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Two Decent Germans

By Manya Friedman

I met them at the first concentration camp I was sent to. Their appearances and personalities were completely different from each other. One, called Shaika, was emaciated, thin. He had to wear suspenders to hold up his trousers. He had a lean, drawn face, protruding cheekbones, searching eyes, and a pipe forever hanging from the side of his mouth—even when it wasn’t lit. He only removed it when he spoke, which happened infrequently. He was forever restless, with hurried steps and a very serious expression. His stiff arm with a deformed hand and crushed fingers, which he constantly held bent and close to his body, indicated that he was already a casualty of the war.

The other was older—I do not recall his name. We did not address any of the bosses by their names; we could only speak to them when we were asked to speak. He was very tall with broad shoulders. His frame filled the entire doorway when he entered. He was a jovial man with a jolly expression, and when his jolly expression turned to full-hearted, roaring laughter, which happened quite often, his entire body shook as if in a convulsion. From his happy expression one could not tell that he was the owner of a brick-making factory that had been taken over by his own government for some secret production and that he had become an employee in our factory.

The two of them were my bosses in my first forced labor camp, in Gleiwitz, Germany. The thin one was the “big” boss, and the other, his assistant. I often recall some events that cause me to think of them as decent Germans.

The camp in Gleiwitz where we had just arrived was privately owned by a German company. There was a brand new factory, not yet well organized, and new barracks. Our job was to produce soot (carbon black), the key ingredient in the production of synthetic rubber used to manufacture the tires on which the Wehrmacht depended.

I and several other girls were chosen to work in the first department of the factory, to keep hourly records of the material used, weigh and record the output from a sample machine, and record the oil waste. When the director of the factory was selecting us from the line, he remarked that he was looking for some intelligent girls. The irony was that most of us were very young—we had barely finished elementary school when the war started and our education ended. For some reason I was chosen to be in charge of the group of girls; therefore, I had daily contact with the two bosses. My job was to deliver to their office after each shift the records kept by the girls, figure out the averages, and, when necessary, explain the discrepancies.

At this point our barracks were still new and clean. We still had our personal belongings. In addition to the German camp elder, we had a Jewish camp elder and Jewish overseers who walked us from the barracks to the factory and back. Soon rumors started to circulate that the camp would be taken over by the SS and we would become a subcamp of Auschwitz. Once I mentioned this to our “big” boss. I added that our heads would be shaved, and German women (Kapos) would oversee us, to which he replied, ”Do not worry, to me you will remain the same Maneea [his pronunciation of my name].” As for the Kapos, he added, “Their job will probably be more to be available to the SS men than to watch you.” As it turned out, the SS did take over our camp and everything changed—everything except our two bosses, who still treated us humanely.

For example, whenever we worked the morning shift, the jolly boss would send me to the office, which was quite a distance away, to get the newspaper for him, but each time he warned me not to dare even a glance at the paper on the way back for fear that I would be watched. However, when we worked the night shift he would leave the door to the office ajar, part of the newspaper sticking out from the desk drawer located near the door, knowing that we would take a peek while he went to take a nap. One of us did manage to read some of the paper while another was on the lookout. Of course, there wasn’t much real news—it was mostly propaganda. In turn he trusted us to watch out for unexpected visitors and for the girl nearest his secret retreat to wake him. Sometimes we even had to motion for him to smooth down his hair or button his trousers.

One day, one of the girls from our shift ran away from the factory. When the jolly boss heard about it, he laughed so hard his whole body shook. It was visible that he admired her bravery and kept repeating admiringly, “Die kleine H [the little H]….” She indeed was small in stature. On the other hand, the SS men lined us all up and sternly warned us, “If this happens again, you will all go through the Schornstein [chimney].”

Another memorable event occurred once on the night shift. Two of the girls who routinely disposed the waste to the containers outside thought they saw a mirage. The girls could not believe their own eyes. Right in front of the factory, on the rails that served to deliver the oil tanks, was diverted a car full of potatoes. What to do with this found treasure? We had to think fast. We could not bring the potatoes to camp for fear we would be searched, which occurred often. Where could we hide some? We could only roast a few on the machine’s burner. But how could we pass up such an opportunity? I hesitantly confided in our “big” boss our dilemma. He immediately came up with a solution. He let us use his hip-high fisherman’s waders, which he used whenever he went to the packing station, and after we filled them up with potatoes he locked them in his office cabinet. We had a ball for the next few nights, roasting a few potatoes at a time on the burner.

In our camp’s maintenance department worked a group of young men from France and Poland. They were not forced laborers like the rest of us and could occasionally go home. Among them was a young man from our hometown. Each time he went home we anxiously awaited his return. He would bring some general news about the situation of the remaining Jews in the ghetto. 

The news lately was disheartening—hardly any Jews were left. Of course that made us very sad, we cried, and we often neglected our chores. We no longer cared what might happen to us.

Often those young men passing by noticed that the gauge on an oil tank was showing almost empty and they would open the valve to fill up the tank. I noticed that sometimes even our bosses, pretending that they were checking something in the area, would fill the tank—a job that was one of the girls’ responsibilities. 

The jolly boss noticed the changes in us, and once he asked me what was going on. After I explained the situation to him—about the news we were getting from home, that there was hardly anybody left alive—he said to me, “You must try to hang on until the war is over. Then you will have it better than us.”

As I think about them now, they were two decent men, though Germans. They did not give us anything really, maybe just some dignity by the fact that they called us by our names, not by numbers. Besides hunger for food, we were just starved for some humane gesture.

©2005, Manya Friedman. The text, images, and audio and video clips on this website are available for limited non-commercial, educational, and personal use only, or for fair use as defined in the United States copyright laws.