The whole male Jewish population aged 16 to 80 was there, regardless
of whether they were sick, weak, or simply unfit for labour. They were all
divided into two work groups and taken to work at both bridges. The work
went on for a full 24 hours without a break and cost the lives of several dozen
Jews, mainly the sick and elderly. I had very often had business dealings with
both Polish Germans and the Reichsdeutsche and had a very good opinion of
them, but here I was stunned. The only possible explanation was that they
had been given a special course in torturing Jews. There was so much cold
sadism in their treatment of the Jews that their deliberateness and methodicalness
sent shivers down your spine. The inhumane beating of everyone
with belts and rifle butts literally drove people insane, and all this was only
by way of a welcome.
The work itself was suited to highly qualified sappers, and we worked
under extreme nervous tension. The slightest insubordination met with the
most barbaric reaction. If it occurred on a bridge, the culprit would be thrown
into the water with mocking remarks, such as “the fish in the sea will have
a nice little feast,” and the like. If it happened on the river bank, he would be
kicked to death. [. . .] they ordered everyone to line up in rows and selected
every fifth man to be shot. Only a few of them were actually shot, but it is easy
to imagine how greatly the Jews were shaken by it. If work stopped for technical
reasons, we were made to do the ‘lie down — stand up’ exercise (including
80-year-olds). After that, they made us lie face down in the mud for a long
time. (There was very deep mud there, and they deliberately did it after it had
rained.) Almost all the prisoners had to undergo the mud bath. We looked
like Negroes and felt a great deal worse. Beards and peyes were yanked with
ferocious savagery, ripped and cut off. Everyone who was shot was immediately
buried in the mud. In not a single soldier — and there were quite a lot of
them — did I detect a shred of human feeling. It is difficult to list all the kinds
of torment to which we were subjected, but as Jews told me told later, various
soldiers took pains to be as innovative as possible in that respect. By chance,
a Volksdeutsche acquaintance of mine rescued me from my plight on the pretext
that I had been summoned to the town hall. Thanks to my non-Semitic
appearance and thoroughly Polish name and surname, my German friend
introduced me (at the town hall) as a Christian. Together with all present,
I had to stand and listen to the Führer’s speech. It was 3 a.m. by the time
the commandant sent me off with two officers to escort me home. When we
