No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home

Arthur Breaks His Arm

I was working with my friend in Mecarez and we were preparing a factory underground. The Russian prisoners of war were doing the digging, standing in water underground for six, seven hours all day long, day after day. You know what happens to your body when you submerge it in water? You rot away. There was a tremendous amount of dying in those areas.

My friend is in charge of this electrical group and one day he pushed me out. The new situation was much worse. The very nasty Ukrainian SS was in charge. Absolutely brutal. The worst. It was a miserable camp. My friend sent me there. My friend did it to me.

One day a boss comes in. He had an artificial leg. We go into the area where I am in charge of electrical work, maybe six hundred feet down. Everything is dark. Lo and behold, we find my men eating breakfast. The boss chases the men with a stick, the handle of a pick. That’s how he walked, because he needed a cane. Everybody ran away but me. I’m in charge. I don’t run away. He hits me with the pick in the side. Then he starts hitting me on the head, but I put my hand to protect my head. He could have killed me with one shot, but he was hitting me with compassion, not to kill me. He hit my arm and broke it. My working days are over.