“Put On Ice” in
Bergen Belsen
When 17-year-old Leslie Meisels insisted that his mother and two brothers join a transport going who knows where, all he knew was that they had to get out of the terrible holding facility in Debrecen, Hungary. Luckily, that decision put them among the roughly 20,000 “exchange Jews” whose lives had been bartered for gold, diamonds and cash in a secret deal between Rudolf Kastner and Adolf Eichmann.
This fateful trip into the unknown eventually landed Leslie and his family at the now-infamous Bergen-Belsen , where Leslie had a very unique position from which to witness the daily horrors and happenings in the Nazi death camp.
Below are excerpts from his memoirs Suddenly The Shadow Fell …
The Bergen-Belsen camp was about halfway between Hannover and Hamburg in northwestern Germany. When we arrived at the gates of the camp in mid-afternoon, the winter weather was bitterly cold, rainy and snowy. I saw a long main street lined with pleasant bungalow-like buildings on one side — which turned out to be the guards’ quarters — then a kitchen complex, and farther down, a dark building with a tall chimney from which black smoke billowed. On the other side of the street were large blocks of barracks separated by barbed wire and in them I later saw hundreds and hundreds of emaciated, staggering and skeletal male and female inmates wearing striped uni- forms made of thin fabric.
The guards led us into the right side of a building where we had to disrobe and shower. Then our clothing and belongings were given back to us and our group was taken to block 11, barracks F. Blocks were known by number, and the barracks within them, by letter. We soon found out that block 11 was a Sonderlager, which means special camp. We didn’t yet know exactly what that meant and why it was “special,” but we soon learned that the very fact that we remained together was unusual; in the other blocks, men and women weren’t kept together. It was also different that we were given back our own clothing –everybody else in Bergen-Belsen was dressed in the striped Häftling (prisoner) uniform, with no overcoats or other warm clothing. Back at the farm in Hollabrunn, my mother had told me to put my stamps, which I had brought from my album, into small envelopes, and she sewed them into the lining of my jacket. Those stamps survived with me inside my ragged jacket.
After liberation, we found out that our unusual situation was largely due to a single individual, Rezső (Rudolf) Kasztner, a Hungarian Jew originally from Kolozsvár (Cluj), Transylvania. Through his efforts, an unprecedented agreement was reached between some western Jewish organizations and high-ranking SS officers Adolf Eichmann and Kurt Becher. Using bribery, manipulation and cajolery, approximately 30,000 Hungarian Jews would be, as they referred to it, “put on ice” — taken to Austria for slave labour and later exchanged, for money and other goods, to eventually end up in neutral Switzerland. The only condition requested — and agreed to — was that these de- portees be remnants of families with children whose fathers were in the forced labour service. Kasztner, as a Hungarian Jew, was negotiating specifically on behalf of Hungarians and since the majority of Europe’s Jewry had already been slaughtered, only the Hungarian deportees fit the requirements. In the end, about 18,000 Hungarian Jews were actually brought to Austria.
A very interesting coincidence happened as my mother, grand- mother, brothers and I entered the barracks: on a worn-out cabinet, among other words scratched into the wooden surface, I noticed a message that read, “Today Dec.4.1944 they are taking me and my family away from here, we do not know where to. Avrom Jungreis rabbi of Szeged.” This had special meaning to us because he was the eldest son of our beloved rabbi from our hometown who had blessed me in Strasshof. He was the same age as my father and had grown up with him, so we knew him and his family very well. My mother and grandmother and I often talked about it later, that we had been so close to seeing him in Bergen-Belsen.
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In our Sonderlager, the biggest difference I noticed from other blocks was that we were not forced to work. Every single day, regard- less of rain, snow or cold, we were ordered to stand for an Appell, a roll call, from about 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., lined up in columns of five to be counted.
Across the main street from our block was the kitchen complex for the entire concentration camp. SS guards on motorcycles or in cars patrolled the street and prisoners pushed and pulled wagons along it, either with supplies for the kitchen or dead bodies piled on like stacked wood. We soon learned that to our left stood the crema- torium, which constantly, day and night, belched out black, horrible-smelling smoke. It was the smell of burning flesh, from Jews and others — political prisoners or Gypsies (Roma) or other “non-desirable” human beings. Sometimes, looking through the barbed wire, we saw some of the emaciated men who were pulling or pushing the wagons collapse. When that happened, the man was stripped of his clothing, thrown on top of the wagon and taken to the crematorium whether or not he was dead.
Bergen-Belsen didn’t have gas chambers, but we later heard that it was infamous for being one of the cruellest of all the concentration camps. Its inmates were annihilated in unprecedented numbers through starvation, illness, sadistic beatings, and by being worked to death. Inmates arrived continually but the population of the camp pretty much stayed the same because of all the deaths. When the crematorium couldn’t consume all the dead bodies, they were piled up in a mountain near it.
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It soon became evident just how different our Sonderlager was when we didn’t experience the level of physical abuse we saw on the other side of the barbed wire dividers. The other prisoners were beaten regularly, without reason, just at the guards’ whims. We saw them beaten with rifle butts and sticks, and we saw some of them being shot to death just for not being able to do the work they had been ordered to do.
We were also less restricted in our movements after the 10:00 p.m. curfew and were allowed to leave the barracks to go to the latrines. On a December night during Chanukah in 1944, some young men in our block pretended to go to the latrines and instead came in our barracks near the window close to our bunk beds and entertained us by singing Chanukah and other Hebrew songs — “Ma’oz Tzur,” “Hatikva” and “Tumbalalaika,” with its repetitive refrain, as well as “Techezakna,” with its lyrics translated into Hungarian. The latter song speaks about a time when all the chalutzim scattered all over the world will be in the land of the Jews and a Jewish flag will fly at the top of Jerusalem. The majority of us, me included, had never heard it before. Living amidst such hopelessness, hearing its uplifting, heartwarming and inspiring words were the most beautiful, unforgettable experience. Even now, when I think about this moment, I get goosebumps.
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On the night of my eighteenth birthday, February 20, 1945, I wit- nessed something extremely disturbing. Sometime after the 10:00 p.m. curfew we heard agonizing screams coming from outside our barracks. I went over to the window and defrosted a small hole with my breath so I could see the next block, which was about one metre away from the window. I saw a large group of inmates herded in there — already looking to be on the verge of collapse — being beaten with rifle butts and sticks with nails and other metal objects protruding from them. The scene that played out in front of me has forever re- mained in my mind and caused many nightmares. Just a few feet from my face, a man was savagely beaten by an SS guard using a stick with nails and as he fell down, the guard yelled at him to get up. When the man couldn’t, he kept beating him until he died right there and then. We found out later that those men had been driven thousands of kilo- metres on foot from a forced labour camp in the copper mines of Bor, Yugoslavia during those winter months. I tell this horrific story to the students who visit the Toronto Holocaust Centre to illustrate the fact that such hatred-fuelled incidents like this from my past should never become their future.
