Stephen Shooster That first month in Tarnow was very tough. I did not have a job, and there was little food or anything else for that matter. In this squalid environment, At one point I be- came feverishly ill. My cousin brought me to the hospital. I was given treatment for ‘belly’ typhus. It would be the first time I had this potentially deadly disease but not the last. I stayed in the hospital for 3-4 days until I was strong enough to be released. Before I was released, my cousin brought me something I would not have expected in a million years -- an orange. An orange is a tropical fruit, rare in this part of the world, but somehow he got one and gave it to me saying, “This will be good for what is ailing you.” A few days later I was back on my feet and found a job. As you might imagine, I grew up very fast. Fear does that to you. No longer could I escape wearing the blue and white emblem of my race, The Star of David, as an arm- band. It was required. Grief was my closest companion, hunger my obsession. I was a teenage prisoner. Everything was taken away, with no end in sight. Every day was a new atrocity. One of the most heartbreaking things I ever saw while in Tarnow was a mother forc- ibly loaded into a truck, while her small child wept calling out to her. They just hap- pened to be out looking for food when one of the surprise purges occurred. I will never forget their wailing. If I tried were to try to help they would shoot me. And if you died they would let you rot in the street. The smells in the ghetto were atrocious. We were all starving and competing for the smallest shred of anything. When the trucks appeared, the whole community scattered trying to hide. Once the Nazis left, the ghetto, daily activity resumed. My cousin, knowing I came from a family of horsemen, told me he would ask his friend if they would give me a job working at the stable. My horse was a giant. I kept him cleaner than a human. And because I also slept near him, he bonded with me. He soon became my horse. I also cared for the carriage. It was a modest but elegant coach emblazoned with the number 7. I loved this horse, and I made sure he was always ready. The horse was named Maciek. He was better fed than the rest of the ghetto, courtesy of the Nazis through the Judenrat. Little did I realize that taking care of the horse and carriage would be the easy part. The hard part was the reluctant willingness to drive the Gestapo. Maybe, my naivete is why I was chosen in the first place? To me, this job was a Godsend. My whole life became that of a ghetto driver. Eventually, I became the preferred driver for The Kommandant of Tarnow, Hauptsturmführer Blache, some of his Gestapo, and the president of the Judenrat. A few months after my arrival, the Jewish police finally tried to remove Moshe Katz from Tarnow for bringing contraband into the ghetto. On April 30th, 1943, there was
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