Stephen Shooster
tress didn’t hurt either. A tune is still stuck in my head from those times. The Dutch boys would sing it frequently. It was something like, “yupee youppe yeah…” I have no clue what it might mean or the rest of the song except that, for me, it has a haunting sound that is better left untranslated and mysterious. Every day, except Sunday, I woke up, had breakfast and ersatz coffee, and followed the others to the Appelplatz. It was the wide-open area used for roll call. Right before roll call, I had a few minutes to orient myself. The Buna-Monowitz, I.G. Farben synthetic chemical plant was gigantic, perhaps 10 miles square. It was more like a city than a factory. After the war, I heard about 70,000 people worked there. The staff was a combination of both employees and prison laborers. My camp was a half-mile away from the factory. It was about 100 meters uphill. The factory was so large, I could see the outline of it whenever I looked to the north. Looking to the West, Birkenau was out of sight, but not out of mind. I knew it was still a short ride away, and as long as the crematoria were working, I was in danger, as well as all of my brethren and my entire race. I did, however, see a barracks while looking that way; it was filled with British prisoners of war. The bell rang, so I had to stop trying to figure it all out and line up with the rest of the prisoners in front of our assigned kapos. I was among thousands of prisoners, each with a different triangle or symbol representing their particular curse for being here. We all stood at attention. Rain or snow, the weather was no consideration. The wide-open square was asphalt. The sky was huge, and we must have looked like a sea of blue and white stripes from above. My group, the teens, was spread among many kommandos. The lineups were always long and seemingly pointless, but none of this was my primary concern. Staying warm was what mat- tered the most right there and then. Even in my new clothing, this would occupy most, if not all. of my energy. The British prisoners of war were treated differently than the rest of us. I don’t know why, maybe the Red Cross, or the fact that the German Air Force guarded them instead of the SS. As we lined up for roll call, they would march into Buna. They did so with a military cadence, singing British songs, loud and proud. It was quite a spectacle to see them marching. Sometimes, just by the luck of timing, we would be marching close to them. We all walked the same road to the factory. I will never forget one of the songs they sang; it had a special kind of twang, and only the British could sound it out properly.
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