Stephen Shooster to ride. You will sleep over there, (near the horse.)” He then turned to Moshe B. and said, “For now, go with Sergeant Strybuc, and we will find you a suitable job.” Moshe B. took care of the pigs. If there is one animal that Jews detest it is pigs. The stable was busy. If by a miracle, my old friend, Moshe Katz, was already at our camp. He wandered in while we were being processed and noticed Maciek. He asked one of the other boys, “What is this horse doing here? I know him.” Then he noticed Moshe Blauner and me. Moshe Katz had arrived one day before us. I don’t know how he did it, but Moshe must have talked himself in with his uncanny ability to bargain. Moshe Katz’s main job was to handle the garbage. Since the collection site was out- side the stables, and that made it possible to smuggle goods on the black market. Moshe traded for vodka to bribe the guards and cheese to supplement our poor diets. For many survivors, the difference between living and dying would be a few extra calo- ries a day. I remember one incident where the kommando that cleaned the pillowcases for the camp stole one and put it into the garbage. Moshe K. understood that this was not trash and traded it for something of value. Moshe thrived on doing these deals as much as a prisoner could thrive on anything. He was the favorite of the guards and inmates alike. Moshe K. and I had plenty of time to talk at our new camp. Once he had left Tarnow well ahead of the destruction of that ghetto, he went to Rymanow as part of a work detail of 300 Jews. Prior to his arrival, the Germans killed 10,000 Russian POWs at this location. I heard two reports about this: one was that they were all shot and the other was that they were locked in the barracks and left to rot. Either way, the camp at Rymanow was liquidated completely, erased from the earth, but materials were scarce, and the Germans wanted to use the camp again. By the time Moshe K. arrived, the POW bodies had been removed. He did not see any of the bodies. His team went to work and collected barbed wire while disassem- bling the barracks for transport to another location. It took from the middle of May to the end of August to complete. Moshe was there from the beginning to the end. This was the worst camp he was ever in because the amount of food given to the prisoners was appallingly little, and the ability to supplement it with food from the outside was non-existent. He is lucky he made it through this terrible period of his life. To give you an idea of what he went through to feed 300 prisoners, three pails of cabbages were made into soup, and 1.5 pounds of bread was given to each prisoner every 10 days. There is no way to live on this restricted diet for very long. When the work was com- pleted, his entire group was shipped to Szebnie. By the time they arrived, they were half-dead from starvation and in such bad shape that the Jewish police told the rest of
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