Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1947-02-02
Prison Camp Heroine
Tries Hard TO Forget

times as though she cannot quite
believe they are real.
They will see how the light in her
eyes can be BACKED out in second
by a cloud of depression which forms
suddenly in some secret recess of
her brain. They will see her vince
when truck passes in the street.
They will notice she is apt to weep
at the sound of music. Especially,
they will wonder about the look on
her face when children are around.
This story may answer a few of
their unspoken questions.
One day in 1912 the Germans
moved 10000 Jews from a ghetto
near Kamieniec-lit, Poland to their
Osweicim concentration camp. Os-
weicim later became known around
the world as the Nazi's most eff
cient death factory. At that time,
however, it was just another place
where helpless people suffered and
died-quickly or slowly, it didn't
much matter which.
IS guards sorted out this group
OF new arrivals, piling the old and
sick into trucks bound for the gas
chambers, marching the rest to
barracks, where they would live in
squalor as long as they were capable
of working. One of them grabbed
the arm of a young woman holding
her 3-year-old son by the hand.
How old are you?"
She told him.
Flames Scared Her Heart.
He said, That's a lie" AS he
said the last word his fist smashed
into her mouth. A few seconds
later, when she came to her senses,
she was lying on the ground, her
mouth full of blood and broken bits
of teeth. Her eyes focused just in
time to see the guard throw her
baby on the back of a gas chamber
truck, already piled high with the
wasted forms of other useless human
beings. The truck drove away.
That was the last Luba Tryszynska
saw of Isaac, only child of Hersch,
the husband the Nazis had taken
away the year before to work as
slave laborer. BY the time she made
her way to the crematorium, fire
had done its work.
In the summer of 1914, they moved
her to Belsen. She had survived
typhus and two trips to the gas
chambers door where, stripped
naked, she won last-second reprieves
from death. Briefly, pitifully, her
path had crossed that of her hus-
band. When they put her to work
as a nurse in the camps so-called
hospital, he was caught trying to
throw her a piece of bread over the
wire fence surrounding the hospital
compound. They punished him by
making him work at the crema-
forum and shot him dead when he
tried to escape.
Her life of torture seemed some
how to have caused the spirit to
freeze inside her. She no longer
reacted to anything. She could not
cry or care.
But now, as nurse, there were
certain advantages for Luba Trys-
zynska. Wearing long -sleeved
jacket, she was able to conceal the
small triangle beneath the identi-
fication number tattoed on her left
arm-the mark of the Jew. She
told the Belsen authorities she was
Russian and, because she spoke the
language perfectly, they believed
her. They put her into one of a
number of little shacks in which
nurses from the hospital were
housed.
Always the Same.
While Luba Tryszynska was trying
vainly to sleep, on her first night
in Belsen, she suddenly became
obsessed with the idea that she
heard children crying. She woke up
the nurse sleeping next to her, an
other transfer from Osweicim.
do you hear?" she said. "Chil-
dren. They are crying"
go to Sleep" said the woman
ut is always the same. You imagine
you hear your baby. Go to sleep"
But Luba Tryszynska could not
| sleep. Defying the regulations. she