Max Mannheimer

“In Nivnice, I worked at a construction site for the Hromčík family. I would carry a three-and-a-half-year old boy – Jindřich was his name – on a wheel barrow loaded with sand. Jindříšek called me ‘Mr. Max’. He adored my Jewish star and once he told me in his Slovak dialect: ‘Mr. Max, please sell that star to me, I’ll give you a cake for it’. His grandmother baked some of the best cakes in the world. I told him that I can’t sell that star to him. He wouldn’t understand why as he liked it so much. He didn’t understand the meaning of the star and was the only one who wanted it.”

“We were re-registered in Theresienstadt. We spent the night on straw mattresses in the stables and the next day we continued our journey to Bohušovice. Our luggage was in the train. I had been assigned the transport number CU 210. Everybody had to report by saying: ‘Hier’. Except for my brother Erich, the family was complete – me, my parents, Eda, Arnošt, Kateřina, my wife Eva and my sister in law. It was a bit crowded there. We had our luggage in the compartment. When the train rolled out of the station, I realized that in the corridor of one of the compartments, somebody had noted the stations that the train had passed on the wall. It must have been somebody who went on the previous transport. At one spot, the train slowed down. We looked out from the window and saw prisoners in civilian clothes working next to the tracks. Quite exceptionally, they wore the star on their backs. We tossed them some bread. They threw themselves at it and pushed each other away. I was wondering whether we would become just like them. Was this the kind of work we would end up doing as well? At midnight, the train stopped. It was dark. Then the lights turned on and we saw transport trucks, SS-uniformed men and inmates in dressed in stripes. We stood at the loading platform of death in Auschwitz–Birkenau. It was on the break of February 1 and 2, 1943.”

“On January 27, 1943, our family was supposed to register at the Comenius grammar school near the train station in Uherský Brod. We were only allowed to take about fifty kilograms of our personal belongings with us. We also had to carry all our documents with us and we had to produce a list of all the items we had left in our apartment. In the school building, we were split up into the classrooms and registered. Two days later we were handed out our registration numbers that we hung around our necks. My first number was CP510. You can tell the transport from the combination of the numbers. We walked to the railway station accompanied by the Czech protectorate police. The train was already waiting for us and brought us to Theresienstadt.”

“On May 23, 1940, a bunch of about 30 freshmen criminals came from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. For them, it was no problem to kill somebody; they’d do what the SS expected from them. A man from Poland marched next to me. The kapo Helmut hashed him why he walked with a limp. He said that he had stomach ulcers and cramps. The kapo told him to report to him in the shed where he supposedly had the appropriate treatment for him. I knew that these guys were murderers. I was tasked with carrying earth in a wheelbarrow. When I was passing the shed, I heard a terrible screaming. A shovel shaft became the treatment for his ulcer. He killed him. A few days later, I was ordered to carry some cement with two other inmates – former police gendarmes who became political prisoners – to a mixer. The distance to that mixer was about 280 meters. As we were on a very poor diet, I suffered from a terrible pain in the area of the hernia. My two angels were supporting me but as we walked past, that criminal ordered them to let me walk by myself. He noticed that I limped and ordered me to come to that shed. He told me he’d come there soon. I had to think of the fate of the Polish prisoner whom he had killed there before. He came in 15 minutes. I told him: ‘Kapo Helmuth, I’m your admirer. You are a leader by nature’. He told me to sit next to the little stove. I sat too close to it which resulted in a blister. That sentence saved my life. Then my two angels came for me and helped me up. I walked all the way to the camp, for 1,7 kilometers, on one foot.”

“My brother Erich was doing an apprenticeship in Slovakia for a confectioner. He then lived in Ostrava and subsequently worked in Luhačovice in the Smetana hotel as a cook and a confectioner. My brother wanted to help the family of a young guy by the name of Lazarowicz (he originated in Subcarpathian Ruthenia). He gave him the address of a man who – for a certain amount of money – would smuggle people to Slovakia. He got the address from the cook Erna Rott, whose husband Sigi Rott was organizing these border crossings. Unfortunately, Lazarowicz was arrested and interrogated in Uherské Hradiště. Erna Rott was arrested and later hanged, probably in Wroclaw. Erich was arrested in 1942 and imprisoned in Uherské Hradiště. He was subsequently transferred to the Kaunitz dorms in Brno. We didn’t know that at the time. Erich was finally transferred to Auschwitz. We learned this in Auschwitz from an inmate, Jan Weiss, who had known him. Weiss saw my number, he knew where we came from, but he didn’t know my name. We learned that Erich supposedly arrived in Auschwitz on foot – he had to march to the camp. His feet were allegedly frost bitten. His death is recorded on February 15, 1943, in the Auschwitz death book. At the time, we were already in Auschwitz as well, but we didn’t know about his presence. Anyway, we wouldn’t be able to help him either.”

„Once, I was allowed to write a letter. I wrote it to the illegitimate daughter of my father in law, Marie. The letter bore the address: ‘Waldsee 17, Kreis Neu Berun’. It didn’t say Auschwitz. I wrote her to send me the wedding dress of Eva. She got that letter. She sent me some marmalade and the golden chain that my wife had gotten from my mother. I gave it to Pavel Sikora, a Polish master craftsman, who was in charge of cleaning the bricks. The deal was that he’d give me some bread for it. He told me that they had confiscated it to him but it was a lie. Anyway, he gave me half of a loaf of bread.”

“The Germans threw the praying books, scrolls of the Torah and the scarfs from the synagogue on the street where they stamped on them. They couldn’t burn down the synagogue because it stood nearby a gasworks. The next day, a roofless police truck came with the Jews from Nový Jičín loaded on the platform. Two policemen came up the first floor for my dad. They told him that he’d be taken into protective custody in order to make sure nothing would happen to him. The police man pointed his finger at me as well but my mom told him that I was just seventeen years old. In fact, I was eighteen years and a half. They took every male aged 18 to 65 into custody. They released ma father after about three weeks in custody under the condition that he’d leave the city and never return home or step his foot on Germany territory. We were allowed to take 10 German Reichsmark which was good for about ten cheap meals. However, we submitted a request at the Gestapo and then we were allowed to take our property. I rode on our Jawa motorcycle. At the customs house, I had to undress as they were searching for money. My dad had already been in Uherský Brod, where he left in our Chevrolet. In Uherský Brod, we sold our cars. I became a worker.”

“I brought some clothes from home in my suitcase. When we got up at the loading platform in Auschwitz, we were ordered to levae all of our belongings there. I put on another pullover and a shirt and took a pack of cigarettes with me, which I later gave to an SS-man who asked for Czechoslovak cigarettes. I asked him about the life in the camp, whether the children would go to the kindergarden there and how often I would see my wife. He told me that I could see her on Sundays. ‘Only on Sundays’? ‘That will do’. It was all a lie. Our transport counted 1001 people but only 155 men and 63 women passed to the camp.”