Non­fic­tion

The Sur­vivor: How I Made it Through Six Con­cen­tra­tion Camps and Became a Nazi Hunter 

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By – January 24, 2025

When Josef Lewkow­icz was just six­teen years old, he joined a group of youths in his home­town of Dzialoszyce, Poland to help the par­ti­sans blow up a bridge to obstruct the Ger­man advance into their coun­try. We were still free­thinkers and had not yet been worn down by the yoke of slav­ery,” he writes.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the brava­do of this rash teenag­er was not to last long. A few months lat­er, the Jew­ish police announced that Dzialoszyce was being made Juden­rein—Jew-free. It felt like a sig­nal that the end of the world was nigh.”

And indeed it was. With­in days, his fam­i­ly was herd­ed into cat­tle cars. He and his father were tak­en to a labor camp near Krakow. His moth­er and his three younger broth­ers were sent to the right,” and were among the six hun­dred thou­sand Jews who died at the exter­mi­na­tion camp of Belzec between March and Decem­ber of 1942

Lewkow­icz was even­tu­al­ly sent to the Arbeit­slager at Plas­zow, a labor camp of twen­ty-five thou­sand pris­on­ers that the Nazis had decid­ed to build on the site of two Jew­ish ceme­ter­ies. Lewkowicz’s job was to shov­el up the remains of the dead — skulls, teeth and scraps of human­i­ty” — into a wheel­bar­row. The head­stones were used to con­struct path­ways to admin­is­tra­tive offices and homes of SS officers. 

The com­man­dant of Plas­zow was Amon Goeth, a man who killed two Jew­ish police­men at roll call on his first day. He used Jew­ish hol­i­days as days of mass mur­der; forced Pol­ish women to be beat­en by Russ­ian women and Slo­vak women to be thrashed by Czech women; uri­nat­ed on a pris­on­er he sum­mar­i­ly exe­cut­ed for being too tall; and left bod­ies in his wake wher­ev­er he walked.” 

The bru­tal rule of Goeth turned Plas­zow into a death camp, where pris­on­ers — clad only in paja­mas made from tis­sue paper” — died of back-break­ing work in sub­ze­ro tem­per­a­tures, dis­ease, and star­va­tion. It was lit­er­al­ly anni­hi­la­tion through work.” But it was Goeth’s mur­der of Lewkowicz’s dear friend Shlo­mo that etched the Nazi’s hate­ful coun­te­nance into his mind: Words can­not con­vey the inten­si­ty of my dis­gust and hatred I felt for my friend’s mur­der­er.” It was to be Goeth’s undoing.

In 1944, Lewkow­icz was packed on a cat­tle car that served as a tor­ture cham­ber and became a tomb” to Auschwitz; he was lat­er sent to Mau­thausen. Lewkow­icz describes the inhu­mane con­di­tions at each camp in great detail, though he admits he is con­scious that giv­ing too many exam­ples of deprav­i­ty may dilute their impact.”

At a sub­camp of Mau­thausen, he man­aged to sur­vive by becom­ing the per­son­al slave of the camp com­man­der, Julius Ludolf, who fell for Lewkowicz’s flat­ter­ing plea: I will shine your boots so they shine like the sun.” One of his first tasks was to feed the rab­bits, and when he took the risk of bit­ing deep into a car­rot, the fla­vor explod­ed in my mouth.” Lewkow­icz used this posi­tion to scav­enge food from the commandant’s left­overs and smug­gle it to oth­er pris­on­ers, even stor­ing slices of meat in the hems of his clothes. Ludolf was anoth­er vicious com­man­der, wide­ly known for throw­ing pris­on­ers to their death against the elec­tri­fied fences. Lewkowicz’s prox­im­i­ty to Ludolf enabled him to eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy him after the war when he tried to pass him­self off as a peas­ant farmer. Lewkow­icz tes­ti­fied against him at the Dachau tri­als, where he was con­vict­ed and exe­cut­ed at Lands­berg Prison on May 28th, 1947.

One of the most riv­et­ing sec­tions of the book is Lewkowicz’s descrip­tion of the final days of the war, when, as the lib­er­at­ing armies advanced, the SS fled and the camps were in chaos. There was no law, no order. More than fifty of the cru­elest Kapos were lynched almost imme­di­ate­ly,” includ­ing one who was burned alive in the cre­ma­to­ri­um. Starv­ing inmates fought for every scrap of food, and some, in a cru­el irony, died from refeed­ing syn­drome,” because after years of star­va­tion, their diges­tive sys­tems could not cope.

After Lewkow­icz returned home to find that his whole fam­i­ly had per­ished, he con­vinced the Allied admin­is­tra­tors to let him help track down Nazi war crim­i­nals. I had wit­nessed their bes­tial behav­ior, I knew their faces, their voic­es, their demeanor, their his­to­ry, their crimes, I was des­per­ate to help bring them to justice.”

After search­ing among thou­sands in the Dachau POW camp, he found a hunched, rather piti­ful fig­ure squat­ting on the ground like a beg­gar.” It was the mass mur­der­er Amon Goeth.

The Sur­vivor was pre­vi­ous­ly released in Cana­da, where it was a Sun­day Times best­seller and the win­ner of the Cana­di­an Jew­ish Lit­er­ary Award for Holo­caust Lit­er­a­ture. Michael Calvin, an award-win­ning author, assist­ed Lewkow­icz, who is nine­ty-six, in writ­ing the book. Togeth­er they have cre­at­ed a riv­et­ing, deeply mov­ing mem­oir. The writ­ing is descrip­tive and dra­mat­ic, pre­serv­ing Lewkowicz’s deep emo­tions. This valu­able book cap­tures the neshama, the endur­ing soul, of the survivor.

Elaine Elin­son is coau­thor of the award-win­ning Wher­ev­er There’s a Fight: How Run­away Slaves, Suf­frag­ists, Immi­grants, Strik­ers, and Poets Shaped Civ­il Lib­er­ties in Cal­i­for­nia.

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