Smelling Freedom Ahead

By late March 1945, days of sunshine and frequent air-attacks nearby radiated a gleam of hope from the beautifully clear and cloudless blue skies above. That eased our tormented and unhappy existence, planting seeds of hope into our indifferent, stiffened senses. During one of our most enjoyable afternoons, a multitude of us crowded outside the courtyard, gazing up in the same direction. A dogfight took place between our barbarian captors and future liberators. Our hearts and souls were filled with gratitude, as we fervently prayed for the allies' victory without casualties on their side. With great satisfaction, we stared as the German combat planes got shot down and caught fire, trundling down toward the abyss.

The Nazi authorities could not bear to witness our happiness, and the guards tried to chase us inside the barracks. But none of us moved an inch till the end of this pleasing event. Not even the begging of our own Jewish barrack leaders could intimidate us now.

Then, strange things started to happen. The Nazi guards no longer used bullets to force us inside the barracks. Instead, without shame, they cowardly asked us for civilian clothes. They, too, wished to be rid of the Nazi reign. For better results, they clothed themselves in Jewish inmate clothing while welcoming the allied forces.

At times in the hardest period of famine, the Polish-Jewish inmates received a distribution of raw potatoes. Our block - the Jewish inmates from Hungary - did not. The Polish-Jews would not eat a raw potato, so we Hungarian Jews pulled out the wood planks from our bunk beds and exchanged them for potatoes. They burned the wood planks and cooked their potatoes, while we gladly consumed even the raw potatoes - with their dirty skins.

About this time, our barrack doctor called us to gather around him outside the courtyard, and informed us that anyone who wanted a vaccination against typhoid could get one. We stood around him, but it seemed that he just wanted to mislead the Nazi authorities. He did not really inoculate anyone.

Those days of brilliant sunshine and frequent air raids blew towards us the winds of our nearing freedom. This cheered us up from our long since numbed emotions. Certain occurrences still saddened me, leaving my heart pierced with holes. Skeleton cadavers were still transported to the crematorium all day long. An especially unfortunate event was the sorry sight of four miserable skeletal figures that dragged themselves along and had to pull and push the horse carts filled with skeleton corpses from early dawn till twilight. As I marked my eighteenth year, I wondered what surprises life had in store for me…

© David Muskal, 2001