Statement
Written with Karel Abeles, born 4. 2. 1926, former prisoner of the concentration camps Lodz, Auschwitz, and Mauthausen, currently residing in Prague XIII., Ruská 934, Jewish nationality, profession student.
I was born in Tepl.Šanov, where I lived with my father, mother, and older brother until the Sudetenland
was annexed. From October 1938 until October 1941 we lived in Prague. That month, Jews
were required to register and the first transports to Poland took
place. Our entire family left on the third transport to Lodz. It
happened like this: we received a summons from the Jewish Community to come to the Trade Fair Palace in
Prague on October 23rd, 1941, with a luggage limit of 50 kilograms per
person. Our carrier brought our luggage, which was labelled with our number. After all of
the formalities had been dealt with (handing over the keys to our apartment, and all of our
gold, silver, etc.), our citizenship cards were stamped with Evakuiert
26. 10. 1941.
We marched past SS
Grupenführer Fidler, who took away all of our musical
instruments and any luggage that looked fancy. At 6 o’clock in the morning, we boarded a
passenger train that departed from the Bubeneč train station at 1
o’clock in the afternoon. It traveled along a strange route through Dresden, Görlitz, Liegnitz, Vratislav, Lodz. Schupo accompanied
us on this journey. The train ride lasted 32 hours, and we were given water only once. We
got out on some sort of provisional platform. We later learned that this was Lodz. The
Jewish police was waiting for us on the ramp, and it split us into groups and took us to an
empty school building. There, 136 people
were stuffed into a room measuring 6x6 meters. Our living
conditions improved, and thereafter 78 people would stay in this room. We slept on the
floor. I soon became sick with angina.
Right after I got better, my mother
came down
with
pneumonia. Because the hospitals were too full, she had to lie on the floor while she was sick.
The rainy autumn weather, the abnormal accommodations, and the overcrowded living
conditions produced a lot filth and made many people sick.
After three weeks, we were all lice-infested and there was practically nothing we could do to prevent it.
We ate the last of the food we brought with
us and then went hungry. We received 20 decagrams of bread
and one soup per day. The Polish Jews didn’t help us, not a bit. We didn’t get the fuel for heating that we
were allotted and received less and worse kinds of potatoes and vegetables than they did. We were forced to work
hard at night during the winter, and as a consequence my father became ill
with phlegmon and died of exhaustion on 5. 3. 1942. I
worked as a blacksmith and my brother as a leatherworker. At the beginning of 1942,
there were mass deportations from the ghetto, which
emptied many apartments, and the collectives
were gradually shut down. In
June 1942, we were given an apartment. I contracted a bad case of hepatitis and I became severely weak. When I got better, I was assigned easier
work in a factory that manufactured wooden products. In August 1942, 25,000 Jews from the ghetto were
sent to the gas chambers. My mother was also supposed to be transported, but I bribed the Jewish police, and so I managed to free my mother. But her mental and physical condition was very poor at the time, and
she died on 12. 10. 1942. My brother, who at the same time was tied to a bed with serious tuberculosis, died after having suffered greatly on 19.
11. 1942. I buried the 3 closest and dearest people to me according to the Jewish funeral
custom.
This was a very difficult time for me. After an 11 hour work shift, I had to wash my own laundry, cook my own meals, and, worse, do my own shopping. I sold everything that I had, I earned my living, and that’s how I supported myself. In the autumn of 1943 we were given permission to send parcels to the ghetto. I received a parcel from my friend Heinz Prossnitz from Prague every week, which elevated my spirits as well as made me feel good physically. The liquidation of the ghetto began in May 1944, since the front was advancing. But we didn’t know that the line of attack stopped at Warsaw. Because we believed that the Red Army would arrive soon, we ignored the order to leave the ghetto and hid. Neither machine guns, nor
greetedby prisoners in prison garb and when I asked them what is being produced in the factories, they replied with ironic smiles:
chocolate. I didn’t believe that, but I had no idea that hundreds of thousands of our fathers, mothers, and children were being burnt in them. We were in Birkenau near Auschwitz. After the selection process, we were sent to work as expert mechanics and dismantled airplanes that had been shot down. Camp life, as has often been described, set in. I witnessed terrible things. Hungarian, Slovak, and Theresienstadt transports arrived. This lasted until January 1945.
The Russians once again attacked near Krakow and threatened
Upper
Silesia. We were evacuated on January 18th. The train connection
didn’t exist any longer and so we set out in wooden shoes with blankets and one loaf of
bread for the journey. We walked
all night and day and our strength disappeared. The only thing we had left was our will and
the hope of being liberated soon. Hundreds of dead
bodies of those who marched before us and had already died
lay at the edge of the roads. Finally, on the fourth day, we boarded a train somewhere near
Katowice. They
squeezed 120 of us into one open car and, without giving us anything to eat, we
rode for 4 days and 4 nights. We were numb, like animals. In Mor. Ostrava
and Přerov, the
inhabitants gave us some food. The SS
shot at them, but this didn’t stop them and they helped us however they could. On 27. 1. 1945, our death
transport ended in Mauthausen near Linz. Without getting anything to eat,
they sent us off to the hot showers and then they made us run naked and wet into an ice
storm. We waited for hours until they let us into the block.
There were 1,200 people in the building. I didn’t sleep for 4 weeks. The Czechs there stuck together and helped
us get food whenever possible. In February 1945, I was transported to Gusen. This was
the worst I have ever suffered. We worked
in the underground Messerschmitt airplane factory under terrible conditions: not enough
food, little sleep, dirt, back-breaking and long labor,
bad air, beatings, and cold. I don’t need to go into the details, just the fact that in 3
months the camp had to take up a whole new workforce because the previous one died a
natural
death is enough. This means that in each block, which had 800 people,
an average of 10 prisoners
died every day. When I was at my worst, when my strength was starting to leave me,
we were liberated: on May 5th the Americans disarmed our guards and all of the prisoners left the camp. I
found shelter in the Czech civilian labor
camp in Linz, where I quickly recovered.
On May 18th, 1945, I returned to Prague. None of my relatives returned. I am the only living member from the part of my family that remained in Europe.
In Prague, on 16. VIII. 1945 Karel Abeles
Statement was accepted by:
Marta Kratková
Zeev Scheck Signatures of witnesses
Robert Weinberger
Alice Ehrmannová
On behalf of the archive: Alex. Schmiedt
18. 8. 1945