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from Part I - Camp Life: The Reality 1933–1945
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2018
Feliks Rak was born in 1903 in Borowiecz, Poland. Rak was arrested by the Gestapo in the spring of 1940 and initially imprisoned in Kielce. In July 1940 he was deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, then was moved to Dachau on September 5 of the same year, where he was registered as prisoner number 18,425. He was still interned in Dachau at its liberation in April 1945. Rak was a leading member of a secret organization in the camp. Many of the poems that he wrote during his incarceration in the concentration camps were read there at secret gatherings. Following liberation he compiled his memoirs and published them together with other material. Feliks Rak died in 1992.
Dachau wśród słońca
Poznałem piekło Dachau wśród słońca
Obóz, baraki stojące tu w rząd.
Płot murowany, rów, zasieki z drutu,
Jest w nim podłączony zabójczy prąd.
Wysokie wieże, a na nich esesmani
Pilnują w nocy, pilnują też w dzień.
Broń maszynowa zawszwe w pogotowiu,
Więźniowie głodni tu chodzą jak cień.
I krematorium tu co dzień i w nocy
Dymi bez przerwy i zatruwa życie.
Słychać też strzały, gdzieś w pobliżu, w lesie
rozstrzeliwują więźniów już o świcie.
Słupek, “kobyła” łańcuch, szubienica,
Jest to codzienny ich sprzęt do użytku.
łańcuch na rękę, hak, już więzień wisi.
Radość esesmanów. Pies! I to już wszystko.
Co dzień nas budzą nie poranne zorze,
Lecz judaszowska ręka esesmana.
Koncentracyjny obóz tu poznałem.
Do dziś w historii to rzecz nieznana.
Dachau 1941
Dachau beneath the Sun
Beneath the sun I discovered Dachau—
the camp with its barracks laid out in rows,
its brick walls, ditch, and barbed wire
plugged in to a deadly current.
The high towers where SS-guards
keep watch all day and night—
their machine guns at the ready;
the starving prisoners like shadows.
All day and night smoke
from the crematorium poisons lives;
while, close by, you hear the prisoners
being shot at dawn in the forest.
A post, a mare, chains, a gallows—
these are the props they use.
His hands chained, the guards rejoice
when the first captive hangs like a dog.
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