The Commandant of Lubizec: A Novel of the Holocaust and Operation Reinhard by Patrick Hicks Page A
Authors: Patrick Hicks
Tags: Historical
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last time I saw Nela and my son, Jakob.” Although his voice is blunt and matter-of-fact, he rubs the lower half of his face and his eyes mist over. “That,
that
, was my first ten minutes in Lubizec.
That
.”
As you watch Zischer in this interview, your eye is slowly drawn to the coffee mug and the steam rising next to him. It is easy to imagine the steam as ghosts floating up and you quickly sense that Zischer lives in two different time zones. His body may be in the here-and-now but his mind flits back through the decades, back towards the camp, back towards the shouldering crowds. Watching Zischer is like watching a man travel through time. His body may be in the present but his mind is not. When he looks at the camera he isn’t seeing a film crew from Israel. No. He is back on a platform, sorting luggage, and he is watching a pink coat and a little boy disappear from him forever.
“Why do you think you survived?”
Chaim Zischer cocks his head. “A good question. One that I have asked myself many times, over many years. Anyone who speaks Hebrew knows my name means ‘life.’ Maybe I was destined to live because of this?”
There is a scowl, as if he is reprimanding himself for saying something so stupid. “That is, if you believe in destiny, which I do not.”
He goes on to explain that he still marvels at the beating of his heart and the movement of his hands and the bellows of his lungs. He doesn’t use the word
miracle
at any time during the interview but he does shake his head on a number of occasions, as if he is stilltrying to comprehend the odds of his own survival. Zischer leans forward and says that both he and Dov Damiel arrived into Lubizec at the same time—late September 1942—and that it was dumb luck they pulled themselves away from the gravitational field of the gas chambers.
“It was a black hole, those gas chambers. Thousands of human beings arrived each day and they were all sucked in. You know how stars and planets get devoured by a black hole? How everything spirals into its drain of fire? That was Lubizec. Relentless. All powerful. Final. It pulled people in from all over Poland. It was unstoppable.”
He mentions that he wasn’t any smarter or faster or wiser or better than those who were murdered. He and the others who lived were just blessed with a greater share of luck. That’s all it was. We may want to pinpoint certain qualities that explain why these men, and not others, survived, and we may want to see their steely-eyed determination to break out of Lubizec and tell the world about what they witnessed as making them somehow stronger than those who were killed, but Zischer is adamant they were just luckier, not more in love with life. This is an unsatisfactory answer for us. We want some mysterious ingredient that explains their survival. Zischer, however, does not want to be seen as special, quite possibly because he doesn’t want to think of himself as being somehow better than those who were murdered.
“It was chance. I could be dead now and someone else could be alive. It is 1983 right now and I live in a possible world where I am still alive. It could have gone the other way in the 1940s just as easily. Because of this, I often feel like a corpse on vacation.”
He takes a long sip of coffee and shakes his head as if he wants to change the subject. He smoothes back his graying hair and adjusts his bifocals.
“In Barrack 14, we cared for each other as best we could. If we didn’t watch out for each other—if we allowed these killers, these Nazis, to make us into animals—it would have been a victory for them. So there you have it. We wanted our barracks to be a place ofgoodness even though evil surrounded us. To do such a thing made us feel human. Do you understand what I am saying? It is only by helping that you are truly alive. If you can do this, especially on the cliff of death, it separates you from the beasts.”
“I see.”
“I’m not sure you do.
that
, was my first ten minutes in Lubizec.
That
.”
As you watch Zischer in this interview, your eye is slowly drawn to the coffee mug and the steam rising next to him. It is easy to imagine the steam as ghosts floating up and you quickly sense that Zischer lives in two different time zones. His body may be in the here-and-now but his mind flits back through the decades, back towards the camp, back towards the shouldering crowds. Watching Zischer is like watching a man travel through time. His body may be in the present but his mind is not. When he looks at the camera he isn’t seeing a film crew from Israel. No. He is back on a platform, sorting luggage, and he is watching a pink coat and a little boy disappear from him forever.
“Why do you think you survived?”
Chaim Zischer cocks his head. “A good question. One that I have asked myself many times, over many years. Anyone who speaks Hebrew knows my name means ‘life.’ Maybe I was destined to live because of this?”
There is a scowl, as if he is reprimanding himself for saying something so stupid. “That is, if you believe in destiny, which I do not.”
He goes on to explain that he still marvels at the beating of his heart and the movement of his hands and the bellows of his lungs. He doesn’t use the word
miracle
at any time during the interview but he does shake his head on a number of occasions, as if he is stilltrying to comprehend the odds of his own survival. Zischer leans forward and says that both he and Dov Damiel arrived into Lubizec at the same time—late September 1942—and that it was dumb luck they pulled themselves away from the gravitational field of the gas chambers.
“It was a black hole, those gas chambers. Thousands of human beings arrived each day and they were all sucked in. You know how stars and planets get devoured by a black hole? How everything spirals into its drain of fire? That was Lubizec. Relentless. All powerful. Final. It pulled people in from all over Poland. It was unstoppable.”
He mentions that he wasn’t any smarter or faster or wiser or better than those who were murdered. He and the others who lived were just blessed with a greater share of luck. That’s all it was. We may want to pinpoint certain qualities that explain why these men, and not others, survived, and we may want to see their steely-eyed determination to break out of Lubizec and tell the world about what they witnessed as making them somehow stronger than those who were killed, but Zischer is adamant they were just luckier, not more in love with life. This is an unsatisfactory answer for us. We want some mysterious ingredient that explains their survival. Zischer, however, does not want to be seen as special, quite possibly because he doesn’t want to think of himself as being somehow better than those who were murdered.
“It was chance. I could be dead now and someone else could be alive. It is 1983 right now and I live in a possible world where I am still alive. It could have gone the other way in the 1940s just as easily. Because of this, I often feel like a corpse on vacation.”
He takes a long sip of coffee and shakes his head as if he wants to change the subject. He smoothes back his graying hair and adjusts his bifocals.
“In Barrack 14, we cared for each other as best we could. If we didn’t watch out for each other—if we allowed these killers, these Nazis, to make us into animals—it would have been a victory for them. So there you have it. We wanted our barracks to be a place ofgoodness even though evil surrounded us. To do such a thing made us feel human. Do you understand what I am saying? It is only by helping that you are truly alive. If you can do this, especially on the cliff of death, it separates you from the beasts.”
“I see.”
“I’m not sure you do.
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