[Konik Picture]

Karol Konik
The Forgotten Holocaust

Condensed from an essay by Tara Dineen - written in 1997

Karol Konik, a ruggedly handsome 73-year-old man, sits at the kitchen table of his home in Port Richmond section of Philadelphia, poised to resurrect his past. He is a Holocaust survivor, with grim memories of a German concentration camp, but he is not Jewish as one might expect, instead he is a Polish Catholic.

"There were 11 million people who died in the Holocaust, six million Jewish and five million others," he points out. "You did not know this?" he asks. "Most people don't. My daughter married a Jewish man a few years ago. His family and friends assumed that I was Jewish because they knew I have been in a camp," he says. With a nod of the head, he begins to confide. "I am not angry or bitter," he says. "I just wish people knew how many suffered in the Holocaust who were not Jewish."

Karol was prepared well for the interview. He has a thick red folder on the table which he carefully opens. "These are photocopies of the original post card and letters I received at the camp," he says. Looking at the map he also shared, he pointed out a highlighted town in northern Bavaria, close to the former Czechoslovakian border. "This is where I was, Flossenburg," he points out.

He shuffles to find another paper which contains his number. He rattles off, "27572. This was my identity, no name, just my number." He sits back in his chair and crosses his arms. He gazes out the window, lost in thought as if he is repositioning himself back in Flossenburg. He sighs and begins. "It was September, 1944, when the Gestapo came and arrested me. I was working at a cigarette factory in Krak—w. They suddenly appeared in the factory and arrested me, sternly yelling, let's go, letÕs go. I was too scared to talk. Everyone knew that they did not hesitate to kill, so you were obedient." He pauses, drops his eyes and shakes his head. "Then they interrogated me, asking me, whom did I know. Who were my friends. Where was I at this time, where was I at that time, and they were always yelling."

Karol continued, "After they took me in for questions, they put me on a train for three days and shipped me to Germany. We had one meal the whole trip and it was very cold. They kept yelling. Then when we got there the noise got worse, and they made us strip down to nothing and they disinfected us with lye. It was so harsh and burned our skin like nothing I've every felt. The label said not to make direct contact with skin. This is what they washed us with." He shifts his weight to the other side of his chair before saying, "It was very embarrassing. We had to stand there naked in front of everyone until they gave us our striped uniforms."

Looking at the table, he sifts through the papers. Pointing to a group of men in a photograph, he says, "This is it. This what we wore. This is what I wanted you to see, though, not the uniforms, but the hair." The men's heads were shaved, except for a finger-width strip in the middle of their scalps which ran from the forehead to the neck line. Then he pointed to the chest of the uniforms. "Number 27572," he spits out with lightening speed.

"While in camp we were assigned work details at a factory built into a mountain to protect it from Allied bombs. They had me make airplane parts. We had to walk miles to get to and from the factory in below-freezing temperatures, and many could not handle it. If you struggled, they would just shoot you. I saw many people get shot on that trip. And the guard dogs were following behind us, barking as the men were yelling and pushing us along. Hurry up. Hurry up. Run. Run. Run, they would scream at us at the top of their lungs. They gave us next to nothing to eat. We woke at 5 a.m. and got a bowl of soup. It wasn't soup, though, just wheat germ and water. Then after walking to work and working until noon, we got a piece of bread. Around 6 p.m., when we returned to the camp, we got more soup. We were always hungry, thinking of food."

"You know what kept me going," he says, looking at the wall across from him. "I think it is because my sister sent me packages once a week," he says with a smile. He laughs, "Don't get the wrong idea. The package was only allowed to weigh one pound, so it was not like she sent me a lot of anything. And they made me give them the cigarettes in my package in exchange for the food that was also in it. I know the extra food is how I was able to withstand the hell of that place. When I went to Flossenburg, I weighed about 150, and when I finally escaped, I weighed 90," he says.

Karol then lifts his head as if he just remembered an intricate detail. "At the end of the war, the Germans knew that they had lost, so they began to transport the prisoners to a different location deeper in Germany. We began what I call the death march of about 300 kilometers. Death march," he repeated.

"There were about 1,000 prisoners that began the march. As we walked through the cold, dark woods, people starved, injured themselves and just gave up the will to live. If you seemed at all tired, they would just shoot you. They shot people right next to me."

"When we reached our destination deeper in Germany, we prayed and prayed and begged our commander to just let us walk away. There were only about 120 of us left, and my four friends and I had always been very obedient. As more people died each morning from hunger, our commander weakened and finally agreed to turn his head while we escaped."

"When we arrived at a farm, a man offered us his silo and told us we could stay there. He brought us food for a few days and then informed us that the Americans were in the town just ahead." Karol looks up with his wide eyes and says, "We were so sick and tired and hungry, but we ran the whole way there and with a ripped piece of my white shirt hung over a stick. Finally, we approached an American soldier, not knowing what to expect. He motioned us toward him with excitement, and we all fell to the ground in joy and exhaustion. We were free."

Karol stands and looks down with a smile and says, "Guess what day it was, April 29, 1945, my birthday. I will never forget that day as long as I live. It was the best present I could have had, my freedom. After we got checked out by the infirmary, we were sent to different posts to work. I did not want to go back to Poland because we had heard that Stalin was worse than Hitler. So then I worked for the U.S. Army in Germany, and after about five years, a buddy of mine decided to go to America and asked me to join him."

Just then a beam of sunlight shot straight at the table, and its reflection brightened the room. Karol peered out the window and spoke. "It was a horror for everyone who experienced it. I'm not downplaying the Jewish loss. I just wish that everyone knew that 11 million people of all different races and religions died. It was hell for us all."

From: Polish American News, June/July, 2005