The Horse Adjutant me back to the quarry. I was still free. While I was at the camp, I heard about my deported community and worried over my family’s hardships. This is where I also learned that after Reinkraut was deported with the others. He told the SS that he hid valuables back at Grybow, and if they would let him return, he would show them where to find the loot. It did not take too much cajoling to have them bring him back. ‘Cold Frost,’ himself, escorted this young man around the town and down by the River Biała. Eventually, they realized it was a ruse. He was lying. For the crime of wasting their time, he was beaten, shot, and killed by the river, strange justice for a Jewish boy who became a policeman that turned on his own people. It wasn’t long after this that things turned nightmarish for me, too. Less than 10 days after my return, August 28, 1942, my name was called as I worked followed by terse orders, “Step away from the rocks,” Under guard, they took me to a large gathering of others detained that day, all Jews. Over 1,000 of us were walked to a secure campsite. The men were separated from the women and children. I got into the appropriate line and waited. I remember clearly we were being detained between two bridges in Sacz. Acci- dentally, while I was in line, I saw my father and instinctively tried to step into his group. A guard prevented it. This freak happenstance was the last time I ever saw him. The next thing they did to me was a shakedown. I heard, “Empty your pockets. If anything is found in your pockets, we will hang you from those hooks.” I reached into my pocket and put my mother’s wedding ring in a basket where it was lost for the ages. I saw many other rings in that basket. Their mothers must have done the same thing for them that mine did for me. Stripped of the one last shred of connec- tion I had to my family I waited as required until everyone was processed. Then we walked under guard to the local jail where we lingered for three or four days. As we waited, the rest of the Jews from Grybow, my father among them, were loaded onto cattle cars destined for Belzec. While I sat in prison for the crime of be- ing a Jew, he was killed. Everything was a mystery. I had no idea if they were being relocated, nor did I know what Belzec was at the time. So, I still held onto hope, as I pondered my own destiny. The local prison they put me in was a harrowing experience. I heard beatings, sense- less shouting, and shooting at all times of the day and night. I could not sleep. The commander in charge of us was the notorious Obersturmfuhrer Henriek Hamann. He was characterized after the war as the mastermind of extermination details, and the operations manager for the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. I heard he once said, “I am Hamann, your worst nightmare, just like in the Old Testament.” He knew the significance of his name to the Jews as the dreaded
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