Surviving the Holocaust: Prisoner 178509

Writer's note: Sam Silberberg spoke at Soka University on April 14. His story was extraordinary, and I was given the chance to interview him at his home in Laguna Woods. His story of survival and tragedy will be told through a multi-part series on Aliso Viejo Patch. View the previous story .

Silberberg’s father was a strict Orthodox Jew, so strict that he still followed his beliefs even while being forced to be a slave. His teachings at the labor camp still resonate to Silberberg today. They are what kept him alive and are some of his last memories of his father.

Silberberg recalled another conversation he had with his father:

“How can I accept that this is God’s will? All this calamity, suffering and misery upon our people?” Silberberg asked his father.

“We cannot win a physical encounter with the Nazis, my son. It is up to us not to behave like beasts. We are the people of the book and were given higher standards of morals to live up to. We must not violate it. If we do, we give the Nazis another victory.”

To Silberberg, however, his father’s words were easier said than practiced in the gruesome reality they faced.

***

Summer 1943

Silberberg and his father boarded a truck that took them to the Annaberg labor camp. As he boarded he had one last wish. It was never fulfilled.

“I turned around to see if I could spot my mother and Benek so I could get a last glimpse of them,” he said. “The truck was crowded, the crying loud and intense. I never got the chance to say goodbye.”

His eyes welled with tears that day. It would be the last time that he would ever see Benek. The tarp on the truck was sealed and the interior darkened. Silberberg’s father sat diagonally across from him. Two rows of wooden planks were used to sit on. As the truck continued to drive farther away from the transport center, the cries of the other prisoners slowly died out.

Silberberg recalls what he thought on the truck:

“My head felt like it was going round and round,” he said. “It was like a carousel with pictures of all the members of my family. I wonder what happened to all of them. I wondered if the other prisoners next to me felt the same. Every person on the truck had a piece of baggage, sorrow.”

***

Annaberg Labor Camp 1943

After a two-hour drive to the Annaberg labor camp, the truck came to a stop. Silberberg could smell the pine in the air, but that moment of pleasure was stopped when he heard something outside.

 “The S.S. guards ordered us off the truck and to assemble in an open field,” he said. “Electric barbed wire surrounded the complex. There was nowhere to run, and we were deep in the forest. We were assigned numbers during the assembly. Mine was number 178509, and my father's was 178508. We were then warned that if anyone tried to escape, 10 of us would be executed. Then we were assigned rooms in the barracks and ordered to be disinfected with Lysol because of the lice on our bodies.”

The conditions inside the barracks were miserable. A funnel served as a sink for more than 20 prisoners. Bathrooms had no stalls and were just open rows of toilets. Showers were long pipes that were perforated and sprinkled water.

“Picture the pandemonium of this place when we woke up,” Silberberg said. “We woke up at 7 a.m. to bullhorns blaring in our barracks. We had to be ready by 7:30 a.m., and if we were late we were beaten.”

Everyone would rush to the assembly so fast that if a prisoner couldn’t keep up, he would be trampled to death. No one wanted to face the pain of being beat by a nightstick.

Silberberg worked as a mason’s assistant in the camp. He built foundations for new barracks that would be erected to house more slave labor. The Nazis never let any of the prisoners use machines to mix the cement; everything had to be done by hand. As they worked, a Nazi guard would oversee them, watching to see if anyone got out of line.

“When it was time to eat, they doled out some watery soup,” said Silberberg. “Most prisoners would fight to be last in line so they could get the veggies at the bottom of the soup. Fights would even break out over those last morsels.”

There was one thing that the prisoners feared at the camp: getting sick. Any prisoner sick for more than two days would immediately be executed because he was considered “useless” to the Nazis.

After four months of grueling work, building of the new barracks at Annaberg was complete. The problem was that Silberberg and his father were still slaves and would be used elsewhere. They were ordered to board a truck to Blechhammer.

Check back Friday for more of Silberberg's story.