“During a round-up of Jews in early June, 1944, Hersch was shoved into a cattle car with several others and shipped to Mauthausen Concentration Camp in western Austria.”
By Jack Hersch
DURING WORLD WAR Two my father, Dave Hersch, spent a year slaving in a Nazi concentration camp. In the final months of the war, he escaped from a Nazi death march, was caught, returned to captivity only to escape again. His survival took monumental will power, indescribable guts, and sheer luck, at least.
In May 1944, the Jews in Hersch’s hometown of Dej, Hungary (now Romania), were ordered out of their homes and into what was called the town ghetto. But it was unlike any ghetto you’d ever seen in newsreels; this one was just a clearing in a local forest.
The Jews shipped there were given canvas and wood and told to build their own shelters. On the third day, some Germans troops came looking for a baker to run the bread ovens in their mess. My father, just 18 years old at the time, volunteered, even though he’d never baked a thing in his life. Somehow, he was good at it. The Germans kept him on and even provided him a small apartment in town in which to live.
This was just the first of a string of lucky breaks for him.
During a round-up of Jews in early June, 1944, Hersch was shoved into a cattle car with several others and shipped from Dej to Mauthausen Concentration Camp in western Austria. Mauthausen and its nearby sub-camps, Gusen I and Gusen II, were known even by the Nazis as the harshest camps in all the Third Reich. Built adjacent to exterior-wall granite mines, at least 100,000 prisoners were murdered there.
Arriving in Gusen II, Hersch immediately realized any job was better than working in the mines. He told an SS guard he was a carpenter, even though he unquestionably wasn’t. Sure enough, after a day in the carpentry kommando (prisoner working groups were called kommandos), his ineptitude was so obvious that he was moved to the mine kommando. Why wasn’t he killed for the ruse? He was living in the cruelest place on earth, but in another stroke of luck, his only punishment was being sent to the mines.
In July of 1944, Hersch was moved to the other Mauthausen sub-camp: Gusen I. It was yet another random lucky break, one that almost certainly saved his life. His previous camp, Gusen II, was garrisoned by some of the most depraved and sadistic guards and kapos (prisoners in charge of other prisoners) in the entire Nazi concentration camp system. Though still working in the granite mines, his survival odds had improved.
Always on the lookout for ways to escape the fatally harsh working conditions of the mines, Hersch noticed the latrine kommando seemed less punishing. Instead of spending the work day moving massive granite boulders, all this detail did was empty, clean and replace barrels of human waste from under the barracks. It was relatively easy, albeit filthy, work. Hersch soon befriended the kapo running the team, and sure enough, one morning he was ordered to report for duty there. Good fortune smiled again.
On my father’s second day working the latrines, he accidentally spilled a barrel on a camp pathway. The kapo pounced, brutally whipping young Dave as he tried to use his bare hands to clean the putrid mess. After the beating, Hersch was sent back to the mine kommando. Why was he spared again? Concentration camp prisoners were routinely murdered for much less. Yet, once again the only consequence Hersch suffered was a return to the mines. Was it just random chance? His personality? His gift for connecting with people? It’s unclear, but one this was certain: His good luck had become a streak.
In November, my father was moved to Mauthausen itself. In April 1945, guards evacuated the camp’s 25,000 Jews away from the approaching Allied armies. As many as 1,000 inmates per day were being marched off to the camp at Gunskirchen, most of the exhausted and starving prisoners expected to perish on the 34-mile route. In fact, 14,000 did die, most on the road, the rest in the destination concentration camp. My father was on one of the first marches. Once again, fortune smiled.
At a crossroads in the town of Enns, six miles from Mauthausen, Hersch’s column intersected with a stream of civilians fleeing the fighting. Sensing an opportunity, he slipped out of line and joined the refugee column. No one seemed to notice the painfully emaciated Jew in the concentration camp uniform who had entered their ranks. Moments into his escape, he spied a raincoat on the ground and quickly threw it over his shoulders – yet another astounding break!
After some time walking, Hersch stumbled away from the refugees and knocked on a house door. A white-haired old woman answered. In perfect German he asked her if she could spare some food. She invited him in, gave him cheese and noodles. Twenty minutes later, perhaps reconsidering her decision to shelter a fugitive, she called the SS. Nazi soldiers arrived and, unsure what to do with the runaway, took him to the local gendarme. Taking pity on my father, the police fed him, kept him overnight in jail, then returned him to Mauthausen the next day. Astonishingly, the camp guards did nothing to punish him.
Ten days later my father was sent on yet another death march. Simultaneously fighting pneumonia, typhus and tuberculosis, and now weighing only 80 lbs., he collapsed from exhaustion after just seven miles. With no energy left, he simply sat down on the side of the road fully knowing that the SS had orders to shoot any prisoner who couldn’t go on.
A stormtrooper approached Hersch and put his pistol to the back of his neck. Amazingly, the sensation of the cold steel gave the young inmate a sudden surge of energy. Seconds later, he was on his feet and walking again. The SS trooper moved off, seeking other victims. Looking around in disbelief after his close brush with death, Hersch noticed that for an instant no one was watching him — and right at his feet was a path leading into bushes. Summoning his last ounce of strength, he sprinted down the path, threw himself into the bushes and waited. No one pursued.
The next morning, Hersch continued down the path to see where it led. Eventually, he ran into a middle-aged couple. They asked him who he was. He replied that he was an escaped Czechoslovakian prisoner from Mauthausen. Exclaiming that they had family in Czechoslovakia, they snuck my father into their home in Enns, hiding him in their cellar. Remarkably, the same couple was billeting elite SS troops upstairs. Insanity! Hersch’s luck continued to hold.
Three weeks later, the U.S. Army’s 65th Infantry Division liberated Enns and rescued my father. Hersch’s run of good luck had seen him through.
After the war, Hersch spent 18 months in a German hospital recovering from his litany of illnesses and regaining the weight he’d lost. He returned to Dej in October 1946, but it didn’t feel like home anymore, so in 1948 he emigrated to Haifa, Israel, where he married Miriam, a beautiful Israeli brunette.
After their oldest, Jack, was born in 1958 they moved to Long Island, New York, following friends who had already made the journey. Beginning as a bus-boy in a seniors’ home, by 1965 Hersch saved enough to invest in a facility of his own.
Twenty-two years later he retired, to enjoy his children and grandchildren. He died in 2001, at 76, of complications during open-heart surgery.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jack Hersch is the author of Death March Escape, the true story of his father’s harrowing experiences during the Holocaust. Jack is a strategic advisor to corporations and investment institutions, a corporate board member, and has guest-lectured in the business schools of M.I.T. and U.C. Berkeley, among others. Death March Escape is his first non-fiction book. He lives in New York City.
