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When they assigned me to work they transferred me to barrack 30, the ones who lived there worked in commando no. 90, in a group of workers. They assigned many young men there, because they taught that it was easy to make skilled laborers, or at least trained men out of the young students. They called us „umschüler”, that is, on retraining. I happened to become a schlosser, so I got to locksmith re-training, which practically meant a huge closed workshop, and there everyone worked. German civilians, English and American airmen prisoners of war, Polish volunteers, French volunteers and civilians, who had been brought there by force. It’s difficult to imagine the chaos that was there. But during work everyone was equal. They assigned me next to a German lather, who called me Franz. I don’t remember anymore what his name was, Herr something, but he never hurt me, I never had any problems with him. Even when the toe-cap and the heels of my boots started to wear out, he showed me where I could find an iron plate, and taught me how to use the drill, and let me make iron toe-caps on my heels, and he even got hold of some nails, so that I could nail it up on the toe-cap, too, so that my shoes wouldn’t wear out. I couldn’t have learned lathing, because I am left-handed, and the lathes were all right-handed. He told me to bring this material, he gave me a caliper square, bring this many and this kind of poles, take them here and here. So I was a kind of do this and do that man. And I was assigned to this man. There were 500 men in the commando, who worked in different buildings on the territory of the factory, they were building the factory of the IG Farben. The IG Farben was building an extremely big chemical factory. And all the 10000 people worked there. [Editor’s note: The IG Farben didn’t only operate one factory, it’s possible that this one was built by 500. In the biggest IG Farben factory, in Monowitz (Auschwitz III) about 10000 people worked in January 1945.]
And I worked in this workshop with a couple of my acquaintances, friends, in commando no. 90. Commando no. 90 had an obercapo, who was a German criminal, and if someone asks me whether the German criminals were good or bad people, I can say it depends. Once the master didn’t give me anything to do, and so to speak I was slacking about. And he sneaked to my back, and beat me up with a thatch. He knew me by name, and said ‘Franz, you know why you got this, don’t you?’ I said ‘I know, because I wasn’t working’ He said ‘No, not because of that. But because you weren’t working, and you didn’t notice that I was coming. What would have happened if an SS had come instead of me, what would have happened to you, what do you think?’ And otherwise he could have beaten me with an oaken cane, because he had one of that, too. He could have broken my arms and legs, because we were completely defenseless. But he told me this. What was I supposed to say?
If someone did a good job in principle, but in reality was friends with the capos [Editor’s note: Capo – concentration camp inmate appointed by the SS to be in charge of a work gang.], got voucher to the Lager mess, where one could buy cigarettes, Majorca tobacco, pickled cabbage – which was vitamin – and mustard, nothing else perhaps. Out of the 500 people in commando no. 90 nobody ever got a voucher like this, but the obercapo kept all the „premier-schein” for himself, then he bought cigarette in the mess of the Lager and exchanged it with the English prisoners of war, who didn’t have enough cigarettes, for the soup that they got at noon. We also got soup, it was called ‘buna’ soup, turnip-tops, nettles cooked in water, it was warm, and very bad, it was tasteless, but we ate it with our leftover bread. And after a while we didn’t get ‘buna’ soup, because the capo regularly exchanged the cigarette with the prisoners of war for the much thicker and better soup which they got, so we got that so called „engländer suppe’, namely the English soup. And this capo was a German criminal. Who, when the SS saw him, he beat barbarously everyone he could reach, and at the same time he didn’t distribute the vouchers, though he could have done it, but exchanged it for soup for us. Otherwise they handled the prisoners of war much better than us. There were Americans, English, Australian, New Zealander, South African, whose airplanes were shot. They were in a POW camp 2 kilometers away, and they worked at the same place we did, only their food and the way they handled them was different.
And I worked in this workshop with a couple of my acquaintances, friends, in commando no. 90. Commando no. 90 had an obercapo, who was a German criminal, and if someone asks me whether the German criminals were good or bad people, I can say it depends. Once the master didn’t give me anything to do, and so to speak I was slacking about. And he sneaked to my back, and beat me up with a thatch. He knew me by name, and said ‘Franz, you know why you got this, don’t you?’ I said ‘I know, because I wasn’t working’ He said ‘No, not because of that. But because you weren’t working, and you didn’t notice that I was coming. What would have happened if an SS had come instead of me, what would have happened to you, what do you think?’ And otherwise he could have beaten me with an oaken cane, because he had one of that, too. He could have broken my arms and legs, because we were completely defenseless. But he told me this. What was I supposed to say?
If someone did a good job in principle, but in reality was friends with the capos [Editor’s note: Capo – concentration camp inmate appointed by the SS to be in charge of a work gang.], got voucher to the Lager mess, where one could buy cigarettes, Majorca tobacco, pickled cabbage – which was vitamin – and mustard, nothing else perhaps. Out of the 500 people in commando no. 90 nobody ever got a voucher like this, but the obercapo kept all the „premier-schein” for himself, then he bought cigarette in the mess of the Lager and exchanged it with the English prisoners of war, who didn’t have enough cigarettes, for the soup that they got at noon. We also got soup, it was called ‘buna’ soup, turnip-tops, nettles cooked in water, it was warm, and very bad, it was tasteless, but we ate it with our leftover bread. And after a while we didn’t get ‘buna’ soup, because the capo regularly exchanged the cigarette with the prisoners of war for the much thicker and better soup which they got, so we got that so called „engländer suppe’, namely the English soup. And this capo was a German criminal. Who, when the SS saw him, he beat barbarously everyone he could reach, and at the same time he didn’t distribute the vouchers, though he could have done it, but exchanged it for soup for us. Otherwise they handled the prisoners of war much better than us. There were Americans, English, Australian, New Zealander, South African, whose airplanes were shot. They were in a POW camp 2 kilometers away, and they worked at the same place we did, only their food and the way they handled them was different.
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Interview
Ferenc Leicht