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

Literary Review, Fall, 1993 by Ervin C. Brody

The person among us who suffered most from the rigors of the work and the brutal treatment of the guards war, Felix. Weak, small, insecure, he was constantly beaten for his inability to carry the heavy ties and rails, to drag those huge rocks and to cart them away. He soon became the favorite target of the cruel jokes of the sadistic guards who mocked and tormented him every day. He was accused of lacking patriotism and of sabotaging the efforts of Hungary and Germany to bring about a new order in the world. The poor fellow used to return to the camp in a state of utter exhaustion and often did not even have enough strength to undress to go to sleep. Yet, as if by a miracle, he was up next dawn, earlier than the rest of us, fending off fear and depression, to wash himself and to pray properly.

One day our crew just finished a three-hour assignment in the tunnel and, as the work plan required, after having been relieved by another unit, it was to continue working outside to load the rocks, gathered from the tunnel, on carts running on rails to be piled up farther down the road. As we were walking out of the tunnel, Felix, dead tired from the murderous schedule - this was the third of our four daily shifts - helplessly dropped to the ground, trying to inhale some fresh air, and he was so weak that we had to help him get up. Unfortunately, at that moment a guard went by and, seeing Felix lying on the ground, as a punishment for an unauthorized rest, ordered him to go right back to the tunnel for an extra three-hours' work. In his tired physical and mental state - he could hardly walk back to the tunnel from total fatigue - this undeserved new ordeal proved too much for him. He could not hear the warning cries of his frightened fellow workers as, suddenly, the roof over him caved in and a huge boulder, now completely loose, broke through the flimsy frame of an inadequate protective net, crushing him to death. Having heard the cries and commotion, I immediately ran after him to the tunnel but could only see his twisted torso, the mask of a terrified face, and a huge ball of air which, like a blown-up bubble gum, enveloped his head as the last breath escaped from his body.

This was the first death in our labor company. The first real confrontation with mortality. There were many more deaths to come in the minefields, in the snow, in the rats-and-lice-infested "hospitals" - mostly as a result of spot typhus. By the end of the war, out of the original four hundred people of our company, only about thirty remained scattered around the world, but this was the most significant as it seemed to predict the fate that awaited us. There was a great stir in the camp, and the senselessness of this death touched and shocked everybody. We felt a rage and indignation toward the wicked guard who had ordered Felix back to the tunnel, but, unfortunately, there was nothing we could do. There was a small sense that we had been orphaned and abandoned.

Felix's untimely death left a lingering pain, a vacuum, and even some of the guards, used to violence and brutality, were moved. Sometimes it takes the impact of a sudden disaster to bring people to their senses and to gain a measure of human consciousness through an acute moral discomfort. One of the German engineers, usually aloof and unapproachable, now showed unexpected compassion and asked me how this could have happened to "unserem jungen Kamerad?" The irony of this uncharacteristic reference was not lost on me. While alive, Felix was just another "dirty Jew" to most of the guards and now that he was gone, suddenly was elevated to the rank of a "comrade." As recently as the day before he was a pariah, an outcast, and the guards refused to recognize him as a human being. Now death gained him a useless acceptance and a meaningless recognition.