No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home

Irene Is Saved Again

In Plaszow there was a Jewish policeman who liked me but I never liked him. So he got his anger ready. He wanted to kill me. He sent me to Scozisco, which is terrible. A lot of people who couldn’t work were sent there. It was an ammunition and grenade factory with terrible chemicals. In three months they were dead so they send the weakest people. It saved the trouble of killing them. As soon as we came, we saw people dressed in newspaper with yellow skin from the chemicals.

The supervisor was a nice guy, not SS man. His name was Gajowcgyk. He was volks-deutsch, means half German and half Polish. He hated the Polish. He helped the Jews much more than Polish. He said to me, you look intelligent and after the war you will save me because the Germans will lose. You will tell that I helped the Jews.

That’s how I got chosen for giving out clean materials. I didn’t work with the chemicals and die in three months. He was bringing me food. I was lucky.

Everybody shares a bed with somebody. It’s not bad, it was straw and wood. No blankets. My bed partner is Magda and she had typhoid. Spotty typhoid. Very, very bad. If they find out she has typhoid, she go to clinic where she will die. The sick ones were shot. She broke the fever but is like a zombie. She doesn’t know where she is. Somebody told me, the best remedy is you hit her very hard in the face from both sides. That’s what I did and she opens her eyes like from a dream and says, I hate you. You’re really bad to slap me like that. I explain it to her, but she always had resentment. She is the only person I ever hit in my life.

After the war, the Poles find Gajowcgyk and they kill him. I run away because if somebody would see me, they would say, oh, this is the Jew that he helped. So I run to the train, and I disappear from Scozisco.