Luxury Reading's Blogger Vera Pereskokova, writing for the website SHEKNOWS, choose Scheisshaus Luck as her first January Book Pick.
From the website:
BOOK OF THE DAY: SCHEISSHAUS LUCK
We've tapped Luxury Reading's book lovin' blogger, Vera, to give us the scoop all month long on what books are worth the read. She'll be dishing out daily book picks -- and here's the first one.
Scheisshaus Luck by Pierre Berg and Brian Brock
I have read many Holocaust memoirs, but the one I remember over and over again, and always recommend to others, is Scheisshaus Luck. (It is also one of the first books I reviewed when I first started Luxury Reading.)
From my review: “While the subject of the memoir is dark and depressing in itself, I felt that Pierre’s message was, 'Don’t feel bad for me. This is what I went through. I survived, and I just want others to learn about what happened.' All the while, his writing style is youthful, candid and extremely readable. I found myself horrified, amused and intensely interested all at once.”
http://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/articles/850639/sk-book-lounge-scheisshaus-luck
THANKS VERA!
Scheisshaus Luck is now available as an ebook (Amazon, Barnes & Knobles & iBook) through Blue Coffee Books
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Saturday, August 20, 2011
REVOLT
A young man wrote to me and asked why didn't the prisoners of Auschwitz rise up and revolt against their Nazi guards. It's a good question. Why didn't we? Why didn't we square off with those Nazi thugs like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood or Arnold or Rambo would have? There were many reasons why we didn't. True, there were incidents of concentration camp prisoner revolts, one happened at Auschwitz-Birkenau while I was in Auschwitz-Monowitz, but they were isolated incidents. For the majority of the "Muselmaenner"* in Auschwitz and other camps a mass revolt was more or less impossible in an environment where day-to-day survival took everything you had.
The only time you are strong enough physically and mentally to try and overrun armed guards is when you first arrive at the camp, but even then you are not in tip-top shape. You get off that train or truck after a few days ride with hardly any food or water (in many cases no food or water) and that is enough to deliver you to your Nazi handlers exactly as they want you, dulled. How do you feel when you haven't had anything to eat for eight hours? Now, how do you think you would feel after not eating for 48 hours? Do you think you'd have the energy to take on a guard carrying a rifle with a bayonet at the end of it? Do you think you would have the presence of mind to rally the men who had been stuffed into that train car with you to rise up and fight? Remember, too, that none of you have any idea what is in store for you. You might have heard rumors, but is that enough motivation to fight well armed SS guards? Add to that the confusion of not knowing where the hell they have just dropped your ass, guards screaming at you in a language you don't understand (I was lucky that I did knew German and 3 other languages), the barking of dogs who act like they can't wait to tear into the meat of your thigh, and the crying, pleading and palpable fear of your fellow new arrivals. No, once out of that train car your spine, if not broken, is severely weakened.
The first few weeks in the camp you are still strong, but you are now in a camp where a dozen or so different languages are spoken. How will you communicate with all these men you will need to join your rebellion? Even if you had a common language, 75% of those men can barely drag themselves out of bed to do their slave labor. And how many men do you think you can rally under one cause? You have people from all over Europe and not only Jews, but Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, Gentiles, Catholics, Communists, Socialists, Homosexuals, family men, single men, teenagers, all with their own agendas and their own schemes on staying alive. How will you convince enough of them to rush the gate, to overthrow the bastards who have rifles and machine guns?
A big problem in your burgeoning revolt is the green triangles. Most of these green triangles are German convicts and the Nazis have wisely put them in charge of all the barracks and work parties. These men don't want their party spoiled, they're lives are now better then what they had behind those penitentiary walls. They are not rapists and murders and thieves anymore. They are the Kapos (supervisors) and Vorarbeiters (foremen) and they run the show inside the camp. They are big shots and they are fed and treated well as long as things run smoothly and the SS stooges don't have to get involved. Even a hint, a whisper that you are trying to start a rebellion (or merely an escape) and those green triangles will kill you and no one will bat an eye. And there are plenty of prisoners, who to win favor with their Kapo, would sing like a canary and you would have your brains knocked out of your skull.
If you haven't been able to orchestrate your little revolt in a couple of months then I would say you were shit out of luck. By that time the only thing you are concerned about is FOOD and making it back to your barracks alive after doing slave labor for twelve hours. Working 10 to 12 hours in below zero temperatures, slaving away in the blistering sun with no safe drinking water in sight, working when in any civilized world they would have placed you in a hospital bed because of malnutrition, dehydration and a smorgasbord of diseases. And you are expected to work and work hard. If you don't work then the Kapo will kick, punch and bludgeon you with his truncheon until you are working or dead. Either is fine with the god with a moustache and his SS stooges.
Oh yes, FOOD…
"…There was only one image that had become more vivid and it savagely haunted me - FOOD. In my mind, I could conjure up the most complicated recipes. Delicious and appetizing smells would fill my nostrils and my mouth would water until my salivary glands were close to cramping, but it did nothing for my fucking belly…"
Most days there will be no sound louder then the growling of your shriveled, empty belly. You would fight tooth and nail for your bowl of evening soup, possibly be willing to kill for it. A bowl of soup that in the sane world (which you barely remember exists) you wouldn't give to a stray dog because it would be inhumane. Any clear, lucid thoughts you still have are consumed by all those wonderful delicacies your mother made every day; meals that you didn't give a second thought to in that sane world. Talk of FOOD can even cause fights to break out.
"…One night I heard men swearing in French outside the Block. I went to investigate and found two men scratching, biting and clawing each other by the latrine. They were enraged beasts and I had difficulty separating them. One brawler was a Parisian and the other had a southern French accent. They were real Muselmaenner and had spent what little strength they had in their fight. On hands and knees, their chests heaving for air, they sobbed like children. The fight was ignited by a culinary difference of opinion. The Parisian preferred to cook with butter while the Southerner swore by olive oil. I stared at the sad fools and wondered if they realized that they would never taste food cooked in either fat ever again…"
Each day you are in that camp is one day closer to your death. One day closer to having no more muscle between your skin and bone. Your eyes are sunk so deep in your head that they might just drop down your throat. If you can still put two thoughts together they will be about self-preservation and any thoughts of rebellion or escape are now the fantasies of a loon. My overriding concern at the time was making it through the "selections."
"…Licking my bowl clean of the tasteless evening soup, I noticed a bored SS officer standing just inside the doorway. Wilhelm, our Blockaeltester, yelled orders for us to undress. It was a selection. We were hustled into one corner and the Boche handed out the green cards that we had filled out on our arrival. One by one we filed past the Nazi. He took my card, looked me up and down then examined my backside. Why was he dragging this out? I'm no Muselmann. I just turned nineteen. On September twenty-sixth to be exact.
"Der Bengel ist noch ganz kraeftig,"--"The rascal is still strong," Wilhelm said.
I turned around. The SS officer gave me another look then shrugged indifferently. He took my card out of his pocket and put it on the table with the others.
"We'll wait until next time," he told Wilhelm.
I rejoined my companions on rubbery legs. I ducked the reaper again. But did I have any real reason to be thankful?With a frigid winter almost on top of us, there was no possibility of putting on weight and regaining strength before the next SS officer looked me over. I was only a condemned man who had been given a short reprieve. If my "selection" was inevitable then wouldn't it be better to get it over with than endure another month or two of pain and suffering before they pulled my card?..."
The men of the Sonderkommando, who led people into the showers and stoked the ovens with their corpses, orchestrated the revolt that took place in Auschwitz Birkenau. These men were fed better then us, worked for the most part out of reach of the elements and they had contacts with the Polish underground. These men also knew they were living on borrowed time. Inmates that worked in the Sonderkommando were recycled every three to six months. A new group was brought in and the old group was placed in the ovens (The SS didn't want any witnesses to their crimes). There is no denying they were a very brave group of men and women. They succeeded in blowing up one of the ovens rendering it useless, but the SS had enough ovens that it didn't slow down the slaughter.
Even if I did manage to lead a revolt that smashed through the gates to freedom or if I alone had been able to escape where would I have gone? I wasn't in France, I was in Poland. I was in a Nazi occupied country where I didn't speak the language or know a soul. Why would an ordinary Pole risk torture and death to help me? I had no connections with the Polish Underground, the only people who might have helped me and that was also a big "if". What value was I to them? I couldn't pick up a gun and fight. No, I needed time in a hospital bed and that is a liability to people who are always on the run. Maybe if I was in a camp in France I could have entertained thoughts of escape and survival, but I couldn't at Auschwitz.
I wanted to live. I wasn't going to step on anyone else's neck to do that, but I also wasn't going to take any unnecessary risks. I have seen the destructive power of a German machine gun stationed on a guard tower. No swarm of human skeletons could overpower it.
* MUSELMANN/MUSELMAENNER (GERMAN) Muslim/s -- Camp slang for an inmate near death, who has given up on life.
HATERS & DENIERS
THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY ON PIERRE'S Myspace BLOG -- 12/22/06
For a few months now I've been trying to write a blog addressing Holocaust deniers and neo-nazis. I would start writing then think that these small minded, hate filled people don't deserve my attention. Why should I put fourth the effort to address them if it meant going past a few carefully chosen swear words. With the messages left by deniers in regards to my last blog and the conference for Holocaust revisionists held in Iran last week, I'm too damn angry to keep my stiff fingers from not typing my thoughts.
For a few months now I've been trying to write a blog addressing Holocaust deniers and neo-nazis. I would start writing then think that these small minded, hate filled people don't deserve my attention. Why should I put fourth the effort to address them if it meant going past a few carefully chosen swear words. With the messages left by deniers in regards to my last blog and the conference for Holocaust revisionists held in Iran last week, I'm too damn angry to keep my stiff fingers from not typing my thoughts.
Now, I know no matter how eloquently I turn a sentence in this blog, I will not change one denier's or neo-nazi's view on the Holocaust, Hitler or Jews, but sitting in silence was one of the reasons the "Final Solution" became a reality. I am a witness. I am a witness to the most horrific crime committed in the 20th century. For 18 months I was a Nazi slave; starved, beaten, humiliated and almost taken to my death twice. I watched butchery that is beyond the imagination of any decent human being. If I keep silent, I become an accomplice.
Not that it should matter, but for the record Mr. & Ms. Denier and Mr. & Ms. Neo-Nazi I was not a Yellow Triangle, so your "Jewish conspiracy" and "Zionist agents" rhetoric won't work with me. I have no agenda other than what any honest man would do when called a liar--confront his accusers.
Now it is here where I get stuck because all I feel I need to say, especially when I glance at my left forearm is, F-you! And I think, when my memoir is finally published it will be a big F-YOU to all you racist, anti-Semitic cowards. Well, I have to say I feel a little better having typed that..
Deniers and neo-nazis want to debate the number murdered, the existence of gas chambers, the existence of death camps and if Hitler and his goons ever mapped out a "Final Solution". They say we tattooed ourselves as part of an elaborate conspiracy to blackmail the German government out of millions of dollars. They say that their "experts" can prove that there is no way 6 million could have died, that the gas chambers were only showers and that photos and films of the nazi's crimes were staged or doctored. I've heard it all, especially now that I'm on My Space. Rearrange facts, leave out crucial details, tell a few outrageous lies and suddenly you have an alternative "truth" that just so happens to conveniently fit your agenda. That's what the president of Iran did with his conference, that's what Holocaust revisionists do with their books and websites and that's what Hitler did in his book Mein Kampf and with the Third Reich.
I'm an expert. I am an expert at what I saw and experienced from the time I was arrested by the Gestapo to the day I no longer wore those stripped pajamas. No, I never saw the gas chambers, but by my 2nd day in Auschwitz III (Monowitz) I was told all about them and many who arrived with me learned in the first week that they were now widowers, childless or orphans. It was then I understood why all of us healthy men (and women) were separated from the elderly, the very young and sick and why we were driven away in trucks while they were forced to walk in the mud to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
I know I didn't tattoo myself. I know that everyday while working at the I.G. Farben plant I could smell what seemed to be burnt pork. I knew what it was. We all knew what it was. There was a saying in the camp, "up the chimney". If you didn't make a "selection" you would go "up the chimney". I did see the crematoriums of Auschwitz-Birkenau with my own eyes. For two days I worked in my camp collecting the dead loading them onto a truck and accompanying them to Birkenau. I watched the Sonnderkommando unload the bodies and take them inside the brick crematorium and then I watched them fill the bed of the truck with sacks of human ashes (of the dead from the previous day) that we then delivered to female prisoners who used them to fertilize a field of cabbage.
I've seen starving men hung because they stole pieces of bread. I've seen a man with diarrhea have his brain bashed in with a shovel so only clean slaves would be observed by the high ranking Nazi official touring the I.G. Farben plant. I carried the body of a young woman down to a river so a Ukrainian SS guard could use her as bait to catch eels. One of my bunkmates was shot dead trying to escape. A 16 year old boy I had befriended and who was convinced he was going to be reunited with his father waved to me from the back of a truck bound for Birkenau. I stood next to young man, a mere skeleton, who was shot in the back of his head by an SS officer because he wasn't dying fast enough.
I don't need to prove anything to any denier or revisionists because the Hitler's stooges took care of that for me. The Nazis kept meticulous records to show their superiors, to show their glorious Fuehrer, what a spectacular job they were doing exterminating Jews and all the other "sub-humans". That is why I know that I was one of 1,155 that were stuffed into cattle cars outside of Paris and shipped to Auschwitz. That is why I know that I was 1 of the 236 men who were selected to be slave laborers in Auschwitz III. That is why I know that 55 women from those cattle cars became Auschwitz prisoners and 864 men, women and children (which included a Catholic priest I used to debate religion with while interned at Drancy). The records are so detailed that I know that I was the 38th man in my group to be tattooed. The Nazis, with their Teutonic discipline were as efficient in their record keeping as Auschwitz-Birkenau was a well-planned, efficient human disassembly line.
Why did most Nazis big shots commit suicide at the collapse of the Third Reich or before their trials ended at Nuremburg? Guilt? No. Shame? No. Why then? Because they hadn't destroyed most of the evidence in time. Why is the German government paying restitution to the Holocaust survivors? It is not because some international Jewish cabal is blackmailing them, but because the proof of the Third Reich's crimes are just so overwhelming.
Deny all you want. Air out your inner Fuehrer. In the end, it is a futile game you're playing. The only thing you will convince anyone (anyone with any intelligence) of is your ignorance. You can debate the policies of former leaders and governments and the strategies of generals and the circumstances of historical events, but you cannot debate cold, hard facts. Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Priests, Nuns, Anti-Nazis, conscientious objectors, Communists, partisans, from Holland to Romania and Greece to Norway--11 million inmates--were processed in a vast network of concentration camps. Gas chambers, bullets, nooses, starvation, disease, hard labor and beatings, eliminated a majority of them before the final curtain dropped on the Nazi scum. This is just a sad, cold, hard fact that will never be perverted.
What heartens me greatly that after all the remaining survivors and I are gone there are plenty of dedicated, intelligent and passionate young people who will step up and insure the world never forgets. Some of them are my friends here at My Space. To those of you who are going to university seeking a degree in Holocaust studies, you are my heroes. To you who have My Space groups discussing the Holocaust or fighting racism and nazism, you have my deepest respect. And to everyone who has sent me comments and letters I thank you for being my friend and giving me the encouragement to keep writing my blogs. I feel very lucky this year.
SIGNED COPIES OF SCHEISSHAUS LUCK FOR ONLY $9.99 including shipping. BUYING DIRECTLY FROM THE AUTHORS!
Not that it should matter, but for the record Mr. & Ms. Denier and Mr. & Ms. Neo-Nazi I was not a Yellow Triangle, so your "Jewish conspiracy" and "Zionist agents" rhetoric won't work with me. I have no agenda other than what any honest man would do when called a liar--confront his accusers.
Now it is here where I get stuck because all I feel I need to say, especially when I glance at my left forearm is, F-you! And I think, when my memoir is finally published it will be a big F-YOU to all you racist, anti-Semitic cowards. Well, I have to say I feel a little better having typed that..
Deniers and neo-nazis want to debate the number murdered, the existence of gas chambers, the existence of death camps and if Hitler and his goons ever mapped out a "Final Solution". They say we tattooed ourselves as part of an elaborate conspiracy to blackmail the German government out of millions of dollars. They say that their "experts" can prove that there is no way 6 million could have died, that the gas chambers were only showers and that photos and films of the nazi's crimes were staged or doctored. I've heard it all, especially now that I'm on My Space. Rearrange facts, leave out crucial details, tell a few outrageous lies and suddenly you have an alternative "truth" that just so happens to conveniently fit your agenda. That's what the president of Iran did with his conference, that's what Holocaust revisionists do with their books and websites and that's what Hitler did in his book Mein Kampf and with the Third Reich.
I'm an expert. I am an expert at what I saw and experienced from the time I was arrested by the Gestapo to the day I no longer wore those stripped pajamas. No, I never saw the gas chambers, but by my 2nd day in Auschwitz III (Monowitz) I was told all about them and many who arrived with me learned in the first week that they were now widowers, childless or orphans. It was then I understood why all of us healthy men (and women) were separated from the elderly, the very young and sick and why we were driven away in trucks while they were forced to walk in the mud to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
I know I didn't tattoo myself. I know that everyday while working at the I.G. Farben plant I could smell what seemed to be burnt pork. I knew what it was. We all knew what it was. There was a saying in the camp, "up the chimney". If you didn't make a "selection" you would go "up the chimney". I did see the crematoriums of Auschwitz-Birkenau with my own eyes. For two days I worked in my camp collecting the dead loading them onto a truck and accompanying them to Birkenau. I watched the Sonnderkommando unload the bodies and take them inside the brick crematorium and then I watched them fill the bed of the truck with sacks of human ashes (of the dead from the previous day) that we then delivered to female prisoners who used them to fertilize a field of cabbage.
I've seen starving men hung because they stole pieces of bread. I've seen a man with diarrhea have his brain bashed in with a shovel so only clean slaves would be observed by the high ranking Nazi official touring the I.G. Farben plant. I carried the body of a young woman down to a river so a Ukrainian SS guard could use her as bait to catch eels. One of my bunkmates was shot dead trying to escape. A 16 year old boy I had befriended and who was convinced he was going to be reunited with his father waved to me from the back of a truck bound for Birkenau. I stood next to young man, a mere skeleton, who was shot in the back of his head by an SS officer because he wasn't dying fast enough.
I don't need to prove anything to any denier or revisionists because the Hitler's stooges took care of that for me. The Nazis kept meticulous records to show their superiors, to show their glorious Fuehrer, what a spectacular job they were doing exterminating Jews and all the other "sub-humans". That is why I know that I was one of 1,155 that were stuffed into cattle cars outside of Paris and shipped to Auschwitz. That is why I know that I was 1 of the 236 men who were selected to be slave laborers in Auschwitz III. That is why I know that 55 women from those cattle cars became Auschwitz prisoners and 864 men, women and children (which included a Catholic priest I used to debate religion with while interned at Drancy). The records are so detailed that I know that I was the 38th man in my group to be tattooed. The Nazis, with their Teutonic discipline were as efficient in their record keeping as Auschwitz-Birkenau was a well-planned, efficient human disassembly line.
Why did most Nazis big shots commit suicide at the collapse of the Third Reich or before their trials ended at Nuremburg? Guilt? No. Shame? No. Why then? Because they hadn't destroyed most of the evidence in time. Why is the German government paying restitution to the Holocaust survivors? It is not because some international Jewish cabal is blackmailing them, but because the proof of the Third Reich's crimes are just so overwhelming.
Deny all you want. Air out your inner Fuehrer. In the end, it is a futile game you're playing. The only thing you will convince anyone (anyone with any intelligence) of is your ignorance. You can debate the policies of former leaders and governments and the strategies of generals and the circumstances of historical events, but you cannot debate cold, hard facts. Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses, Priests, Nuns, Anti-Nazis, conscientious objectors, Communists, partisans, from Holland to Romania and Greece to Norway--11 million inmates--were processed in a vast network of concentration camps. Gas chambers, bullets, nooses, starvation, disease, hard labor and beatings, eliminated a majority of them before the final curtain dropped on the Nazi scum. This is just a sad, cold, hard fact that will never be perverted.
What heartens me greatly that after all the remaining survivors and I are gone there are plenty of dedicated, intelligent and passionate young people who will step up and insure the world never forgets. Some of them are my friends here at My Space. To those of you who are going to university seeking a degree in Holocaust studies, you are my heroes. To you who have My Space groups discussing the Holocaust or fighting racism and nazism, you have my deepest respect. And to everyone who has sent me comments and letters I thank you for being my friend and giving me the encouragement to keep writing my blogs. I feel very lucky this year.
SIGNED COPIES OF SCHEISSHAUS LUCK FOR ONLY $9.99 including shipping. BUYING DIRECTLY FROM THE AUTHORS!
THINKING ABOUT TATTOOS
There are so many people with tattoos these days. In Los Angeles it might even be a requirement to have a tattoo or three to buy or rent in certain neighborhoods. Men and women, young and old have decorated their bodies with artwork to express themselves, individualize themselves or to conform to the norms of their peers. I bet if dogs and cats didn’t have so much fur there would be pet tattoo parlors around the country.
I started to think about tattoos after an e-mail from Rachael, a friend here on My Space. She has a tattoo. A tattoo that seems to mean a lot to her. A tattoo that she chose of her own free will. I have a tattoo. It is old and somewhat faded. Not as many people notice it as they used to. It’s nothing at all to look at. I don’t particularly like it and I sure didn’t want it when I got it. A branded steer and I had much in common when I was inked.
My Auschwitz number is on my left forearm. Everyone who was tattooed in Auschwitz has a series of numbers on their left forearm. For the first few weeks in the camp every time I looked at that tattoo I felt humiliated. As hunger, exhaustion and repetitious brutality whittled my body and mind, humiliation as an emotion disappeared and so did my concern about those numbers on my left forearm. When I arrived back home to Nice, no one asked why I had the tattoo, they all knew. Everyone in Europe was quite aware where those tattoos were given. When my family and I moved to Los Angeles in 1947 no one seemed to know much of anything about the Nazi concentration camps and I was barraged with questions at work, at the bus stop--hell everywhere I went. Since most of these inquires would end with the look of I wish I hadn’t been so nosey, I made it a policy only to wear long sleeves shirts even on sweltering summer days.
Each one of us finds our own unique way to cope with the hell life puts us through. The Nazis owned and brutalized me for almost two years. Since there was no way I could get those years back I wasn’t about to freely give my tormentors a moment more of my life by feeling angry or depressed every time I looked at those numbers. So, decades ago I decided that my tattoo wasn’t Nazi property or an Auschwitz keepsake, it was Pierre’s tattoo. In the past I’ve used the numbers as my ATM password, I’ve used them as the combination for locks and I still use the numbers when I play the Lotto. I like to think that it is one reason I’ve made it this far.
To pass the time these days, and because my girlfriend is the head usher, I work as an usher at a theatre. During a show I found three teenage boys with their feet resting on the seats in front of them. When I told them to put their feet down they just looked at me blankly and asked, don’t you know who we are? They went on to inform me that they were the stars of a national commercial. I told them I was sorry that I hadn’t seen it, but even if I had they still would have to take their feet off the chairs. Again they gave me blank stares. One of them noticed my left forearm.
"Where you get that tattoo?"
"Alcatraz," I blurted, having no patience to give the three a history lesson.
One of them smirked. "Alcatraz is closed."
"Not when I was your age."
That gave them pause. Their eyes met in conference.
"He seems like a tough guy," one of them said, and their feet plopped on the floor.
"Thanks," I said turning quickly on my heels so they wouldn’t see my smile.
It’s my tattoo, they're my numbers, I’ll use them as I see fit. I’m sure it is one of the reasons I’ve made it this far.
BUTTERFLIES & SPEECHES
A few months ago Pierre and I were contacted by one of our facebook friends, Michelle Zimmerman, who wanted to know if we would contribute handmade butterflies for the Houston Holocaust Museum's "The Butterfly Project". Michelle and Helen Bradley were the event coordinators for Amaco, an arts and crafts company based in Indianapolis, and the butterflies were part of Amaco's "Friendly Plastic Challenge". Over the Thanksgiving weekend Pierre and I slid the "Friendly Plastic in the oven, softened it up, grabbed the butterfly cookie cutter and here are the results.
Last Monday at an arts and craft convention in Anaheim, California, I spoke at Amaco's booth before they announced the winners of the Butterfly Project as well as the "Bottles Of Hope" with donations from that project going to the Hasbro Children's Hospital. I was asked to speak about the Holocaust and Pierre's memoir. Here is my speech.
"I have to apologize up front because as a speaker I'm a very poor second to Pierre Berg, who as a young man spent 18 months in German concentration camps, 12 of those in Auschwitz and who graciously and with a big leap of faith allowed me to co-write his memoir, Scheisshuas Luck. I say, "with a big leap of faith" on Pierre's behalf because I had never written a book before let alone a Holocaust memoir. Being that history was one of my favorite subjects through college, I prided myself on being quite knowledgeable on the "Final Solution" and the death camps this policy spawned. After my first two days of interviewing Pierre, I realized what I had learned barely scratched the surface in truly understanding what the victims of the Holocaust had endured. It was seven years last September from the day Pierre and I started working together to the day his memoir was finally published, and I have to admit that I still can't completely wrap my head around what Pierre and Mr. Zimmerman went through on a daily basis as inmates of the Nazi concentration camps. I've never been that close to such depravity, hatred and cruelty. I would like to think that I never will, which was pretty much what Pierre thought before he got arrested.
Pierre was arrested in his hometown of Nice, France two months after his 19th birthday. He was a bicycle courier for a cell of the French resistance, but that was not the reason he was arrested by the Gestapo. Pierre was not arrested because he was Jewish - He is a gentile. Pierre was picked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time -- Scheisshaus Luck as he puts it. Pierre went to the house of a school friend and walked in just as the Gestapo was arresting his friend for having a short-wave radio/broadcaster.
With no explanation - there was no due process with the Nazis - Pierre was also handcuffed and placed on a Paris bound train. He spent a couple months in a camp called Drancy where he toiled as an orderly in a quarantined ward during a scarlet fever epidemic and had an unexpected romance with a 16 year old Jewish redhead named Stella. In January of 1944, Pierre, Stella, her parents and a couple thousand other prisoners were loaded onto cattle cars to an unknown destination - Pitchi-Poi as some referred to it.
Days later Pierre found himself in Auschwitz where he spent 12 months.
In Auschwitz Pierre witnessed beatings and was on the receiving end of a couple himself. He watched a man's head caved in with a spade because he had diarrhea and that just wasn't right when a Nazi dignitary was making an inspection.
Pierre witnessed shootings. He witnessed men hung for stealing bread to stop their hunger while their Kapos, convicted murderers, rapists and thieves, placed bets on who would die first.
He watched the Sonderkommando unload the bodies from his Auschwitz camp, then helped deliver the ashes of 1200 human beings to slave laborers toiling in a cabbage patch. In his memoir, Pierre wrote: "From the looks of the heads of cabbage we made good fertilizer."
Pierre escaped a selection to Birkenau's gas chambers because he did a good job washing the barrack's foreman's shirts.
Pierre fell asleep in a warehouse during a work detail and was written up for an escape attempt, but because the man who tattooed the number on his left arm had a shaking hand they mistook the 9 for a 2 and another poor soul was hung in his place.
Pierre celebrated his 20th birthday in Auschwitz. He carried the body of a Jehovah Witness out of his camp's brothel. She had committed suicide because she couldn't be anyone's whore.
Everyday in Auschwitz Pierre dreamed of reuniting with Stella, the red-headed girl he had met in Drancy. Even after he escaped the Nazis and recuperated in the German town of Wustrow, Pierre hoped that he would see Stella again. But, there was no fairy tale ending.
In 1947 Pierre moved to Los Angeles with his parents. At his first job in Hollywood, a female coworker inquired about the tattoo on his left arm.
"It was my license plate in a Nazi concentration camp." Pierre told her. "I lost half of my weight there. From 145 lbs to 72 lbs."
"We had a rough time, too, here in the U.S," The coworker replied. "We had to eat chicken all the time."
Thinking that someday he might forget what he had gone through in those 18 months, Pierre jotted down his recollections. Those recollections sat in a drawer for over fifty years until Pierre and I met while we were both working part-time at the Canon theatre in Beverly Hills.
The butterflies that are on display here today will become part of exhibit that will represent the 1.5 million children that were slaughtered by Nazi Germany. Butterflies are elegant and beautiful creatures and of course so are children. 1 million, five hundred thousand innocent children systemically murdered. Many were shot to death, beat to death or starved to death, but those children who arrived at one of the extermination camps were murdered with an insecticide called Xyklon-B. Infants, toddlers, 3 year olds 4 year olds, 5 year olds, 6 year olds, 7 year olds, 8 year olds, 9 year olds… if they were deemed to young to work productively they would be marched to the showers, sometimes with a parent or holding the hand of their sister or brother or maybe they walked into that room alone, naked, waiting for the water to come out of the pipes above them, not understanding why there were people crying all around them. The pellets of insecticide would be dropped and 20 ungodly minutes later the door would be open and all the children, men and women inside would be gone.
One of the main goals for Pierre and I in writing his memoir was to tell his story without whitewashing or softening a thing. To have done so would have been a great disservice. As a race we humans have a difficult time enough learning our lessons from the past. Diluting history, softening the truth to not upset the children sitting in classrooms, means we are only giving the tools to future generations to repeat past generations' mistakes and atrocities. The Holocaust survivor who recently admitted to romanticizing his memoir in the desire to give people hope, his heart was in the right place, but hope is for the future. The past only needs one thing -- brutal, unblinking honesty."
Michelle's father, a Holocaust survivor, was scheduled to speak but had to back out at the last minute. I truely regret not being able to meet him. Helen read his prepared speech. Mr. Zimmerman was gracious enough to allow me to post it.
"Unfortunately George’s wife became very ill suddenly. He apologizes for not being here, is honored for being asked to speak at the AMACO challenge and wishes to share his stories but this time has to deliver his speech through me.
These are George’s words:
Holocaust stories are all big stories and all different. You can’t say that if you have heard one you’ve heard them all. Each is about different torturing and killing. The only common thread is that it was about extermination.
They told me that if I worked good they will treat me decently and when the war is over as all wars are, we will go home, except those that were different and didn’t belong would be shot.
For example we were told that when we finished a project we’d be shot. The first project was building a bridge to get wounded soldiers out. People were hung from this bridge every day for bringing in less pebbles, for working too slow. I was hung from it by my hands which were tied behind my back, because my mother came to see me.
Halfway through construction the Russian army burned down the bridge so I lived to build another project. We kept constructing and the army kept destroying and I kept living.
5 kilometers from the Hungarian border we were told that anyone who wanted to go home was to fall in line and march. I fell in a ditch. Years later when I arrived home I found a man who had been in my group. He said that at the border there was a train waiting to take everyone to a concentration camp where everyone was shot that same day. Except for he and his twin brother.
My Holocaust story is one of many horror stories.
In a nutshell I went through 3 hells not just one.
The first hell was the forced labor camp, but I was a young man, sure of myself and survived—me against the world. I thought I’d go home a free man.
The 2nd hell was being liberated from the labor camp and taken as a Russian Prisoner of War. POWs had no rights, not even the right to life. Russians had not signed the Geneva Convention.
The 3rd hell was when I was liberated and went home. I got off the train in Budapest happy and proud that I survived. I was greeted by 2 long lines of silent strangers who were holding photos to their chests. They said nothing but looked me in the eye hoping I knew where their relative was buried. I had to walk by these people to reach the street. By the end I was so ashamed that I’d survived. There was my home, the furniture, the streets I grew up on and all my family was dead.
This was the worst hell. During the day I laugh and smile and then night comes and I dream about the horribleness of coming home every night and have done so since 1947.
It was cruel and brutal. The only limit to the cruelty was the imagination of the people and they were very imaginative. I am told that now imaginative people use their skills to ensure that the stories and memories of the survivors continue on past the time that is coming very soon when we are all dead. I hope it’s true. It is a wonderful thing these butterflies for the children. "
Neither Pierre's or my butterflies won, but that wasn't a surprise seeing the craftsmanship of some of the other entries. I got none of my mother's artistic attributes. I do like Pierre's Rainbow Butterfly very much.
We are both very thankful to Michelle for getting us involved in the butterfly project. It means so much to Pierre and I to contribute to what should be a stunning exhibition remembering all those children that never got the chance to grow up. Here is the link to the The Butterfly Project if you want to get involved.
 |
| Pierre's "Rainbow Wings" |
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| Brian's "Stars" |
 |
| Brian's "Hands" |
 |
| Pierre's "Purple & White" |
Last Monday at an arts and craft convention in Anaheim, California, I spoke at Amaco's booth before they announced the winners of the Butterfly Project as well as the "Bottles Of Hope" with donations from that project going to the Hasbro Children's Hospital. I was asked to speak about the Holocaust and Pierre's memoir. Here is my speech.
"I have to apologize up front because as a speaker I'm a very poor second to Pierre Berg, who as a young man spent 18 months in German concentration camps, 12 of those in Auschwitz and who graciously and with a big leap of faith allowed me to co-write his memoir, Scheisshuas Luck. I say, "with a big leap of faith" on Pierre's behalf because I had never written a book before let alone a Holocaust memoir. Being that history was one of my favorite subjects through college, I prided myself on being quite knowledgeable on the "Final Solution" and the death camps this policy spawned. After my first two days of interviewing Pierre, I realized what I had learned barely scratched the surface in truly understanding what the victims of the Holocaust had endured. It was seven years last September from the day Pierre and I started working together to the day his memoir was finally published, and I have to admit that I still can't completely wrap my head around what Pierre and Mr. Zimmerman went through on a daily basis as inmates of the Nazi concentration camps. I've never been that close to such depravity, hatred and cruelty. I would like to think that I never will, which was pretty much what Pierre thought before he got arrested.
Pierre was arrested in his hometown of Nice, France two months after his 19th birthday. He was a bicycle courier for a cell of the French resistance, but that was not the reason he was arrested by the Gestapo. Pierre was not arrested because he was Jewish - He is a gentile. Pierre was picked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time -- Scheisshaus Luck as he puts it. Pierre went to the house of a school friend and walked in just as the Gestapo was arresting his friend for having a short-wave radio/broadcaster.
With no explanation - there was no due process with the Nazis - Pierre was also handcuffed and placed on a Paris bound train. He spent a couple months in a camp called Drancy where he toiled as an orderly in a quarantined ward during a scarlet fever epidemic and had an unexpected romance with a 16 year old Jewish redhead named Stella. In January of 1944, Pierre, Stella, her parents and a couple thousand other prisoners were loaded onto cattle cars to an unknown destination - Pitchi-Poi as some referred to it.
Days later Pierre found himself in Auschwitz where he spent 12 months.
In Auschwitz Pierre witnessed beatings and was on the receiving end of a couple himself. He watched a man's head caved in with a spade because he had diarrhea and that just wasn't right when a Nazi dignitary was making an inspection.
Pierre witnessed shootings. He witnessed men hung for stealing bread to stop their hunger while their Kapos, convicted murderers, rapists and thieves, placed bets on who would die first.
He watched the Sonderkommando unload the bodies from his Auschwitz camp, then helped deliver the ashes of 1200 human beings to slave laborers toiling in a cabbage patch. In his memoir, Pierre wrote: "From the looks of the heads of cabbage we made good fertilizer."
Pierre escaped a selection to Birkenau's gas chambers because he did a good job washing the barrack's foreman's shirts.
Pierre fell asleep in a warehouse during a work detail and was written up for an escape attempt, but because the man who tattooed the number on his left arm had a shaking hand they mistook the 9 for a 2 and another poor soul was hung in his place.
Pierre celebrated his 20th birthday in Auschwitz. He carried the body of a Jehovah Witness out of his camp's brothel. She had committed suicide because she couldn't be anyone's whore.
Everyday in Auschwitz Pierre dreamed of reuniting with Stella, the red-headed girl he had met in Drancy. Even after he escaped the Nazis and recuperated in the German town of Wustrow, Pierre hoped that he would see Stella again. But, there was no fairy tale ending.
In 1947 Pierre moved to Los Angeles with his parents. At his first job in Hollywood, a female coworker inquired about the tattoo on his left arm.
"It was my license plate in a Nazi concentration camp." Pierre told her. "I lost half of my weight there. From 145 lbs to 72 lbs."
"We had a rough time, too, here in the U.S," The coworker replied. "We had to eat chicken all the time."
Thinking that someday he might forget what he had gone through in those 18 months, Pierre jotted down his recollections. Those recollections sat in a drawer for over fifty years until Pierre and I met while we were both working part-time at the Canon theatre in Beverly Hills.
The butterflies that are on display here today will become part of exhibit that will represent the 1.5 million children that were slaughtered by Nazi Germany. Butterflies are elegant and beautiful creatures and of course so are children. 1 million, five hundred thousand innocent children systemically murdered. Many were shot to death, beat to death or starved to death, but those children who arrived at one of the extermination camps were murdered with an insecticide called Xyklon-B. Infants, toddlers, 3 year olds 4 year olds, 5 year olds, 6 year olds, 7 year olds, 8 year olds, 9 year olds… if they were deemed to young to work productively they would be marched to the showers, sometimes with a parent or holding the hand of their sister or brother or maybe they walked into that room alone, naked, waiting for the water to come out of the pipes above them, not understanding why there were people crying all around them. The pellets of insecticide would be dropped and 20 ungodly minutes later the door would be open and all the children, men and women inside would be gone.
One of the main goals for Pierre and I in writing his memoir was to tell his story without whitewashing or softening a thing. To have done so would have been a great disservice. As a race we humans have a difficult time enough learning our lessons from the past. Diluting history, softening the truth to not upset the children sitting in classrooms, means we are only giving the tools to future generations to repeat past generations' mistakes and atrocities. The Holocaust survivor who recently admitted to romanticizing his memoir in the desire to give people hope, his heart was in the right place, but hope is for the future. The past only needs one thing -- brutal, unblinking honesty."
Michelle's father, a Holocaust survivor, was scheduled to speak but had to back out at the last minute. I truely regret not being able to meet him. Helen read his prepared speech. Mr. Zimmerman was gracious enough to allow me to post it.
"Unfortunately George’s wife became very ill suddenly. He apologizes for not being here, is honored for being asked to speak at the AMACO challenge and wishes to share his stories but this time has to deliver his speech through me.
These are George’s words:
Holocaust stories are all big stories and all different. You can’t say that if you have heard one you’ve heard them all. Each is about different torturing and killing. The only common thread is that it was about extermination.
They told me that if I worked good they will treat me decently and when the war is over as all wars are, we will go home, except those that were different and didn’t belong would be shot.
For example we were told that when we finished a project we’d be shot. The first project was building a bridge to get wounded soldiers out. People were hung from this bridge every day for bringing in less pebbles, for working too slow. I was hung from it by my hands which were tied behind my back, because my mother came to see me.
Halfway through construction the Russian army burned down the bridge so I lived to build another project. We kept constructing and the army kept destroying and I kept living.
5 kilometers from the Hungarian border we were told that anyone who wanted to go home was to fall in line and march. I fell in a ditch. Years later when I arrived home I found a man who had been in my group. He said that at the border there was a train waiting to take everyone to a concentration camp where everyone was shot that same day. Except for he and his twin brother.
My Holocaust story is one of many horror stories.
In a nutshell I went through 3 hells not just one.
The first hell was the forced labor camp, but I was a young man, sure of myself and survived—me against the world. I thought I’d go home a free man.
The 2nd hell was being liberated from the labor camp and taken as a Russian Prisoner of War. POWs had no rights, not even the right to life. Russians had not signed the Geneva Convention.
The 3rd hell was when I was liberated and went home. I got off the train in Budapest happy and proud that I survived. I was greeted by 2 long lines of silent strangers who were holding photos to their chests. They said nothing but looked me in the eye hoping I knew where their relative was buried. I had to walk by these people to reach the street. By the end I was so ashamed that I’d survived. There was my home, the furniture, the streets I grew up on and all my family was dead.
This was the worst hell. During the day I laugh and smile and then night comes and I dream about the horribleness of coming home every night and have done so since 1947.
It was cruel and brutal. The only limit to the cruelty was the imagination of the people and they were very imaginative. I am told that now imaginative people use their skills to ensure that the stories and memories of the survivors continue on past the time that is coming very soon when we are all dead. I hope it’s true. It is a wonderful thing these butterflies for the children. "
Neither Pierre's or my butterflies won, but that wasn't a surprise seeing the craftsmanship of some of the other entries. I got none of my mother's artistic attributes. I do like Pierre's Rainbow Butterfly very much.
We are both very thankful to Michelle for getting us involved in the butterfly project. It means so much to Pierre and I to contribute to what should be a stunning exhibition remembering all those children that never got the chance to grow up. Here is the link to the The Butterfly Project if you want to get involved.
The Butterfly
The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun’s tears would sing
against a white stone....
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun’s tears would sing
against a white stone....
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly ’way up high.
It went away I’m sure
because it wished
to kiss the world good-bye.
Is carried lightly ’way up high.
It went away I’m sure
because it wished
to kiss the world good-bye.
For seven weeks I’ve lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto.
But I have found what I love here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut branches in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
Penned up inside this ghetto.
But I have found what I love here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut branches in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don’t live in here, in the ghetto.
Butterflies don’t live in here, in the ghetto.
Pavel Friedman, June 4, 1942
Born in Prague on January 7, 1921.
Deported to the Terezin Concentration Camp on April 26, 1942.
Died in Aushchwitz on September 29, 1944.
Deported to the Terezin Concentration Camp on April 26, 1942.
Died in Aushchwitz on September 29, 1944.
Friday, August 19, 2011
The Book’s First Review & Scheisshaus Luck Defined
Here is The Kirkus Reviews' review for Scheisshaus Luck:
"The harrowing story of Berg's time in Nazi concentration camps, related with irony, irreverence, and gallows humor that led co-author Brock to urge him to publish it a half-century after it was written.
The pair collaborated to amplify and clarify the original manuscript, but retained the cocky voice of a French Resistance member only 18 years old when he was arrested in Nice in late 1943. On a train full of prisoners, Berg met Stella, a pretty Jewish girl with whom he snatched some stolen sex and happiness at the Drancy transit camp near Paris. There he also had the misfortune to encounter the Gestapo agent who had arrested him in Nice; the agent ordered him sent to Auschwitz. But the "shithouse luck" of his book's title, Berg explains in his preface, meant that he "kept landing on the right side of the randomness of life." A minor clerical error caused another Häftling (prisoner) to be hung in his stead. Berg got to carry on collecting corpses, digging trenches and cadging the occasional extra ladle of watery soup that sometimes made the difference between life and death. Like other survivors, he graphically recalls the beatings, hunger, sickness, selections, stink, despair and omnipresent death. Berg's mechanical skill and proficiency in German, English, Italian, Spanish and a bit of Russian, in addition to his native French, contributed to his Scheisshaus luck. The young Häftling was sent to the caves of Dora, where he assembled V-1 and V-2 rockets as a slave of IG Farben. When freedom came, he was caught between the retreating Wehrmacht and the advancing, marauding Red Army. He was searching for Stella, never forgotten during his 18 months in the camps, and the randomness of life proved itself once again.
A worthy supplement to the reports of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel."
Here Pierre explains what Scheisshaus Luck means, why it is the title of his Holocaust memoir and why in 1948 he began to write about his experiences in the camps.
"The harrowing story of Berg's time in Nazi concentration camps, related with irony, irreverence, and gallows humor that led co-author Brock to urge him to publish it a half-century after it was written.
The pair collaborated to amplify and clarify the original manuscript, but retained the cocky voice of a French Resistance member only 18 years old when he was arrested in Nice in late 1943. On a train full of prisoners, Berg met Stella, a pretty Jewish girl with whom he snatched some stolen sex and happiness at the Drancy transit camp near Paris. There he also had the misfortune to encounter the Gestapo agent who had arrested him in Nice; the agent ordered him sent to Auschwitz. But the "shithouse luck" of his book's title, Berg explains in his preface, meant that he "kept landing on the right side of the randomness of life." A minor clerical error caused another Häftling (prisoner) to be hung in his stead. Berg got to carry on collecting corpses, digging trenches and cadging the occasional extra ladle of watery soup that sometimes made the difference between life and death. Like other survivors, he graphically recalls the beatings, hunger, sickness, selections, stink, despair and omnipresent death. Berg's mechanical skill and proficiency in German, English, Italian, Spanish and a bit of Russian, in addition to his native French, contributed to his Scheisshaus luck. The young Häftling was sent to the caves of Dora, where he assembled V-1 and V-2 rockets as a slave of IG Farben. When freedom came, he was caught between the retreating Wehrmacht and the advancing, marauding Red Army. He was searching for Stella, never forgotten during his 18 months in the camps, and the randomness of life proved itself once again.
A worthy supplement to the reports of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel."
Here Pierre explains what Scheisshaus Luck means, why it is the title of his Holocaust memoir and why in 1948 he began to write about his experiences in the camps.
Scheisshaus Luck: An Introduction To My Memoir
Pierre Berg, 16 years old
In 1947, after 18 months in German Concentration camps, I moved from Nice, France to California. At that time no one in the U.S. really cared about Auschwitz or what would later be termed "the Holocaust." So to insure I wouldn't forget what happen to me I wrote down my odyssey. I was twenty-one years old. My mother, bless her heart, typed it up for me. I spared her many of the more revolting things I saw and went through. Once finished it sat it in a drawer for over fifty years.
Pierre, 1946
The title of my memoir is Scheisshaus Luck because it was shithouse luck that I survived.I saw a man's head caved in with a shovel because he had diarrhea and that is an affront when a Nazi dignitary is making an inspection.
I witnessed men hung for stealing bread to stop their hunger while their Kapos, convicted murderers, rapists and thieves, placed bets on who would die first.
I've watched the Sonderkommando unload bodies, then I helped deliver the ashes of what I calculated to be 1200 human beings to women toiling in a cabbage patch. From the looks of the heads of cabbage we made good fertilizer.
I've watched the Sonderkommando unload bodies, then I helped deliver the ashes of what I calculated to be 1200 human beings to women toiling in a cabbage patch. From the looks of the heads of cabbage we made good fertilizer.
I escaped a selection to Birkenau's gas chambers because I did a good job washing my blockelster's shirts.
I fell asleep in a warehouse and was written up for an escape attempt, but because the man who tattooed me had a shaking hand, they mistook the 9 for a 3 and another poor soul was hung in my place.
I celebrated my 20th birthday in Auschwitz. I carried the body of Jehovah Witness out of the camp's brothel. She had committed suicide because she couldn't be anyone's whore.
I barely survived the death march out of Auschwitz and found myself working on circuit boards for the V2 rockets in Dora. I did what I could to make sure they didn't work without getting my neck stretched by the noose.
I still have a few shards of shrapnel from a Red Army tank shell in my ass.
I fell in love with a girl in the Paris camp of Drancy before we were shipped to Pitchi Poi. In Auschwitz I dreamed of reuniting with her, even after I escaped the Nazis and was recuperated in a German village I hoped that I would see Stella again. But, I had no fairy tale ending.
Pierre, 2008
I am a gentile. I am a Holocaust survivor. I want the skinheads, the neo-Nazis, the Holocaust deniers to come to me and say that the Holocaust is just Jewish propaganda. I want to help put a cork in the bile they spew.
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