Treblinka Survivor: The Life and Death of Hershl Sperling (26 page)

Jews who left the relative safety of the D.P. camps put themselves at risk. Officially, the US military that controlled Germany had stamped out Nazism and its ideology by banning Nazi organisations and removing known Nazis from public office, but the anti-Semitism could not be removed. In the archives of the London
Jewish Chronicle
I found the story of a German ticket inspector who tried to throw an Auschwitz survivor from a moving train in September 1946. A Parliamentary Foreign Affairs committee in Britain also reported that when cinema newsreels showed footage of a Munich synagogue re-opening in 1948, someone in the audience called: ‘Not enough Jews were killed.’ Jewish cemeteries continued to be ransacked.

Nonetheless, Hershl made it to Czechoslovakia unscathed. ‘Both my parents spoke very fondly of the Czechs,’ said Sam. ‘I think they were nice to them and made them feel welcome.’

I found numerous testimonies in which survivors spoke of their return to Poland through Czechoslovakia, where they had been showered with food, warmth and sympathy by Czechs. Others recalled how people at Prague’s Hlavni Nadrazi, the main train station, threw flowers as they came through. However, it was a different story when they crossed the border into Poland. Here, returning Polish Jews encountered unrelenting anti-Semitism. At the same time, those Poles who had sheltered Jews during the war – and there were many – begged to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from neighbours. One image I saw in the Jewish Historical Museum in Warsaw in February 2007 has continued to haunt me. It showed an aerial view of Treblinka in September 1945 – a moonscape of craters, where Poles had dug thousands of holes searching for gold fillings amid the bones and ashes.

A particularly horrific episode of anti-Semitism occurred in Poland in July 1946, just before Hershl returned. The incident was triggered by an eight-year-old boy who falsely claimed he had been kidnapped by Jews. Residents in the Polish town of Kielce, among them soldiers, policemen and boy scouts, murdered 80 Jews with iron pipes, stones and clubs in a day of carnage. The pretext for the savagery was the medieval charge of Jews killing Christian children for their blood. However, this time, there was a new and grotesque twist – Jews now craved the child’s blood not to make matzo, but to fortify their bodies, which had been emaciated in Nazi camps.

At some point he arrived in the city of Częstochowa. I imagine him walking instinctively toward the old ghetto, alone in his ‘good suit’, like a being from another planet. I imagine people staring at him, and their expressions asking ‘Why did you return? You were supposed to die.’ I recalled the echo of my own steps on the streets of the old ghetto in 2007. What did Hershl think when he crossed the railway tracks, where five years earlier he had been among 35,000 Jews crammed into boxcars and taken to Treblinka?

He either walked the ten miles to Klobuck or hitched a ride. Upon arrival at the town’s market square, he passed the church where Jews had hidden during the Gestapo round-ups, and – according to Hershl in later years – were betrayed by the priest. He went to his old house, where Poles lived. Were they sitting at his father’s table and eating from the family crockery?

Sam said: ‘I don’t know exactly what happened. There was some kind of incident. I know that he went back to sell his grandfather’s land. Presumably the ownership papers were still in the Szperling name. At some point, while he was in Klobuck, Poles threatened him. They told him leave or they would kill him. So he left, and he never went back again.’

However, on his return to Germany, something extraordinary happened once he crossed back over the border into Czechoslovakia. Sam told me, ‘The story Alan and I got was that my father was standing on a railway platform somewhere in Czechoslovakia – I have a feeling it was Prague – and that was where he met my mother. She said he was so emaciated he was barely alive. At the time, she was living in a former porcelain factory in Tirschenreuth with some members of her family that hadn’t been killed in the camps. There was Cheskel – I suppose that’s Charlie, in Yiddish – my mother’s younger brother, her older sister, Regina, and Mundich, Regina’s husband. I think that my mother may have felt sorry for my father and she brought him back with her to the porcelain factory.’

There, Hershl became part of this depleted family of small-time, Jewish black marketeers.

‘Of course, we can’t know for certain,’ I said, ‘but I imagine the minute Hershl laid eyes upon the beautiful Yadwiga Frischer, he was smitten.’ Sam agreed.

‘I know they loved each other,’ he said. I remembered them again walking arm-in-arm past the window of my parent’s home in Glasgow, and the tender and desperate way they clung together.

The records from Bad Arolsen reveal that on 7 October 1946 Hershl registered a new address as Marktplatz 157, Tirschenreuth, the location of the old porcelain factory. The factory had been requisitioned by the American authorities to help alleviate overcrowding at the camp.

Hershl told them about what had happened in Klobuck, and in their innocence and hopefulness the group now agreed that they would join forces and buy a cinema together. It was the beginning of the happiest period in Hershl’s adult life.

* * *

In the porcelain factory, they were a gang of six – Hershl, Yaja, Cheskel, Regina, Mundich and a man they called Michah. Perhaps there were others. From their base in Tirschenreuth, the men would carry out black market excursions across the border into Czechoslovakia and Poland, against the flow of the refugees fleeing westward into the American and British zones. They had various schemes by which they were able to accumulate money, most of them involving acquiring goods from the Americans and from UNRRA, and selling them in countries that were under the jurisdiction of the Soviet authorities, where the shortages were even more acute than in Germany.

I looked again over the notes from my meeting with Sam. I remembered now that he had gone into the kitchen to make himself another cup of coffee – it was his fourth in the past hour – and lit up his umpteenth cigarette.

‘You want more coffee?’ he asked.

‘Why not?’ I said, meandering into the kitchen while he waited for the kettle to boil. ‘I might as well be as jittery as you while I’m here.’ He laughed.

‘I remember when I was young and we were in New York, my parents and Regina and Mundich were all laughing about their time in this porcelain factory in Tirschenreuth. I was there in the room when they mentioned this guy, Michah. I remember asking who Michah was, and they all started laughing. They said things like, “Oh, you don’t want to know Michah.” One of them said he was a barbarian. I don’t think he was Jewish, but he lived with them in the factory. I got the impression he used to pretend to be Jewish, probably so he could get things from the Americans and UNRRA.’

Sam said Hershl gave the impression that he knew his way around all the networks of various UNRRA or International Relief Organisation offices. ‘I know they had one scheme where they would go from office to office and tell the authorities they had no clothes, and they were given suits which they would then sell on the black market.’

‘You can’t blame them,’ I said. ‘It was still about survival.’

‘Of course it was.’

It was not just suits, however. Hershl also somehow managed to acquire large quantities of fish, which he smuggled out of the country by the truckload in barrels into Czechoslovakia and Poland. And Mundich had another scheme: he would dip his hands in a vat of olive oil, rub them on his clothes and later ring out his clothing and sell the oil.

‘I think Mundich might have actually worked in an olive oil factory at one point,’ said Sam. Sometimes they would be gone for long periods of time. On some occasions, Hershl would go by himself. ‘My mother told me he used to disappear for weeks on end, and that she was worried about him a lot.’

During one smuggling excursion to Poland with Cheskel, Hershl was arrested and ended up in a police cell. ‘He didn’t say what he was smuggling into Poland, but I know he got arrested and found himself in a Polish jail,’ Sam said. To be sure, a Jew, alone in a Polish police cell in 1947 was in a highly dangerous situation. He would likely be beaten up or possibly murdered. ‘This was one of his crazy stories. Apparently, Cheskel arrived at the jail dressed in a Polish policeman’s uniform. I don’t know what was said, but he escorted my father out of the cell and the two of them escaped. Perhaps he said he was going to beat him up or kill him.’

Nonetheless, this story was also significant because Hershl had lost a sizeable sum of money during the incident, and with that loss the dream of buying a cinema came to an end. Shortly afterwards, Hershl and Yaja were married in Tirschenreuth.

‘I have the picture,’ said Sam. ‘I’ll show it to you some time when I can dig it out. It was somewhere in Germany. There are a lot of people at it. My mother was wearing a big white wedding dress, and the men were dressed like gangsters, with suits and trilby hats. It’s a funny picture. That whole period for my father seems like it was a big adventure, at least that’s the way he would tell it to us.’

I lay that night on Sam’s fold-down couch in his TV room, and I turned over and over in my head the images of Hershl’s fearless smuggling adventures and his marriage to Yaja. I tried to reconcile that with what he must have felt towards the end. I found myself trying to visualise him during those difficult but essentially happy times, and all I could do was grieve for all that lay behind and ahead of him, and I supposed that was what he must have felt, too.

The happiness was all a diversion; I knew it now and he had known it then, a little digression that had allowed him to live without focusing incessantly upon what had happened to him and his family.

I decided to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC in another attempt to get to the bottom of the enigma of Hershl’s written record of Treblinka. My own research had revealed scant information about what lay behind the writing and publication of this journal that contained Hershl’s account. My email enquiries to professors and experts at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem and various universities around the world had yielded little fruit. This extraordinary historic journal always raised more questions than answers. Why had it been published? How had it been published? Where had they found the machinery to typeset and print such an account with Hebrew characters amid the chaos and destruction of post-war Germany? Also, why had Hershl kept in his possession a journal that had not included his own account – but was instead something similar, but different? Sam and I had concluded that the actual book Hershl had so obsessively guarded was nothing more than a red herring. It contained no information specific to Hershl’s story. Had he carried it with him because he wanted to have something that was connected to what had happened, but the real thing was too much? There were also questions about content. His account contained a number of peculiar errors – discrepancies in time and the appearance of the sadist Kurt Franz during the uprising, who had not been in Treblinka at that time. I was concerned these discrepancies would be seized upon by Holocaust deniers and the overall truth of his record would be ignored. Also, for what purpose had Hershl written his memoir and under what circumstances? Why had he included only his ten months in Treblinka? Why was there no mention of Auschwitz, Radom, Dachau, Kaufering, Sachsenhausen, or his extraordinary experience with Mengele or his time as a secret Jew in the
strafkompanie
of Birkenau? And what precisely was this series of eight journals called
Fun Letzten Hurban
– or ‘From the Last Extermination’ – of which it was part, and where did Hershl’s story fit into it? These were some of the questions that had sparked my journey into his life.

The best information I had found so far came from the descriptions of online antiquarian booksellers, several of whom offered either all or some of the journals in the series at prices that ranged from $85 to $125 apiece. They were clearly semi-rare and collectable. Only a couple of vendors seemed to have the particular journal in stock – Number Six – that contained Hershl’s story. There had only been 8,000 copies printed when it was published in August 1947, according to the journal’s inside sleeve. The third and fourth volumes appeared to be the most common. The fullest description I found among these online antiquarian booksellers stated:

At this stage, that was the full extent of my knowledge about these journals.

I called Sam that night and asked him if he had any more thoughts about this apparent mystery. He didn’t seem interested.

‘This book thing is strange,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure it’s really that important. I suppose the book is a bit like looking back at the Holocaust itself. It’s like a metaphor for trying to find out anything about the Holocaust, especially from authentic sources. It’s also a metaphor for how difficult it was to find out about the Holocaust from my father.’

‘Well, he certainly didn’t make any of this easy.’

Sam said, ‘I was thinking the other day that because it seems to contain only partial information and some odd time sequences, it would be very easy for the Holocaust deniers to get hold of it and claim that the whole thing had never happened. The point is that you and I know it happened – we know my father was there in Treblinka – in spite of the discrepancies – unless of course I’ve been lying to you, or my father and all my relatives have been lying to me for their entire lives. As you’ve said, there is too much that’s right, authentic and corroborated about it to make it untrue. You see, if it weren’t true, the whole world would have to be in on the conspiracy.’

Yet there had to be some practical answers, a real history to this testament. So I booked two tickets to Washington – one for myself, and one for my twelve-year-old daughter. I decided she was old enough now to learn about the Holocaust. She had already experienced anti-Semitism. In a strange and terrible way, our trip to Washington would be a variation on a rite of passage taken by all Jews, at one time or another, everywhere – a way of explaining to my daughter that she too was a Jew and, terrible to say, the reality was that half the world wanted to kill us, and too many of the other half didn’t care whether we lived or died. The Holocaust for all Jews was irrefutable evidence of this truth. Those images she would see at the museum might have been pictures of her or me, and by extension anyone. But aside from these considerations, I knew that I’d be grateful for her company. At the same time, I decided to combine our trip with a visit to Rubin Sztajer, the former Klobuck resident, and his wife Regina, who lived in nearby Baltimore.

I had discovered Rubin through an online article from 2005 I found in the
Baltimore Jewish Times
when I was first searching for information about Klobuck. I had contacted him through the reporter who had written the article and Rubin replied – via Regina – almost immediately. We had corresponded for several months until I had been able to construct a full picture of life in the Klobuck shtetl. Although Rubin, who in 1939 was the thirteen-year-old son of the town’s Mikvah keeper, did not remember Hershl, he recalled the Szperling family’s presence in the shtetl. He had also put me in touch with his cousin, Rebecca Bernstein, who had lived across the street from Hershl in Klobuck and she remembered him very well.

From the beginning, I was struck by how different Rubin’s fate had been to Hershl’s, in spite of similar beginnings. Rubin had been spared Treblinka because his family had not fled to Częstochowa. Instead, he had remained in the Klobuck ghetto. Had he escaped to Częstochowa he would almost certainly have been murdered. At some point later, however, Rubin’s two younger sisters ended up in the Częstochowa ghetto, and they died in the gas chambers of Treblinka. Later, when the Klobuck ghetto was emptied, Rubin was transferred from one camp to another until, close to the end, he was death-marched and dumped at Bergen-Belsen. He, too, was lucky to be alive.

Yet, while I understood the survival of Hershl Sperling had really been no survival at all, Rubin’s was a success. He had made it his life’s work to talk about his Holocaust experiences, and each year he spoke to students at 80–100 venues. It was therapeutic and cathartic for him, and enlightening for his students. When I emailed him to tell him I would be conducting some research at the USHMM in Washington DC and that I was coming with my daughter, he insisted we base ourselves in his home and said he would drive us to the museum and help in any way he could. He also insisted on picking us up at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, and he asked me to send a photograph so he and Regina would recognise us when we got off the plane.

‘Your daughter is adorable. Love her freckles,’ Regina wrote back, after I sent our photograph. ‘Rubin will take you to the archives at the museum and help you get any information you need. By the way, Rubin is not computer literate, so it is Regina, his little wife, who does the typing.’

* * *

It was evening when our plane landed. They greeted us with hugs and took us directly to dinner at a Chinese restaurant near their apartment. Rubin was a small, stocky man with kind eyes, who a few months earlier had turned 80. He was thirteen months older than Hershl. Regina, a former advertising artist and now a political blogger on the internet and writer of World War II history, was a few years younger. She was originally from Brooklyn and had a pronounced New York accent. His accent was Yiddish and his voice was gruff, as though something were permanently caught in his throat. On the way to the restaurant, she prodded him with persistent reminders about things, such as directions and his medication, and each remark prompted the deadpan response, ‘What do you want from me?’ The talk between them was laced with an underlying humour. It was a tenderness that reminded me of Hershl and Yaja, and I found myself wondering about the divorce rate among Holocaust survivors. Later, I researched the subject and discovered numerous references to studies. One such study noted that divorce occurred among about 11 per cent of survivors, compared with 18 per cent of American-born Jews and some 50 per cent of all Americans.

‘Why Baltimore?’ I asked from the backseat, as the car sped along the highway.

‘Baltimore is where I first came when I got to America,’ Rubin said. ‘I’d wanted to go to New York, but what are you going to do? After a while, I went to New York, but when I saw it I turned around and came straight back to Baltimore.’ He chuckled.

After we parked and walked half way across the parking lot, Rubin realised he had forgotten his sweater and went back to get it. He was wearing short trousers and as he jogged back to the car I was surprised to see how quickly he moved and how muscular his legs were. In the restaurant he ordered a large unfilleted fish, whose head and tail extended over the sides of his plate. He laughed when it arrived and he picked up his knife and fork with glee. ‘If you eat a fish like this every day, you’ll live to be 100,’ Rubin said.

Over dinner, Rubin told us his story. He spoke about how the Germans had torched the prayer books and Torahs in Klobuck and then turned the town’s only synagogue into a stable for their horses. Although, like Hershl, he had lost his faith in God in the camps, the memory of that act continued to offend him. He also spoke about the spring of 1940, and how the Jews of Klobuck were forced out of their homes and into a ghetto.

‘I take it that you have no truck with modern Polish historical teachings, which claim that Poles tried to help Jews, but could not do so for fear of punishment from the Germans,’ I said.

‘I never saw any kindness or help from the Poles, and they did not risk their lives to sell anything to the Jews. We traded things with them and they paid us for them,’ Rubin replied. He carved at the fish, skilfully and speedily stripping away the bones. ‘I’m surprised to hear you say that.’

‘I was just putting it to you,’ I said. ‘I know this Polish version of events is not true, from what I know of Hershl’s life.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Let me tell you, as children in Polish schools and in the Catholic Church they were taught the Jews killed Christ and therefore should be hated. I remember anti-Semitism from infancy. The church was across from the ghetto and every time a Jew ran up to hide in the bushes, the priests pointed them out to the Nazis. Of course, today the Poles will insist there was no anti-Semitism during World War II and that they were only trying to protect themselves by turning in the Jews. Hogwash!’

He also told us that on 12 April 1942 he was sent from the Klobuck ghetto to a concentration camp near Niederkirchen in Germany. He was put to work with a shovel, levelling the ground for an ammunition factory. He was marched for an hour and worked all day each day and then marched back to the camp. During the summer he baked and in the winter he froze. In the evening, he received the day’s only meal – a tin cup half-filled with soup made from turnips and a small portion of bread. A bucket in the barracks was the toilet. He did not know how many camps he was in after this one, over the next three years, except that it was ‘many, many’.

‘The Nazis intended to work us to death or to starve us to death. Our death was what they hoped to achieve eventually. I do not know what happened to my parents and my three younger siblings. I can only assume they were murdered by the Nazis.’ He then turned to my daughter and said, ‘You can ask me any question you like. Any question at all, and I’ll answer.’

My daughter smiled, and thought for a moment. Then she asked, ‘Do you miss them?’

‘Every day,’ he replied. Then he turned to me. ‘But I don’t believe these things they write in Holocaust books about guilt. What does it say – that I’m guilty because I survived and my parents died? My parents would have wanted me to live. It’s insulting to them. If I could tell my mother and father that I wanted to die instead of them, they would slap me in the face.’

I knew now that I had come here for more than research into the origins of Hershl’s book. I had also come to ask Rubin, a fellow Holocaust survivor who had grown up just streets away in the same Polish shtetl, why he thought a man who had survived Treblinka – let alone Radom, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Sachsenhausen, Kaufering and Dachau – would throw himself into a river more than 1,000 miles away, 44 years after liberation. I had already asked him the question by email. He had replied ‘I happen to be fortunate to be able to have coped with my past. That’s why I’ve lived for almost 81 years. Speaking to schoolchildren has been a help to me. It is a way for me to deal with the subject. Each and every one of us came out differently.’ But I wanted more.

After dinner, we went directly to their apartment building and their front door opened into an orderly living room, lined with pictures of their children and grandchildren. It was late and we were tired. Regina showed us to the spare room and pointed out the bathroom.

In the bedroom, I asked my daughter, ‘So, what do you think?’

‘She’s a bit strict,’ she said. ‘But he’s funny.’

‘They’re both nice,’ I said. ‘They’re good-hearted people.’

My daughter fell asleep almost as soon as she got into bed; it had been a long day. I lay awake for a long time and thought about Rubin in the camps. In my mind, I saw him toiling. I imagined his misery and physical suffering.