The Testimony by Halina Wagowska Read Free Book Online

saw a group of women being marched out of our section of the camp. My barrack was empty so, assuming that Mother was in the group being herded out, I joined it when the guard got busy counting and yelling at those selected to leave. We were ordered onto a cattle train and there, to my relief, I found Mother. Another long, cross-country journey followed, with many dying on the way. We received a bucket of water per wagon, and a slice of bread for those who lined up at a stop in a middle of a field somewhere.
    On arrival at this new camp there were showers, and our soiled uniforms were exchanged for a variety of civilian clothing. Each carried a number preceded by the letters ‘PV’ that was printed on the front and back, below shoulder level. Very small dresses were issued to tall people and large ones to petite figures. The overseers were helpless with laughter as we were made to march round and round in a circle.
    ‘Old’ inmates told us that this was Stutthof, a concentration camp in East Prussia on the coast of the Baltic Sea. The letters ‘PV’ stood for Politische Verbrecher , meaning political criminals. Inmates in other sections were German communists, Russian POWs, saboteurs, among others. In a distant section we could see a group of women with long, blonde hair. They looked healthy and dignified, in complete contrast to us. We learned they were Estonian freedom fighters. What were we doing here?
    Next to us, in the male section, was a raised platform with gallows for public hangings. At the corner of each section was a tower with an armed guard. From dusk to dawn the barbed-wire fences carried a high-voltage current.
    Stutthof differed from Birkenau in other aspects. It was smaller and surrounded by a forest, and our barracks had no bunks, only some straw on the floors. The filth was horrible. The occasional fumigation and hosing down of the barrack helped only briefly.
    The latrine was an open hole in the ground outside with slippery edges, making its use fraught with the danger of falling in. The overseers were mostly female, pathologically sadistic and highly inventive in ways of punishing and humiliating us. Earlier arrivals to Stutthof called it ‘the bottom of hell’.
    Apart from early morning rollcall and the removal of dead bodies piled outside the barrack, there was nothing to do all day officially. There was a group selected to go to work on nearby farms, some on a daily basis. Others stayed on the farms for a period. They were well fed there, and on return would smuggle in a few carrots or small pieces of other food.
    I was not selected and was glad to stay with my mother, again at a safe distance. She was now very weary and emaciated.
    It was in this nether world that I met and befriended the remarkable Frieda. I don’t know her surname—we all left those outside the prisons—but I still remember her number: PV 83356. (I was PV 84065.) She was sent to Stutthof some months earlier from Budapest, where till then Jews were allowed relative freedom. She was a university professor and I think that her subject was sociology—not something I could well comprehend then.
    I think Frieda was in her fifties, her re-growing hair a silvery brown. She was a gentle, wise and knowledgeable lady. I spent most days with her and the nights with my mother at the other end of the barrack, because here too they were separating families. Mother’s friend and neighbour was a lady from Warsaw, still very beautiful, whose golden hair re-grew upwards on her shaven head so that it looked like a halo. Goldie was her name now. She was a physician, and a warm and caring person.
    Frieda and I talked in German. Her intellect impressed me, and I grew very fond of her. We were an odd pair: she a mentor and a teacher to me, I a self-appointed bodyguard to her. Towards the end of the war I was becoming an accomplished prisoner, skilled in the tricks of the trade, with a variety of survival mechanisms and a sharpened sense of