attention in the small infirmary at Blyzin. The witness, a doctor, testified that the accused came to see how he was treating the wounded and did not permit him to administer any anesthesia. סא"‎ chloroform! No ether! It is enough to anesthetize Jews with a hammer-blow over their heads.” Another witness, a carpenter, recounted how Gos- berg ordered him to construct a special table upon which to beat the Jewish inmates. According to a design Gosberg had personally formulated, the table should restrain the victim and expose the bottom to beating. The witness mentioned that he had received twenty-five lashes for failing to provide a certain part for the punishment table. He added that two Jews were shot for asking to see their wives. A third witness told of how the women suffered in the camp as a result of inhuman slave labor, famine and filth. Frequent beatings and lashings were the order of the day. Impossible production quotas were imposed and severe punishments meted out for not filling them. Dr. Tuwja Cytron, a fourth witness, described how healthy young people turned into skeletons in a short time, with swollen feet; he used the term ‘‘mussulman,” connoting extensive physical deterioration where people became living corpses. Others became incontinent; their bodies slowly rotted. He recalled that some victims had no flesh underneath their skin; their bones protruded under a fold of yellow parchment. The commandant provided such inadequate food rations that everyone suffered emaciation. The camp also contained a ‘‘sick bay,’ where ill and wounded Jews were allowed to die without medical treatment. Then I was called to the witness stand, desperately trying to avoid looking at this accused monster. I wanted to retain my composure and not succumb to the burden of my memories. It was important for me to testify calmly about everything that had occurred, once again having to leaf through the pages of the bloody past and reendure the entire chapter of suffering. I recounted how I emerged from the ‘‘sick bay” after a difficult bout with typhus and internal hemor- rhaging. I was a skeleton standing on two swollen sticks for feet, threatening to burst from the edema at any moment. More than once we heard at night an ex- plosive noise — the sound of a leg fissuring, the skin falling off, exposing white bone. I told how the accused beat my legs and left me unconscious in my cell. Twelve judges listened. Who knows what thoughts ran through their minds? Perhaps some were accompli- ces in our destruction. Maybe others were ashamed of what their people did. Above their heads on the large wall of the courtroom I noticed a multicolored mural, depicting the famous Biblical story of Solomon and the child, whom two different women claimed as their own. King Solomon was portrayed with the child on his lap, grasping a sword with which to divide it in two, as were the two women who came to him seeking justice. 152 The chief judge interrupted my musings by asking what I could add about the accused’s actions. I de- scribed how during one morning roll call, as 4,000 men and women lined up, the commandant asked a Jewish girl of about twenty to approach him, whispering some- thing I did not hear. Subsequently I learned that the guards found a piece of bread on her, as she returned from work through one of the gates of the camp. She refused to name who gave her the bread and the com- mandant ordered that she receive one hundred lashes. The girl lay down on the whipping table. Suddenly, 55 officer Arthur Gosberg, representing the German Aryan race, ordered: *‘Pick up her dress and rip off her panties so that she can be beaten while naked, and the four thousand inmates of the camp can watch.”’ The girl at first screamed, then fell silent. After the beating she was removed to the “sick bay.’ She died several days later. I then told the judges: ‘“‘Perhaps you are wondering how I remember this incident so well? After all, seven- teen years have passed and I suffered many other horri- ble experiences in the shadow of the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz. But in this instance with the girl, I saw a reversion to the law of the jungle. I wit- nessed basic human values and decency violated.” At that moment I looked at the King Solomon mural over the judges’ heads. I told them this was the symbol of the German court, binding nations and faiths. Every religion teaches that man was created in the image of God. Together with that young Jewish girl God was also ravished! Tears welled up in their eyes. I do not know, nor do I wish to know, why. They are Germans and who can understand them? True, not all of them are alike. During the recess, the prosecutor invited me for lunch in the court’s restaurant. I declined. He pulled a document out of his briefcase and handed it to me. It stated that he had spent five years in one of the worst prisons in Germany — Spandau — for anti-Nazi activ- ity. I then accepted his invitation. The public defender’s young secretary approached me, saying, ‘““When Hitler was in power, I was five years old. Do you want to talk to me?”

I discovered there were high German officials in the present government who suffered for their resis- tance against the Nazis and are doing everything possi- ble to bring war criminals to trial. Things could have been different. Many more Germans could have helped the Jews by resisting. On a flight between Dusseldorf and Munich a young German next to me said he had saved Jews dur- ing the. war who today live in America. No longer able to contain myself, I said, "1 have just spent a week in Germany. Every German I met claims to have saved Jews. Where are all these rescued Jews? If these claims were true, we would today number eighteen million.” The Bialystoker Memorial Book