Stephen Shooster
reason, I will not be able to help you.” Before he walked away, he looked at me deeply, and as I peered back, I saw my fa- ther saying, “You are young, you will survive and live longer than any of us. When you do, tell our story to the world, they must figure out a way to stop the madness.” I shook my head, silently vowing to do what he said. Wiktor was a saint. He saved many people, I only know a few, but I bet there were hundreds. I believe this is true because he was the liaison between Birkenau and all of the prisoner labor requests. The next morning I walked over to his barracks. There was no daily assembly in the rehab area, so I was able to walk on my own. An SS Striben officer was waiting with his assistant, a teen, wearing a blue and white striped outfit, not like my regular clothing, now tattered with a painted red line down the leg. My record was in the officer’s hands. In 2010, a copy was sent to me by the Auschwitz records bureau. It has the strangest title for a report, Fleckfiebertrockenbluntersuchung. This word is difficult to translate. It means a dried blood test for typhus. I don’t remember having my blood drawn, but the test is completed by checking blood samples allowed to dry on a slide with a microscope. This test was important because typhus can spread like an epidemic and was rampant in Auschwitz II. The blood test was to ensure the health of the factory workers. One prisoner with an infectious disease could hurt or even halt production. This document was a clean bill of health for the listed prison- ers. You can see one hundred tattoo numbers on the form. Mine is the 7th on the list, 161744. It is under the hâftlinge column. You can’t tell by the list, but it includes both adults and a couple of teens. I was one of the teens. Everyone arrived at Wiktor’s barracks with all of their belongings, a tin pan, and the clothing on their backs. We were told we didn’t need the pans anymore, and as strange as it may seem to you since this was an essential part of staying alive in Birkenau, I found it hard to put it down. I had no time to ponder the loss. I was ex- pected to release it and line up 5 across immediately. A group of 100 of us walked in formation to a station where a line of trucks stood ready to go. Our wooden shoes created an unmistakable prison shuffle. As I got on the truck, I thought of Moshe Blauner. Even though I did not know what happened to him, I sat down in the back of the truck heading to Buna and tried to think about something else. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I would find out soon enough. My destination was only 6 kilometers away. This whole prisoner exchange was a business for the SS. They sold our labor to the factory. The factory was happy to have the cheap labor, and we were lucky to have
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