Holocaust Years

Naftali gave oral testimony about his experiences in the Holocaust several times.

Kean College Interview  - In 1989, Kean College (now Kean University) conducted and recorded an extensive interview with Naftali. Four tapes were generated over two days a month apart, each tape an hour long.

Spielberg Foundation - The USC Shoah Foundation interviewed Naftali in a more structured format, having him answer questions.  The foundation only gives access to family members (they do not ask for proof of the relationship) and you have to formally request the interview

Interviews with Dovid Laks - In 2014, Dovid Laks (son of Naftali) conducted a series of interviews with his father, covering life in Zmigrod and the Holocaust years

The content below is derived from our memories of Naftali's speaking about the Holocaust, boosted by the recordings and the transcript.

The Germans Arrive

The Germans invaded Poland on Friday, September 1, 1939 and overran the country within weeks.  Poland was divided, with the Russians controlling the eastern half and the Germans, the west, where Zmigrod is situated.  Naftali was 17 years old.  All of Zmigrod tried to follow the unfolding events as closely as possible.  Planes flew overhead--a major event for Zmigrod.  A policeman told the residents that these were Polish planes, but the truth came out later that the war planes were German.   

The school principal owned the only radio in town.  He stationed the radio at a window and people would gather to hear the news.  Nevertheless, the town did not know that the war had started until they went to Jaslow for the weekly market day on Friday.  In Jaslow they heard about the bombings and realized that the war had begun.  

The Jews had few illusions about the Germans plans for them.  Naftali and his sister Esther's friend tried to flee eastwards towards the Russian zone of Poland but the German advanced faster.  After traveling 60 miles, partly on foot and partly by hitching rides on a freight train, they were overtaken by the Germans and were told to return to Zmigrod.  

Naftali's mother Rivka  and the family prepared for the impending catastrophe as best as they could.  False papers were acquired for the daughters, to allow them to pass for non-Jewish Poles with the last name Laksovna.  Aunt Fradl's daughter, Chana, living in Jaslow, procured a false document to certify that Naftali was a trained tailor.

The Germans arrived in Zmigrod shortly before  Rosh Hashana in 1939.   On Rosh Hashana, men came to daven in shul and were chased out by German soldiers.  A few hours later, the SS arrived.  Had they found any Jews in shul, they would likely have killed them, as happened in other towns.  They tried unsuccessfully to destroy the shul, which was a very solid stone building.  Instead, they destroyed the Bais Medrash, a newer building adjoining the shul.

It was around this time that the Lodz and Krakow ghettos were set up.  All the Jews in these cities were herded into the ghetto zone, which was located in an undesirable part of the city.  The poorer Jews had been living in that section.  These Jews were expelled from their houses to make room for the more prosperous Jews from the nicer parts of the city and their former occupants were forced into the country side, including to Zmigrod.  Eighty years later, Naftali was very indignant at this injustice as he shared the story. The Laks family hosted such a family one Friday night.  When they served the chicken soup, a daughter asked for the little square noodles that she was used to.  The Lakses were taken aback--these noodles were considered a luxury item by Zmigrod standards.  Apparently, even the poor in Lublin lived better than the people of Zmigrod.

The Jews were now required to wear a yellow star with the word "Jude" whenever they went out.  When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Germans confiscated all fur since they needed warmer garments for the colder northern climate.  Jews were now forbidden to own fur.  The Germans also prohibited any kind of gatherings, including for prayer.  Nevertheless, Jews risked their lives to pray together clandestinely in private homes.  

Able-bodied men, including Naftali, were rounded up for forced labor for the next two and a half years, until the summer of 1942.  The work was unpleasant and very strenuous: cleaning outhouses, paving roads, and clearing snow. Naftali contracted pneumonia.  His family tried to bring him to the hospital in Jaslow for medical treatment, but were turned back because the Germans had forbidden hospitals from treating Jews.  A local physician treated his very high fever by having him take cold baths.  This treatment was successful and Naftali recovered after his family had given up hope.  The doctor told Rivka, Naftali's mother, that Naftali would never be able to perform hard labor again.

A middle-aged German soldier, a former policeman who had been drafted into the army, was quartered with the Laks family.  He was a decent man and he became friends with the family.  Rivka cooked him a goose to bring home with him when he was given time off, and he brought back for them a useful but illegal gift.  Eventually, he was sent to the Eastern Front and they never heard from him again.

Life was bearable most of the time, except when the SS was in town.  Naftali remembered how they could tell what kind of Shabbos they would have depending on whether they spotted SS vehicles at the German headquarters.  However, in the summer of 1942, the Nazis decided to start eliminating the Jews of Zmigrod.  This was done in two stages, about 6 weeks apart.  

The Sisters' Tale

Much of the information here was supplied by Bertha, Naftali's second oldest sister, when she visited America to attend a wedding.  Cousin Rivka, Bertha's daughter, also contributed material and Naftali shared what he remembered being told by his sisters.  

Weeks after the first liquidation of the Jews of Zmigrod, the Germans prepared to deport every remaining Jew to make the town Judenrein (empty of Jews).  

Rivka was old and knew that she could not survive.  Amidst the general panic, she kept a level head.   Rivka was the only one who remembered where they had hidden the false papers identifying the sisters as non-Jews.  Determined that her four daughters should escape (Naftali was in the relative safety of a slave labor camp), she pleaded with them to hide.   Three sisters obeyed.  Esther, the fourth sister, refused to abandon her mother.  Both she and Rivka died, but the remaining sisters: Miriam/Manya, Baila/Bertha, and Golda/Zahava survived the war. 

The Laks home, built by their grandfather Naftali, had two attics: a regular attic and a secret attic above it.  Family members would hide there during pogroms.  Manya, Bertha, and Zahava climbed to this attic.  Bertha took with her the beautiful, detailed needlepoint pieces that she had created over the years.  As they sat in their refuge, they heard the screams of their friends and neighbors who had also tried hiding.  The Germans pulled them out of their hiding places and shot them on the spot.

The sisters could not hide in the attic forever.  They would not be safe in the countryside either.  They realized that their only hope was to try to join Naftali in the Plaszow concentration camp.  They had the address of the Polish woman through whom they had been sending packages to Naftali, and they had cash--American dollars, which could buy you anything.  Manya was a favorite of Aunt Perl, the wife of Uncle Chaim Shalom, their father's brother.  Her children, living in America, would send her dollars and she gave several hundred dollars to Manya. 

In order to get to Plaszow, the sisters needed to travel to Jaslow to take the train from there to the Polish woman's house.  Manya, who didn't look very Jewish, went out from hiding to hire a wagon to take them to Jaslow.  None of the Poles were willing to rent them a wagon.  They viewed the Jews as the living dead and were too frightened to do business with a Jew at this point.

 Manya refused to give up.  She pushed herself and her sisters to walk to Jaslow.    The walk was unpleasant and frightening.  Any time traffic passed by, they hid in the tall grain growing at the side of the road.  They successfully made it to the train station and boarded the train for Plaszow.  Once in Plaszow, they found the Polish woman and stayed with her for about a week, paying with their American dollars.

At this time, a woman's camp was being set up in Plaszow for the women in the Krakow ghetto.  Some landsmen (fellow former residents of Zmigrod) learned that the Laks sisters were in the area.  They applied to Shaya Eisenberg, the Jewish head of the Plaszow concentration camp, to bring them into the woman's camp.  The man gave the three Lakses the slots they needed (there was a quota for how many women the camp would hold) and they were smuggled into the new woman's camp.

The women in Plaszo were crowded into unheated tents in frigid conditions.  Their job was to peel potatoes and beets for the German army.  The vegetables were for the soldiers.  The peels were for the Jewish inmates of the camp.  The women were supervised to make sure that the peels were very thin; they could be whipped or shot for making overly thick peels. They were always afraid and under tremendous physical and mental stress.  Lice was prevalent, and typhoid epidemics were common.  Those who contracted pneumonia were often shot since antibiotics were not being administered to Jews.

Zahava, young and pretty, found favor with the commander of the camp and became his personal servant.  The commander used to say that she reminded him of his daughter.  This gave Zahava access to more food which she shared with her sisters and Naftali.  In addition, she used her influence to have Naftali switched from the backbreaking work on the railroad to serving as a tailor.  This saved Naftali's life, since he would not have been able to survive had he continued to haul the rails.   

Naftali and his sisters stayed in Plaszow until after Yomim Noraim (the High Holidays) in 1943, a little over a year.  They continued to be together at the next camp: Skarżysko-Kamienna.  See bottom of this Wikipedia article for more about this camp.

After that, Naftali and his sisters were separated and only reunited after the war.  It was very rare to have four members of a single family survive.

Plaszow

The Nazis had all able-bodied men in Zmigrod assemble again at the soccer field.  One hundred and fifty, including Naftali, were picked to be slave laborere.  The men were loaded onto trucks and driven to Yaslow to spend the night at the Yaslow jail.  The next day, they were forced into freight cars on the train to the Plaszow concentration camp in Poland (near the one featured on Schindler's List).  The Jews were given the backbreaking work of laying train track near Krakow for the German army.  The train rails were very heavy.  Several men would carry a single rail on their shoulders.  The taller people had it hardest, since they needed to stoop or they would bear the brunt of the weight.  The skin on Naftali's shoulder began to rub off.

The Germans used Ukrainian guards to supervise the Jews.  Naftali rated Ukrainians as the most anti-Semitic ethnic group in Europe.  For sport, they used to wake Jews in the middle of the night, force them by gunpoint to the perimeter fence, and proceed to shoot them for "escaping".

A Polish woman living close to the railroad work site made a living by cooking food and selling it to the laborers.  She also functioned as a "post office" for the inmates to exchange mail and receive parcels from outside the concentration camp.  Rivka and her daughters used this service to send food to Naftali.  This woman was essential to the story of how Naftali's sisters would leave Zmigrod and be admitted to the Plaszo camp.  See above, the The Sister's Tale.

There was a meeting place in the camp where men and women could see each other and transfer food.  Naftali's sisters had access to more food than Naftali did, due to their  working in the kitchen and to Golda/Zahava's privileged position as the commandante's servant.  They would pass food to him surreptitiously, at risk to their own lives, since Jews were shot for helping each other.

It became clear that Naftali was not going to be able to survive under the strenuous workload.  Golda used her influence with the German commander of the camp to have him transferred to tailoring, saving his life.  Naftali and his sisters stayed in Plaszow until after Yomim Noraim (the High Holidays) in 1943, a little over a year.  (Interestingly enough, the Jews in the camps were well aware of the Jewish calendar and when the holidays were taking place.)

In 1943, there was a typhus epidemic that spread through the entire camp--90% of the inmates caught the disease.  Naftali contracted a high fever and became delirious.  At one point, he got out of bed and must have passed out because the next thing that he remembered was having water thrown over him.  His sisters helped him survive by sending him liquid to keep him hydrated.  Manya and Bertha both caught typhus and it took them a long time to recover.

The Germans decided to liquidate the camp.  A Selection took place and a doctor had everyone who didn't look healthy enough to work pulled out and shot.  Naftali remembers a neighbor from Zmigrod,  a few years older than him, a fine and learned young man, who was killed at this time.  The survivors spent the night at a larger camp down the road (the one in Schindler's List) which was headed by Goeth.  He was notorious for walking around with a pistol, shooting anyone as he felt like it.  It was said that he would not eat breakfast before killing a Jew.  The Jews were crowded into a room and were terrified as this monster entered.  He announced that they were going to be shipped to Skarżysko-Kamienna.

Skarżysko-Kamienna 

This slave labor camp was the worst of all the camps that Naftali endured.  See bottom of this Wikipedia article for more about it.  The Germans manufactured munitions at a factory there.  Each morning, empty ammunition shells needed to brought in to the factory to be filled with explosives.  In the evening, the filled shells would be loaded into freight cars to be shipped to the war front.  Full shells could weight up to 100 pounds.  Later in life, Naftali explained to us that the technique they used was to pick up and put down the extremely heavy load as quickly as possible, before the muscles could realize what they were doing, a procedure that is the opposite of body building.

A very nasty Polish foreman used willow branches to whip the Jews carrying the heavy loads.  The whipping was very painful and would leave marks on the body.

The explosives were a yellow powder that pervaded the entire camp.  Even the soup smelled of the powder and was bitter to taste.  Even Naftali, who credited his survival to his willingness to eat absolutely anything, had trouble eating it at first.  Rations were meager: 250 grams of bread that was so mushy that it was spreadable.  His sisters, who as women, were given more rations, would occasionally send him a loaf of bread, and this allowed him to survive.  Inmates of the camp who did not have access to supplementary food perished.  

The camp had no showers.  Lice was pervasive in Skarzysko and there was no way to protect oneself.  On Sundays, some inmates had the day off and were permitted to go to Section A (the women's area) to take cold showers.  Naftali had to work 7 days a week but he knew a young man who was willing, for a half or quarter loaf of bread, to take his place, allowing Naftali to go to Section A, see his sisters and use the shower.  His sisters would give him soup, the soup that was meant for the pigs that the Germans raised in order to supplement their food.  This food was better than the food given to the Jewish inmates.  On one Sunday, Naftali got permission from the German supervisor to visit his sisters, but the head Kapo was offended that Naftali hadn't consulted him.  Therefore, he slapped Naftali on his way to Section A and put him in jail for the rest of the day.

Naftali told us that he was already used to cold showers from home and inured to suffering.  This also helped him survive.  During the shower, clothing would be steamed to kill the lice.  The Jews who loaded the shells with the explosives could not wash the yellow powder off their skin.  Everyone knew that they were doomed. 

In the summer of 1944, it became clear that the Russians were approaching and there were plans to evacuate the camp.  One day, the guards opened the camp gates, allowing anyone to leave.  Naftali and the rest of the inmates faced a tough decision--were they more likely to survive by staying in the camp or by taking their chances in a hostile countryside.  The well-connected, more prosperous element, who had connections outside the camp, left.  The Germans tracked each one down and only one escapee survived.  Poles were offered a bounty of five kilograms of sugar for each Jews that they handed in.  Naftali speculated that opening the gates was a ploy to get the money of the higher status inmates, who would take it with them when escaping.

Naftali was in Skarzysko for nine months.  In the summer of 1944, the Russians were defeating the Germans.  The Nazis decided to liquidate the concentration camp.  First they made a selection, to decide which inmates were healthy enough to transport to another labor camp and which should be executed or sent to a death camp.  Selections were extremely nervewracking, since anyone could be taken out to be executed for any random cause.  It was a drawn out process, in which the Nazis would look you over and over again, to decide whether you would live or die.

Naftali's sisters were sent to a different camp and they were separated until Poland was liberated.

Sulejow

Naftali survived the selection and was sent to Sulejow to dig anti-tank ditches to fortify the area against the advancing Russians.  On arrival at the camp, the Jews were divided into gangs of 10 workers and assigned the task of digging a certain number of meters of ditch.  Ditches had to be 6 meters wide at the top, tapering down to 5 meters at the bottom.  Workgangs that didn't finish the job would not get supper and would be beaten.  Naftali's gang did not complete the job in time and indeed, they were forced to lie down and they were whipped.  Their supper was given to the other gangs.

In Sulejow, the Jews slept in a huge barn.  Every morning, they were woken up at 4 AM and were forced to walk 2 hours to the work site.  On the positive side, sometimes one found potatoes in the fields on the way.  The food was better than at Skarżysko but the work was very hard.  Naftali spent 2 months in this camp.

Czestochowa 

In Czestochowa, Naftali's work involved wheeling concrete around to where it was needed.  They would fill his cart, he would bring it to where it was needed, empty it, and then go back to have it refilled.  Naftali developed a hernia, and one day, collapsed while working.  He was carried to the barracks.  A Jewish doctor pushed his insides back in and Naftali didn't work for a few weeks.

A selection took place after this to go to Buchenwald.  This transport was done in a systematic way, with 50 people per train car, plus an SS guard, and food was provided.  

Buchenward

Naftali arrived at Buchenwald on December 24, 1944.  This was a very large camp and well-organized.  The arriving inmates were lined up, stripped, shaved, and forced to enter a tub filled with a strong disinfectant that burned the skin.  After that, they were sent to the showers, a scary experience, since they knew that "showers" were how Jews were gassed.  However, the showers were legitimate, and even equipped with warm water.  Striped pans and jackets were issued to the prisoners, and they were sent out into the freezing cold.  Sleeping quarters were stacked shelves, that you climbed in order to reach your assigned "bed".  They were so closely spaced that one could not sit up.

Buchenwald was administered by political prisoners who made sure to kill the kapos.  

The day started at 3 AM.  Breakfast was served, followed by lunch at 9 PM.  The work was not usually hard.  An exception was the time that the Jews had to carry stones up and down a quarry.  Sometimes, the work involved clearing rubble from the houses that had been bombed by the Allies in the city of Weimar nearby.  Four or five prisoners would be assigned per house, guarded by one SS soldier.  This task was considered a privilege, since food could sometimes be found in the houses they would clear.

One day, while working in Weimar,  Naftali met an older lady accompanied by a daughter or daughter-in-law.  The older lady gave him a vegetable.  The younger woman yelled at her for giving food to their enemy.

The Allies continued to bomb Weimar.  When air raid sirens sounded, the procedure was to run to the park in the middle of the city, under the assumption that this would not be targeted.  Naftali remembers seeing a huge American Flying Fortress flying overhead.  It was very scary, but it also felt good to see the Nazis being pounded by the Allies.

Flossenberg

After two months, Naftali was sent to Flossenberg, a small labor camp in the middle of dense forest.  Everything in the camp was infested with lice and there was no running water.  The prisoners melted snow in order to drink.  This concentration camp was created in order to build a new factory to manufacture a handheld anti-tank weapon.  The forest would provide cover to prevent the Allies from detecting and bombing the factory.  Naftali marveled that even at this late point in the war, the Nazis still thought they could fight and defeat their enemies.

Building the factory involved hauling blocks of concrete around.  One day, Naftali was told to climb a ladder while carrying a very heavy concrete block.  He just couldn't do it; the hernia had weakened him.  The guard beat him mercilessly.

The factory was completed and was scheduled to begin production the following day.  That night, the sky was lit up like daytime as the Americans dropped powerful flares.  They proceeded to bomb the new factory and destroyed it completely.  The Nazis were furious and set their prisoners to work clearing away the evergreen branches that were scattered all over the camp.

From Flossenberg, Naftali was transported by train to Mauthausen.  This infamous transport is chronicled in a chapter in Sparks of Glory, a collection of stories from the Holocaust written by a survivor.  The prisoners were stuffed into the train cars, with no room to sit.  Fights broke out among them because of the lack of space.  Food was distributed once a day, although they went for 48 hours at one point with no food.  One day, the only food was a spoonful of sugar.

After a few days, there was more room in the train cars, as the corpses were moved to the last cars in the train.  A number of times, the train was strafed by British spitfire planes.  The prisoners were moved outside to lie in the grass during these episodes.  Naftali remembers once being hit very hard on the head by an SS soldier passing by, as he was lying in the grass.

One day, prisoners were let out in order to repair the track.  Some Czech villagers came out to meet them to give them bread.  Naftali remembers how these villagers were crying as they distributed the food.  He realized later that he and the other prisoners, must have looked like "Musclemen" skeletal concentration camp survivors.  To Naftali's horror, the people who received bread first grabbed bread from those who were getting it later.  The suffering they had endured had taken away their humanity.  

A cousin of Naftali's, also named Naftali, was with him in the transport.  He was too weak to go out to work on the train tracks.  When Naftali returned, the man was very unhappy that he hadn't saved a piece of bread for him.

The transport arrived at Mauthausen on Sunday after 10 or 11 horrific days.  When they arrived, the Nazis announced that all who cannot work should go to a specific place where they will be sent on to somewhere else.  The prisoners knew that this meant execution and ignored the offer.  In order to get into Mauthausen, the prisoners climbed a hill.  Naftali walked with his cousin at the back of the line. They waited outside for the rest of the day and night, until they were given bread on Monday morning.  By then, his cousin Naftali was not up to eating bread and he died the next day.  Again, those who got their bread first grabbed bread from those who got theirs later.  Naftali was traumatized watching this behavior.

Once they entered the concentration camp, everyone was shaved and given a shower.  Their clothing was taken away and replaced with a blanket.  The crematoria used for disposing of corpses had stopped functioning.  The corpses that accumulated were stacked up like firewood between the barracks.  

Naftali's stay in Mauthausen was less than a week.  The Americans arrived on the following Saturday and liberated the camp.  They forced the local Germans to bury the corpses.