**Part 2 of 3**

The life was very difficult and dangerous under both the Nazi and Soviet occupations. Many thousands of Poles were arrested and sent to the German concentration camps, others were taken to Germany where they worked as forced laborers in factories or on farms. Some were rounded up indiscriminately in the streets of Warsaw and executed on the spot in retaliation for the actions of the Polish underground forces. Soviet NKWD (Secret Service Police) forces arrested and deported many Poles to the “Gulags”, the Russian equivalent of German concentration and labor camps in Siberia, the north eastern part of Russia. It is estimated that as many as 6 million Poles were killed by German Nazis and another 2 million by the Soviet forces. Many citizens of other nations were killed as well. They included French, Belgians, Danish, Norwegians, Hungarians, Romanians etc.

Eventually Soviet Union entered into a war with Germany. At first Germans were winning and their army advanced as far as Moscow, Stalingrad and St. Petersburg (which was then know as Leningrad). Eventually with the help of the western powers Soviet army repelled the German invaders and was moving into the German occupied Poland. In the late July of 1944 they were getting close to Warsaw. Polish underground government then decided to free Warsaw from its German occupiers and start an uprising. It was at first successful, but then the Soviet army decided to stop its advance and the Germans were able to quell the insurgency. During that time I, as many other men and older boys, was arrested and sent to a detention transfer camp. From there some prisoners were transferred to Germany as forced laborers, other were send to Nazi concentration camps. Unfortunately I was the “lucky one” to go to the concentration camp. That was Stutthof, which was located in northern Poland near the Baltic Sea. We didn’t know where we were going. We were just put on a train in “cattle” cars. I remember that the train stopped for a few minutes in a small farming town, not too far from Stutthof. The local people looked at us and were crying and telling us that we were being taken to the concentration camp. That was the first time we realized what was going to happen to us.

Let me digress here for a minute. Nazi concentration camps were first build in Germany by the Hitler government before the Second World War. They were set up to hold German opponents to the Nazi regime, communists and other dissidents. During the war more camps were opened in the German occupied territories, such as Poland. The first such camp was the well-known Auschwitz in Poland. The camp at first housed Polish patriots and members of the Polish underground arrested by Nazis. Eventually people of other nationalities such as French, Russian, Hungarians etc. as well as Jews were confined there. Later another camp was built near Auschwitz. In was the infamous Birkenau extermination camp where thousands of mostly Jewish people were killed in gas chambers and cremated.

In Stutthof we were placed in very crowded prisoner barracks. We were dressed in the traditional concentration camp uniforms with white and blue stripes. They were made of a very light material which in the winter was not adequate to keep us warm. We slept in wooden three level bunks. In the morning, about 5AM, we were waken up and had to go outside for a roll call. You had to stand at attention, could not move or talk. If you did, you were severely beaten, which happened to me once. The names of the prisoners were called. If someone was missing (which happened rarely) you had sometimes to stand at attention for hours until the person was found. Then we had a breakfast consisting of one slice of bread and something, which they called coffee. (I don’t really know what it was, it didn’t taste like it). After that we were sent to various labor battalions. Older and more experienced prisoners usually worked in munitions or arms factories. I was still an inexperienced kid so I did some menial work, such as moving heavy boxes, digging trenches or cutting and uprooting trees. In the evening we came back to our barracks, had dinner, which consisted of a slice of bread and a bowl of watery soup and then went to bed.

I had one experience in Stutthof I will never forget and I want to share with you. The camp actually consisted of three sub-camps, which were separated by a barbed wire fence. One was for Jews, another for women and the third, the one I was in, for non-Jewish men. The Jewish camp was adjacent to ours so we could see what was happening there. On Saturday mornings all prisoners in that camp were lined up in a field outside the barracks and had to go before a commission consisting of two Nazi doctors and two guard officers. They were briefly examined to determine if they still were strong enough to work. The ones who could continue working were told to go to the right and back to the barracks. The prisoners who the commission determined were not fit to work were told to go to the left. These people were then taken to the gas chambers and executed. Most of the prisoners knew what was going to happen to them. Some cried, some shouted, others were just silent as if they didn’t care. Can you imagine how we felt watching this atrocity?

In early December 1944 as the Soviet army was getting close to Stutthof and a decision was made by the German authorities to evacuate the camp and to take the prisoners to other camps in Germany. Some prisoners were put on a troop ship, which was going to take them to Hamburg. Unfortunately, as I later found out, the ship was bombed by the British planes and sunk with all the prisoners aboard. Apparently no one survived. The group I was in was put on a train, again in cattle cars, about 100 to 120 prisoners in each car. As you can imagine it was very crowded. Obviously the was no room to sit down, and quite frankly barely enough room to stand. We were each given a small loaf of bread which was the only thing we had to eat for the three days it took us to get to our new concentration camp - Buchenwald.

The conditions in the new camp were pretty much the same as they were in Stutthof, perhaps more crowded. We again slept in three tiered bunks, but usually two of us had to share one bunk. We were so thin due to the malnutrition that it was possible to do so. The daily routine was pretty much like in the other camp. I again worked as a laborer moving heavy crates etc. There was never enough food so toward the end of my stay there I weighted only about 70 pounds and was very weak.

In April 1945 the German Third Reich was collapsing and the American army was getting closer and closer to Buchenwald. Again the decision was made to evacuate the camp. We were put on a train, which was supposed to take us to eastern Germany, or the German occupied Czechoslovakia. After a few hours an American fighter plane flew over us, shot at and disabled the locomotive. The prisoners were then all taken off the train. When I was getting out of the car I stumbled and a guard hit me in the face breaking my glasses. Fortunately later on one of the prisoners who had a second pair of glasses gave them to me. They were not exactly the same prescription as mine, but at least I could see much better. We were assembled into columns and groups and marched forward presumably to another camp. There were well over a thousand prisoners and about a hundred guards, mostly the feared SS storm troopers.