I was a secure man for many years. I worked for the Army as Director of Pools, and I was respected as a smart, old Auschwitzer. I had two cousins very high up in the communist party. So I acted like I was with the communists, but I wasn’t. If the Russian soldiers stop you on the street because you’re drunk, or something else, you smile to the major and talk enthusiastically.
“Heh, you arrest me when I am a worker? When I was in Auschwitz suffering in German concentration camp?”
Right away the Russian soldiers back off and don’t do nothing. Auschwitz survivors were very respected, especially since Cyrankiewicz was the premier of Poland. He survived Auschwitz and pushed for other survivors to have positions in the government.
My two cousins were no good. They were both generals in the communist army. Two brilliant men, brilliant brains, and they are nothing (because they are communist.) My one cousin was very good Catholic, very religious, a very good guy. But he worked for a regime that was a loser. – Henry Zguda
Photo above is of an armband that was donated to the USHMM. I first saw this the same time I saw a camp letter – stapled to poster board for a middle-school project. When the lead archivist from the USHMM came to Henry’s house after he passed, he was very interested in this arm band.
Arm bands in the camps were extremely rare – only a few privileged prisoners had them. My deduction because a) – this is clean, and b) – lists both camps in hand-written letters, was probably put together to wear to a banquet to honor camp survivors sometime in the 1950’s. If you’ve read earlier posts, you may remember that 39551 was Henry’s prisoner number in KL Auschwitz, and 10948 was his prisoner number in Buchenwald. Poles honored their survivors, and Russians tolerated it; barely.