World of Yesterday

This picture shows me as a Sixth-battalioner in Borkut in 1941.

After graduation I was at home until March 1941. I was no longer allowed to work. I made money by giving private lessons. In time I had to stop with this as well. I also managed to make money by drawing. I also gave lessons in descriptive geometry to one high school student and her sister, a university student. In March 1941 they summoned me to the Sixth Labor Battalion. I served in it for 28 months.

The Sixth Battalion was a group of Jewish guys. They were all young people. Many of them were university graduates. Among them were doctors, lawyers, engineers, surveyors... men who where already independent. They were also summoned to the Sixth Battalion. The philosophy was likely that when they'll have young Jewish men concentrated in one place, they'll be easier to control. At first they gathered us in Cemerne, in the Vranov nad Toplou region. To there, and later, in the fall, to Sabinov, came about 1200 to 1800 young, healthy, sympathetic Jewish boys from the whole of Slovakia. In the beginning we were ordered about by simple, even primitive wardens, who were from Eastern Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Can you imagine it? A doctor was being commanded by a warden who perhaps didn't even have two grades of elementary school.

[from Interview of Bernard Knezo Schoenbrun by Centropa]