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"That sugar bowl is not good,
Stephanie. Nothing comes out of it."
"Gary, it's not the bowl, it's
the sugar. I got this time the brown sugar, unrefined, it's
good for you, better than the white one."
"Oh yes, I know it, Stephanie,
I know that sugar, we called it 'MELASA'."
--o0o----o0o----o0o----o0o----o0o----o0o--
April, 1945
"Not that bloody spinach again,
tomorrow."
Berek, our kapo, wasn't happy.
Spinach day was the worse day in our
sheilroom barrack attached to the camp kitchen in Katzetlager Sportshule
Reichenbach (now Dzierzoniow).
Sugar radish soup day was okay,
you had to prepare a barrel of them, clean and cut about 100 kilograms
- no big deal.
Potato day, the same, peel
a barrel of potatoes, no drama. A bit risky as the peeled off
skin was sporadically inspected by the kapo.
"God have mercy on you", old
Pilcer warned us, the younger prisoners, "if the skin is not transparently
thin, that is, if you left too much potato on it."
Still, potato day was okay.
But spinach day - God forbid!
No peeling, but rinsing, rinsing, rinsing.
Ten big drums full of water
were lined up in front of the barrack. Ten prisoners (in
freezing winter weather) one in front of each drum were removing the
load of spinach from one drum, shaking it and dropping it into the
next drum and eventually to the big kitchen 'kociol' (kettle).
And there, near the 'kociol'
stood he, SS Obersturmfuhrer Max.
"God have mercy on you", old
Pilcer warned us again. "If that sadist, tasting the spinach,
will find a bit of sand or something else krechtsing in his teeth,
God have mercy on you. That bastard", continued Pilcer, "is
so concerned about that bit of lonely spinach that will eventually
land in some starving prisoner's soup bowl."
"If the prisoner will see it without
a magnifying glass", David Stern interjected sarcastically.
Unfortunately spinach days
were becoming more and more frequent as we were rapidly running out
of potato reserves that were normally stored in nearby potato farms.
"What? You must be joking,
they'll never go there, they won't risk their lives to get some potatoes
for your lousy kitchen."
"Not for our kitchen, Jack, for their
kitchen, for their SS kitchen."
"Go where?" I asked.
"Jack Rosen", David explained, "got a
tip that the SS guards are going to take us to a farm near Schweinitz
(now Swidnica) to bring some potatoes."
"But, David, Schweinitz..." I started.
"Yes, Gustav, we all know, Schweinitz
is just kilometres away from the Russian front lines surrounding Breslau."
For weeks we could hear (to
our delight) the Russian artillery shelling the besieged encircled
town of Breslau, (now Wroclaw) one of Germany's greatest metropolises
in Lower Silesia, about fifty kilometres from our katzetlager.
"You know," the frumer (religious)
were saying, "'Yeider kanon', every shell that lands in that rotten
city, brings the 'melhumme' (war) nearer 'tsum soff'( to the end),
let's hope before Shavuot." (A Jewish holiday in May).
Two canvas-covered trucks were
parked outside the camp to take us for that daring potato expedition.
Equipped with shovels, we didn't mind that escapade, six of us and
more than a dozen SS.
"They are worried we may run
away seeing that we are going to be so close to 'Fonnie'" (Russians),
someone remarked.
There had to be a chance to
knock off a few potatoes, we all secretly hoped.
Although blessed with working
in the 'sheilroom' job, we were still constantly hungry as there,
it was too hard to steal anything and the risk of losing that priceless
job, if caught, was too great. But here, on the truck, it would
be much easier, we thought.
Under cover of night we travelled,
a bit excited and a bit worried.
"Wouldn't it be funny to be hit by a
Russian shell?"
It was Friedman the pessimist.
"It wouldn't be funny at all, not now,
so close to the end of the war, not now after years of suffering",
answered David angrily, "Not now!"
We reached the farm at midnight.
It took us only an hour to open the 'kopces' where the potatoes were
stored in winter to protect them from freezing. and to load the trucks.
"Have a look there", called out one of
the SS guards, pointing to something on the left with his long army
torch as we were about to jump on our trucks to go back to camp.
We all turned around and what
we saw was beyond dreams or imagination.
A HUGE MOUNTAIN OF SUGAR,
probably ready to be refined in the nearby empty and evacuated sugar
refinery.
We hadn't eaten sugar for months,
we hadn't even seen sugar for months, and here, tons of it!
Not knowing what to do, we
stood there, afraid to move. We looked at each other, the six
of us, then turned around and looked at them, the guards, awaiting
their reaction.
There was hope that they would
say yes. Now, with losing the war around the corner, they seemed
to be slightly different than before.
"Go for it!" one of them nodded
with his head, pointing with the machine gun in his hand towards the
sugar mountain.
We ran - we almost buried ourselves in
that sugar mountain. We ate - we ate - we ate!
"Manishtana halelu hazey?",
(why is this night different?) someone recited out of the blue.
It was Jack Rosen.
We stopped.
"Of course", David shouted.
"Of course, it's Pesach night tonight, first Seder 'nacht' 1945.”
We stood there in silence under
the moonlit sky and listened, knowing that with our families perished,
there won't be anyone to answer these traditional 'ma nishtana’ questions
any more.
"We don't have any matzo",
David continued, "We don't have any carp, but look, what He above
us has hidden here for us. HIS 'AFIKOMEN', and we found it!"
"You know, Gustav, what this
unrefined sugar is called? It's called 'melasa', Gustav,
- ‘melasa'!".
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