Holocaust Survivor Seg. VI Krakow Koncentration Camp

Seven months later he was in the first group of prisoners assigned to Krakow Koncentration Camp in Plaszow, Poland, the site of the movie, Shindler’s list (He wasn’t with Shindler. “I wasn’t so lucky. If I were I wouldn’t have had to go to Auschwitz and other camps.”)

The camp was small---only barbed wire contained the prisoners.

Prisoners were divided into groups called commandoes. Mendler’s commando built barracks for newcomers.

“We became the carpenters. We were the builders. We knew they (other prisoners) were going to come. Why else are they building them? Not for us---we were too few. Later they brought people to the barracks from ghettos and little cities.”

The barracks were built on the Jewish cemetery where some of Mendler’s ancestors were buried.

“We knocked out the stones, leveled the ground. Many times we came on skeletons and got gold teeth. We would trade them (with the Gestapo guard) for potatoes or a slice of bread. Maybe I committed sin because I pulled teeth, but what did it mean to the skeleton? To me it was a lifesaver. My life was valuable.”

While there, there was a man hung.

 “He’d tried to escape. He was put on a gallows, and the rope broke. Three times they tried to hang him. Finally the angry commander, Amon Ghet from Vienna, Austria, took his pistol and shot him. That’s what kind of murderer he was---he was a sadist.”