Mendler’s next assignment, Camp Fluskis Co., was a forced labor camp in the town of Czarny Dunajec, the location of two companies: Poland Mining and Hobag A. G. Wercke, a lumberyard. He alternated working for them, and commuted to the jobs from his hometown.
At Poland Mining he pulled stones from a river.
“We traveled daily from the ghetto to the mines, working from dawn ‘til dusk. We dug stones up with a shovel and would sort them on screening according to size,” Mendler said.
Hobag A. G. Wercke was a large company headquartered Breslau, Germany. It made pre-fab homes and barracks for concentration camps. Its head was a man named Schmidt.
The commander of Camp Fluskis Co. was a man named Grubel, “a real sadist.” “He smiled and laughed as his dog bit the feet of the Jews while he sat on a chair and smiled. The dogs tore our pants and bit our legs. This was the punishment for nothing. It was for his entertainment. He always had a whip and expected us to stand up quickly, bow down and take our hats off. Sometimes he smacked us with a whip. It’s not easy being a Jew.”
Mendler described Grubel as a slow walker with bow-legs. He smoked a cigar and wore a Swastika on his coat.
When he arrived home on August 30, 1942, his father was waiting for him. “Tomorrow we will be relocated at different camps,” he told Mendler.
For Hitler and his clique, it was time for the final solution. They were liquidating the Jewish ghettos all over Europe.
The next morning all the Jewish people in his town were taken to the stadium and divided into three groups.
Older and crippled persons they didn’t want to transport were executed at the Jewish cemetery.
Others were transported to different camps (“really, death camps”), mostly to Belzec. It was convenient that there was a railroad station across the road from the stadium.
“I lost 89 members of my family in one camp, Belzec.”
Belzec had gas chambers, but at this time they used exhaust from diesel trucks to kill the prisoners. It took a long time to kill them, a long time for the women and children to die.
Those able to work, “young people like myself,” remained in town, Mendler said. “I was sorted out because I was fit to work, in the age range of thirteen to fifteen. We remained, and emptied everything we had.”
He was reassigned to the same job he’d already had at Hobag A. G. Wercke. He cut timber, transported it to camp with horses, cut it, dried it, preserved it.
“My body was yellow with preservatives,” Mendler said. He worked side by side with German and Polish workers.
Seven months later he was reassigned to Krakow Koncentration Camp in Plaszow, Poland.
(Click on the Holocaust Survivor category, Segment 1, on the beanerywriters blog for in-depth details on the ghetto liquidation and its aftermath.)
