for Samuel and Sylvia
Try as I might, I can’t forget the little sewing machine
that accompanied me through the last days of the war, all the way from Radom,
my place of birth in east-central Poland, to Vaihingen an der Enz, a farming
village turned slave labour camp amid the forests of southern Germany, where it
was dumped unceremoniously, abandoned forever
Nowadays I, Sheva Lansky, am living out my last years in
Caulfield, a leafy, spacious suburb of Melbourne, that still retains a sizeable
Jewish population, though very few of the original post-war immigrants. Which explains why I have been requested by
the Jewish Museum to put on record my personal experience of the Holocaust.
From the time I was a young child in knickerbockers, I was
trained to make teller caps. It wasn’t
long before I became an accomplished and dedicated craftsman. You had to be smart to grub out a living
during those dreadfully dark days of the Depression and World War II to offer
some contribution to our down-at-heel family, no matter how meagre. Most men wore hats then, so at least my
modest job seemed secure. Until the
local cap maker was unable to pay me back some money he owed. Instead, he handed over a cap maker machine.
Small and handy, it was easily
portable, and, as I quickly discovered with my nimble fingers, easy to work.
When the German army invaded my country in September, 1939,
Jewish life changed savagely over night.
A crowded ghetto was rushed up for about 40,000 hard-pressed Jews. At first I carried on making caps at home
for the locals in exchange for a bite to eat.
In August, 1942 almost all but a few thousand Jews were deported to the
extermination camp at Treblinka, a farming village in north-eastern Poland set
in the heart of forest: ancient white
cottages with rooves of thatch and wooden Catholic churches in miniature and
the single-lane bridge for horse-drawn carts and those sinister trains of
steaming death. In less than two hours
of their arrival, deportees were gassed to death and their bodies promptly
disposed of. Among the dead were my
parents and my three sisters. My
younger brother Berek and I managed to duck into the so-called ‘small
ghetto’. Such was my good luck, which
continued when I found odd jobs in the ammunition factory on the outskirts of
Radom.
Eventually plucking up courage, I dared speak to the senior
prisoner, Lageralteste Friedman, explaining that I could run up caps for the SS
soldiers. In charge of the Radom ghetto
were the supervisor, SS Obersturmfuhrer Siegman and Schaarfuhrer Hecker, the
Rapportfuhrer, responsible for administrative duties. I was called into their office a few days later and promptly
ordered to make tellermutzen (special flat top caps) for the SS. I was given a box to store materials that
doubled as a seat while I was sewing.
My task was extremely precise:
the caps had to fit perfectly, otherwise . . .
The German military put great emphasis on the sharp cut and
élan of their uniforms, including their headgear, which lent these blue-eyed,
blonde-haired physical specimens a terrifying intimidating aspect, giving them
extra height and leanness, an assured sense of authority and ruthless
efficiency. I trembled at the prospect
of making some stitching error or even haplessly falling out of favour.
One day Lagerfuhrer Siegman called me into his office,
ordering me to make ‘eine schone Mutze’, a splendid cap for the
Obersturmbanfuhrer from Lublin. As I
was about to measure the size of this visitor’s head, he curtly turned
away. I bumbled on about how necessary
it was to ascertain the exact measurement.
Reluctantly, not without some awkward fidgeting and fussing, Siegman
permitted me to take the measure.
Naturally, I took great care to fit the top cap perfectly. Later, when I delivered it, with no little
trepidation, half a loaf of bread was lying on Siegman’s desk. After keeping me waiting for some while, the
Obersturmfuhrer motioned me over. ‘Take that away!’ he barked impatiently, not
glancing up, as if begrudging.
It wasn’t long before Radom was converted into a
concentration camp. I kept my head down
and my nose clean, quietly running up these caps until the final
liquidation. Then all we remaining Jews
were pushed and prodded out of Radom.
First, we hobbled along by foot, then were herded into a cattle train,
until finally we reached Auschwitz.
Little did we know what this name would signify. Nowadays, its very sound sickens me with
pitiless blasts from hell.
With me all this while, the little head of my machine and a
bit of fabric that I discreetly carried.
In Auschwitz, the women and children, the elderly and infirm
were hustled off the trains, screamed at, abused, threatened and struck before
being driven away in trucks. Following
a rigorous inspection, our group of men continued our journey in the
trains. A question was frequently
thrown at my younger brother: ‘How old
are you?’ Berek would stand on tiptoe
and mutter, ‘Fifteen, sir.’
Thankfully, the young lad was granted permission to join us,
having spent a frightening night on a cattle train. When we departed from Auschwitz next morning, we had no idea
where we were heading or what was our intended purpose. Peering out through streams of grey mist and
steam from our rattling engine, we caught glimpses through the double-barbed
wire of heavily armed guards staring back at us. beneath the towering concrete
of watchtowers and embedded searchlights.
Shunted into Vaihingen, we were affronted by two barracks,
no kitchen, no facilities, no nothing.
There were, however, prefabricated sections for barracks, which we were
commanded to assemble at once. Every
morning for roll call we would stand outside on parade, before being fed a
small portion of bread and hot coffee water.
On starvation diet, I was sent outside the camp to work for twelve hours
a day in the quarry, carrying stone, rubble, sand and grit. The most urgent task was to repair the
damage to the Luznik Arms factory to satisfy the desperate but unrealistic
demands of the German military. Many of
our stick-thin prisoners were sick and dying – there was just the one filthy,
stinking latrine for the original two thousand prisoners – others fell into the
mire of faeces or dropped dead from exhaustion and withering cold or were carried off by the typhoid
epidemic. Mortality rates were
horrendous.
A few weeks dragged by, then one bitter morning
Oberschaarfuhrer Hecker took a headcount of prisoners. As he was passing by me, I made so bold to
address him.
‘I am the Mutzenmacher,’ I blurted in a voice made hoarse by
fear and lack of drinking water. ‘I can make you some splendid caps.’
Turning, with a contemptuous sneer, he looked me up and
down, then with furrowed brow nodded slowly, as if weighing up the
consequences.
To my astonishment as well as great relief, both of which I
tried not to show, he ordered me to go to the Schneiderwerkstatte. Standing over me, he grabbed my ear and
twisted. ‘I hope for your sake you are a good honest worker.’
There, at least, I was warm. From time to time I was tossed some extra scraps of bread by the
least callous of the SS men.
One time, though, disaster struck! The special curved needle of my little cap machine broke. I couldn’t find the right-sized replacement
needle to fit the machine. I grew
frantic, then an idea hit me. I found
some steel nails lying about.in dark, dusty corners. I took a lidful.of water and a stone and started to sharpen and
shape the nail to create a new needle.
When I finally achieved the right shape, my hands were bleeding. I bore away with a small, sharp, pointed
nail to create a thin hole and threaded the cotton through. I kept manipulating with my fingers and the
nail, but I was highly nervous. I knew
that my life depended on repairing the machine. Such was my relief and joy when at last a copy of the original
needle gradually emerged. In the
struggle, I’d completely forgotten about my injured fingers and the tell-tale
drops of blood.
Always at the back of my mind, though, this under-sized
machine had a complicated stitch, so would it work? Miraculously, it did! I
was helpless with excitement, unusual and unwise sentiments to reveal in a
labour camp, feelings that I was compelled to conceal.
I continued plying my craft, somewhat mechanically then, until
the last few survivors were bundled out
of Vaihingen like dirty washing to another unknown sink-hole. Vague rumours of a French force closing in
were whispered about. In the panicky
rush, exhausted and feeble, I left my little cap maker machine behind. Somehow we eventually stumbled into some
camp called Dachau, our last destination.
We fervently prayed that it wouldn’t take long for Allied soldiers to
free us emaciated wretches from further starvation and put us out of our
misery.
Even now, some seventy years later, I find myself still
conjuring up the memory of that little cap maker machine.
Michael Small
