Stephen Shooster
the next few weeks, just as he promised, he did what he promised and brought me a basket of food every Thursday. I don’t know if you can understand my joy, getting a package with sausage and bread each week. Without asking, he would toss it towards me and I would then pick it up. The guards either did not see this or they ignored it. For as long as I received these care packages, I shared them with my friends. Later, when I needed help, it would be my friends who saved me. One night, when Moshe K. was about to take out the trash, the kapo stopped him. “You are not going to take the garbage out today.” He had decided Fritz would do it instead. I did not know Fritz very well. He must have bribed the kapo. Fritz lived in the area around the camp before the war, so he knew it well. When the time came, Fritz left with Sergeant Strybuc and the garbage. Once outside the compound, Fritz took Strybuc to a flour mill. He escaped! Strybuc was furious. He must have also been afraid of what his Kommandant would say when he returned without the prisoner. Frantically, he looked everywhere. But the mill operator, a man who could pass for a hard-core Nazi, with no trouble at all, assured him, “Don’t worry, I will find him and bring him back to you personally in the morning.” The Sergeant returned to the stable empty-handed and furious. As soon as he re- turned, he woke up all the stable boys and marched us up the hill to the front of the headquarters building, Moshe Blauner, Moshe Katz, and me among them, barking orders along the way. Kommandant Grzimek himself conducted the interrogations. First, he took one fellow prisoner named Golb and hung him on a pole by his hands. I don’t know why he was singled out. Then he interrogated the rest of us roughly, “Do you know where Fritz went? Did Fritz tell you of his plans to escape?” Then we were lined up against a wall and a guard covered each of our heads with a sack. I was certain we were going to be executed. A series of gunshots rang out. Blinded by the hood, each shot shook me to my bones. I thought my friends were being executed. I thought I would be next. Finally, Grzimek said to me as I was wearing the hood over my face, “I killed your friends, and I will kill you, too, if you don’t tell me where to find Fritz.” But, I had no idea where he was or even his intention to escape. I said, resigned to my fate fearing the worst, “I don’t know.” Miraculously, the shots did not kill any of us. It was just a fear tactic to get us to talk. After some tense moments, Strybuc returned us to the stable. Fritz never returned. He was one of the few who escaped successfully. Days later another nightmare occurred on the Jewish holiday of Simchas Torah. I
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