The Dentist Of Auschwitz by Benjamin Jacobs Read Free Book Online

again. As the first German troops were replaced with new ones, more discriminatory laws were piled on our backs. Jews had been barred from associating with any other race. The Aryans shall be spared the impurity of Jewish blood, the laws said.
    By the summer of 1940 the vise around us tightened even more. The Nazis decided to clear Dobra’s slums and create a ghetto there. Some of the poor Jews who had lived there for years could only keep one room. They had to give the rest to other families. We had to move out of the school and were given a room with a dirt floor. We came to realize that even our cramped quarters had had advantages. By then our home was just a distant memory.
    The ghetto rations were our only source of food, and hunger became the number one enemy. Butter, milk, sugar, and flour were almost never available. Even though we were ready to part with anything to win another day of life, those who came to trade with us, masquerading as do-gooders, did so mostly for personal gain. Because we had fewer and fewer tradable goods, in time the merchants stopped coming.
    Each morning all Jewish men, and sometimes women, had to report for arduous and demeaning chores. I’ll never forget the strain of kneeling on the side of the road and breaking down large stones with a heavy hammer for road construction.
    In the meantime the Nazis rolled through Europe with unparalleled ease. To the west they were in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In the north they were in Norway. To the southeast, Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria were under their control. In North Africa, General Rommel was near El Alamein. The Nazis seemed to extend their influence to the entire world. It seemed unlikely that Great Britain and the Soviet Union were a match for Hitler’s armies. In their speeches, Hitler, Himmler, and Goebbels used harsher, more venomous anti-Jewish rhetoric. For the Germans to fail was unthinkable.
    Deprived of hope and broken in spirit, we waited for a miracle that we never really expected. Our biggest dilemma was that our people would not believe what was about to happen. We defied conventional wisdom. At each new Nazi anti-Jewish action, people commonly thought, That’s as far as they’ll go! What else can they do to us? But we were living in a world that didn’t make sense, and what we thought to be inconceivable happened. Escape from a Warthegau ghetto held extraordinary risks. Even if we were successful, where would we go? We had to accept whatever our fate had in store for us.
    Suddenly the tires screeched, and the truck swerved to avoid a cow crossing the road. I opened my eyes. I was on the truck, and my father was staring at me, reading my expression.
    A while later the truck pulled off the road and stopped on a grassy embankment. The guard yelled, “Get off, everyone, and relieve yourselves in the woods, but be back in five minutes.” The guards now formed a cordon around us. “If one of you escapes, all of you will pay for it.” We knew it wasn’t an idle threat.
    There was a dense forest on the side where the trucks had stopped and a green meadow with red poppies across the road. When I went into the forest, the trees were so dense that they repelled nearly all light. Pervasive in the near dark was the scent of spruce. Twigs snapped under my feet. After relieving myself, I returned to the truck. I found Dr. Neumann’s eyes fixed on me.
    “You there, come here,” he snapped at me. I wondered why, of all of us, he would call me, so I didn’t respond. But when I once more heard his command, I turned. “I am calling you,” he said.
    Though I knew that being singled out by a Nazi often meant nothing good, I had no choice but to go. I rushed over to him and stopped at a distance of two meters, as Nazi protocol required. Don’t show him you’re afraid, I thought. “Jawohl,” I said loud and clear. He asked my name and age. When I answered, he asked me what I did before the war.