No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home

Arthur’s Last Camp

Mosbach is an old city, maybe eight hundred years old. A beautiful German city in the area they call the Black Forest. There is an underground factory and the Allies start bombing raids. I have a show every night. I’m sitting in the window and watching Mosbach being bombed. I’m extremely happy. It’s a beautiful night and then you get the airplanes coming. Sirens are ringing air raid and everybody goes into the cellars. I don’t mind. I love it. There are rows of bombs going down. The city got hit and everything is burning. We are engaged now in Götterdämmerung.

They missed the factory and hit the city, but there was nothing there. It was just civilian population. We had to clean up the mess, rubble and fires burning and the dead. The men were gone to fight and the old people were already dead. Only women and children were left. It turned my stomach. Women with no arms, babies without heads.

The first time we cleaned up I don’t know what to feel, because when I saw the bombs coming I was happy about it. Then I saw the result and I didn’t feel any pleasure at all. I could have gone anywhere, I could have escaped, but I wanted to help. I was very happy when somebody was taken out of the rubble. When I found someone dead, I didn’t feel so good.

It took a few weeks to clean up, and the people were feeding us. They were grateful. I got butter and milk, things I never thought I would see again. They forgot that we were prisoners of war. They behaved like friends. We did a lot of laughing. We were always joking around. It seemed to me we lived a very normal, crazy life. We were laughing, we were singing. Then they realized that we were Jewish prisoners and they became hostile. They threw things at us. They told us to dig in certain places where there were time-delayed bombs. No more food they give us.

After we clean up, back to the camp. It’s peculiar living when you know you’re gonna die because you’re so sick and there’s no medication, and in addition, every so often, the Americans bomb it. We have casualties in the camp and who gives a damn, because we are all dying.

There are guys holding their pants up because all the pants were too big. We call them Muselmann. Walking dead. They’re still walking, but they’re dead already. Just a skeleton. The only thing you see is bones that still walk around somehow. They are holding on to anything to walk.

One night one of the bosses brought in a force of Polish slave labor women. They had bread and potatoes and sausage. You have to give them something for that food. You had to give them sex. The Serbs and Russians, they liked to screw but they had to save their strength for work. So they said to the women, I’ll sleep with you on one condition. You give me a nice piece of sausage.

The women lived in France for so long, they thought that we know something about their family. They hadn’t seen a man in months. They are doing it for food while getting some news of their husband. It was business, strictly business. Nothing personal. If they are caught, they’re dead. And the Muselmanner are going back there, holding their pants up, willing to perform sex for food. The Serbs were tops. They could do it any time, anywhere. They brought back the biggest amount of food.

Me, I decided not to shit. I thought that if I kept it longer in me, my body would get more nutrition. I held it until there was no more to get. Then I let it go. There was never much.