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On the Verge of Life and Death
Camp Experiences from the Journal of Abraham Kajzer
Abstract
Abraham Kajzer was a Polish Jew, a simple worker, born in Będzin. He went through the Łódź ghetto, Auschwitz concentration camp, and a complex of subcamps subordinated to the concentration camp Gross-Rosen, known as “AL Riese”, where he started writing his journal. He wrote during his spare time, in the latrines. His need to share his thoughts and experiences with himself was greater than his fear; he was well aware of the risk he was taking. He wrote the journal on scraps of thick gray paper he obtained from cement bags. He hid his notes in various places and when he knew that he was going to be transferred to another camp, he collected them and nailed them to the bottom of a toilet seat. In the last days of the war he escaped from the camp. He found shelter with a German woman who escaped from Breslau with her five children and stayed at her father’s house. He repaid her after the Soviets entered. His presence at her house, and his story saved the family from revenge and agg ression of the soldiers. When the war ended he rode a bike to all the camps he had been in and collected his notes. Abraham Kajzer loved Poland but, as many Jews who survived the hell of the camps, he found he could no longer live here. Lonely and gravely ill, he went to Israel in 1949. His journal is a unique and moving record of camp experiences. There are descriptions of many situations when a man reaches his limits, overcoming many obstacles, as well as internal and external boundaries. This journal is a portrait of a good man who despite the dramatic experiences, starvation, sicknesses, humiliation, and beatings, continued to believe in rescue, and – what is more important – remained open and kind towards people.
Keywords:
concentration camp Gross-Rosen, prisoners, Arbeitslager Riese, Polish JewsDetails
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
