Nightmares

by Charmatz, Konrad; Kudelka, Matthew; Beckerman, Miriam Dashkin

• ISBN13: 9780815607069
• ISBN10: 0815607067
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-11-01
• Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr

Summary

A memoir by an award-winning author in its first English translation. When World War II erupted in Europe, Konrad Charmatz was a prospering businessman in Sosnowiec, Poland, a loving son, and an aspiring poet. For the next seven years he witnessed the Holocaust as it destroyed his family, his country, and his culture. In this astonishing story of suffering and survival, he gives his own personal account of the Warsaw ghetto, the death chambers at Auschwitz, the transport trains, the slave labor camps of Dachau, and the liberation. And from the perspective of the renowned journalist he later became, he also describes how the Holocaust was carried out, not only at the level of governments and their armies, but at the level of the individuals who took its orders. Few people survived the Holocaust from such close range or for so long, and few remembered it with the eye of a practiced journalist.

Author Biography

Konrad Charmatz, a Yiddish newspaper editor after the war, was awarded the 1985 literary prize of the World Federation of Jewish Partisans and Holocaust Survivors for the Yiddish edition of this work.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	xiii
PART ONE
1. Not God, Not Man, but the Devil Himself	3	(3)
2. My First Contact with the Shtetl	6	(2)
3. People on the Run	8	(2)
4. The First Rosh Hashana under German Occupation	10	(2)
5. Getting Used to the Troubles	12	(2)
6. Sosnowiec	14	(2)
7. Terror and Evil Decrees	16	(2)
8. The Tricks of the Nazis	18	(2)
9. The Judenrat	20	(3)
10. The Problem of Shelter in the Ghetto	23	(3)
11. A Jewish Café in the Ghetto	26	(2)
12. Liquidations	28	(2)
13. Labor Camps	30	(3)
14. The First Transfer	33	(5)
15. The Second Transfer	38	(3)
16. The Third Mass Transfer	41	(4)
17. The Mournful Mood in the Ghetto	45	(3)
18. The Turn Comes to Liquidate the Workshops	48	(2)
19. The Last Action	50	(1)
20. The Liquidation of the Judenrat	51	(2)
21. The Completion of the Liquidation	53	(3)
PART TWO My Personal Fate	56	(216)
22. I Fall into the Grasp of the Gestapo	57	(4)
23. Those in the Prison	61	(5)
24. A Cell of Jews Only	66	(2)
25. My Mother Appears to Plead My Case	68	(2)
26. The Noose Around My Neck Gets Tighter and Tighter	70	(4)
27. "If a Misfortune Is Destined, It Will Come Right into the House"	74	(4)
28. I Get a Notice to Report to the Dulag	78	(2)
29. We Arrive at the Slave Labor Camp	80	(4)
30. The Day Arrives	84	(3)
31. The First Day in Hell	87	(3)
32. Block Number 7	90	(4)
33. Life in the Block at Birkenau	94	(2)
34. The Work in Birkenau Camp	96	(2)
35. A Strange Meeting in Hell	98	(7)
36. I Break Down	105	(4)
37. Warsaw	109	(3)
38. The First Day Amongst the Wreckage in Warsaw	112	(4)
39. Work in the Ruins	116	(4)
40. Destiny Gives Me a Chance	120	(3)
41. Relations Between the Camp Inmates and the Poles	123	(1)
42. I Belong to the Privileged Class	124	(3)
43. Block Elders	127	(5)
44. My Luck Runs Out	132	(5)
45. The First Day in the Straf kommando	137	(4)
46. Jews Bake Matzo in Hell	141	(3)
47. Typhoid Breaks Out in the Camp	144	(3)
48. After the Epidemic	147	(2)
49. We Await Evacuation from Warsaw	149	(5)
50. We March out of Warsaw	154	(5)
51. The Second Day of the Death March from Warsaw to Dachau	159	(2)
52. The Third Day of the March	161	(2)
53. The Miracle of Water	163	(4)
54. The Hellish Scenes in the Locked Train Wagons	167	(5)
55. We Reach Dachau	172	(2)
56. Mühldorf and Waldlager (Forest Camp)	174	(3)
57. A New Trial	177	(2)
58. Destiny Offers Me a New Chance	179	(5)
59. The Klausenburg Rebbe	184	(4)
60. The "Good Germans"	188	(2)
61. The Last Winter in the Concentration Camp	190	(3)
62. News from the Front	193	(3)
63. The Rescue Operation to Munich	196	(3)
64. Mercy, or Fear for the Future	199	(4)
65. The Front Gets Closer	203	(4)
66. The Devil Trips Me Up	207	(4)
67. My Last Chance-Run Away	211	(4)
68. The Leap to Freedom	215	(6)
69. My Fate Hangs in the Balance	221	(4)
70. I Win a Battle	225	(3)
71. The Downfall of the Third Reich	228	(2)
72. The Last Act of German Resistance	230	(3)
73. My First Night as a Free Man	233	(4)
74. I Become a Confidant of the U.S. Army	237	(2)
75. Jewish Revenge	239	(2)
76. I Tear Myself Away from Bloody German Soil	241	(3)
77. We Arrive in Paris	244	(4)
78. The First Contacts with My Family	248	(2)
79. I Depart for Poland	250	(2)
80. First Steps on Polish Soil	252	(2)
81. Sosnowiec	254	(4)
82. I Am Once More in Krakow	258	(5)
83. In the City of My Birth, Ostrowiec	263	(9)
Glossary	272