Felix Gluck - a Hungarian Jew who died in a forced labor company in Ukraine

Literary Review, Fall, 1993 by Ervin C. Brody

In the summer of 1942 the most important work of our forced labor company in the German-occupied Ukraine was to repair a tunnel near the settlement Sianki on the Carpathians. The tunnel was a part of the major historical invasion route - used by the Austro-Hungarian and German armies during the First World War - and its restoration was among the top priorities of the German High Command as the most direct supply fine for their army in the Dnieper-Don region. We had to work day and night at high speed, in several shifts, without any interruption in this feverish schedule, driven and beaten constantly to increase our productivity. Since the guards needed a day of rest, we did not work on Sundays.

Reveille was at four o'clock in the morning, an hour for roll call in the freezing cold, another few hours for the six-mile march to the tunnel, fourteen hours of work, and then back to the camp. Our smaller unit, composed mainly of Jewish intellectuals - lawyers, teachers, writers, artists, and journalists - had no idea of how to handle the rather complex operations the rebuilding of the tunnel required. The intricate job needed the skill of professionally trained engineers who, as the first step, would have raised a scaffold around the crumbling walls to secure a safety zone for the workers to protect them as they were clearing the passageway from the accumulated debris, in order to prevent the rocks and stones from falling on them. But there were no engineers, and we were expendable. Thus, we were working amidst falling rocks and boulders, constantly aware of the mortal danger, yet often unable to avoid it. Many of my friends would pray before entering the tunnel, not sure whether they would survive the grueling task and return safely to the camp. Fingers were cut off, legs broken, heads bashed in, teeth knocked out, and bones crushed, but the work had to go on faster and faster regardless of the increasing number of injuries for the preparation of a main German offensive in the central sector of the Eastern front. This perilous work was made even worse by the inhuman treatment of the Hungarian guards who, calling us cannibals, criminals, traitors, and other names, kept shoving, kicking, and slapping us mercilessly.

As I now, half a century later, recall the people and the camp, many faces emerge from the midst of the past. One especially recurs in my memory and often appears in my dreams. It is the shy, intelligent, and apprehensive face of a young friend, Felix Gluck, whose two names carry the sense of happiness, one in Latin and the other in German. He was a good and pious boy who, even under the most difficult conditions, tried to observe the rituals and customs of the Jewish Sabbath. Although religion alone is no guarantee of decency, it symbolized steadfastness, selflessness, and spiritual resources. When I saw him saying his prayers silently in a corner so as not to hinder anybody in his activities, I could not help regarding it as a noble effort through a kind of stoical inner strength that cut through the savagery of camp life to keep alive our collective humanity. I was always touched when I saw this simple ritual. He was so utterly dedicated to this private meditation as if it were a language of his own heart in a communion between him and God, reviving and repossessing remote tribal memories, as if God were present in all his experiences and gave him a sense of connection to his Jewish world. He seemed to have left all the unessentials, the mean and vulgar things of camp life behind him and forged a special universe of piety, all of his own which, contrary to the evidence surrounding him, could not have been violated. It was a testimony to the vitality of life, and, watching him, I felt a lightness of spirit coming over me. It is to his memory that these lines are dedicated.

In the late thirties I had a private tutoring school in Budapest. Felix and his brother Richard, sons of Hasidic Jews, whose family just came up from Debrecen to the capital, had to pass an entrance exam in the Commercial Academy of Budapest, a prestigious business school, and I prepared them for it. Then a few years later, as I was being transported to the Ukraine after the outbreak of the war, I met him again in the cattle car where we were kept waiting at a railway station. Miraculously he was able to sneak a message to his parents before the train departed, and they rushed to the station for, what proved to be, a last embrace. The sadness was piercing. At no other time was the French adage partir c'est mourir un peu ("to leave is like dying a little) more poignantly justified. Remembering me as Felix's former tutor, the weeping parents begged me to look after their son, and to ease the pain of this sorrowful farewell, I promised to do my best, although I was fully aware of my limitations under the circumstances. Both of us were forced laborers in a camp, and our legal status was much worse than that of a prisoner of war since we were not protected by any international agreement which would regulate the fate of such workers.