He lost much more than his youth: Josef Königsberg, born in 1924 in Polish Katowice, was still 14 when the war broke out. Soon the Nazis in the conquered Poland were hunting for Jews and thus for his family. His father was able to escape, his mother and his little sister were murdered in Auschwitz.
Josef Königsberg's fate oscillated between unexpected, happy turns and life-threatening setbacks. Thus, in February 1942, a high German official at first saved him from Auschwitz; only decades later, Königsberg was to learn more about his courageous savior. Nevertheless, he was later deported, if not to Auschwitz, and fought on a long odyssey through several satellite camps of the concentration camp Gross-Rosen for survival.
Königsberg, today 93 years old, wants to report on these experiences. He can never forget his liberation in May 1945.
Execution - KZ Gräditz, 1943
The screams of pain of the man I have to this day in the ears. They came from Mr. Reich, the husband of a friend of my mother. Mr. Reich had been caught with potatoes after returning from the Frondienst at the entrance of the criminal camp Gräditz. A cruel punishment awaited him: 50 lashes.
He screamed loud and horrible. For us, the other inmates who could not help him, that was unbearable. In his distress and desperation he called for his wife: "Esther, my dear wife, help me!" In the end, he only moaned softly. The 50th whip beat did not happen anymore.
He broke down dead before that.
Attempted escape - KZ Faulbrück, 1943
Moniek Ruf and I met in the ghetto Chrzanów (Krenau), not far from Auschwitz. Soon we became friends. He was a tall handsome boy, a year older than me. The girls ran after him. Fate brought us to the Faulbrück concentration camp in 1943, a branch of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. He was ambitious, he did not want to, as he repeatedly said, fall victim to the Nazis here. So he decided to escape with two friends. He did forced labor near a train station, eight to ten kilometers from the camp, and helped build a rail network.
There Moniek watched the trains and noted exactly arrival and departure times. I had no idea of his escape plan. His friends and he had not told anyone. One day it was time. They managed to leave the workplace and walk to the station. It was planned, as I suspect, to arrive shortly before the train's departure on the platform, and then jump in immediately.
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End of War 1945: The LiberationBut fate was moody that day.
The train was one hour late. An hour's wait for refugees, that meant the almost certain discovery. Moniek and his friends were arrested at the station and beaten mercilessly. The bloody refugees were led past the detainees as a deterrent.
The same evening, the soup was not served as usual in front of the kitchen. Instead, the soup kettle was placed under a tree on the branch of which Moniek and his friends had been hanged. The dead bodies hung so low over the cauldron that their legs touched the edge. A sight that I can not forget all my life.
Lice - transit camp Markstädt, 1942
Previously, I had a less brutal experience in the transit camp Markstädt (Laskowice Olawskie), east of Wroclaw. It was my first night there. I entered the barracks assigned to me and sat down on a free bunk. Suddenly, I saw something that looked like a worm but did not move on the blanket. I was scared.
For the first time in my life I saw a louse. In my youthful naivety, I thought that despite bad and inadequate conditions, I would be spared from such parasites. A fallacy. For years I was plagued by lice, bugs and other vermin.
In the quarry - KZ Faulbrück, 1943
This work was tough. With a heavy hammer, stones were broken from the wall, taken on the arm or on the shoulder to throw it into a car 20 to 30 meters away. Everything under surveillance by SS men.
One of the SS people we called Otto. He was especially unsympathetic. Over his upper lip he had a two-centimeter scar that disfigured his mouth. This made the face look bad. On this day Otto was in a particularly bad mood. He kept watching me, shouting with the stone on his shoulder every step of my life, shouting, "You're a lazy man, move faster!"
Josef Königsberg - eyewitness accounts from the Holocaust
Concentration camp destiny: "I'm the Bubi Königsberg, do not you recognize me?" (more...)
Earlier, the nice Mr. Stiebel cut his hair and gave him sweets. Then Josef Königsberg met his barber in the concentration camp again. The man had become an icy tormentor.
Concentration camp destiny: The bread smuggler of Reichenbach
Every day he hid a bread slice in his coat pocket: A young factory worker risked his life in World War II in compassion for concentration camp inmates. Josef Königsberg never forgot it.
Visit to the concentration camp doctor: monster in human form
First he chatted friendly, then he sprayed his victims cold-blooded poison. The aunt of our author Josef Koenigsberg met the sadistic doctor Dr. in the concentration camp Auschwitz. Mengele. She escaped almost certain death only because the war ended soon afterwards.
World War II: chased away at dawn
When the German troops invaded Poland in September 1939, the SS drove Jewish families out of their homes. Josef Königsberg recalls how he saved some of his belongings on this day - while his mother froze in shock.
World War Memories: Condemned to death by Catholics
The Jewish boy David and Marek succeeded in 1941 the risky escape from the ghetto in Chrzanów, Poland. They escaped the Nazis - but not a group of Catholic partisans, who declared them mortal enemies. The indignation of many Poles on the ZDF epic "Our mothers, our fathers" prompted Josef Königsberg to report on the events.
Nazi resistance: agent from the air
He did not let his mouth shut and almost paid with his life: in the last second, Austrian Nazi opponent Alois Bilisics escaped from the Gestapo. In Egypt he was hired by the British secret service.
Jewish childhood in Poland: stroke with teacup
Rigid: in the twenties and thirties, Polish Jews constantly feared police harassment and avoided them wherever they could. When Josef Königsberg accidentally poured hot tea from the window onto a gendarme at the age of four, an encounter of a particularly unpleasant nature followed.
Anti-Semitism in Poland: years of hide and seek
After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the Malinowski family was initially successful in keeping their Jewish roots secret. But then the daughter is assigned in a raid a wrong piece of luggage. Darin: a star of David.
Jewish persecution in Poland: too blond for a Jew
Disguised as a Catholic, the Jewish woman Katja Lukasiewicz hid from the Nazis in Warsaw - until she was denounced. Paradoxically, life saved her from the race test of the Gestapo.
Holocaust: It started with the Kristallnacht
The Jewish pogroms of November 1938 in Germany were perceived only by the 14-year-old Josef Königsberg from Katowice from a distance. But a year later, the Nazis march into Poland, Josef comes as a Jew in a selection. His life is saved by a stamp collector - who by the way is an SS officer.
German attack on Poland: fatal hope
He fled and left his wife and children behind: The father of the then 15-year-old Josef Königsberg could not imagine that the invasion of German troops in Poland in 1939 meant a danger to his family. He was wrong. In his place, Josef had to take over the protector role - until the family was finally torn apart.
The silent hero of Chrzanów
For half a century, Josef Königsberg had been looking for his savior: at the end of November 2016, Jutta Scheffzek, now 92 years old, met the only daughter of Helmut Kleinicke and thus the man who had saved him from the deportation to the concentration camp in Chrzanów in 1942. Königsberg learned that his rescuer had apparently helped many more Jews - but returned from the war as a broken man.
Unfortunately, I caught a rock of at least 30 to 40 kilos. When the SS man approached me, he roared, "You are young and strong, you idler, faster or I'll cripple you!" I suddenly felt an indescribable irritation. Anger was boiling up in me. I threw the stone on the ground, which unfortunately met the German Shepherd Dog. The dog yelped with pain.
The SS man hesitated for a moment. Then he ordered, "Rex, grab him!"
The dog grabbed my left leg and tore out a piece of meat. I fell over and fainted. Later, I woke up in my bunk in the barracks where prisoners had taken me. The wound was bleeding continuously. One brought shreds of a cloth, connected the leg. I suffered monstrously for months, the scars remind me to this day: I feel them in bad weather.
Under dead
On Sundays one did not work in the concentration camp, but here and there one was obligated to storage work. On a Sunday I was unlucky. I can not remember exactly the day and the year. Just because it was midsummer and a terrible task was foreseen for me: I was to pick up corpses with another inmate, throw them into a cart, and carry them to a grave outside the camp.
After the first three bodies that we found and loaded on the cart, I felt sick. I started to vomit without end. Thank god, a passing Kapo freed me from work.
Fortune - KZ Langenbielau / sports school Reichenbach, 1944
We called the SS man in this forced labor camp near Breslau Siegfried. He belonged to the watch group, which led us to the construction site and back to the camp. One day on the way to work, I was approached from the back: "Hello, you, take off my knapsack, it's not that heavy again, you'll make it, so go fast!" It was Siegfried.
I took the knapsack from him, lifted it onto my shoulder. The knapsack was actually not heavy. What could the SS man have in his knapsack, I puzzled? Probably, I thought, a thermos of coffee and his breakfast. After a while, Siegfried approached me and said in a low voice: "If no one looks, be very careful, take out of the knapsack a slice of bread." Bread - in a concentration camp this was a magic word. Every prisoner yearned for it.
The next day Siegfried was apparently assigned to another working group. But after several days, when Siegfried supervised us again, he whispered to me: "I am a farmer and have brought you some potatoes from the field, you can find them in the knapsack." Potatoes were in the camp next to bread what you dream day and night. On the site, supervisors allowed us to build a fireplace when it was very cold. This allowed us to cook six potatoes, an extraordinary treat.
It is hard to imagine today how lucky it can be to smell a healthy, boiled potato, even in a bowl, taste it in the mouth and melt it on the tongue! To this day, I eat potatoes with special enjoyment.
Liberation - KZ Wüstegiersdorf, 1945
I will never forget the 5th of May. On that day, the Russian army freed me from Wüstegiersdorf, now Polish Gluszyca. Wüstegierdorf was an external camp of the concentration camp Gross-Rosen and was established in April 1944. There were between 700 and 1,000 Jews from Hungary and Poland imprisoned. Who was brought here, was no longer able to work.
The people vegetated. Most of them were too weak to get up from the bunk beds, a cruel image of emaciated people, to whom death seemed safe. Then on May 5, 1945, the SS guards suddenly disappeared. An hour later Russian soldiers stood at the gates of the concentration camp. Only a few emaciated, depressed, almost lifeless people staggered towards them.
Immediately the Russians handed out bread and hot soup. However, many detainees were far too weak to eat. War reporters made unanswerable questions. A Russian officer came up to me with a microphone and said, "You seem to be the only one who has the strength to answer questions." What are you most looking forward to? "
I replied, "That I am freed from vermin and Nazis."