Justin's barber's name is Eli and he has an old school barber shop in midtown Atlanta, complete with striped pole and red leather barber chair. He looks a lot like Mr. Magoo and speaks with a heavy Greek accent. There was no on else in the shop that day so I was grateful we'd get in and get out.
I sat opposite the red leather chair and the three of us exchanged pleasantries about the holiday weekend, time spent with family, etc. He told us he has family in Tampa and spoke enthusiastically about spending time in Tarpon Springs, a Greek community near Tampa. I asked if his children spoke Greek and he said "Little bit. Not like me. I speak seven languages." People who are multi-lingual may as well possess a super power as far as I'm concerned and I'm always intrigued about how they learned, when in life, what were the languages. Seven languages! "How did you come to know seven languages?" And he said "I was a prisoner for two years in the death camps in Europe."
Eli speaks Greek, Polish, Russian, Italian, French, English and German. And then while he is snipping serenely around my husband's head, he started telling me the story of how he came to be in those death camps at 16 years old. He was taken prisoner when Germany invaded Greece in 1941. I always wondered how the Nazi's knew who was Jewish and who wasn't when they sent people to camps and asked Eli about it now. He said when the Nazis arrived in a town they would build scaffolding and hang people from ten random families and tell the crowd that if they lied about their status they would be next on the scaffold. I guess that was a pretty effective method. He also said there was no mention of concentration camps or gas chambers. Prisoners didn't know where they were going only that they were being taken away. He said if people knew the journey by cattle car led to death by gas chamber, there probably would have been a lot more people running for it, or at least resisting. For the time being, he wore the gold star they gave him and crowded onto the train with his two brothers.
He went on to tell me from that point forward, he was moved around between 8 different concentration camps. He lost his older brother to sickness at one of them and was separated from his younger brother early on. They worked digging ditches and unloading bags of cement from trains. He said the Nazis starved them right from the get go and food became a preoccupation. He learned to count the people in line to the barrels of soup and time it so that he got a ladleful from the bottom, where the potatoes were. Although sometimes he did get it wrong and they switched out the barrels while he was still in line, giving him the thin, watery broth from the top. He also learned which dumpster was used for the officers mess and stole food from it repeatedly, carefully waiting for the searchlight to pass before doing his thieving. He said he got caught only once and received 25 lashes on his bottom. I felt hunger just listening to his stories, how you are so starved you will do just about anything for food.
Sometimes the soldiers would come to the prisoners for certain skills they had a need for. Who is a mason? Who knows electricity? They came once and asked for a barber and Eli volunteered his services. They took him to a small office where the Kommandant was waiting. The man was completely bald and wanted his head and face shaved. Eli picked up the straight razor to begin work and as soon as he did an officer cocked a gun and kept it trained on him during the entire process. He did nick the Kommandant during the process and had nothing but some hair and soap to stop the blood. When Eli finished, the Kommandant looked in a little mirror, wrote something on a bit of paper and handed it to Eli. Sure he was carrying his death sentence for the nick, Eli opened it and found a coupon for some bread and cheese at the mess hall. He thought he had found his gravy train, but that officer was transferred later in the week.
Five times, Eli said he stood in line to enter the gas chambers and five times something happened that stopped the process, a miracle, he called it, and he lived to see another day. All this time I am sitting across from the chair, leaning forward into his story and asking questions, shaking my head, dumbstruck at the magnitude of it. I know it is also millions of other's story who have survived the Holocaust, but I've never talked to a survivor before, and he was so open about sharing this personal, terrifying experience.
Liberated with his younger brother who he was reunited with at another camp, he described the American planes flying overhead, while he was being loaded into another cattle car, this one open at the top so the planes could see the people piled inside. "Les Americains! Les Americains sont ici, maintenant!" he yelled, imitating the joy, the relief, the exuberance they felt knowing the end of the war was imminent. I was almost in tears myself at this point and Justin's hair was finished.
Eli lost a twin sister, and five other siblings to the camps. His hometown of 200,000 was wiped out with only 200 survivors left at the end of the war. He showed us pictures of his late wife, his son and daughter, his grandchildren. His face is so happy and proud and I think he feels like the luckiest man in the world. "Bring the baby back" he said pointing to my belly and he pulled out a blue plastic rocking horse. "For customers and kids" he winks at me. He thanked us again and again for the company and tried to give us the haircut on the house. I was ready to stuff the money in his pants if he didn't take it.
My worries and problems feel ridiculous when we leave his shop. Our biggest concern is whether we should buy a wagon or a sedan. I can't stop thinking about Eli all day, or the next. Where does one get that kind of triumphant attitude after all of that horror? How does it destroy some and not others? He said some prisoners would just throw themselves at the electric fence, unable to take the wretchedness their lives had become. Their bodies would be left to remain there for a few days, hands gripping the wires even after death.
I hope I am made of the same stuff as Eli and more than that, I hope B the G is too. She has already proved herself a little fighter and we still have a big journey ahead of us. I feel so much wiser after listening to Eli's story and I can't really put my finger on what it is I've learned. I feel calmer and more determined to enjoy every minute I have, though I know that feeling will fade or be forgotten. In the end, I only know that I witnessed a little slice of strength and the real power of the human spirit, visiting with him that day. I will add it to the other little nuggets of wisdom and stories and experiences I have collected and tell it all to B the G one day.
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