His name was his tattoo: Man recalls struggle for survival in concentration camp

Arthur Gelbart was born in Klobuck, Poland, on March 25, 1929. Young Arthur had three sisters. two older and one younger. They were all two years apart. Arthur and his sisters used to sing songs in their modest home. Jewish songs. Arthur would chase his sisters around the house. There was laughter. There was love. His father was in the meat business, and family meals were prepared by Arthur's mother and grandmother. "They were both very good cooks," he said. Arthur's mother spoke and wrote in five languages but had never attended school. The Gelbart family was large. Arthur's father had four brothers and three sisters and all lived in either Klobuck or the small towns nearby. That all changed in September 1939. Arthur was 10 years old and in school that September. His first day of the new school year would be his last day in school, ever. "On that first day of school, my mother's brother was taken into the backyard of his home and shot, as an example," he said. Germany had invaded Poland in a blitzkrieg from the north, south and west. The city of Czestochowa is 17 kilometers or 10 miles away from Kłobuck. The Nazi persecution of the Jews began immediately. Arthur had family in several of the small towns surrounding the city. The Germans attacked Czestochowa on Sunday, Sept. 3, and more than 300 Jews were killed the following day. It is known as "Bloody Monday." "We, a little later," Arthur said, "found out that my father's youngest brother was shot on that Monday." "They (German soldiers) were trying to teach us to behave or else," Arthur said, and then he paused. "They were very good at it." As we talk, he is looking over my shoulder, past me, almost as if he is speaking to a memory, but he turned to me when he said, "A lot of killing." Most of Klobuck's 2,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. The Germans took Arthur's father to Auschwitz to work. "All we know," Arthur said, "was that my father was 42 years old and strong and healthy. He was a very, very, healthy person. Auschwitz was not a work camp, it was a death camp." He is now staring straight into my eyes, and he speaks in an even cadence. "As long as you were young enough to work, you worked," he said. "When you dropped, they had gas chambers and they had ovens." Arthur's father died in Auschwitz. Arthur, his mother and his three sisters were placed in a ghetto as the Germans moved Jews through Poland. The Nazi-established ghettos were put in place to terrorize the imprisoned Jews. Starvation, exploitation, forced labor and finally deportation to extermination camps were the operating procedures in the ghettos. Arthur, his three sisters and mother were moved from ghetto to ghetto for nearly three years. "They took all of us," he said. And then he stopped. He closed his eyes, and he kept them closed in silence for 16 seconds. When he opened his eyes he said, "They took us to Blechhammer." Blechhammer was a subdivision of Auschwitz. "This is when they made prisoners out of us, and we went to work. We were given the numbers, the uniform." The tattooed number Arthur was branded with is still visible on his left forearm. "My number is 177191. That was my name for three years," he said of the dehumanizing Nazi practice. He rolled up his sleeve and revealed it. The number, forever inked on his arm, is still very visible. They wore striped uniforms. His sisters were picked to go to a work camp. "I had worked quite a bit in the ghettos," he said, "so, when it came to selection time, the people around me told the Germans that I was a very good worker. I had calluses on my hands. Before we were sent to Blechhammer, I was assigned work in cemeteries removing headstones to be broken and used to build roads for the Nazis." Pause. "One of the stones was my grandfather's." Arthur stops and closes his eyes again. "It's hard to go through this again and again." Arthur's mother was shot to death by the Schutzstaffel, the SS. "The Germans were taught how to do war," he said. Arthur was selected to stay at Blechhammer and work. There, he watched "the leftovers, the very young and the very old, sent off to Auschwitz without realizing they were going to the gas chambers. The convoys kept coming back with their clothing," he said. "We knew then (they were murdered) and that included children younger than me." "For your information," Arthur said as he stared at me, "out of that war, a million and a half children died. Our generation was killed." The room Arthur and I sit in is dark except for a ceiling light and a window in front of him. He drops his head as if to rest it. The light above puts a spotlight on his white eyebrows and the eyes that have seen too much are lost in the shadows of darkness as his face falls to the floor. I asked him if it was hard for him to understand what happened. He looked up. "I asked the grown-ups, why? Nobody had the answer. I still don't know why. But yet, in a smaller way, in different countries, we are doing the same thing to people. Why?" Arthur was in Blechhammer for two and a half years. Most of the forced labor at Blechhammer centered on the construction of a synthetic fuel plant to feed the German war machine. The portrait of Blechhammer is dark. Here, women and children were murdered on a regular basis as the Nazis selected groups of people from the ghettos. Executions were part of the canvas young Arthur had to view every day. "To survive, for people of my age, was not easy. It was very hard for me to follow religion. Do you know what that did to a mind my age to watch people giving up a life and hanging onto electric wires, and me, as a worker, had to move them into wagons to disappear?" Arthur's voice trails. Buchenwald was next for Arthur. It's 1942. Buchenwald was a death camp. "They didn't have gas chambers, but they had ovens to burn the dead," Arthur said. "You were right among them. They couldn't burn enough of them. So, next to us are three to four thousand bodies waiting to be burned, and this is where we are laying and watching to be, in a way very selfish, to make sure we are not one of them. I was in a barrack for children. There were three of us on a wood built shelf. "But you wake up in the morning and the guy next to you is dead (from starvation), and that's hard to live with, but in order to survive, you didn't want to be one of those persons." In December 1944, the Russians were getting close to Germany through Poland and the Germans didn't want any prisoners to fall into the hands of the Allies and expose their atrocities. So, people of Buchenwald and every other concentration camp were sent on what became known as "The Death March." "We started walking, I was told, with 4,000 of us from Blechhammer. Nearly half would die. It's Poland now in January and February and it's a very cold winter and this is when we walked," Arthur said. "We only had the clothes we were wearing and we'd walk all day." SS guards were taking the prisoners to Gross-Rosen, another concentration camp. The forced death march was Germany's last extermination effort. "The German guards," Arthur said, "they enjoyed shooting. If you would sit down. If you couldn't walk anymore. They'd shoot you. That's it. A lot of people gave up, too. There was no food. I still haven't learned how to live without food, but at night, as we slept outside on frozen farm land, if you dug up a carrot or something that the farmer left, that's what you ate. The guards would be in the farmer's house, and we were left outside, always. My shoes? They were gone. So, if somebody was shot on the walk, you took their shoes or their shirt. We had those striped outfits." The Death March changed Arthur. "I never even thought about what happened to my family anymore. We turned out to be selfish people. There was not a helluva lot left of me in 1945." Arthur turned 16 years old March 25, 1945. In April, he and all that survived the Holocaust were liberated. Germany unconditionally surrendered on May 8. "I never gave up. I never gave up," he said. "It's very hard to go through this again, especially if your mind is still working. Most of the time, you still dream about it all. I was told by my wife, years ago, I would wake up screaming." He paused. He looked off into the light coming through the window by us. A moment breathed, and then he looked back at me and said, "But somehow you even get used to that." Arthur and his three sisters were separated early and never knew if death by execution, sickness or starvation had found any of them. They were reunited years later in America. His three sisters are all gone now. He remains. "I'm proud," Arthur said, "from the four of us that survived, we have a family now of 42." One of his grandsons, now a school teacher, tattooed Arthur's identification number on his own forearm. One of his granddaughters is named after his mother, Liba. His wife, Rose, is six years younger. She was one of "The Hidden Children" who survived the Holocaust by hiding. She is her own story of perseverance in the face of evil. Arthur came to the United States in March of 1947. He landed in New York with only 90 cents. "I had 95," he said, "but I spent 5 cents on the boat to get a Coke." He spoke only Yiddish and Polish. "I was proud to get off that boat and be free." In 1948, at 19 years of age, he joined the United States Army. "I became an American citizen, and that's the country I love. I was happy to pay back the country that gave me so much. I won't ever forget that." Has he ever come to terms with it? How did he not allow himself to be consumed by it and destroy him from the inside? "Well, surviving is a very hard job. But, if you don't learn to survive today and live for the next day, who is going to be telling my story, because let's face it, when I'm gone, and my generation is gone, people tend to forget. But I'm very proud of the fact that I haven't forgotten." He looks at me. "So that's what you see. A Holocaust survivor. Not many of us around," he said. "And, I appreciate you putting it down." The setting for my interview with Arthur Gelbart was "Barnegie Hall," in Avon Lake. It's an old barn converted to a music venue. Marilyn Zeidner is the proprietor. Arthur was a guest for Marilyn's commitment to honoring veterans through music and the D.R.E.W Project. Singer songwriter Tracy Marie Greenberg sat with Arthur on Saturday and wrote a song honoring him, titled "My Name was My Tattoo.'' Contact Ron Jantz at rjantz@chroniclet.com.