By Brian Zanzonico
Roman Weingarten awoke at dawn inside a crowded barracks in Dachau on April 29, 1945. The eerie sound of silence swept through the dank building. Weingarten and other Jews with the strength to stand rose from their bunks and exited the cramped sleeping quarters to find the camp devoid of Nazis.
In the distance, beyond the razor-wire gates, was the synchronized sound of boots clapping the earth and an incessant squeaking. The prisoners hurried to the gate, pushed it open and poured onto the road. Flanked by massive tanks, American soldiers marching in the middle of the road stopped and turned. They saw the men clad in prison stripes, looked at one another and approached them.
"They embraced us," Weingarten recalled. "They didn't know what to do with us."
The Americans began fishing in their pockets and gear for sustenance, and pulled out sticks of chewing gum and hunks of chocolate and distributed them among the bony, outstretched hands. The prisoners devoured the small bounty and looked for more. The Americans watched these human skeletons in bewilderment. But they never stepped foot inside the Dachau camp. There was no need to. The Nazis had fled sometime in the middle of the night and were probably scattering across Germany. The Americans continued on their way. And the freshly emancipated Jews took their first steps toward freedom.
The Weingartens of Krakow, Poland, were a middle-class family, owners of a chocolate manufacturing company called Nadzieja, which in English means "hope." They employed more than 100, a large workforce by 1930s Poland standards. At 29, Weingarten married a girl named Phyllis, a stunning woman with classic Hollywood leading-lady looks. He kept the books, and Nadzieja flourished. Then came September 1939. And so did the German army.
"Everything stopped," Weingarten said. "It was quiet the first day, not too bad." Initially, the German soldiers patrolled the streets but posed no threat to the 60,000 Jews who called Krakow home. "They had no particular interest in us," he said.
Peace would be shattered two weeks later. An announcement was made ordering all Jewish-owned businesses to post yellow Stars of David on storefronts and forbidding Jewish children from entering the schoolhouses.
In December 1939, members of Germany's elite SS entered Krakow, and the situation worsened. They forced their way into homes at all hours and plundered at will. When they entered Phyllis's parents' house, her mother suffered a massive stroke and died on the spot.
"They were in the middle of a war, and all they were worried about was taking care of the Jews," Weingarten said. "The psyche was unbelievable."
In 1940, the Nazis announced that a ghetto would be constructed in Krakow. Jews would be forced to build the very walls that would shut them off from the world. When it was completed in March 1941, only 10,000 of the 60,000 Jews living in Krakow were given permission by the Nazis to stay. The Weingartens were among the excluded.
Roman, the eldest of six children, knew he had to relocate his family. He was able to procure phony identification papers, hopped a train, and began searching for a new life for his family. He found a small village about 30 miles from Krakow called Kurow. He went back to Krakow, moved as much of his family's belongings to the little town as he could and helped them settle in. He then left with Phyllis to live with her father and two sisters in Pilzno, a small town along the Wisloka River about 63 miles east of Krakow.
Within months, his parents were forced to a ghetto in Bochnia, 30 miles east of Krakow, where the Jewish population increased from 200 families in 1869 to more than 3,000 families by 1939. Nine months later, Roman's parents and two sisters were transported to Belzec, a Nazi death camp where an estimated 600,000 Jews were slaughtered. The most popular method of execution at Belzec was the gas chamber, where fumes from diesel engines were pumped into vents inside what the prisoners thought were showers. But the fumes caused a long, torturous death, and were eventually replaced with Zyklon B, a toxic acid that served as a more efficient means of murder. Weingarten's parents and sisters were never heard from again.
Soon Weingarten and his wife were caught and transported to a ghetto in a little town. Phyllis was able to get a job working for the Germans. One morning the prisoners were called to the square in the middle of town. A Nazi officer rattled off some names, and Phyllis was one of them. These were the people who would be spared, and Phyllis knew it. She understood that if she stepped forward, she would be separated from Roman and he would be sent to his death.
But Weingarten made a vow. After the officer repeated her name, he leaned into Phyllis and whispered, "I will come back to you." She tearfully came forward, and Weingarten was swept into a tiny cattle car along with a hundred other men, women and children.
The air inside was scarce, and Weingarten realized that most of the people would suffocate before the car reached its destination. He was a slight man, under 5 feet 9, and the chances were that Weingarten would be one of them. Once the door was closed and locked, he squeezed his way to the window in the rear corner of the car. He and a handful of other young people decided they would try to do the impossible: escape.
Once the train started moving, they wrapped their hands with pieces of clothing and removed the barbed wire from around the window. Once night fell, they began exiting the train. One by one, this group of four pulled themselves through the window. They agreed to meet at a certain spot at daybreak.
Once they met up, they started walking in the woods and came across some Polish peasants chopping wood. The four began knocking on doors. "Some didn't want to engage us," Weingarten recalled. "They probably suspected we were Jews and didn't want to let us in. But one man did."
He supplied them with hay in the attic for a makeshift bed and some bread and milk for nourishment. They emptied their pockets off all the money they had and squeezed it in his palm.
Within days, Weingarten made his way back to Phyllis. One night, he slipped through the barbed wire and entered the ghetto. It had been almost entirely liquidated, and was reduced to just three homes. He checked all of them and found his wife living with strangers. The moment she saw him, she fainted.
Within days, Phyllis answered an ad to serve as a nanny for a German family in Krakow, and Weingarten secured false IDs for them. He was able to get work in a factory for three months and lived in a building provided for workers. One day there was a firm knock at the door. Two tall Germans in black SS uniforms were on the other side. He had little choice but to let them in.
"Sie sind jüdisch!" one of them said, "You are Jewish!"
They asked for his papers, and tore them to pieces before checking their authenticity. Then they ordered him to drop his pants. When they saw he was circumcised, one of them barked "Gekommen mit uns (Come with us)."
Weingarten was taken to a jail in the ghetto the last week of March 1943. He was held with other Jews who had been on the run but were finally tracked down. After four days they began marching to Plaszow, a concentration camp where many Jews rounded up in ghettos were sent to die. When they arrived, there was a huge hole dug in the ground.
A tall, sinewy, tough-talking guard told them to strip and stand at attention. It was Amon Goeth, a vicious SS commander who had been put in charge of Plaszow. Under Goeth, prisoners lasted only a few weeks before being murdered. He deliberately walked around the group of naked men and women, and one by one asked them what their trade was. Weingarten blurted the first thing that came to mind: mechanic. Goeth pulled out 67 people and sent them marching in the other direction. Weingarten heard the pop of gunfire and the thud of bodies hitting the ground. The corpses were dumped into the mass grave.
Weingarten cleaned laundry at the camp until May 1944. Every morning, the prisoners would leave the barracks and assemble in a square for a head count. One morning, he was on a list to be transported with 500 men out of Plaszow. When his name was called, he didn't answer. After the group broke, Weingarten hid under his barracks for three days. He was eventually found and sent to Wiestegiersdorf, a German concentration camp. After three weeks there, he was sent to one of Germany's main camps, Flossenburg.
"It was terrible," he said. "They pushed about 600 of us into a barracks meant to accommodate 150. We had to sleep four to a bunk."
But in Flossenburg, Weingarten was not forced to work. And he was fed a slice of bread three times a day. Every morning at 4, the prisoners were awakened for what Weingarten said passed as breakfast. "There was a big kettle with black water," he said about what he assumed was a crude type of coffee. "At least we could wash our faces with it."
After a few weeks at Flossenburg, Weingarten was marched to a camp in a small town in Bavaria run by an organization that provided transportation for the German army. He was again asked what his trade was, and he responded, "Electrician." He worked alongside an 18-year-old German master electrician who sympathized with Weingarten. To help him maintain his strength, the man brought him fruit from home. He did this every day for several months until he was mobilized by the German army.
"It was the best time I had during the war," Weingarten said. "He was a decent person."
In the spring of 1945, the prisoners were marched from Bavaria to Dachau. Weingarten had been in Dachau for three days when he rose one morning to find the camp vacated by the Nazis. Then he spotted the parade of American soldiers. "We knew we were not going to die," he remembered.
The Americans marched in one direction, and the Jews marched in another. Weingarten, who lost 40 pounds during the Nazi takeover, headed for Munich. He was on a quest to find Phyllis. Or so he hoped.
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