We were stunned. When we walked into the apart- ment, the terror-stricken mother was still holding the child in her arms. The sight destroyed us. All around us was fright, suffering and hunger. Once again, pain had intruded into our tragic lives. That’s how we lived, from day to day, not knowing what to expect. Until August 16, 1943. It was on that infamous day that the Nazis reentered the ghetto and announced that all remaining Jews in Bialystok should assemble on Jurowiecka Street. This was the beginning of the final liquidation of the Jews of Bialystok. That was the Nazi objective — to make the 0006 great and respected community of Bialystok jJudenrein. We could hear resistance to the Nazis. The Nazi soldiers rounded up and crammed us all into a small area on Jurowiecka Street. We were pushed together so that, thinking back, I don’t know how we survived. The Nazis kicked us, pushed us and tormented us. They shouted orders for us to move in this direction and then in the opposite direction. Most of the Jews were in shock. They were confused and frightened. Many people collapsed from exhaustion. Once we arrived at the Petrasie fields, we were allowed to stop while the Nazis counted our families. They then separated us — the young on one side, and the elderly to the other. My brothers and I were told to stay where we were. My mother and father were taken to the other side. Hours later, we were still standing in the same place, waiting to see what fate held for us. Trucks passed by almost non-stop, their cargo areas filled with bodies of dead Jews. Other Jewish prisoners walked alongside these trucks, heads down, some trembling — making the con- stant effort to keep up with the trucks. I moved closer to where this was happening, and suddenly I recognized my father walking alongside one of the trucks, two steps behind the already dead. For just a moment, fighting broke out between the Jews and the Nazis; many Jews were killed in the shooting. But during the fighting and confusion my father rejoined me and my brothers. We were together again. My mother was already on her way to Treblinka, along with many others, where she was put to death. Words could not explain how we suffered those next two weeks. The four of us were taken to Majdanek, where we were subjected to more pain, torture and hunger. From Majdanek they took us to Blizin — which was a labor camp. We worked for long hours, without sleep and without food. Many died. While in Blizin my young- est brother, Yankel, and my father’s brother, Beryl, con- tracted typhus and both died. In June 1944, they moved us again, this time to Auschwitz, where the next chapter of our tragic lives began. In Auschwitz we were assigned to block No. 9. At that time, there was a group of children with measles, so new inmates were all quarantined. Time and again, they The Bialystoker Memorial Book KALMAN SCHWECHER pulled us out of our barracks, at all hours of the day and night, many of us wearing the thin cotton prisoners’ uniforms and others naked. We stood in the cold, and they counted us. A German soldier walked up to each of us and looked us in the eyes. Off to the right stood the infamous Doctor of Death, Joseph Mengele. Whomever Mengele pointed to had his number written down. One day during the ‘Apel,’ my father’s number was written down. We looked at each other. It was well known that when your number was written down you were just hours, or maybe days, from the gas chambers. On the second day of Succos in 1944 — the murder- ers came to take my father from the barracks. My brother and I walked with him to the door. We kissed and we cried — we held each other close and said our final words to each other. It occurred to me that our tears might have reached the heavens. If they did, the heavens were silent. There was no answer to our cries, and the isolation, torture and liquidation of the Jewish people continued. At the same time that my dear father was killed, groups of young Jewish children from Wilno were also being put to death. I remember sitting in my barracks, hearing those children pleading, ‘“‘We are too young to die, we still want to live. Please, let us live.” Their pleading fell on deaf ears. The children were gassed and put in the crematoria with my father. I stayed up all that night, watching the smoke rise from the crematoria, where Jew- ish lives were being destroyed. In November 1944, we were taken on yet another death march. I felt as though every minute we were on the threshhold of death. Several months later, we were liber- ated from Hitler’s clutches. My father, my mother, my little brother and millions of our brothers and sisters were victims of Hitler’s unstoppable madness. And today, so many years later, I go about my daily business and con- cerns. I travel and go for walks, my head down, steeped in thought. But when I look up, I see them, as if they were still alive today — my father, mother and little brother. But they’re not. 155