No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home

Arthur Works at a Labor Camp

In labor camp I am helper to a master surveyor, running around with that stick, doing land surveying for the airport facilities. I had a job, and was able to wash myself every day. This is the best time of my war years. It was peaceful. They didn’t mistreat us. It was slave labor.

My wife worked in the kitchen and in the evening I was able to visit her. We worked only about ten hours a day. We had Sunday off and we took old clothing and tied them into little pieces for socks. I could not sleep with her but I was able to take care of her. She smuggled potatoes to me and I traded on the black market. I buy panties for her, some soap.

I was going with my boss by the hospital in the ghetto. There was a big driveway that was shut by a wooden gate. My boss asked me what’s that, and I said that used to be the hospital. He said, open the gate. I want to see what’s in that. So we opened the gate and inside is full of corpses, people shot. They were just laying maybe ten high. The courtyard was filled with corpses, children mostly. Piled up like lumber. Just thrown in the garbage. It was the first time I saw corpses piled up that way. The first time.

They sent my brother to another camp and I did not see him again. I never saw him ever. I don’t know where he is buried. He was sixteen.

I was working in the rain and lo and behold, I catch pneumonia. My boss likes me. He drove me to the hospital in camp where my wife is. And now I am happy. I have a clean bed. Out my window is the place where they bring the people every day and shoot them. Every day. Most are people who are caught in the resistance. When the sun came up, two guys came on motorcycles and then the trucks. Everybody off the truck, undress, line up in front of the pit, shoot them, fall in the pit. Sometimes they shoot into the pit if somebody was moving. Then they poured in gasoline and burned it. That thing was like a hell smoking, continuously smoking, day in, day out. They put in railroad ties because it is very difficult to burn bodies. The air has to circulate, otherwise they don’t burn. So the bodies from yesterday are still smoldering. The pit is smoking all the time. Fifty yards from my window. I could see faces. I could see everything. That was my morning.

So I send out the good news that I am in the camp. An old man was dying, so I put on his uniform, and sneaked out to find my wife. She cut her own hair and it looks good. She has a little more hair than other women. Just a little more, but it makes all the difference. She starved herself and bought a comb. She took her uniform, which was shit, you know, and she tied it and made it fit her. It didn’t look like a piece of something hung on her. It looked good. She was very beautiful, my wife.

She took me to her barracks. They had bunks stacked on top of each other and they run from one end of the camp to the other. There were curtains drawn between each of those. You crawled in from the front and you drew the curtains. They were, I would say, two hundred feet long. Thousands of people. They were shitting and pissing and vomiting and screwing and eating and washing, all in the same area. If a man or woman was able to organize something to eat, they cook it right there. It looked like some kind of pure hell.

My wife remained untouched. She was like Mr. Magoo on the cartoon. All the chaos surrounding him and he is untouched. She has a certain naïveté in her left. She is Mrs. Magoo still. There is no malice in her. She was witnessing rape and murder by the day. My wife, when she was young, she was built like a statue. Very distinguished. She had nice features and she was courageous.

We have one foot of privacy, and I spent the second night with my wife there. I was just holding her. I couldn’t protect her from this. She was an angel in hell. That was the last time I saw my wife till after the war. Three years.