CUSTOM FLORAL DESIGNS By Jackie Exotic and very unusual designs. Specializing in silk floral arrangements for your every need. Fantastic savings on silk trees. camp commandant Oskar Zunker. This, he said, had given him the only prerogatives different from other prisoners: Occasional trips into town for supplies. Tannenbaum said he had once threat- ened to turn over to the SS an inmate who had taken more than his share of food. Another time, he had used a rubber hose to chase inmates away from kitchen gar- bage, but only because "the Germans put some white stuff on this garbage, some poison." And during the final days of the war, "Just as there is no collective guilt, there is no collective innocence." Tannenbaum said, he led an escape of 50 inmates from Goerlitz. "We cut the wire and we were free," he said. Tannenbaum's lawyer said these are the "ramblings" of an ill, confused 75-year-old man. "I can't get three consecutive sentences out of him," said Manhattan at- torney Elihu Massel. Massel conceded that his client had been a kapo, although he preferred the word "overseer," since "kapo" has emotional overtones. But he said the brutality with which Tannenbaum has been charged would have been difficult, if not impossi- ble, since he was not physically fit by the time he arrived at Goerlitz: In a previous forced labor camp, Wola in Galicia, Nazis had blinded him in one eye and severely in- jured his back in a beating. And if Tannenbaum's account about helping prisoners escape from Goerlitz is true, said Massel, then "he couldn't have done the things with which he has been charged. He couldn't have been a leader. Nobody would have followed him. And anyway, most of the really bad kapos never left the camps alive. The prisoners made certain of that." But different stories about Tannenbaum have come from former inmates of Goerlitz. They say he was Goerlitz's chief kapo, not merely an aide to the camp commandant. Former prisoners claim he raped women and beat, tortured and killed male pris- oners. Well-groomed and well-fed, they say, he escaped the privations of life in a forced- labor camp. Described by some as a "wild," "cold-blooded" man, Tannenbaum, accord- ing to accounts, was hated and feared by fellow Jews. Goerlitz was constructed during the summer and early fall of 1944. Construc- tion was nearly complete when Leon Zelig arrived there in August, 1944. Tannen- baum arrived there a few days later. "He was six feet tall, blond, good look- ing," said Zelig, 58, now a resident of Los Angeles. "No one who spends time in a ghetto or forced-labor camp looks that well." When Tannenbaum came to Goerlitz, he was a kapo, according to Zelig. A few days later, he said, Tannenbaum was the chief kapo, in charge of Goerlitz's eight other kapos, one for each bloc in the camp. David Katz, 65, arrived in Goerlitz about the same time as Zelig. "Tannenbaum didn't seem too bad at first," he said. "But when the new prisoners came from [the ghetto of] Lodz in September, 1944, he changed. He became a wildman." Leon Hostig is now a 67-year-old resident of the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn. In the ghetto of Lodz, two SS men had beaten his mother. She died two days later. His father was sent to the ovens in Auschwitz. Hostig, then 23, and his two brothers, Avram, 19, and Joel, 24, were also in Auschwitz in July and August, 1944. In September, they were among the approx- imately 500 men from Lodz sent to Goerlitz. "We didn't know where we were heading," said Hostig. "But we knew it was a labor camp and that meant survival." Before leaving Auschwitz, Hostig had been given relatively sturdy clothes — a jacket, a shirt, pants, decent shoes. Upon arriving at Goerlitz, he stood in the camp's courtyard in the first of two rows of incom- ing prisoners. Tannenbaum, standing about 15 feet from Hostig, faced the new inmates. "He wore beautiful pressed pants, shined shoes, a cap with a brim," said Hostig. "He was the king of the camp." Tannenbaum looked at Hostig's shoes and ordered him to remove them and get some wooden clogs from a supply room. "I didn't move too fast," recalls Hostig. "After all, he was another Jew. What could he do?" Tannenbaum then strode over to Hostig, raised both his hands in the air and slammed him on the head. Hostig fell sprawling into the dirt. , Later that day, the prisoners in Bloc No. 4, where Hostig's younger brother, Avram, had been assigned, were ordered into the courtyard. Avram, thin and frail, was slow to move. Tannenbaum went into Avram's barracks and, according to Hostig, stood in the doorway next to the boy's bunk and "beat his lungs out." The beating was witnessed by the prisoners in the court- yard. The next day, Avram went to Goerlitz's "hospital," a room with three beds and a Jewish physician who was given no medications. The boy died the following day. "Tannenbaum is responsible for my brother's death," said Hostig, who had sneaked his brother into the trucks from Auschwitz heading to Goerlitz. "Avram weighed about 80 pounds. He was only flesh and blood. He wouldn't have passed the inspection at Auschwitz that approved prisoners being sent to Goerlitz. I risked my life so he would have a chance to sur- vive." "Tannenbaum was responsible for a lot of killings," said Hostig, "not with a weapon, not with a stick, but with his hands. We didn't have any Germans kill- ing us because there were hardly any Ger- mans." (According to Hostig, there were only three Germans at Goerlitz: The camp com- mander, the lager fuhrer, who lived in a house on a hill above Goerlitz; a shoemaker Continued on next page FREE IN-HOME CONSULTATION Contact Jackie Schwartz 399 3360 - Artists from the State of Israel Yaacov Agam Calman Shemi David Schneur Bat-Zvi Izik Ben-Shalom Zaritzky Mixed media, soft paintings, lithos, etchings, water- colors, ceramics, originals and many others. at the Jewish Community Center 6600 W. Maple Rd., W. Bloomfield, MI 48033 661 1000 - etmiterr, Ems „ ► LM.= METIEr211111•1111111 Mill11 ■ 111 ■ 11A1111111111= Distinctively designed furniture limited only by your imagination • Finely crafted custom furniture especially designed for your unique lifestyle at affordable prices. ▪ Professional design services. - No obligation in home /office estimates. Call for appointment. Laminations Limited 40400 W. Grand River, Novi, MI 476-8119 Free delivery with this ad