p 22

Kasriel K. Eilender, M.D.

next >

THE BARBER OF GOERLITZ - A MEMOIR

< PHOTOS < CONTENTS < BACK   

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

He offered me

everything he owned 

to change my

testimony.  

Finally, the commotion had subsided. We had been ready to board the cattle trains when one of the young prisoners got up to wave good bye to his family. Whereupon, one of the Germans shot him dead. 

The killer happened to be in charge of the labor office of the commandant’s bureau of the region of Slonim.

___________________________________________

After the war, the killer who shot the young prisoner waving from the cattle car, was arrested by the American authorities and was to be turned over to the Polish authorities for extradition and trial for war crimes. 

I was called as a witness to testify about this murder.  At this time, I was a medical student at Munich University. 

Ironically, a very nicely dressed gentleman came with a young and good-looking woman and asked my landlady if he could speak to me.

Naturally, I met these people. The elderly gentleman introduced himself as the father of the arrested killer and the lady was his daughter-in-law of six months. 

He said that the mother of his son wished me to rescind my testimony since his other son had already died on the eastern front. He went on to say that it was unbelievable that his son Karl could commit such a crime. 

He also offered me everything he owned to change my testimony.

My reply was polite but clear. I did tell him that I thought many German people were hardworking, intelligent, smart, and they most likely would not do what his son had done. However, as much as an ordinary German may have some humanity and understanding, Germans in their military uniforms in the east and also in the west had been a bunch of murderers. 

I also said: "How do you expect me to react when my father, mother, sister and brother are buried somewhere in the forest of Western White Russia, victims of this horrible genocide? Thus, you are talking to the wrong man." 

The son was extradited to Poland. He was tried and executed. It also came out later, which I did not know at that time, that the son Karl did participate in the mass shootings in the surrounding little towns.

__________________________________________

Finally toward evening we had been put in the cattle wagons holding about 60 to 70 people and had been traveling for three days and three nights, not knowing where we were heading, and what was going to happen to us the next minute or the next hour.

We finally stopped at a very large railroad junction center in the city of Orsha. This was in Soviet White Russia. A few German gendarmes and White Russian auxiliary police were guarding us. We stood there for a long time with the guards had been drinking, singing and talking. We found out that we had to stand there to make a detour to the city of Mogilev. Evidently going straight would be dangerous in view of the partisans.

Mogilev was situated on the river Dnieper with a big segment of industry. It had a large Jewish population. During the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, it fought for over three weeks until it was captured. As we left the train, we noted a group of German-speaking Jews working at the station and some of us told them: "Run toward the forest, because you are going to be murdered." The answer was: "The Fuhrer (leader) will not do such a thing." One of our co-prisoners asked the local policeman: "Where are you taking us?" The answer was: "We are taking you to a place were you will live for a while but you will not have any desire to make love."

The Mogilev camp to which we were brought was small. Previously it had been a factory for airplane parts named after Dimitrov, which apparently was bombed out by the German air force. It had guards with machine guns in the turrets at the corners of the fences. We had been ordered to sit on the ground and wait to be processed. In the meantime, we watched the inmates. Many of them had Semitic faces; however, they did not say one single word to us. Their heads had been shaven and they wore civilian clothing. 

By sitting on the ground, I had a dilemma since I had in my pocket the graduation certificate from the high school that I received on the 10th of June 1941. As I mention previously I had hidden this diploma in cellar in Slonim. When I changed my living location, I risked my life in order to dig it out from the hiding place. From that time on, I always carried it with me. If I kept it, the Germans would find it and they would kill me, since they did not like any educated people. If I destroyed it and survived, I might need it to prove that I had a high school diploma.

I spoke to one of the prisoners sitting near me and he said: "Idiot, you will never survive, so destroy it." I did with tremendous trepidation and sorrow even though I was facing death any minute.

next  >