My name is Chaim Ferster. I am 92 years old and I survived the horrors of the Holocaust.
When the war broke out in Poland on Friday 1stSeptember 1939, I was 17 years old and lived with my family at home in a place called Sosnowiec near the German border. I had a very religious upbringing and belonged with my family to the Gerer Chassidic tradition. The Jewish population of the town was about 28,000, a little over 20% of the total population.
Various rumours were circulating about the atrocities the Germans were committing against the Jews, in their advance into Poland. Everybody was very anxious about what was to come, so on the Sunday we decided to travel to Pilc, a small town where a relative of ours lived. My father refused to come with as he said he had to look after the factory. We had a small brush factory with about 10 employees.
We managed to hire a horse and cart, and packed all our necessary belongings. After 4 hours we arrived there but by Wednesday we decided to go back as the Germans already occupied a very large part of Poland. Sosnowiec had been occupied the day after we left.
On arriving back in Sosnowiec, we found that the synagogue, which was next door to our apartment block, had been burned down.
When we went into our home, I could not recognise my father, as I had never seen him without a beard. All Jews had been ordered to shave off their beards.
He told us how on the 4thSeptember at around 5pm, the Germans had gone into various houses and assembled around 1000 Jews in a field. They then selected about 30 of the most respected orthodox leaders of the community and shot them. This was a reprisal for 4 German soldiers found dead the night before.
In Bendzin, which was about 4 miles from Sosnowiec, the synagogue was surrounded by Germans with heavy machine guns. 300 Jews were forced inside and told to pray. The Germans then set the synagogue on fire. Some of the Jews tried to get out to save themselves, only to be mowed down by the machine guns.
Jews were shot daily for no reason at all. White arm bands were introduced with the Star of David, trains for ‘Jews Only’ were introduced and Jews were restricted to living in certain areas of the town.
Early in 1941, 5000 Jews were expelled from the town of Auschwitz some 40 km away and the Jews of Sosnowiec and other surrounding towns were forced to accommodate them. Though we did not know it at the time, the reason for the expulsion, was to start construction of what would become the most infamous concentration and extermination camp of them all. Our already small apartment was split in two as we made room to share with another family.
It was shortly after this that a very painful incident, the memory of which still haunts me took place. Life was becoming more and more difficult in Sosnowiec, and my parents decided that I as their only son stood the best chance of survival and should try to travel east, into what was then Russian occupied Poland. I remember vividly being packed and ready to leave our apartment. I was in the kitchen saying goodbye to my mother and father. It was terrible, my mother gave me a blessing that, “No enemies should be able to do you any evil”. We were all in floods of tears and I only got as far as the first floor stairs before I decided I couldn’t go through with it, I couldn’t leave them.
Food rations were distributed in the town, but there was not enough for everybody. Soon afterwards my father returned to work after lunch one day to find that his factory had been confiscated. He was forced to sweep the floors and clean the toilets in his own factory under the eye of a German manager!
Daily the Germans took away men and women to the camps. Many of our friends had already disappeared but we were lucky in that our family was still intact. This was 9 months after the outbreak of the war.
At the end of July 1942, notification was sent out to every Jewish man, woman and child, regardless of age or health, to present ourselves in two weeks time at the sports stadium. We were told that the purpose of this was to register, and to have our identification papers stamped, after which we would be allowed to return home. Without the official stamp on our papers we would not be able to get a rations card, and consequently no food.
The Germans made it clear that failure to appear would mean certain death, either for the culprit or their family. We were constantly reassured and told there was nothing to worry about – nothing would happen. We wanted so badly to believe the Germans, that we allowed ourselves to be duped and willingly obeyed the orders.
On that fateful day, 12thAugust 1942, almost all the Jews of Sosnowiec, around 20,000 by this point, including my family and I, presented ourselves at the Stadium. There must have been 1000 Germans with machine guns surrounding us, we were kept there 3 days and 3 nights. The rain poured down relentlessly, as if the heavens were weeping for us.
During this time there was a selection. Disabled people, elderly men and women, and lots of others were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz. The rest of us were eventually sent home. This was the last time I saw my mother as she too was sent to Auschwitz.
Whilst all of this was going on, many Poles went in to the empty Jewish homes and ransacked them, taking whatever they wanted.
In every home, at least one family member had been sent to Auschwitz. In the streets you could find little children searching and crying, “Mummy, daddy, where are you, where are you?” to no avail. Hours later, German trucks were driving around picking up these unfortunate children and sending them on to Auschwitz.
As time went by, life was becoming more difficult. People were dying in the streets from starvation, beatings and illness, as there was hardly any medication to be had. Yet we still did not lose our religious faith. Prayers took place three times a day with someone keeping watch, as the penalty for more than three people congregating in one place was death!
In November 1942, 14 people were found praying in a cellar. They were marched out into the market place and shot. On another occasion there was a cloth merchant called Nuchim Kohn and his son who were hanged in the centre of town with a large number of Jews forced to watch. They were accused of possessing false utility labels.
At the end of 1942, my younger sister Manya was taken away.
By the beginning of 1943 the Jewish population of Sosnowiec had shrunk to about 8000. It was at this point that we were moved to a ghetto in Shrodula, which had been created to house the remaining Jews of Sosnowiec and other surrounding towns. The ghetto was around 5km away and we took only what we could carry.
In March 1943, the Germans closed the factory where I was being forced to work seven days a week as a sewing machine mechanic producing clothes for the German army. They deported a lot of the workers from the factory.
I was sent to a camp called Markstadt. On arrival we were put in a barrack and told that if we did not behave we would be shot. I met a few people who I had known back in Sosnowiec who had already been in the camp for some time. They told me how terrible the daily life there was, but after two or three days of doing nothing, I was sent to another nearby camp called Klettendorf. For the first few days I couldn’t eat the food, a watery sugar-beet soup, but I soon learned to take what I was given.
I remember that very early on in Klettendorf, I went to sleep on my bunk and they called an Appel, a rollcall. I would soon learn that Appel, which involved standing outside in what could be freezing conditions to be counted by the guards, was a daily occurrence at all camps at both the start and end of the day. On this occasion however, I slept through it and when they counted up, one was missing. I was found and given such a beating I couldn’t walk properly for the next few weeks. I didn’t realise what it was all about, but I never slept in again.
In this camp we were taught to lay bricks, and railway lines. We laboured hard, outdoors in all conditions, seven days a week with a break maybe every third Sunday.
After a few months, I along with around 100 inmates were sent by cattle truck to a much bigger camp called Faulbruck. This was a far worse place than Klettendorf, the daily routine was gruelling. We were woken at 3am and had half an hour to shower, and collect our portion of bread, margarine and black coffee.
We got a 1kg loaf of bread between 4 inmates. We cut it into four portions and weighed each by a set of homemade scales, to make sure that everybody got exactly the same weight, not a gram more, not a gram less. This had to last the whole day. Some cut it into smaller portions to last, but I ate mine right away, my hunger was so great that I could not wait. All the while the kapos in charge of the barracks would be running around like wild animals beating us with thick sticks.
By 3.30 we had to be on the appel platz for rollcall. This took place outside and could last up to 2 hours in often freezing cold conditions. Afterwards, I along with 150 or so inmates were marched by 50 guards with machine guns for 6km to a railway siding where we boarded cattle trucks, that took us to the Krupp armaments factory at Reichenbach. We were worked until around 6.30pm, when we started the long journey back to the camp. By the time we put our heads down to sleep, having again attended roll call and stood in long queues for our watery soup, it could be as late as 11pm. The next day at 3am, the whole thing started again. Many men could not take it.
I remember on one occasion that three inmates were punished for some offence or other, by being buried up to their necks by the guards, and left for 24 hours. Two of them died there in the ground.
I was comparatively fortunate at this time, as my background repairing sewing machines qualified me as an engineer. As such I was one of a very few Jews who worked inside the factory on the machines, instead of hard labour in the freezing cold outside. Although we were very closely guarded in the factory, I worked under a German master, who was a kindly older man, and smuggled me some potatoes whenever he could. This helped to keep me reasonably fit, and must have contributed to my survival.
After 3 or 4 months, we were moved to another nearby camp called Graditz. The routine here was just as rough and we continued to travel to work at the Krupp factory. In this camp I actually met a cousin and a brother-in-law of mine. I could barely recognise them as their faces were swollen with hunger. They had it much worse than me, as they were labouring outside in the freezing cold.
Despite having been close before the war, there was no joyous reunion, we would say hello and ask for any news of other relatives, but it wasn’t the same, we were too busy concentrating on day-to-day survival. I remember on one occasion I was made to help with digging outside the factory for a few days, and for their sheer amusement the guards, ordinary German soldiers in this case, made us strip naked to our waists in the minus 25 degrees cold, to make us work faster. Many could not take it and died of pneumonia.
It was around this time, that I heard that the ghetto in Sosnowiec had been liquidated. Those who resisted or hid, were shot on the spot, the others were sent to Auschwitz, so the rest of my family must have been sent there too.
Around February 1944, Typhus broke out in Graditz. The Germans sealed the camp and left us inside. People were dying rapidly as there was no medication and no help. Some of the inmates who had been doctors tried to help as best they could, but within three weeks, only about 200 out of the original 2,000 inmates lived. There but for the grace of G-d I survived.
The Typhus did get to me however, and I took ill with high fever and hallucinations. I do not know how many days I lay there, but when I came round, I started to try and sit up and my head started spinning. Eventually, I managed to sit up, but I was completely naked and in a mess. I thought I had better go down to the wash barrack and clean myself up and find some clothes. I was on the fourth level of the shelf like bunks, and was so weak that it took me a half hour to get down!
I looked at my hands and my body, I was a skeleton and could count every bone in my body. When I entered the wash barracks I found a large number of naked dead bodies stacked on top of each other – six one way and six the other on pallets.
Once the Typhus had passed, those of us who survived were sent by cattle truck to another camp called Annaberg. In this camp, I met an uncle, my mother’s brother, Yossef Mendel Oderberg. He was a watchmaker and had taught me to repair sewing machines back in Sosnowiec. He helped me quite a bit with food and general advice on how to get by in the camp.
Conditions weren’t quite as bad in this camp, and again I was sent out to work in a nearby factory with other foreign labourers, mostly French and Czech. These workers had much more freedom than us Jews and one particular Czech girl would secretly bring me sandwiches every day, leaving them on a corner, for me to take when the guards weren’t looking. I was so grateful for this!
In September 1944 I was sent to Auschwitz. This was extremely frightening. I was shocked. We arrived in cattle trucks in the middle of the night after a 24 hour journey, with very little food. When the doors slid open, the quietness and the stillness made me shudder. There was a heavy smell of carbolic. As I looked around, I could see electrified barbed wire for miles and miles. Every 10 metres or so, large light bulbs lit up rows of barracks as far as the eye could see. In the distance I could see flames coming out of chimneys on all four sides. I did not realize at the time, but these were the flames from the crematoria.
Uniformed SS men with sticks and dogs were screaming at us, “Raus, raus, raus!” When we got out of the wagons they lined us up to be counted. They were also helped by some of the Auschwitz inmates in the blue and white striped uniforms. We were put in an empty barrack for the night.
The following day, there was a selection. Some had to go to the right and some to the left. My group, which was sent to the right, went to the shower room, where we were showered. We were tattooed with a number, and taken to our wooden barracks in quarantine, which housed up to 1000 people. As you can see, my number was B10924. [Show number].
The others who were sent to the left, were never seen again.
It was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year when I was at Auschwitz. Despite our hunger, most of us fasted and prayed. Some of the men knew the entire service by heart and we followed them, whilst one inmate stood on lookout for any approaching guards.
I remember getting friendly with one of the old inmates and we got talking about the place. He said to me, “Chaim, over there is a block with about 110 Jewish children. They are getting lots of food and toys, all they need. I can’t understand why they are doing it.” 12 days later we could see these happy faces on lorries being driven to the gas chambers.
Although we were in quarantine, and not working as such, daily life was a terror. We were woken with a gong, which was very chilling, and made to stand at roll call as they counted and humiliated us. People were beaten to death daily by kapos.
One day, I was standing outside the barracks when an SS man came over and asked, “Why do you stand outside the barracks?” He took me inside and gave me such a beating. He shoved my head into the opening of the oven in the centre of the room and beat me with a stick so that I couldn’t stand straight for quite a few days.
I remember on another occasion, an Alsatian got lost and wandered into our barrack. We caught it and killed it and carved it up, cooking it to make a soup. It sounds barbaric but we were desperate and this was the closest thing we had had to a proper meal in a long time.
After about six weeks there, they were selecting engineers. I immediately volunteered to get out of this hell, and after various tests I was fortunate to be selected along with a few hundred others.
We were loaded onto cattle trucks once more, and given a larger portion of food than normal, so we knew we were in for a long journey. This was a truly terrible journey. The cattle car was incredibly cramped, and we travelled for three days and three nights during which many people died.
I remember on the second day, when the train stopped briefly, a Hungarian man pleaded that he needed to get out and do his business.
A soldier went with him, and the man managed to pick up a stick and hit the soldier over the head, only to be immediately shot by the same soldier. I think this man knew it was futile, but he couldn’t take it any longer. We didn’t react, as we were scared they would shoot the lot of us.
Eventually, we arrived at a town called Niederorschel in Germany, where we were to work in a factory assembling the wings for Junker planes. This camp was comparatively like a ‘holiday camp’. The Kapo was a German communist, a marvelous man who had been in camps since the beginning of the war, and he treated us very fairly. Through him, for the first time, we had news of the war and that it was going against Germany. As engineers, the Germans needed us and as a result there was a more relaxed atmosphere with regards discipline.
While I was working in the factory, there was an attempt by one of the inmates to sabotage the planes by cutting the electric wires in the wings. The camp called a roll call and guards, and special SS men were called in and were screaming at us and running around with machine guns. They threatened to shoot us all, unless we gave the perpetrator up, but nobody knew and nobody came forward. After a few days of punishment with less food, they let us continue as normal.
Many years later, I found out through a mutual friend, that the person responsible for the sabotage was a boy called Sholom Szweicer, who I had gone to cheder with back in Sosnowiec. He also survived and we met years later in Israel.
By the beginning of March 1945, the Allies were getting closer with more frequent air raids on the factory. Towards the end of March, the Germans closed the camp and forced us on a death march towards Buchenwald. We marched endlessly for about 8 days. Some died and others could go no further and were shot where they lay.
We finally arrived in Buchenwald on the evening of 10thApril to what was quite a chaotic atmosphere. We were told by a number of inmates that in the last week, transports of several hundred inmates were being sent out of the camp daily, with rumours that once they were a short distance from the camp they were all machine gunned and killed. As such, many were hiding within the camp.
On the following morning, the 11thApril, we were called for roll call and were being counted, ready to be marched out of the camp. Suddenly, a number of American planes appeared on the horizon and all of the German guards started to run.
A few hours later, American tanks drove through the gates. Soldiers were shouting, “You’re free, you’refree!” We couldn’t believe it. We were standing completely dazed as the soldiers were throwing lots of large blocks of chocolate. We finished them very quickly and many of us were sick from it, as we hadn’t had such rich food for years. Had they arrived a day later I wouldn’t be here.
The Americans gave us whatever we wanted, and some days later there was an American rabbi in uniform who came with matzos, as it was Pesach Sheni. In hindsight this was very pertinent timing, as Pesach Sheni takes place one month after the festival of Passover, which commemorates the Jews exodus from slavery in Egypt, and is for those who were unable to bring the Passover offering at the correct time.
Several weeks after my liberation, I was lying on my bunk and trying to realize the consequences of the last few years of my life, when suddenly an inmate shouted,“Chaim, Chaim Ferster, your sister is looking foryou!” It was my younger sister Manya, and she was standing about 30 yards away. I could not believe it.
Manya had been liberated by the British in Bergen Belsen, and had found me through lists of survivors that were interchanged at the camps. I travelled with her to Belsen to meet up with a cousin of ours Regina Bornstein who was the only other known survivor from our family. Together we were fortunate enough to travel to Sweden as part of a recuperation scheme.
From Sweden I wrote to my uncle Bernard, my father’s younger brother, who had moved to Britain before the First World War. He arranged to bring us over to Manchester, and on the 7thFebruary 1946 we arrived in England to start a new and happier life.