(David Shentow, together with his wife Rose, took part in the 2002 March of the Living, accompanying the Canadian Coast to Coast delegation.)
I was born on April 29, 1925 in Warsaw, Poland. Due to waves of anti-Jewish pogroms, my parents moved us to Antwerp, Belgium, when I was 6 weeks old. They had planned to stay in Antwerp just long enough to save up the money needed to buy a passage either to Montreal or to New York City, where my two uncles, both master bakers, had found steady employment.
My father, a master tailor, opened an atelier and had a parade of excellent clients. My mother ran a little grocery store. Because life was pleasant and peaceful in Antwerp, and because my parents had two more children, my two sisters, Esther and Paula, they kept postponing our departure for North America. We were all happy together.
Then World War Two was declared. My father, determined to find a way out of Europe, located a driver who agreed to take us in his vehicle to Mouscron at the French border. When we arrived at the Grande Place in the center of town, we were horrified to see that the German army had preceded us. Because the border to France was closed to civilian traffic, we had no choice but to return to Antwerp.
Until 1941, the situation in Belgium remained pretty much as before the invasion. During this period of apparent normalcy, the Gestapo was busy making lists of addresses where Jews resided, worked, or attended school and university. This master list would enable the Gestapo to work efficiently to plan their midnight round-ups of the Jews of Antwerp.
Gradually the noose tightened around our community. We had to turn in to the Gestapo office our radios and bicycles. Every day new decrees forbade us to go to school, to the cinema, to the theater, to the Opera House, to sit on the benches in the park, and so on.
The ultimate degradation was the order commanding us to display on our clothing the mediaeval yellow Star of David with the letter “J” in the center of the badge. We felt humiliated and insecure by the unwelcome glances of curious, and sometimes hostile, neighbours. Whenever I had to go out on an errand, I tried to place my arm on my badge in order to avoid attracting attention to myself.
When I was 17 years old, a letter from the Gestapo arrived at our house. We learned that all able-bodied men, and boys aged 16 or older, were to report to the railway station in Antwerp. At the base of the marble staircase leading to the railway platforms, I said goodbye to my mother and my two sisters. I would never set eyes on them again.
My father and I were to report to the railway station at 6:00 a.m. on August 10, 1942. When we arrived at the designated platform, we saw a group of men, and boys my age, neighbours and friends from our Pelikaanstraat community, surrounded by German soldiers, dressed in their green and grey Wermacht uniforms. I do not recall seeing any guns or guard dogs.
The passenger train destined to take us to a work camp in France was already waiting for our departure. As we boarded the train, we had to hand our identity papers to one of the guards.
Our train left the station promptly at 6:00 a.m., and rattled along the countryside, passing the French border, and continuing onto Dannes-Camiers with many stops along the way.
Because our guards had not distributed any food rations or water to us, I was glad that my mother had prepared a hearty snack for our all day journey to the French coast, near Dieppe.
We arrived at the station at Dannes-Camiers at 8:00 p.m. The sun was setting on a very hot August evening. Promptly upon our descent from the train, our guards hurried us a long and unlit country road past a village named Condette.
The work camp consisted of a number of wooden barracks. Once inside our building, we were assigned to one of the double bunk-beds. We were allowed to keep our suitcases and our travel clothing. We were told that we could use our money to purchase food from the guards.
The next morning we learned that we would be put to work building concrete pill-boxes, installing barbed wire and concrete sea-wall defences in case of an Allied invasion of Normandy. Our other job was to build a cement highway to be used by heavy armoured vehicles and tanks for Hitler’s planned invasion of England. This road, named Le Chemin des Juifs (The Jews’ Highway), still exists. Because our guards were too impatient to wait until the cement had cured properly, it still bears the traces of the pawprints of the guard dogs and the prints of the hob-nailed boots of our captors.
One day news came that the Gestapo had rounded up the remaining members of the Jewish community of Antwerp. The elderly, the infirm, mothers and children had been arrested and deported at midnight.
Monster moving vans, owned by Arthur Pierre Moving Company, had been placed around the Jewish neighborhood of Antwerp in such a way as to prevent any resident of the area from escaping from the cordon.
The vans transported the prisoners to the Caserne Dossin at Mechelen (Malines), a mediaeval city in Flanders. The Caserne, a former army barracks, was used as a transit camp, like the one at Drancy in France and at Westerbork, in Holland.
After receiving this news, my father began to complain of severe abdominal pains. The guards gave him permission to return to Antwerp, but he was reluctant to leave me behind. I had never been away from my family before. I was lying to him when I encouraged him to leave the camp, saying that I was sure that I could take care of myself. I would never see my father again.
After my return to Antwerp in May 1945, our kindly next-door neighbour and postman told me that when my father arrived in Antwerp, he discovered that the Gestapo had given our home to a Belgian Nazi sympathizer. Our postman invited my father to take shelter in his basement. Twenty-five thousand Belgian Jews were protected this way.
He told me that my father spent his days indoors busying himself with some tailoring. At night he would go out for some fresh air and a brisk walk. My father, who had never wanted a cigarette, had now begun to smoke.
One night, disregarding the postman’s advice, my father had gone out for his walk, was spotted by an informer and denounced to the Gestapo. He was arrested and deported to Auschwitz.
In September 1942 we heard rumours of an Allied invasion of Dieppe. We could hear the bombardments quite clearly. We were not required to go to work that day. We were so sure that the war was over and that we would be going home that I ran to the barracks and started packing my suitcase.
After some hours our guards came to tell us that the Canadian invasion had failed and that all the Canadian soldiers were dead. They ordered us back to work as if nothing extraordinary had transpired. We would not learn the whole story of this noble enterprise until the release of pertinent documents by British Intelligence Services.
A few weeks later, we learned that Hitler had decided not to invade England at this time. Instead, he had planned to invade the Soviet Union and to have his armies battle their way to the rich oil-fields in Central Asia. Our work camp was to be closed, and we were to be sent back to Belgium.
We received from our guards a loaf of bread and a bit of jam. I was disturbed to hear that these meager rations were to last us for four days. I prepared my suitcase and joined the other prisoners in our return march to the railway station at Dannes-Camiers where guards herded us on a passenger train headed for the Caserne Dossin at Malines.
Once our train had come to rest in the area in front of the Caserne, I saw another passenger train being attached to the one in which we had been traveling. Through the windows I could see that the passengers were composed of elderly men and women, young women, and mothers with babies and small children.
Suddenly the train began to move, and we began to see the Belgian countryside disappear behind us as we traveled eastward. The train continued, non-stop, for four days and four nights. As we passed through Germany into Poland, we could see the names of important cities in the various train stations along our route.
Finally the train slowed down and came to a complete halt. It was 4:00 p.m. The sign in the train station read Auschwitz.
Alongside of the station platform I could see men dressed in what appeared to me to be striped pajamas and striped caps. I noticed that they were wearing wooden clogs on their bare feet. They all seemed tired and frightened and they all had their heads shaved.
Suddenly we were surrounded by S.S. guards holding on to vicious guard dogs, German Shepherds, trained to rip out a prisoner’s throat instantaneously upon command.
Megaphones, used at full power, ordered us to vacate the train immediately. We had less than ten seconds to obey that first command.
Next we heard that all valises had to remain on the train. Any passenger who offered the least sign of resistance was shot on the spot.
Teams of men in the striped pajamas were removing the luggage and personal effects from the train. As they brushed past me in a most obsequious manner, I heard one whisper in Yiddish, “Tell them that you are a carpenter, a plumber, or a tailor.” As he conveyed this message, he did not lift his head, nor did he appear even to be speaking to me or anyone in particular. At the time I did not understand that this whispered advice was to help me to prolong my life.
Although everything which transpired that cold October morning, before dawn, happened within a few moments, now I see those events as if they had occurred in slow motion, accompanied by the constant repetition of commands in gutteral German amplified by the loud-speakers and accompanied by the constant barking of the dogs.
Other S.S. guards stood by, ready to use their rifles or machine guns on any prisoner too slow to vacate the compartments of the train. I was appalled to see the number of passengers lying dead or dying on the platform in the space of less than five minutes.
We heard loud commands ordering all women and children, all the infirm, and everyone over the age of fifty-five, to move to the left side of the platform. Any man wishing to join his family was also encouraged to join the people on the left side of the platform. A thousand passengers had now collected in that area.
When someone asked where those passengers were going, we heard that they would not have to walk to their destination. They were to be driven to Birkenau. At that moment, the name meant nothing to me.
The seven hundred passengers remaining on the platform were ordered to form lines of five men abreast. We proceeded, one row at a time towards a tall, blond, handsome, immaculately dressed S.S. officer. With a flick of his finger he was directing some men to his left and others to the right. I was in the middle of my row.
When it was our turn, this officer, Dr. Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, as he was named by the prisoners, waved the two men on my left and the two men on my right towards the left side of the station platform. In this way two hundred men were eliminated from entering the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Five hundred men remained.
As we passed through the gates I looked up at the wrought iron motto, “ARBEIT MACHT FREI”. I remembered that it was some time around Yom Kippur and I thought that if Hitler was to win the war that I would never come out of that prison alive. At that time, I did not understand that the oddly –shaped letter “B” carried a subtle code: nothing beyond that gate would relate to a normal universe.
Some hours after entering the camp, I began to experience a sweet, sickening smell. I began to wretch. I saw smoke and flame belching from chimney stacks, sharply visible in the pre-dawn sky. Another prisoner explained to me the reasons for the smoke, the smells and the flames. At that moment I was unable to connect my parents and my two beautiful sisters to the fate to which the men, women and children of my transport had been condemned.
The first few hours inside Auschwitz went rapidly. Like all prisoners at that camp, we were forced to disrobe completely, forced to run naked to shower in ice cold water, forced to run to another barrack where we were shaved of all body hair, and finally to run to yet another barrack where all new prisoners were given numbers tattooed, with long, burning hot needles on our arm. My number, 72585, with the little triangle below the “5” identified me as a Jew. Nothing else of my life from before 4:00 a.m. that morning remained.
In yet another barracks we were inspected to see whether we had hidden in our bodily orifices any diamonds. Next we received our uniforms: the striped pajamas and cap and a pair of wooden clogs, but no underwear or socks. Henceforth I was Kazetnik (Prisoner) 72585.
One day, during the autumn of 1943, I was transferred with a group of two thousand prisoners to the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw. Our job was to level the remains of buildings shattered during the Jewish Uprising. We had to convert those vast blocks of rubble into a grassy park.
One morning as I was piling the large building bricks into neat stacks, I saw the earth move. I thought at first it was an earthquake or a moment of dizziness resulting from hunger.
Suddenly a manhole cover lifted up, revealing a ghostly figure emerging from the sewer opening. This gaunt, half-naked figure, with sunken eyes, skin as white as chalk, and whose half-opened mouth revealed a toothless expression of surprise and terror, spoke to me.
“Bist a yid?” (Are you a Jew?), he asked in a trembling voice. “Yes”, I replied. It was his next question which broke my heart.
“Is the war over?” he asked. “No”, I replied. “Actually, we are prisoners of the Nazis and we are being forced to clean up these ruins. "Who are you?” I asked.
“My name is Katzenelenboigen,” he said. “I was part of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. When the Uprising was over, my fellow prisoners and I hid in the sewers below the spot where you are standing.”
He led me down the ladder to the sewer where I saw some fifteen other ghost-like, almost naked men, lying exhausted on the ground. Each fellow resembled Katzenelenboigen with their sunken eyes and gaunt, toothless faces.
“You see,” said Katzenelenboigen, “for a few months we survived here in the sewers by trading our valuables for food. Then we traded our clothes and footwear with the Poles for food. Finally we pulled out our gold fillings to get something to eat from them. When we had nothing left to barter, the Poles never came back to help us. We are all starving. Can you help us?”
“I am just as helpless as you are,” I said. “We are also starving. I wish I could help you.”
Although I knew that he was making an impossible request, I promised that I would try to get them something to eat and said that I would try to return to them as quickly as possible.
When I was finally able to return to the sewer opening, I tapped on the manhole cover, expecting to see Katzenelenboigen’s face as he raised the cover in response to my signal. When no response came, I used all my strength to lift the cover and expose the sewer opening below.
As I climbed down the ladder, my eyes slowly adjusting to the dark interior, I saw the men lying about on the ground, scattered in irregular patterns like awkward puppets
Katzenelenboigen was sitting on a chair, his head cupped in his hands, and his elbows propped up on the table in front of him. As he appeared to be asleep, I put my hand on his shoulder to awaken him. Very slowly, he turned and fell on the ground. His bulging eyes, staring up at me, told me that during the night he had starved to death.
In the summer of 1944, because the Nazis feared the arrival of the Russian army which had crossed the Vistula River, we prisoners were to be led on foot to Kutno, Poland. This was the first of the notorious Death Marches which the Nazis inflicted on hundreds of thousands of concentration camp inmates.
Our S.S. guards, accompanied by their vicious German Shepherds, forced us to walk from Warsaw to Kutno in the blistering August heat, without food or water. Some of the prisoners, driven mad by the ordeal, were unable to keep up with the pace imposed by our captors. Those who fell behind were attacked by the dogs and shot by the guards. Their bodies were left where they fell on the road.
At Kutno a cattle train was waiting to transport us to Dachau Concentration Camp. The S.S. guards distributed small rations of salted herring, but no water. There was no provision for sanitation.
The train was made up of a number of cattle cars, designed to hold eight horses or cows. The S.S. squeezed 120 prisoners in each of these wagons. We were forced to leave a space in the center of each wagon. It was impossible to sit down or recline. To do so was to risk being trampled to death.
When our train finally arrived at Dachau, the S.S. guards unlocked the wagons and forced us prisoners out into the fresh air. When I turned around to glance at what I was leaving behind, I was overwhelmed by the incredible stench of the compartments and the number of dead and dying prisoners still inside the train.
One day, during the winter of 1943, a neighbor of our family, a Mr. Lipshitz, recognized me, despite my much-altered appearance. I was equally shocked by the dramatic changes I saw in him. He told me that he had seen my father. He said, “Your father is with a group of prisoners being out on a truck to go to work. If you want to see him, hurry along to the gates right now. If you go fast enough, you might catch a glimpse of him!”
I ran towards the camp gates, all the while yelling at the top of my lungs, “Tateh, Tateh!” (Dad! Dad!)
All the prisoners turned around to look at me. They all had shaven heads. Their faces were all gaunt. Their bodies were all emaciated. I could not recognize my father. The men stared at me. Were they wondering whether I might be a son whom they had lost? As I watched the truck speed away with its wretched cargo, I wondered whether my father had truly been able to recognize me.
During the winter of 1944, I was part of a work detachment sent to Landsberg, a small town close to Dachau. Our job included laying steel rails and cleaning ice and snow off the railroad.
I happened to see a German hausfrau walking home from market. In her grocery basket I spied a loaf of bread sticking up from her other purchases. Noting that the S.S. guard was not on duty in his usual spot, I decided to dash over to her to ask her for something to eat. I knew that I was risking my life, but I was so hungry that I decided to chance it.
“Could I have something to eat, please?” I begged politely. “Why?” she asked. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m starving to death!” I replied.
The woman tore off a piece of bread and handed it to me. Then she said that she might be able to give me something more to eat the next day. As she hurried home, I took careful note of her address.
The next day, I told the S.S. guard that I had to relieve myself. When he gave me permission, I hurried off to the house which I had seen her enter the previous day. I knocked at her door. When she opened the door of her house, I was stunned. Over her shoulder I caught a glimpse of a table, chairs, a couch, flowers, photographs, and a carpet on the floor! In short, I saw all the simple traces of the domestic life from which I had been alienated for three full years.
As she handed me some potatoes and a piece of bread, I noticed a man, probably her husband, sitting at the table having his breakfast. He stared at me intently, never uttering a single word.
Stuffing this priceless gift of food inside my uniform, I ran back to work at top speed, hoping and praying that the S.S guard had not noticed how long I had been gone.
I do not recall precisely when it was that I learned that my visit had been to the house of the mayor of Landsberg, and that the man whom I saw having breakfast was the mayor himself. After the war I wrote a letter to thank him and his wife for their kindness.
Some time during the last week of April 1945, I was lying in my bunk, all alone in the barracks. Suddenly I was seized with the desire to have a look at my legs. I rolled up my pant legs. I was horrified. I saw two sticks! I was a “mussulman”, a prisoner useless for work, ready to be taken away to the gas chamber and the crematorium.
“This is it!”, I thought. “I’m finished!”
Just then an S.S. officer entered the barracks. He screamed at me.
“Get up, you filthy Jew! Get up!”
I wanted to obey his command, but I could not move my legs. They were numb and useless.
Enraged, the Nazi clubbed me on the back of my head. I fell to the ground, unconscious. I thought that I had died. Hours later, I felt myself coming back to life. My eyes began to focus, and I regained a faint sense of hearing. This savage beating destroyed the nerve in my left ear and is responsible for the gradual and permanent loss of hearing in my right ear.
Some hours later I dragged myself out of the barracks and looked around. The camp gates were opened wide. The sentry boxes were all empty. There were no S.S. guards and officers anywhere to be seen. Prisoners were lying about, listless, waiting to die.
Suddenly, a large armoured vehicle rumbled towards me. The turret of the tank opened up, revealing to me the smiling face of a young, helmeted African-American soldier. He looked at me.“Hi, young fella! How are you doing?” He threw a stick of gum at me.
This was the moment of my liberation! The date was April 29, 1945. The day of my birthday! I could not have asked for a better birthday present. I had just turned 20 years old.
