The Cremator of Auschwitz: Sometimes we wonder if we're human

Every day, after dragging the bodies, I spent most of my time sitting on the edge of the bunker and returning to Camp D in the evening. I wanted to live in the building of the crematorium, not the "bunker". The "bunker" is the hardest work there, and there is always unfinished work. We had to work non-stop, not even for a minute. We had to keep moving, carrying, dragging, throwing, and the German guards watched our every move.

Pictured | stills from "The Pianist"

Preface

Auschwitz-Birkenau was a huge "factory of death": its "raw materials" were living people, and the final "product" was ashes; as a labor force in the extermination camp, the "task force" was a squad of Jewish slaves in the death factory, unprecedented in human history. As a result, these people became the saddest characters and the most unfortunate people in the history of the Holocaust. Crying Without Tears is a self-narration of the holocaust tragedy at Auschwitz by special task force survivors, written by Gideon Grave, an Israeli historian and educator who is a world-class expert in the field of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and extermination camp research.

Regrettably, I had to tell the story of Yakov Gabai in the same way as in the past tense. During my investigation to write this book, he passed away. Yakov Gabai lives in Nevjamin, a Moshav near Kafasaba, half an hour from Tel Aviv. I should have visited him a few more times, but only because of laziness. Now I regret it because I never see him again, never talk to him again. Part of his memories of the Task Force was thus brought to the grave. But in the few hours I spent interviewing him, I had gained a lot, and I was the only comfort. Yakov Gabai was born in Athens and worked with his brother in the Task Force. His brother now lives in the United States. An important reason they survived was undoubtedly to be able to support each other. Gabai's family settled in Lyhen, Italy as early as the 16th century. The descendants of the family still live there today. Even members of the Gabai family living in Greece (including Yakov) retained Their Italian citizenship. For a time, the Germans respected the Italian citizenship of these Jews and did not send them to concentration camps. As a result, the gabai family was not sent to Auschwitz until 1944. Yakov Gabai has always been an optimist. Even at Auschwitz, he was convinced he would get out of there alive. Yakov Gabai was a strong man, and he said in our conversation: He was strong enough to survive and tell posterity everything he saw. I asked him if he would be ashamed of the work he did in Birkenau. "No!" He replied. Still, he could not hide the pain he felt as he witnessed the suffering of the Jewish people. "I have seen millions of Jews killed!"

Q: Yakov, where were you born? Where does your family come from? I was born in Athens on September 26, 1912. His mother was Greek and his father was of Italian descent. When I was three years old, my family moved from Athens to Thessaloniki. That's where I grew up. Q: Can you describe the origins of your family? My ancestors are from Lychen, Italy in the 16th century. These are easy to find. I have three brothers in my family—I'm the eldest, the second is called Dario, a few years younger than me, and the third is called Sammy. The only people who survived were me and Dario. My father worked for 30 years in the printing house of New Truth Press. My parents didn't have a lot of money, but the school I attended didn't charge tuition, which made their lives a lot better. After finishing the sixth grade, I also went to work at the New Truth Printing House. In 1929, I became a permanent employee and then worked there for another 12 years, until October 1940. The Germans invaded Greece on April 6, 1941. It was Good Friday. On Sunday, April 27, 1941, Athens surrendered. Q: When did you start to notice a change in German attitudes towards Jews? We slowly realized that this was a war. At first, we heard that the Italians had invaded Albania. Later, the situation got worse and worse, but our family was not in trouble for the time being, because my father was an Italian citizen. Fortunately, we belong to the privileged category of civilians, that is, those with Italian and Spanish nationality. Initially, the Germans arrested all Jews without foreign nationality. Thanks to our Italian citizenship, we were not immediately arrested and sent to concentration camps. Q: What changes have taken place in the daily lives of the Jews of Thessaloniki? Can you give some examples? At the end of 1942, the tragedy of the Thessaloniki Jews began. At first, the governing councils of the Jewish community came under enormous pressure. The Germans demanded that the community commissioners come up with an astronomical sum of money and asked them to recruit all Jews between the ages of 18 and 45 and force them to labor. The Committee was powerless to resist. From July 1941 until they were sent to Auschwitz, conscripts were forced to work as laborers. In the beginning, the Jews of Thessaloniki were taken to concentration camps in central Greece, where they did hard labor. They had to endure hunger, beatings and humiliation, building roads, digging trenches and laying railroad tracks. At that time, I was working for the liberal newspaper Pravda, but they immediately banned the newspaper, cut off the flow of information, and it was difficult to get the word out of what was happening in Greece and elsewhere. The Germans published a special newspaper for the Jews, with articles written in German and spelled in Greek letters. They named the newspaper New Europe. Newspapers publish anti-Semitic articles that constantly stir up doubts and fears in people's minds. Then the Germans began rounding up the Jews of Thessaloniki and sending them to concentration camps, and our family decided to move to Athens. We count on taking refuge there as Italian citizens. We left Thessaloniki on July 15, 1943, two months before Mussolini stepped down. I am married to Lola, and her father is a Thessalonica man named Joshua Menace. I've known Lola since 1935. At that time, there was almost no Jew in Thessaloniki, and we wanted to start a new life in Athens. Life in Athens is peaceful. Every week, the Italian army would give us some food, including things that were not often obtained in Greece. Those days were peaceful and stable. Until Italy surrendered, the Germans did not harm Italian or Spanish citizens. However, on September 5, 1943, Mussolini surrendered. From the end of that month, we reported to a German official every month. On March 24, 1944, the Germans ordered the expulsion of all Italian citizens in Athens. We couldn't believe our ears. I thought they would let us go. Immediately afterward, however, they began to send the Jews of Athens to concentration camps. I was among the first people to be sent. The way I received the deportation order was sudden. Every morning, we gather at the synagogue and sign a sign-in form. One day, they were there and they arrested us. I've never checked in person before, and usually, I let someone else go for me. However, on the same day, I went in person and they arrested me. Maybe that's fate. We were taken to the Hyde concentration camp, which was actually a prison in Greece; we stayed there for a week. We don't know what awaits us. We thought the Greeks would do something to get us out. On April 1, 1944, after a full week of nightmares, we were caught on a train to Poland – when I was 32 years old. They told us we were going to Krakow. The train carried our group from Athens through Arta and Ioannina. There were 2,500 people in the car: men and women, and children. The journey took 11 days, lasting from April 1 to 11, 1944. We passed through Greece, Yugoslavia, Hungary and Austria before reaching Poland.

Q: Are you in the same car as your family? We were on the train together. My two younger brothers and parents were by my side. My wife was there. Q: What are they allowing you to take away from your home? We brought blankets, a mattress, and two or three short tops. There are no toilets in the carriages. Food is distributed in a flat rate and has a small share. We try to spend most of our trip sleeping. During those 11 days, some people died. The doors were opened only once, when we arrived in Budapest. The men opened the car door, brought us some water, and moved the dead man out of the car. We left Athens that evening and arrived at Auschwitz on April 11, 1944. It was Tuesday and the time was 10 a.m. Q: What happened after the train stopped on April 11? We arrived at our destination. Near the station, we saw a group of men and women weeding. They looked exhausted. Later that day, they made their first "pick" on the platform. Young men and women are divided to one side, and older people are divided into others. All the old, sick and disabled, pregnant women and children were stuffed into trucks and sent to Birkenau. When they got there, they were incinerated to ashes in the blink of an eye. They were killed that same day. Seeing those older people being loaded into trucks and taken away, we also thought they were too lucky. Lo and behold, they could take the car, while we could only walk. Q: What happened to your family after getting off the bus? After the "pick-and-go", my brother Dario stayed with me and a truck drove up and took our parents away. We stepped forward and said to them, "Be safe all the way, take care of yourself." We'll all survive. "However, in the family, only my brother survived. Unfortunately, everyone else was killed. Q: What do you remember about "pick"? The Germans in charge of "picking" told us which way to turn. I didn't expect to see my family again after turning around. Q: Before that, had you heard of the place "Auschwitz"? As early as 1942, we heard about labor camps in Ukraine. When we arrived at Auschwitz, everyone thought it was one of the many labor camps. We don't know that Auschwitz means death. We thought it was just another labor camp. Seven hundred of the people who came over were selected, including my brother and me. We had to walk three kilometres to get to Birkenau. We don't know where our family has been taken. For nearly a month, they kept us in quarantine camps in case we had any illness with us. If someone gets sick, they kill us all at once. Fortunately, no one got sick during that time.

Q: When did you get your prisoner number? A few days later, they gave me a number: 182569. The people in the camp had no names, only numbers. Twenty days after we got there, on May 12, 1944, the Germans made another "selection," this time more rigorous. Two doctors and two officers came. We were forced to stand naked in front of them. A German doctor examined our bodies without a word and then selected three hundred of the strongest and healthiest men. The inspection was meticulous and comprehensive. The doctor spent five minutes around me and touched me from head to toe. The two SS commanders (presumably squad leaders) standing next to him said to us, "From today onwards, you must work hard and there will be no shortage of food and clothing. "It gave us a reassurance; we were glad to hear that. There were seven hundred and fifty of us in all—some of us had been in the camps for a while, and some of us had just arrived here. They took us to a labor camp, which had an additional name: "Camp D." In fact, that means that we have joined the Task Force. On Friday, we were taken to the camp where the Task Force was located. There, we met some Jewish Poles who had been living in France before. There were also several Jews from the Soviet Union, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Jacob Kaminsky was appointed captain. He was an amazing man—tough and not afraid of the Germans. We were selected to join the "Task Force", moved into Camp D, and never had any contact with the rest of the camp. About a hundred of us lived in the attic of Crematorium One (Ii), one hundred lived in the attic of Crematorium Two (Iii), and another seven hundred and fifty lived in Crematorium Three and Four (Five). When we first arrived at the barracks, the prisoners there told us, "Everything is better here than at home." You just need to know one thing – none of us can get out of here alive. "My companion at the time was a Soviet Jew who was born a pessimist. He said to me, "Yakov, we will never be able to go out, believe me." I know what I'm talking about. And prisoners who have been there for a long time tell us: "Working in the 'task force' means burning corpses every day." "That was the first time we learned that they were doing burning people at Auschwitz. May 15 is Monday, the beginning of the week. We were divided in two. One group went to crematorium two (number three) and we were taken to the first (two) crematorium. Most of our group were Greek Jews, like Mitchell Adity, Joseph Baruch, the Cohen brothers, Shlomo and Maurice Venezia from Corfu, my brothers Dario Gabai and me, Leon Cohen, Marcel Nagari, and Daniel ben Nakmez from Corfu. We were told not to work the first night and just watch. I remember that it was almost half past five in the afternoon when a group of people arrived from Hungary. The veterans of the task force asked us to take a closer look at the faces of those people, because it wouldn't be long before they were going to be killed. We don't believe what they say. After a short while, we were asked to go downstairs to see what was going on. We went down, opened the gas chambers, and sure enough, we saw corpses. They told us that's what we do. There is a sign outside the gas room with the words "shower" written in Polish, German, Russian and English.

Q: What did you see when the door of the gas chamber first opened in front of you? I saw corpses, one stacked on top of the other. There were about 2500 bodies inside. You can see that many of them have scars and blood on their bodies. I've never seen a scene like this before. That scene was terrible. I remember that they took us to that room later—the bodies were moved there. They pulled out the gold teeth from the corpse's mouth, cut off the female corpse's hair, and then put all the valuables together. We have to observe how they do these things. Q: What did you think when you saw those bodies? I think it's a tragedy, it's a terrible tragedy for the Jews — they've been so cruelly deprived of their lives here. In the first few days, all we felt was terror. But I told myself, "You must not lose your mind. "I know that since then I've had to see these scenes like this day in and day out. That's what we do, so we'd better get used to it all. It's a chore, but you have to get used to it. We didn't work the first night. It didn't start until the next night. The steward came over and assigned jobs to each of us. "You go for this! You go for that! "I was partnered with another prisoner. Our task was to lift the body up and put it on a stretcher. I had to fork the body with a fork and push it straight into the crematorium. Each crematorium has three doors. You can put four corpses in each door—sixty bodies in fifteen minutes, and then, when fifteen minutes come, you have to turn over the hearth with a fork. The flames burned, and in another fifteen minutes the victims were left with only ashes. And then it goes on and Each round of our work takes a total of three minutes (up to four minutes), and half an hour is idle.

Q: Before you were assigned to the Task Force, did you know that Auschwitz was killing people and burning people? Greek newspapers have been reporting on the horrors of the Germans in concentration camps since 1943, but we just don't believe it. Who would believe that a civilized nation like Germany could do such a thing? But every day Jews were thrown into the crematorium, every day, endlessly; at the same time, outside the crematorium there were bands playing and women's choirs singing. After three days of work like this, half of the new members of the Task Force, including me, were ordered to be transferred to the crematoriums of Number Three (Iv) and Four (Five), because there were too many people sent there. They cremate the bodies of 24,000 Hungarian Jews every day. The members of the "task force" sent there to work were simply too busy. A few days later, after thousands of Hungarian Jews had been cremated in the bunker, everyone returned to where they had worked and continued their day-to-day work in the team. From the end of April until the whole of May, large numbers of people were transported from Hungary to Birkenau. There were so many people that the crematorium simply could not accommodate so many people. So they dug a few big pits so they could cremate thousands more there. My squad worked next to the "sauna" in the woods, opposite the third (fourth) crematorium and the fourth (fifth) crematorium. That's where the big pit was dug. Bodies that could not be accommodated in the crematorium were cremated in those pits. They call these pits "bunkers." I worked there for three days.

They transported the bodies from the gas chambers to the "bunker", where they were cremated. The bunker was surrounded by trees, so no one could see what was happening there. In the "bunker", they burned the corpses like this: first they placed them on one layer of logs, then laid logs and planks on top of the corpses, and then put more corpses on top of them— usually at least three layers. Then an SS member would come and pour gasoline into the pit, draw a match, and everything in the pit would turn into flames. In this way, about a thousand corpses could be burned every hour. The fat from the corpse will keep the fire burning. They put a kilogram of coal and two planks of wood in and lit a fire. The fire soon reached the corpse. Later, after the twelve-hour shift, we returned to District 13, located in Camp B. The next day, we went back to work on the "bunker". There was a man in our squad who had come to the concentration camp with me. His name was Menachem Liski, and he was originally a shoemaker in Greece, and he had a wife and two daughters in the family. One day he said to me, "Yakov, I really can't stand this errand anymore. If you think about it, we can't keep throwing people into the fire like this. I don't want to live anymore. I told him to endure a few more days: "Everything is difficult at the beginning." It's all going to pass. Don't give up your life so easily. He stayed up for two more days, and then on the third day, just as they were transporting the body to the "bunker," Menachem, taking advantage of the lack of attention, dragged the body into the fire with him. A sergeant named Grunberg shot him in the face, freeing him from his pain. It was May 18, 1944. A month or two later, a German soldier came to the crematorium no. 2 (no. 3) and asked, "Does anyone know about Menachem?" I raised my hand. He asked me to tell him what had happened. I said, "I can tell you, but I don't speak German." I only speak French. "He took me to the office. When I got there, they sat me down and gave me some food. Then a guy came up and asked me to tell me what was going on in Menachem. I wondered to myself: If the Germans were killing thousands of people every day, why did they suddenly care so much about the life and death of a person? I knew I could never tell them he had committed suicide. They asked me what was going on, and I said that he was too close to the fire when he was carrying the body, slipped under his feet, and fell into it. That's it. If I told them that Menachem was committing suicide, I would be finished. Q: Why? They're going to kill me on the spot. Q: Is there anything else similar to the Menachem incident? No, I remember only this one time. Every day, after dragging the bodies, I spent most of my time sitting on the edge of the bunker and returning to Camp D in the evening. I wanted to live in the building of the crematorium, not the "bunker". The "bunker" is the hardest work there, and there is always unfinished work. We had to work non-stop, not even for a minute. We had to keep moving, carrying, dragging, throwing, and the German guards watched our every move. Every evening, nine or ten people in the team would bring us dinner. Once or twice, I asked our captains, Kaminsky and Lemke, "Why can't you transfer me from the Bunker to the Crematorium?" Kaminsky and Lemke tried their best. Four days later, I was transferred to the second (third) crematorium. I stayed there until the day I left the camp, January 18, 1945. I was glad I left the grave so early, because there was so much work there that I couldn't see my head.

Q: Where did your brother Dario work during that time? He worked for a month at the crematoriums number three and four (five), and then Kaminsky transferred him to the second (three) crematorium so that we could work together. Q: What does your brother do? We worked in the same building, but we did different jobs, and he was a little easier because he was weaker. They used a lift to transport the bodies to the level of the crematoria, and Dalio placed them in a place in front of the furnace door—usually a batch of four corpses. His job was much easier than mine because he didn't need to lift the body up. He only had to drag the body with his hands. Some of the "task force" jobs are easier and others are a little harder, but we always take each other's hands. Q: How did this job affect him? To be honest, I thought he couldn't hold on. He was sensitive and ten years younger than me. However, he persevered until the end. Q: What does the No. 2 (No. 3) crematorium look like from the outside? You must not believe it – it looks like a factory building. Like any factory, it has a large chimney in front of it. If it weren't for the stench of charred corpses coming out of the chimney, you wouldn't have thought it was a place to kill people. Can you describe what it was like whenever a group of prisoners was brought in? Whenever a train comes in, a group of Germans wait on the platform for a "pick.". The doctors in the camps will also join them. The train enters the platform, stops not far from the crematorium, and the "selection" begins. They would get rid of children and women first. Germans don't beat women and children. What a gentleman's act. The gates of the crematorium complex are about a hundred meters away from where the train is parked, so we can see how many of each group of prisoners will be sent to the crematorium. The camp commander would tell the doctors involved in the "selection" that he wanted the percentage of people in each batch, and those people would be sent to compulsory labor: 10% today, 15% tomorrow, 20% the day after tomorrow, and so on. There are also batches that have not been "selected" after arriving, and all of them have been killed. There is no standard for this "selection". The Germans responsible for "selection" set quotas according to the proportions set by the camp commanders. Those who could not escape death were sent to the crematorium, and the crematorium could be used. Q: How did the Germans know which crematorium would work at that time? Each crematorium had a sergeant major who would report every morning whether there was any empty space in the crematorium. The sergeant major at our crematorium was a red-haired, lowly villain from Berlin. In May and June 1944, all the crematoriums were spinning at full horsepower. In July 1944, the intensity of the work was slightly reduced; by August, almost no one was brought in. When will you have the opportunity to say a few words to the victims who came to the crematorium? Before the start of construction, if there was nothing to do, we would sometimes go to the big strip room to receive the victims who had just arrived. Then we saw them, we saw all the people. Q: Can you talk to them? We had to persuade them to take off their clothes, but the Germans wouldn't allow us to tell them the truth. Q: How do you feel when you see hundreds of thousands of Jews transported to concentration camps, and you know they're all going to die before long? I told myself that whatever we did couldn't help them. Power was in the hands of the Germans, and no one could rebel against them. After all, we don't have weapons to take action. None of the Jews in the strip asked us where we were going. Q: Do you still have an impression of those who were sent to concentration camps? Do you remember how you felt when you saw people who were sent to concentration camps? Can't remember because we really didn't speak to them. I never spoke to them. When we were busy dealing with a group of people who were about to arrive, it was usually the "Canadian" task force that went with the German guards to receive another batch. We don't receive it because that's not our job. Sometimes, we don't see the living people who came in, and we don't know who came in, because we were busy with the work we were doing. We cannot leave our work alone and go to see the prisoners who have been sent.

Q: Have the members of the Task Force ever met their own loved ones? This has always been possible, unless it is a Hungarian Jew who has been sent. My wife was also held in a concentration camp. Some of the team members, like me, had relatives in the camp, and they were scared. I was worried that my wife would be sent to the crematorium to be killed, and I kept asking myself: What would I do if that day really came? Fortunately, this didn't happen, but on October 31, 1944, when the last 400 "Musselmans" were about to be killed, my two cousins were also there, who had previously worked in the D labor camp in Birkenau. We sat down in the stripping room of the crematorium and talked for two hours. Q: So your cousins are going to die, you know. Yes, of course I know. As soon as the Germans gave the order, we knew who was going to be killed. If a prisoner is forced to strip naked and then get a blanket, a little bread, and a little margarine, it means he's going to be thrown into the crematorium. Q: What did you talk about? I asked them how someone like them, who had always been so brave and so composed, could have ended up in such a situation. They replied, "This is our destiny, it is Providence, and we cannot hide from it." "After they finished eating, we smoked together again until they were leaving. A German said, "It's time." Then I told them, "Come, I have something terrible to tell you, but you won't suffer anymore." "I took them to the gas chambers and to the location of the gas inlets." If you sit here, you won't have to suffer even a second of sin. As I was leaving, the German soldier said to me, "You are getting stronger and braver now!" I replied, "Why let them suffer so much?" "Ten of the people killed that day were acquaintances or relatives of mine in Greece. All 390 bodies were burned, during which time each of us separated several relatives and acquaintances and cremated them individually. We collected their ashes individually, put them in jars, and buried them in the ground. We wrote down the names, dates of birth and dates of murder of the victims. We buried the jars and even recited the Gadish for them. But now, who will recite the Gadish for us? We ask ourselves... After the Soviets came, I heard that they found the jars.

Q: Which groups of people do you remember the most? Please describe. On my first day in the "Task Force", in the afternoon, a group of people came from Hungary. In June 1944, a group of two thousand people was brought from Greece, which also impressed me deeply. It was the last people sent from Greece, and all of them were killed without being "chosen." This was an order from the officer of the concentration camp. This group of people was eventually buried in the fire, and none of them were spared. At the end of June 1944, prisoners from the gypsy camp were sent here. They resisted because they did not want to be sent to the crematorium. They're all still healthy. In the middle of July 1944, a group of people came at three o'clock in the morning, let alone 1500 people. They were Jews from Hungary — men and women, and children. We waited for them in the strip room. There were women, young girls, and children. Suddenly we see a woman, with two children, and she asks us, "How can I strip naked in front of you?" What a shame! "We told her we were used to it. Before he could say anything, the camp commander appeared, and he said to the woman, "Put your clothes here, and the children's clothes." Remember the number on the hanger and look back for your clothes. "How ironic... She took the child straight into the gas chambers, and that was it. By August 1944, fewer and fewer people were arriving from Hungary. When no one was coming from Hungary, no Jews could be shipped anywhere else. Later, several small groups of Jews arrived, but then they almost stopped. The Germans began to evacuate the places where the Jews were sent. In August 1944, a large number of Jews were transported from Lodz, and in the same month, 250 Polish "Musselmans" were sent from several concentration camps on the outskirts of Auschwitz. By then they couldn't move. Then, the chief of the cinnabarium, SS officer Mohr, came over and said, "Don't send these people to the gas chambers." "He wanted to kill these with his own hands. At first, he beat the men with a metal stick that had been used to crush the bones left over from the cremation. Then he came over, asked a soldier for a rifle and some bullets, and started shooting them. After killing four or five people, one of the "Musselman" shouted, "Sir! Then Mohr, the murderous sadist, replied, "What's the matter?" "I have a request." "What request?" "When you shoot at my friends, I want to sing 'Blue Danube.'" "Feel free to sing! How happy! There was also music when the shots were fired, and of course it was even better! Mohr responded. So the man sang—la-la-la The last bullet hit him, ending his life. I remember bringing with me 42 children with sound limbs, about thirteen or fourteen years old. I saw a boy die after five shots. They killed these people in such a brutal way. After another two weeks or so, 20 guerrillas were sent, including 4 beautiful girls. They knew they were going to die here. We expected them to protect themselves and wave their fists against the Germans, after all they were guerrillas – but nothing happened. They are like lambs to be slaughtered in proverbs. We asked them to take their clothes off, and they all did without a word. They quietly walked into the gas chambers—like lambs waiting to be slaughtered. I remember one time when one hundred and forty or fifty girls were sent here. They sat down and started frolicking and laughing. They must have thought they had come to Birkenau for fun. We were astonished – what was going on? Half an hour had passed, two hours had passed, and how had they not been thrown into the crematorium? Then the order came down to send the girls back. A truck came and took them to the "sauna" and into a certain room. They came out of the crematorium alive, and we said to them, "You should light a candle and be glad you got out of here alive." As they sat in the crematorium, the Germans ordered them to write postcards: "We're in the concentration camps." We were warmly welcomed by the Germans. We eat well and are healthy. Two days later, the Germans took them back to the crematorium, where the girls were making a lot of noise and chaos because they knew what fate awaited them. In this way, they were all killed. Once, they brought a young woman from Hungary with a child who had just been born two days ago. She knew she was about to be killed. That night, we had nothing to do, so we sat there, moved a chair for her to sit down, and gave her some food and cigarettes. She told us she was a singer. We talked together for more than half an hour, sitting in front of the crematorium. Next to us sat an SS soldier from the Netherlands, a relatively kind fellow. He was also listening to us chat. When the story was over, the soldier stood up and said, "Well, we can't sit like this all the time, now it's time to hit the road." He asked the woman how to choose: whether to kill the child first or kill herself first. She said, "Kill me first." I don't want to watch my child die. So the Dutchman stood up, took his rifle, shot her, killed her, and threw her into the crematorium. Then he pulled up the kid, "bang, bang" two shots, and it was all over. We are the only witnesses to the suffering of the Jews. The Dutchman, who had been in the camp for a year and a half, had seen it all, but he had not experienced our suffering. We're witnessing it all, we're going through it all. At first, it was hard for us to bear what we were doing, but over time we got used to it. Once, I met a mother and daughter in the strip. The mother took off a white gold ring and tucked it into me, apparently thinking I could save her daughter. But I have no right to save. I took the ring down. But how long can I stay with something like this? In the end I threw it away.

Q: Yakov, how do you remember these details, and even the exact date? That's awesome! I wrote a diary. From the first day I joined the Task Force, I began to write, until January 18, 1945, the day I was rescued. I take notes every day. Almost five hundred pages were written. Every day, I write down the most mundane things, like "What happened today..." or "What did we do today..." Every day I write down what I did in the task force. Every day there are new things — weird ways of dying, where prisoners come from, how people behave, and teenagers crying, "We don't want to die!" We can work, let's work! "But at that time, who would listen to what they say? The world doesn't care whether the Jews live or die, doesn't it? They were all slaughtered. Q: Does anyone know you're writing a diary? A few people know that they are all my friends, but this matter must be kept secret. Why do you keep a diary? I told myself that maybe I would get out of here. But when I left Birkenau, I failed to take my diary with me. How could I have brought a five-hundred-page diary from Birkenau to Mauthausen? What if the Germans found out? They're going to kill me. Q: Where did you keep your diary? It was in the same place, and it wasn't buried. But even if I can't find the diary, I still remember many, many dates that I will never forget in my life. I remember those dates very well and never forgot them. Q: Can you list those dates? The first day of service in the "Task Force" was on May 15, 1944. 200 friends were brought in by the Germans to kill on September 18, 1944. The "Task Force" uprising took place on October 7, 1944. The last day in Birkenau was January 18, 1945.

Q: How long have you been with the Task Force? From May 15, 1944 to January 18, 1945 – eight months in total. Q: How did you end up in that hell for so long? Indeed, those who worked in the concentration camps lived every day with uncertainty about their lives. They were beaten and other tragic encounters. But we've seen even the scariest of things. In the course of the Holocaust, we did the dirtiest work. I worked in the Task Force for eight months, and I lived in this tragedy for eight whole months. Those jobs were tiring and torturous, especially in the first few days. Everyone is afraid to find their loved ones in the corpse. The first time is always the hardest. But seriously, you'll get used to anything. We sometimes worked at night, and in the middle of the night I sat next to a corpse, but it didn't affect my mood in the slightest. I would work for three minutes and then rest for another half hour. I knew that as soon as I made a small mistake, they would get rid of me. So I did my job, and to be honest, not a single German had ever done anything to me during my days in the concentration camps. The unlucky ones were those who were prone to trouble, and they were all eliminated. Q: Do you have time to think about all that you see? Just seeing all this at the beginning, it was really painful. I couldn't understand what I saw—the only thing left behind a man was a kilogram or so of ashes. Sometimes we also think about this, but what good is it to think? Do we have a choice? Escape is impossible, because none of us know the language here. I worked like this, even though I knew my parents had been killed. What could be worse than that? After two or three weeks, I got used to it. Sometimes when I rest at night, I put my hand on a corpse and don't feel anything wrong at all. We work there like robots. I have to be strong to survive; only by surviving can I make public everything that is happening here. It turns out that man is even more cruel than the beast. Yes, we were beasts at that time. We have no emotions. Sometimes we wonder if we're human or not. Q: It's hard for me to understand that you can still sing after a long day in gas chambers and crematoriums. As I said earlier, we're not just robots; we've become beasts. We didn't have any thoughts. We only think about one thing – get out and survive. Q: During that time, did you still believe in God? I'm not a believer, but I've always believed in God. And that's still the case. I have never turned my back on God. Q: In that extreme despair and helplessness, you must have suffered, right? I've never despaired. When I got there, everyone said, "We're going to die; we'll never get out of here." And I said, "I want to live!" "I said this from the beginning. I'm an optimist. It was true when I first went in, it was true when I was working on the task force, and it was still the same when I walked out of there. I knew I would survive. Q: Are you afraid? I'm not afraid. I'm really not afraid. I was never afraid of anything. Nor do I think about fear or death. I am extremely optimistic. I kept saying to myself, "I'm going to get out of here!" I will definitely get rid of everything here! Everyone asked me, "How can you think about leaving?" Don't you see what's happening here? "There's a friend who's been pessimistic. He was always weeping, and I said to him, "Don't cry! Men should not cry. "This is life — you have to see the good side of it. You must not be afraid, although it will sometimes bring you to something not so good. I was never afraid of the Germans, nor was I afraid of anyone else. I always hold my head high and look straight ahead. I was like that then and I still am.

Q: How were you liberated? By May 2, we could already "smell" the "liberation" of the Güssen concentration camp. We saw the Red Cross flag for the first time, and there wasn't even a single SS in the camp, only the guards and war criminals. Not only that, but from that day on, we didn't have to work. We were so dirty that we didn't have the chance to take a shower for a month. On 5 May, we were ordered to roll call. In total, 12,000 people reported. We heard the American tanks approaching in the distance, and shouted in unison: "The Americans are coming!" The German guards told us that it could not be the Americans, because the Germans had won the war. As they began to count the numbers, the gate was opened and tanks rushed in. The guards fled immediately. Five minutes later, the U.S. commander climbed a watchtower, moved the machine gun from the tower to the side, and shouted, "From today onwards, everyone except the Germans is a family!" "That's how I regained my freedom. It felt strange at the time. We weren't happy. We know the war is over, but we Jews have no more parents. No one is alive anymore. The first to be sent home were the French and Italians. I was on a team of 44 Greeks, 16 of whom were Jews, and some Greek Christians, who were clearly political prisoners. We spent another month in Güssen. Thank God I'm in good health. I lived with three other friends in a German officer's house. Our food was taken from the village; we went to the village with 20 other people and came back with some chicken and meat. An American truck carried us to Oberbourg, the junction of American and Soviet troops. Then a Soviet train took us to Vienna. By that time, Vienna had been destroyed beyond recognition. I stayed there for four days before being sent to Budapest, Hungary. Finally, we went to Skopje, Yugoslavia, and from there we went to the Greek border. Q: That is, you returned to your home country after the war? Yes, I tossed around for three months. It then traveled through Austria, Czechoslovakia, hungary, spent a month and a half, and spent another 20 days in Yugoslavia, finally arriving in Greece in August 1945. I started working as a printer there, as well as a journalist. Q: Why did you come back to Greece? Aren't you reluctant to go back to your hometown? I still have a home there, and my uncles are still alive. Four months after liberation, I returned to Greece, but it was difficult to adjust to the atmosphere there. When I saw that there were no more Jews in Thessaloniki, I was sad, very sad. I went to the city where I was a child, walked around, and tried to get back to the civilization I once had, but I couldn't find anything back. I searched for relatives in Thessaloniki, but in the end I found only a few friends. They asked me where I had gone and what dangers and tribulations I had experienced. Q: Have you told anyone about your experience at Auschwitz? I don't think there's any point in doing so, because I can't describe exactly where we are there. But when I started to feel like I was part of society again, when I started to reflect on what I had done there, I felt miserable. It's still the case, and when I talk about this, I feel like a knife. Q: Did you find your wife then? I looked everywhere for my wife, Lola. I had a friend named Pepo Ezrati on Güssen I, and when he regained his freedom, he went to Mauthausen. He happened to meet my wife there and told her I was alive. I didn't know she had survived, but when I got to Athens, I learned that she was in Thessaloniki and found her in a sanatorium. With the help of a Greek official named Modiano of the Federation (the Joint Relief Committee for Jews in The United States), I managed to send her to a nursing home in Athens. Our reunion was hard-won. It was hard to see her like that, but we were happy to see her again. We stayed in Athens until May 21, 1949. During this time, I was working for the Federation. Our daughter Rosa was also born at this time. Everyone advised me to move to Italy, but we still wanted to emigrate to Israel and live on the land of our ancestors.

Q: When did you arrive in Israel? I set off from Greece on May 21, 1949, and then arrived at my destination, Israel, on May 24. Some of my relatives came to Israel as early as 1932. At first, I planned to join a kibbutz, but after meeting a few friends, we decided to join Moshav anyway. Life is hard, but we have ideals, we have determination, and we have a head start. We know that no one here will call us "dirty Jews." Q: Have you ever returned to Auschwitz? About a year ago, I had the opportunity to go to Auschwitz, but my wife didn't want to stay alone, so she couldn't make the trip. Q: Have you ever thought about what happened in Auschwitz? Have you ever dreamed of that? No, but I think about it sometimes, but I haven't dreamed of it. I never dreamed of it there. The things of the past are over. I only live in the moment. Q: Would you be ashamed to tell your story and tell someone you've never been there about your experiences? No, I'm not ashamed of it, I'm not ashamed. It was the Germans who should be ashamed, not me. It was a painful experience, but I wouldn't be ashamed of it. It is difficult to tell the world what happened before 1945. It is also difficult to describe our experiences and insights. It's all unbelievable. Who would believe these things? Who would believe that the Germans had committed such a crime? It's unbelievable! The whole thing is unbelievable! But it did happen. Q: Have you ever told your daughter about your experience? Of course. I told my grandchildren about it. I have a grandson, who is twelve years old, and he wrote all this down. I also told my two granddaughters everything. One of them just graduated from school last year and is now working as a lawyer; the other is a senior in high school this year. They all know. I told the children everything when they were young. Q: Do your children enjoy listening to your stories? Love, my wife will tell her own story. After all, she had also been a prisoner of Birkenau. Unfortunately, however, today's young people don't like to listen to people much. That's my opinion. I want young people to know that these things are not made up, but that they actually happened. This is the fate of the Jews. I have witnessed the brutal murder of millions of Jews. But then again, there are also many young people who go to Poland to visit Auschwitz and see what has happened. I particularly support these events. Q: Where did you meet these young people? I was responsible for the security of two schools in Kafasaba. In addition, on Holocaust Memorial Day, I talk to people and tell them everything. I worked there until 1975, when I went to work in the municipality of Kafasaba, where I worked as a gardener. I worked in the Civil Defence Corps for seven years and told them a lot about that time. Q: What is your brother doing now? My brother has been living in the United States for the past thirty-eight years. We worked together in the Task Force, but he didn't want to say anything, didn't want to listen, didn't want to remember. He was working at the crematoriums no. 3 (4) and 4 (5), and it took a lot of effort for us to bring our families together. My two cousins and our brothers managed to get together, and we worked together until the end. However, when he left Auschwitz, he went to Melk and Ebensser. After being released, he returned to Greece and served as secretary of the Federation. For the past thirty-eight years, he has run a large curtain factory in Los Angeles. Q: Do you feel like you're still stuck in those days on weekdays? Have you ever been affected by it? All things are in the past. It's all over, it's all behind me. I survived because from the moment I entered Auschwitz, I had been looking forward to getting out alive. I survived because I was optimistic. Now, as I sit here and tell you everything, I will ask myself, "How can a man endure such a thing?" How did he survive? "Yes, people are tougher than steel. This is life, my dear friend – always have to experience, to persevere, to let go.