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Kasriel K. Eilender, M.D.

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THE BARBER OF GOERLITZ - A MEMOIR

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Chapter Three

It is a psychological

fact that power

degenerates and

corrupts human 

beings both in 

war and peace.

Fritz Figas

"The Barber of Goerlitz"

immediately started

a reign of terror.

People were 

sleeping in their clothes

waiting for death.

A young police noncom, former barber from the city of Goerlitz in Silesia was second in command of this newly arrived group. It is known in Europe that barbers are supposed to be very polite, even subservient.

 But here we had this individual, who was typically Aryan in appear-ance with blonde hair, blue eyes, clean-shaven, and dressed in an impec-cable uniform. It is a known psychological fact that power degenerates and corrupts human beings both in war and peace. It is the same for everybody in every walk of life. It affects national leaders, businessmen, professionals, bookkeepers, barbers, and shoemakers in the same fashion. 

A uniform and the power it symbolizes can alter the personality of the one who wears it one way or another. "The Barber of Goerlitz" proved this point. This is what I call him even today. His real name was Fritz Figas. Upon his arrival, he immediately started a reign of terror.

There were also several Austrians among this band of newly arrived police officers, as well as one Polish speaking German. The rest of them were German and they all had one goal: to destroy all the Jews in the district and then go after the other "subhumans." 

This "team" had moved into the newest building in the town, which was the school. They used about fifteen Jewish girls as servants, who did everything from washing clothes, serving food, and peeling potatoes to other menial tasks. These Germans lived a life of leisure and affluence, while their comrades on the eastern front were dying at the rate of about 10,000 a day. 

According to the Nuremberg Laws of Segregation of 1935, it was a crime severely punished by Hitler’s regime for intimate contact between Jews and Aryans. In spite of it, this did not deter Fritz and his comrades from using some of the Jewish servants as mistresses. They also used to force hundreds of young men to do all kinds of heavy work, without any real purpose or necessity.

Fritz Figas would come out and inspect the work of "the modern slaves" after lunch. Once in a while, he would shoot people without any reason. It appears that this was his pleasure, which became a habit and an expression of his power over life and death for so many human beings. His underlings were no better.

After the War, a Jewish survivor told me the following story. On January 21, 1942 an elderly Jewish man walked into a house where he was arrested and accused of having typhus fever. Apparently, there was no basis for this. The police took him to the station. He was isolated. It was known that Germans became afraid and panicked over typhus and lice, because they had suffered a great deal of it during the First World War.

 The commanding non-com of the police and Fritz Figas were notified and the latter ordered that this person be brought to the Jewish cemetery where Figas would personally "take care of him." 

The local police brought the man to the cemetery where he was shivering from the cold. He asked permission to pass some urine before he died. The permission was granted magnanimously. After breakfast, Fritz was brought in by sledge to the cemetery. 

Here this former barber from the small city of Goerlitz, now the commanding officer in charge of the Final Solution shot this poor, innocent old man in theatrical fashion at point-blank range. Obviously, this kind of ritualistic execution had made the barber’s day.

Life was getting much more precarious and difficult in the ghetto. If some mother went out of the ghetto to the market, which was not allowed, to get milk for her hungry child, she would be shot on the spot. Anybody who ventured out of the ghetto to get food from a Christian acquaintance would be shot without any hesitation.

The news from the neighborhood communities had become more alarming. There had already been "aktion" (mass murder) of men, women and children. The ordinary Germans with their local helpers had been rewarded for the number and rapidity of the many human lives they destroyed. We were all waiting consciously or subconsciously for our turn. Whenever people heard a car engine, they thought this was it; they were coming already. People were sleeping in their clothes waiting for death.

On one early, cloudy morning my father and I went to work as usual. However, instead, of working, we were herded together with three hundred other Jewish males into the courtyard of the headquarters of the German gendarmerie (military police). After a selection process, my father and many others had been released.

Under heavy guard about two hundred of us were marched 35 kilometers from Dereczyn toward Slonim. As we were leaving the town, some mothers and sisters ran out from their houses to say good-bye. The guards opened fire on them. I never found out how many were killed or injured.

I was brought to the Ghetto of Slonim and worked in and out of the Ghetto cleaning rubble and helping to demolish damaged houses. Many other people, who came with me to Slonim were placed in a nearby work camp. Some of these workers actually escaped back to Dereczyn. When Fritz and his German police found out they had run away, the workers were

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