Holocaust Years

Friday night at Skarzysko

Pesach in Flossenburg

Potato Peels in Fossenburg

Friday Night at Skarzysko

In the evenings at Skarzysko, the Jewish inmates had the arduous task of bringing the loaded, heavy munitions shells from the factory to the train cars.  One Friday night, it was snowing heavily and Naftali was part of a crew tasked with pushing a very heavy handcart loaded with shells to the train.  It was extremely difficult to push the cart on the rails through the thick snow.  The Polish foreman mocked the Jewish laborers.

"Now you Jews would be eating your chicken soup and your white bread."

The words pierced Naftali like a knife, probably because of the malice underlying them.

Pesach in Flossenburg

There were two very frum Jews among the prisoners at the Slossenburg labor camp.  One was Hungarian, the other from Poland.  They both decided that they were not going to eat bread on Pesach.  The only food provided to the inmates was bread and soup made from beets grown to feed horses.

One of these Jews gave up after a few days; the other one somehow managed to go through the entire 8 days of Pesach without eating his bread.  Naftali was amazed.

Two brothers at Slossenburg were roofers; the Germans would send them to town to repair roofs.  This gave them the opportunity to procure some wheat before Pesach.  The Jews used a cup to crush the wheat into something resembling a very coarse flour.  They added water and created small Matzos, each about the size of a silver dollar.  The Matzos were baked on a hot steam pipe outside their quarters.

On Pesach night, the Jews improvised their Seder.  People recited whatever they could remember from the Haggada.  There was much crying, as the Jews remembered what the people they had lost and worried about their fate.  Indeed, Naftali estimated that about half of the people who attended this seder did not survive the war.

Potato Peels in Flossenburg

One day, Naftali found some old potato peels in some garbage.  Always hungry, he badly wanted to eat something.  Naftali tore some of the lining from his coat to wrap the peels and to serve as a pot.  He found a puddle of warm water next to a steam pipe, "cooked" the peels in the water, and ate them.  Naftali wondered later if there was any nutrition left in those peels, but he was very desperate at the time.