Its name was Stuthof, where the Jews of Danzig and vicinity were exterminated. But the Nazis needed to build factories for their war machine and, at the same time, required capable tradesmen. That is how I remained alive. The number 26652 was tatooed on my arm, a permanent reminder of what I endured. None of us believed we would ever leave Stuthof alive. Incredibly, I held out until March 1945. Each day, the other Jewish prisoners and I were sent out to perform slave labor under the strict supervision of Ukrainian and Lithuanian guards with large attack dogs. It would have been impossible to escape even without such vigilance. Stuthof was on an island sur- rounded by water. Often, as I carried out the back- breaking assignments, some of the British and French prisoners of war in the camp would give me extra bread that they had received from the Red Cross. In turn, I threw the bread over the fence into the women’s camp populated by Jewish survivors of the Wilno ghetto. In time, the Nazis removed all the Jews from the Bialystok ghetto to Auschwitz, where they died in the gas chambers. My beloved father was among them. In early April 1945, shortly before the end of the war, the Nazis selected about 1,400 people from the camp — among them, me — and forced us to march through many miles of snow. All along the way, many people dropped from exhaustion or were shot. Only three hundred survived. We were taken to a prison in another small town near Danzig, only to suffer addi- tional barbarities. But a miracle occurred, which taught me that a person must never give up hope. In May 1945, German army units suddenly sur- rounded the prison, ordering all inmates into the large courtyard. I sensed that the Nazis were preparing to shoot all of us. On my way outside, I noticed a tub with four legs. Quickly I hid underneath it. Something told me that we would soon be freed, if only we could hang on just a bit longer. My intuition proved right. Those who had entered the courtyard were shot by the Nazis with machine guns. Immediately after this mass execution, the Ger- man soldiers fled in panic. It did not take long for the Third Reich, a rapacious regime that had devastated Eastern European Jewry, to suffer a crushing defeat. After five years, during which Europe soaked up the blood of six million Jews, the end of Hitler’s hell had finally arrived. Everyone lost beloved family members. Can we allow our children and grandchildren to forget? Surely we are obliged to remind them that what happened in the past can recur if we forget. Throughout the forty years since those terrible days, I never forgot what my life was like. I frequently daydream and have nightmares about the past. What I have written in this article is a drop in the bucket, con- sidering all that we endured. Never again will we allow beasts in human form to inflict such torment upon us. The Bialystoker Memorial Book A FATHER’S GRIEF FOR HIS DAUGHTER (This moving poem was written by Ruwen Rybalowski in memory of his daughter Frida, killed in the Bialystok ghetto uprising on August 16, 1943. He wrote these lines while standing over the grave of seventy heroes buried in the Zabia cemetery in Bialystok, his daughter presumably among them. Ruwen Rybalowski, who spent the war years in Russia, returned to his home- town at the end of the war. He submitted this elegy to the Jewish Reconstruction Committee in Bialystok in December 1946. Mr. Rybalowski, the late brother of Izaak Rybal, General Secretary of the Bialystoker Cen- ter in New York, spent the rest of his life in Uruguay, where he died in 1955. His younger daughter, Liza, whom he mentions at the end of the poem, also passed away there in 1972. This poem was copied from the original by Dr. Szymon Datner.) * * * In memory of my beloved daughter Frida, who lost her life for the greater glory of God while defending the Bialystok ghetto, August 16, 1943. At your grave I stand with head bowed; You died a heroine, not a meek lamb. My dear, small, sacred Frida, Your soul was as perfect as crystal. Your zest for life and good deeds Led you to the company of wonderful friends, Now all of you lie together in one mass grave In a large cemetery, in endless, unmarked tombs. I have come to bid you farewell, my child, My tears streaming atop your grave. Where once parents, brothers and sisters stood Are now ruins and grief. I recoil at the desolation and the bloodbath, Among strangers who have settled here Who will light a candle for you, my child, on your yahrzeit? Who will pour out his heart at your grave? May your devoted friends always visit you in this place And plant lovely flowers during better times to come, One day your heroic deeds will be recorded, The murderers’ nest will crumble because of your innocent blood I, your grieving father, and your friends, will always miss you, Your sister in mourning, Liza, will always remember you.... 149