Stephen Shooster had his own room. At least when he was in there, he could do little harm. Across from his room was one of his assis- tants. I don’t remember his name, but I do remember he was a professional fighter before the war. He was in great physical shape. This was a terrible place. The grim reaper would be wide-awake during my entire stay. Each morning those who died the night before were piled by the door. My block included at least 50 Russian prisoners of war. I ended up with a group of them, but soon, I would learn, even prisoners of war were treated better than Jews. I met one, named Sasha, who must have been an officer before he was captured. He went out of his way to give me en-
Soldier with German Shepherd
couragement. To start, he gave me a familiar nickname. It was in his native language -- Malczyk (young boy). I’ll never forget his prison uniform. It had a large SU painted on his back: Soviet Union. This was the first time I was assigned to the general concentration camp population. I was confined and quarantined with Jewish prisoners, Polish political prisoners, and captured Russian combatants. It would not be long before I realized my barracks was close to one of the infamous crematoria. The smell of humans burning, day after day is something I will never forget. When I was there, I did not think about the odor. However, I never escaped the smoky beacon on top of that smokestack. It was an eerie and unmistakable omen of evil that I could see from most any place in the camp. To avoid thinking about this, I kept my head down and focused on maintaining my wits. I was just trying to survive. I was so young. It was a time I was just trying to figure out the world, but this was not a good place to figure out anything, better to just keep my head down and take one awkward step at a time. 5:00 AM a harsh, metallic noise punctuated the morning; it was a flat piece of steel hanging on a pair of posts that was hammered to wake everyone up. There was still no food, but they did finally give us some drinking water in the form of roasted chicory, a popular substitute for coffee. All our meals were given to us in a tin pan. We had no spoons. Gold would be less valuable than those pathetic pieces of tin. I took mine with me everywhere. Everything I had I kept under my cap or on my belt; it wasn’t much. If I were to lose my pan, I would not get another, forced to eat everything with my hands. My first bit of nourishment since the train ride was a dark liquid doled out of a bar- rel. It had been 3 days since I last saw food. Images of Tarnow flooded my memory. I drank every drop. It wasn’t much. 6:00 AM, we had to be ready to shuffle in our
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