Reich, there is no permanent memorial to mark their terrible fate. While hundreds were murdered in the Nazi death camps because of the colour of their skin, their story has been largely forgotten.

Now, however, a controversial new exhibition is forcing Germans to confront the disturbing truth of what happened to the thousands of black people living in their country during the Führer's rise to power.

The Nazi Documentation Centre in Cologne is showing the first exhibition on the subject. Called Distinguishing Feature: Negro - Blacks in National Socialist Times, it documents the lives of black people in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.

At that time, immigrants from European colonies, the Caribbean and Africa called Germany their home. There were also many black Americans who fled to Europe to escape the economic crisis in America, as well as diplomats, business people, students and sailors who began to make their presence felt in Hitler's narrow, racially-obsessed society.

The driving force behind the exhibition, Dr Peter Martin, of the Hamburg Foundation for the Cultivation of Culture and Science, estimates that some 10,000 black people lived in Germany before the Nazis came to power.

Martin said he was motivated to put on the exhibition by the "lack of awareness" among Germans about the fate of black people during Nazi rule.

He said: "It is important to remember that there were more victims than Jews and that each one was a piece in the mosaic of evil that was Nazism."
Martin added: "Hitler wanted a whiter-than-white society. It had no place for blacks, Asians or anyone else. The one thing that you can say about The Führer is that he was an equal-opportunity hater."

The forgotten chapter in German history has been revealed to the public through a collection of posters, flyers, films, sound recordings and photographs. The venue where they are shown is hauntingly appropriate: The Cologne Nazi Documentation Centre is housed in a building used by the Gestapo for torture and interrogation.

Before Hitler's accession to power in 1933, there had been widespread tolerance of black people. Black entertainers, in particular jazz musicians, singers and dancers, were wildly popular in Germany and black music was considered hip in the Weimar Republic.

But Josef Goebbels hated it and it was soon demonised then outlawed. He called it "Negroid swamp music" and ordered his brownshirts to the music halls where it was played to beat up and deport listeners to concentration camps.

The Nazis' 1933 racial law, which applied to black people as well as Jews, institutionalised racism and made it impossible for them to lead normal lives. Propaganda on the streets and in the media labelled blacks as a "dangerous plague" and "bastards". Black men were said to be a danger to German women.

Black Germans who had married white Germans were subjected to additional persecution. Many were forcibly sterilised.

Martin said: "The Nazis liked to demonise blacks in the way that bigots of the deep south in America did. It was all part of the desensitising of the German race in the Nazi effort to convince them they were the chosen people."

Nazi Germany regarded black soldiers as inferior beings and treated them as such. French colonial troops captured after the fall of the country in 1940 were photographed by Goebbels' propaganda ministry to depict them as "subhuman savages". American troops captured during the Second World War were singled out for particularly brutal treatment in PoW camps.

Historians still don't know what happened to most blacks in Germany between 1933 and 1945. Many simply disappeared from public life, most of them permanently.
Some were able to leave the country but many others were sent to concentration camps. Hundreds or even thousands may have been killed.

Martin explained: "The Nazis collated names and addresses but there was no separate register for blacks. We honour both those who died and those who survived."

The exhibition also features the great American athlete Jesse Owens whose spectacular performance at the 1936 Olympic Games, which Hitler wanted to be a showcase for 'Aryan supremacy', caused the Führer to storm out of the stadium.

In addition, it reveals the spurious pseudo-scientific theories used by the Nazis to justify their perverse ideology. A series of photographs show black men and women having their skulls measured with callipers - supposedly to show that the thickness of black people's skulls indicated a small brain "unreceptive to intelligence".

Researchers spent months scouring libraries and archives for information and found many letters seized by the Nazis from black prisoners that had been intended for loved ones back home.
One was from a Jamaican sailor called Gilbert Thwaites, who was arrested on 1934. He was sent to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen on the outskirts of Berlin where thousands died at the hands of the SS.

In the days before his arrest he wrote to his mother in Manderville: " "People started to spit at me in the street and make noises like an ape when I went by. I daren't speak with a white lady on the streets anymore. There was an article in the Hamburger Morgenpost saying Hitler wants to make us wear a black star like the Jews have to wear a yellow one. The jazz club where I used to hang out in the centre of Hamburg was raided last week. Josef Goebbels said it was a centre of vice and corruption."

Thwaites ultimately managed to escape Germany, after his former boss on the Hamburg waterfront intervened on his behalf and he was able to buy himself freedom.
Also chronicled is the murder of dozens of mixed-race children in 1937. These were children born in the Rhineland to women who cohabited with French colonial occupation troops after the First World War.

Around 800 of the children - referred to as the "Rhineland bastards" and "black disgrace" in Nazi propaganda - were sterilised by a secret group called Commission Number 3.
In Mein Kampf Hitler said he would eliminate all the children born of African-German descent because he considered them an "insult" to the German nation."

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=40712003

Here is a excerpt from a review of Raffael Scheck's Hitler's African Victims, The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.)

"Anyone who has seen Marcel Ophuls' Le Chagrin et la pitié is unlikely to forget the scene of exotically dancing African soldiers who had been taken prisoner from the defeated French army and filmed for Die Wochenschau, the German weekly newsreel, during the German defeat of France in 1940. Neville Chamberlain's statement that the Allies were defending civilization against "Medieval barbarism" is recalled, then, in dripping sarcasm, the African troops are called "the defenders of civilization." The following sequence shows a column of marching German soldiers of the Wehrmacht, again sarcastically called "the barbarians." Nazi racial ideology could hardly have been expressed more succinctly. It is not surprising that France's African troops who fell into German hands during the 1940 campaign were often singled out for harsher treatment than the European French. In some cases, the African prisoners of war were massacred.

These massacres are the subject of Raffael Scheck's Hitler's African Victims, a richly documented analysis, based heavily on the records of the French army (SHAT) at Vincennes and the German military archives at Freiburg im Breisgau. The archival material available shows that, despite Nazi racial ideology, as in so many other aspects of their policy, the Germans' treatment of their African prisoners was by no means consistent. Hitler's African Victims is divided into four parts. Starting in part one with the narrower issue of the massacres themselves, Scheck assesses their extent and situates them in the context of the 1940 military campaign. In the second part of the book, he traces the origins of German anti-African sentiments in the colonial wars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The third part, which constitutes the main argument of the book, assesses ideological and situational factors in the massacres, and the last section discusses their implications.

Some 100,000 soldiers were recruited in French West Africa for the 1939-1940 army with about 75,000 seeing duty in France. Of these, approximately 10,000 were killed in combat in the spring 1940 campaign and thousands of others went missing. While white French prisoners of war were generally treated according to the rules of the 1929 Geneva Prisoners of War convention, on the night of 9-10 June, several massacres of black soldiers known as tirailleurs sénégalais, from the 4th Colonial Infantry Division (DIC), occurred. These and other massacres of African prisoners in 1940 "form a missing link between the limited Wehrmacht atrocities in Poland and the full-fledged race war it later conducted in the Balkans and the Soviet Union".

Not only did thousands of Africans fight in the French army, they often--despite propaganda images to the contrary--fought bravely and well. In one instance during the Somme campaign, a group of African soldiers fought effectively and suffered close to 90% casualties defending the village of Airaines (p. 28). Scheck argues, in the first section of his book, that German soldiers' rage, excited by the heat of battle and normal in any military confrontation, was directed on occasion against the French colonial troops. Perhaps German anger focused on them precisely because they fought so unexpectedly well. Altogether, Scheck determines that some 3,000 French African soldiers were killed in the heat of combat or immediately thereafter, in addition to many others hunted down before they had a chance to surrender . Authorization for Wehrmacht field commanders to single out African prisoners for especially harsh treatment did not come from any legal documents or specific orders, Scheck observes. It was endemic in the racial prejudices engendered by the Nazi movement with longer-term roots in German society. In this sense, he might have added, it was simply part of the genocidal orientation of Nazi philosophy in general…"

This review was written by Bertram M. Gordon and can be found on the "H-France" website.

HERE ARE SOME NUMBERS THAT I CAME ACROSS:

55,000 African people died in camps, as French Troops, and civilians in Europe.

In Uganda, 0.3million were killed by the local Nazi regime.

250/300,000 North Africans died of diseases added to by the war.

700,000 Ethiopinas died in the Italian invasion, of which many tens of thousands were massacred.

The Nazi racial programs and the "Final Solution" were tailor made for the Jewish population of Germany and the rest of Europe, but many other races and religions also came under their jackboots. It is important to remember this. The Holocaust has significance for all of us because it demonstrates that whatever our race, religious beliefs, political views, sexual orientation are they could be used as an excuse for genocide.

Finally, when I escaped from the Nazis my ordeal was over. I'm Caucasian. When Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and people of African descent were no longer in Nazi concentration camps they still had to deal with prejudice and discrimination on a daily basis. Sadly, they still do (and so do many others).

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