IN MEMORIAM: Voices from the camps (01/20/02)

IN MEMORIAM: Voices from the camps

John Lahola, a longtime activist in the Ukrainian community in Canada, passed away in Edmonton on November 14, 2001. A former member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) Mr. Lahola was imprisoned during World War II. The following article, written by Andriy Semotiuk back in 1997, chronicles Mr. Lahola's wartime life and his extraordinary experiences.

by Andriy Semotiuk

Finally the train stopped. After four days of starvation and thirst, sealed and wired shut in stench and filth with 120 other prisoners in a boxcar with no toilets or water, John Lahola was apprehensive but relieved that his uncertain journey was over. For four days and nights the fearful occupants jointly recited prayers in Polish as they anxiously awaited their fate.

Four days earlier the prisoners had been forcibly taken from Gestapo headquarters in Nazi-occupied Lviv and loaded onto this train bound for an unknown destination. It did not matter that most of them were Jews and Ukrainians - in Polish prayer they all found common solace. Now, as the SS guards flung open the boxcar doors, a welcome burst of fresh air flooded the compartment.

But then the prisoners realized where they had arrived: Auschwitz.

It was now over three months since Mr. Lahola had been arrested for his support of the partisan underground resistance to the Nazi occupation of Ukraine. For a split second while the Gestapo was placing him under arrest in Lviv, he caught a glimpse of his mother across the street. As he sought to wave good-bye, he was struck on the head by the butt of the soldier's gun. Mr. Lahola did not know than that in that place, at that moment and in that manner, he was parting from his mother forever.

Thus began the relentless march of events that now ended here, with these fellow prisoners, in this - the most notorious death camp of Nazi Germany.

"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed," wrote Eli Wiesel, one of the former inmates of Auschwitz. Like John Lahola and countless other former prisoners who experienced the horror of Auschwitz, Mr. Wiesel is tormented by his memories of the camp. In his book Mr. Wiesel declares the following:

"Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

"Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.

"Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul, and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."

It was under these conditions that psychiatrist Victor Frankl, also a former Auschwitz inmate, was able to develop a deeper understanding of the human mind and the foundation of his theory of human survival. Frankl observed that while many inmates perished, some Auschwitz inmates managed to survive despite the hardships and privations. He asked: Why?

How did people like John Lahola manage to survive in such inhumane conditions?

In his book "Man's Search for Meaning," Frankl states that the answer was to be found in the prisoner's attachment to some larger explanation of his existence - some higher purpose to his life. Frankl hypothesized that the difference between those who perished and those who survived was to be found in the manner in which the inmates translated the meaning of their suffering to themselves. Those inmates who lived with a higher purpose in life were able to endure the hardships and sacrifices because they could be explained as necessary evils that had to be surmounted for the sake of a higher purpose. Those inmates who lived without a larger philosophical framework through which to interpret their suffering died. It was Frankl who quite rightly pointed out that one of our most deeply rooted needs is to believe that our life has meaning, that our setbacks and efforts to overcome them carry a significance apart from the mere events themselves - they fit into a bigger picture.

This knowledge armed Frankl with a weapon he could employ in helping fellow inmates. He knew that while an inmate could do absolutely nothing to avoid the extreme external that he hed to endure on a daily basis, he alone controlled how he would interpret the events and react to them. If the inmate could identify a "higher" purpose to his suffering this would serve as a key to his survival.

Whenever a fellow inmate would turn to Frankl exhibiting signs of depression or resignation, Frankl would ask the prisoner why he doesn't just give up - throw in the towel so to speak. Frankl would then intently listen to the prisoner's response, which would usually be something along the lines of "I would give up, but I have a wife..." or a child, or maybe a political cause or religious belief, etc.

Whatever the prisoner would proffer in that moment, Frankl would seize upon as the anchor to that inmate's continued survival. The prisoner's answer was really his reason for living and a powerful key to his continued existence. If the inmate spoke of a wife, for example, Frankl would endeavor to direct all his comments and explanations for what was taking place towards that idea, linking everything to it and thus developing a whole rationale for the prisoner on why he must continue the struggle to survive.

In his own case Frankl rationalized his suffering by focusing on his wife's beautiful hands. He told himself he must survive to hold those beautiful hands in his again. He also developed a rationale that he was sent into the camps as a psychiatrist so that after his release he could later relate his findings to scientific colleagues all over the world.

Perhaps this explains how Mr. Lahola survived the death camps. He wore a red triangle on his prison garb signifying that he was a "political prisoner." Could it be that his passionate devotion to a free, independent and democratic Ukraine helped him overcome the camp repression? After all, there was so much to endure. He recounted some of his experiences for us in his video memoirs.

* * *

On arrival at Auschwitz, each prisoner was registered and assigned a number. While the prisoner was restrained, a prison guard roughly tattooed this number on the prisoner's arm with three needles. The number permanently branded on Mr. Lahola's arm was 154820, which became his new name. By the time the ordeal was over, Mr. Lahola was drenched in blood. He was then forced to join the others who were led to the barracks.

Silence ruled the barracks. It was clear that a complaint meant instant death. A "punishment hole," where prisoners were beaten until dead, served as an effective reminder of the futility of complaining.

There were no beds. The prisoners were jammed together on shelves just large enough for four prisoners to lay down on their sides one way, while four lay the other way. Latrine breaks occurred only in the early morning when the guards shouted for the inmates to get up and then beat the prisoners to hurry them along. Then there was the routine roll call in the courtyard when the prisoners were required to stand naked in the snow without a single piece of clothing to protect themselves against the cold.

Each prisoner was issued one pair of pants, one shirt and one jacket. If he was ever discovered with anything else he was beaten to death. As soon as a weakened prisoner fell, he was thrown into ice water - an instant death. By nightfall each day there was always a pile of human corpses waiting to be burned. Resistance was impossible.

For two weeks newcomers were "initiated" to Auschwitz. First they were divided into groups of 100. Then, to induce terror and submission to camp authority, every 10th man was shot arbitrarily. Then some of the prisoners were strapped down to benches especially made for this purpose. They were beaten by the Gestapo so badly that their screams didn't sound human. At the end of each day as the prisoners returned from back-breaking work, they were herded back into the barracks. A mad rush to get inside always ensued in order to avoid the Gestapo who would beat the stragglers.

Anyone who tried to escape was found, tortured and then paraded in front of the inmates. A sign was hung around the inmate's neck declaring, "I tried to run away but did not succeed. Hurray, I'm back!" As the horrors of initiation at Auschwitz subsided, Mr. Lahola came face to face with an equally insidious threat to his survival: hunger.

As the SS guards cut back on food rations, famine stalked the camps. In the face of death, the pursuit of any form of nourishment became a never-ending obsession. Virtually no price was too high to satisfy the hunger pangs constantly tormenting them. Mr. Lahola's experiences vividly illustrate the magnitude of the problem.

Enforced starvation turned Mr. Lahola into a scavenger. Whenever a camp guard threw away an empty can of food he would scoop it up and clean it out with his fingers. Such a can meant two or three days of nourishment. Once, while searching through the personal effects of some prisoners who had been removed by the guards, Mr. Lahola found a jar of goose fat. He gleefully smeared the fat over his camp ration of bead over the next few days.

After months on a diet of bare subsistence, fortuitously Mr. Lahola was chosen by the SS to unload a bread truck. To be caught stealing bread meant death. Nonetheless in an unattended moment, Mr. Lahola devoured as much bread as he could. Then he hid more bread away into his clothing to take back to the barracks. Luckily, that day he passed through the camp gates unchecked. However, his feeble body could not process the food. Mr. Lahola became violently ill, vomiting everything he had eaten. He was so sick he gave whatever bread he had smuggled into the camp to the other inmates because he knew he wouldn't be able to eat it himself.

Liquor was obviously unavailable in the camps and thus became a prized commodity that could be traded for food. On one occasion Mr. Lahola was unloading wagons of goods which had to be brought in from the front when he spotted a whisky bottle. He immediately started concocting a method for smuggling the bottle into the camp compound. He found a strap which he tied around his waist and then hung the bottle down his pant leg suspended from the strap.

As the prisoners marched through the camp gate, the strap broke and the bottle fell to the ground. When the guards discovered it, they halted the return of the work party. The guards demanded that the prisoner who stole the bottle step forward and confess. Mr. Lahola stood silent as did the others. When nobody confessed, the guards searched every prisoner and noted the strap down Mr. Lahola's leg.

While they said nothing, the next day Mr. Lahola was called out and then ordered to report to a hard labor work party digging ditches several kilometers away from the camp. Exhausted after two weeks, Mr. Lahola knew that he would not last if he continued to work there.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Lahola hid among some prisoners assigned the task of pealing potatoes. This move went unnoticed. Then, luckily, the camp cook chose Mr. Lahola to help in the kitchen. He was safe and in a place where he could attend to his hunger, albeit at great risk. His main job was to fill big pots with soup for the SS officers. He would then carry the soup pots to the soldiers at mealtimes. He would wrap a rag around his hand to help carry the pot and, as he pretended to hurry along, would purposefully spill some of that soup on to the rag. Later, back in the barracks, he would rinse the rag into his cup and drink the dribbles of soup for extra nourishment.

Every day for three years Mr. Lahola and the others endured this torment. Every day more people died in the gas chambers; every day their bodies were stripped of jewelry and gold teeth, and then piled up on carts to be wheeled over to the incinerators. Every night as the prisoners of Auschwitz looked on, flames and smoke rose above the Birkenau chimney, while the putrid stench of cremated bodies permeated the air. The relentless process continued until the facilities were taxed to the limit. Towards the end, Mr. Lahola and other inmates were forced to collect firewood from the surrounding forests to be used to burn the overflow of corpses piled into ditches near the camp.

Finally, the end drew near. For months rumors had circulated in the camp that the Russian front was coming closer. Then a huge fire was built to destroy camp papers and documents. Finally, on January 18, 1945, prison officials began removing the inmates. As a cook, Mr. Lahola was one of the last to leave, since he had to prepare meals for German soldiers from the front.

The Nazis now engaged in a frantic three-month effort to hide the prisoners and transfer them from one concentration camp to another. Thus, Mr. Lahola and the others from his camp were forced to march westward for three days and nights until they reached the German border. There, as the men huddled together in the sleet and driven snow, they were loaded onto boxcars and transferred to Mauthausen, a concentration camp near Linz, Austria. Not long afterwards they were again transferred, this time to Melk, a converted army camp where the prisoners worked in coal mines. Then again they were transferred, this time by tugboat into Germany to the Ebensee concentration camp. There, on May 6, 1945, liberation day, an American tank pulled through the gates of the camp and the astonished soldiers informed the exhausted prisoners they were finally free.

Some of the prisoners went wild. In their rush to enter a bakery to get some bread, several of them were trampled to death by fellow inmates. Others died from overbinging at a time when their bodies were incapable of processing the food they hungrily consumed. The long nightmare, however, was finally over.

Over 50 years later, John Lahola was living in Edmonton. Yet he was overcome with emotion whenever he reflected on these events. More than anything, his three-year incarceration in Nazi concentration camps exemplifies the fact that life requires struggle - that resignation and surrender are the surest prescriptions for death.

His experience, like that of the other survivors from the camps, demonstrates that the essence of life is not found in arbitrary events that occur in our lives. Rather, John Lahola's life shows that the real question is how to lead your life no matter what events life brings you.

Survival depended on Mr. Lahola dedicating himself to a larger cause, a cause that helped him find meaning in his suffering. It was this greater overarching purpose that saved John Lahola and helped him surmount the many great hardships he faced.

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