No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home

Arthur Faces Firing Squads

The groups working outside the camp were the main vehicles by which the black market existed. I was in one of those groups, and somebody said, if you get this linen out, you get paid for it. I walked out with those fine linens under my clothes.

We got stopped at the gate and they found the linens. They brought us back to the main assembly. Naturally we had to undress completely. Put all the goodies in front of us to prove that justice is done. All day long we waited in the cold so they can shoot us in front of everybody. This was just naturally what they did. We were standing there from eight in the morning until about four o’clock in the afternoon, and then somebody come by and said, put your clothes on and get out of here.

There was another time with the firing squad, in the main camp at Natzweiler-Struthof in France. Very famous camp for medical experiments on prisoners. We went there in a boxcar. Fifty-two men. Goodness gracious, very comfortable. Lie down, stand up, sit, whatever you want. We had straw and sawdust. They gave us water, they gave us bread, and they closed the car. And they had a hole so we had a potty. The windows were slits with bars in them at the top.

We had bread. I ate two pieces in the morning and two pieces at night. After a while, no more bread. Fourteen days on a boxcar and I am out of bread. I was more than a week without anything. Zero. Finally my neighbor, a gypsy, took a piece of bread, cut it in half, and gave it to me. That gypsy kept me alive. I never saw him again.

We got out of these boxcars at night. It was spring; it was gorgeous. It was the most beautiful night I ever saw. We came to that camp and everybody had to assemble. Just to show us they mean business, they go around and take people for the firing squad. No reason, no rhyme. They picked me and other people and put us in front of everybody. They start shooting. I’m closing my eyes. They stop shooting and I open them. They were shooting over our heads. They said, this should happen to you, you did something wrong.

The third time was in France in a camp. Nicagara, the most beautiful part of the valley. We had no food, so what the cooks used to do, they mowed the grass in front of the barracks and cooked that and fed us. Naturally we don’t want to eat grass. We throw it out. They said, look, we know that valuable food is thrown out, so if we find food thrown out, we gonna shoot every tenth one of you. We don’t want to have any people dying from hunger here.

We throw out the food and they assemble everyone and they count. I am tenth. All right. I didn’t give a shit. We undressed because they want to use the uniform later. They lined us up against a wall, about forty of us against the back side of the latrine. They start shooting. I closed my eyes. Then they stopped and I was still standing there. They shot half the line and I was in the other half.

All I was thinking was: Is it gonna hurt? How is it gonna hurt? I hope it doesn’t hurt too long. Ordinarily you have ten guys shooting one guy in a firing squad. But here are two guys shooting twenty. It takes time. They’re screaming and yelling because the soldiers don’t care if a guy gets hit by one bullet, in the arm or your stomach. He moans, they shoot him again. It’s messy. It’s not a clean operation.

I took clothing from the heap but it wasn’t mine. It was too small and too dirty. Naturally I did not go back for my clothes. I didn’t feel like going back and asking for my socks. I hate to wear brown socks with black trousers.