Newly arrived and, at 17, one of the oldest among the 1,000 boys in Birkenau’s Block 22, Jack Lewin – then Yanek Levin – was incensed as he watched the Polish block leader and his Jewish deputy, a man named Wolkowicz, divvy up the bread rations, cutting the small, hard loaves intended for four prisoners into five portions and pocketing the extras. Jack gathered together a couple of boys and reported the injustice to some higher-ranking Jewish kapos, who entered Block 22, approached the Polish man and Wolkowicz and warned, “It’s not nice to steal from kids. Aren’t you ashamed of yourselves?” As soon as they walked out, Wolkowicz glared at Jack and then grabbed him, ripping off the Polish army officer’s belt with its studs and heavy buckle that Jack had somehow acquired and furiously beating him, as blood gushed. After 10 minutes or more, some boys pulled Wolkowicz away and hid Jack in another barracks. “If not, he would have killed me,” Jack recalled.
Born on April 13, 1927, in Lodz, Poland, Jack was the only child of Dinah and Hershel Levin. The family lived in a one-room apartment, where Dinah worked as a seamstress and Hershel ran his house-painting business. To this day, Jack can recall the sound of his mother’s thimble clinking against her wedding band, as well as the smell of his father’s paintbrushes.
Jack was brought up with no religion — Dinah and Hershel were the first in their families to reject an observant life. Still, Jack attended the private, secular Medem school, where he acquired a life-long love of the Yiddish language and literature.
A highlight of Jack’s childhood was attending a summer camp affiliated with the Jewish Labor Bund for a month in July or August 1939 in the nearby village of Zondlowice. He especially remembers the day the campers assisted the Polish peasants in the straw fields. “The sun was baking and the freedom outside was beautiful,” he said.
A month or two later, on a morning in early September, Jack walked to the newsstand to pick up a copy of the Yiddish newspaper Folkzeitung, which had not been delivered. The headline read: “Hitler’s Hoards Cross the Polish Border.”
“Little did we know what was awaiting us,” Jack said.
On Feb. 8, 1940, the Jews were ordered to relocate to the ghetto. Hershel rented a horse and wagon, and Jack sat atop the family’s possessions, his parents walking alongside as they joined a miles-long procession of wagons and people on foot lugging their belongings.
After initially living with his maternal grandparents in their one-room apartment, Jack and his parents moved into their own quarters. Jack attended school.
In 1941, with no money and no job, Hershel volunteered for work in a labor camp in Poznan, leaving on May 1, his 15th wedding anniversary. For a few months afterward, Jack and his mother received some letters and checks, then nothing.
Toward the end of 1941, Jack, 14, was hired as an apprentice in a fur factory. There he performed menial tasks and also learned to use a fur machine, stitching together the pelts that would line military coats. “I’m a member of the working class,” he proudly told his mother. He also stole small pieces of fur, which he hand-stitched to make vests and then sold, earning enough to buy a loaf of bread.
For Jack, the constant hunger was the worst. “I cried myself to sleep from hunger,” he said.
In August 1944, Jack and his mother were rounded up with thousands of other Jews and crammed into cattle cars. A half day and a night later, the prisoners arrived at Birkenau, where they were lined up for a selection. Jack watched as Dr. Josef Mengele directed his mother to the right. She walked away slowly, hunched over and appearing 100 years old. “I can still see her,” Jack said.
Soon after his beating by Wolkowicz, in August 1944, Jack was tattooed with the number B10237 and trucked with a group of 14- to 17-year-olds to Trzebinia, a work camp 19 kilometers from Auschwitz.
Jack first worked carrying bricks up scaffolding to build walls around a nearby oil refinery. Then he worked constructing a 35-foot-thick roof for a German bunker. Most problematic, however, was the commandant, SS Unterscharfurher Wilhelm Kowol, who smacked Jack every time he saw him, which was almost daily, sending him flying to the ground.
On Jan. 17 or 18, Trzebinia was evacuated and Jack and the other 800 or 900 prisoners were marched out, five abreast in deep snow with no food. A day and night later, they reached Auschwitz.
There, Kowol asked for 100 volunteers who couldn’t walk. Jack volunteered, assuming he would be placed in a wagon. But immediately he was surrounded by muselmanner (living skeletons), and he knew he was headed for the gas chamber. Somehow, he found this comforting. He imagined he would rejoin his family and, most pressing, he could sit down. “That’s all I wanted,” he said, explaining that each step of the march had felt like a knife cutting him.
But instead, the guards escorted the 100 prisoners into barracks, dropping Jack off at Barracks 28, the surgical hospital, where inside he found bunk beds, copious glasses of milk and other food, and no guards.
Once he felt better, Jack remained in the hospital, tending to sick people and cleaning toilets. “I just needed food,” he said.
During this time, he learned that Kowol had marched the rest of the group to Rajsko, a village near Trzebinia, shooting anyone who sat down.
On Jan. 27, around 2 p.m., Jack ran outside to see Russian soldiers on skis, wearing white sheets over their uniforms as snow camouflage. “They were the most beautiful sight in the world,” he said.
Jack remained in Auschwitz until mid-March when he returned to Lodz, rooming with some friends and working as a runner for a Polish newspaper.
Soon after arriving, Jack spotted Wolkowicz. He jumped him, and a nearby police officer arrested him. But without a second witness — and no one would testify — the head jailer was forced to release him.
Around August, Jack traveled to Germany, scouring the country for surviving family members. He found no one from among at least 40 relatives.
Then, after a brief stint working for the American military in Furth and staying in the Feldafing displaced persons camp, Jack joined a group of people moving to Brussels, arriving on Feb. 6, 1946. He found work as a machinist for a furrier.
The following November, Jack met Regina Szwarcfeld. “I don’t remember if it was love at first sight, but it was pretty close,” he recalled. They married in a Jewish ceremony on May 8, 1947, and again, after acquiring proper papers, in a civil ceremony on June 24, 1950.
But Jack wanted to be as far away from Europe as possible, so he and Regina immigrated to Melbourne, Australia, arriving on Nov. 6, 1950. Their daughter Dinah was born in October 1952 and daughter Sylvia in November 1960.
Jack again worked in the fur trade, spending 10 years with a large firm and five years managing a small fur factory and store.
One day, Wolkowicz unknowingly walked into the store. “Do you remember me?” Jack asked. Wolkowicz was speechless. Jack followed him across the street to his tailor shop, where Wolkowicz’s wife begged Jack to leave him alone, explaining that he had a heart condition. “I just want him to know that I remember him,” Jack said. “That I’ll never forget.”
In Melbourne, Jack pursued an active Jewish life, performing in the David Herman Yiddish Theatre Group and participating in the Yiddish Cultural Centre.
But while Australia had — and still has — a big place in Jack’s heart, he and Regina moved to Los Angeles to be near Regina’s aunt. They arrived on Aug. 14, 1965, during the Watts riots.
Jack initially worked as a shipping clerk for the clothing manufacturer Tots to Teens. Five years later, he started his own business, selling ladies sportswear at swap meets in Colton and Chino and retiring in 1990.
Jack began composing Yiddish poetry seriously in the 1970s. Several of his poems were published in Kheshbn, the literary journal of the Los Angeles Yiddish Cultural Club (available online). Other poems appear on YiddishPoetry.com, under Contemporary Poetry.
Jack served as a speaker at the Museum of Tolerance for more than 20 years, only stopping two years ago after a surgery. Now 88, he spends his time reading and enjoying his family, which includes a granddaughter and three great-grandchildren.
Jack credits “sheer coincidence” for his survival. Still, he never gave up hope. “If you lose hope, you’ve lost everything,” he said.
At his request, Jack Lewin was interviewed by the Shoah Foundation on Jan. 27, 1995, the 50th anniversary of his liberation from Auschwitz. This Jewish Journal profile appears 21 years later, once again commemorating Auschwitz’s liberation.
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