By Jason Fields

The stories below belong to one man, Martin Spett, who I met recently when he visited me at The Riverdale Press to talk about his life. He is a man of humor and grace, with an extraordinary life story.

Mr. Spett survived the terror of the Holocaust, growing up in the Polish city of Tarnow and, eventually, spending two years in the Bergen- Belsen concentration camp. In 1945, his family was loaded on a train that was meant to take them to their deaths. Instead, American tanks liberated all those still alive.

Recently, the soldiers involved in that liberation gathered in upstate New York to remember what they had done and invited Mr. Spett to join them. He chose not to, the memories still etched in his mind as if by acid.

Martin Spett is alive, he is 81 years old, and that is remarkable, as is his story, of which this is the first part:

The Germans have come

Martin Spett is hiding in a hastily, secretly built attic in a woodshed. It is 1939 and the men in gray uniforms, in black uniforms have come to Tarnow. There are 40,000 Jews in the Polish city, and thousands of them have been marched to the Jewish cemetery, of which he has a clear view. His father tells him not to look, but Martin is a child and the slits between the boards of the shed afford a perfect vantage point on death. It’s not quick. It can’t be quick, there are too many to kill. It is four days of bullets. Four days of senseless screaming, begging and blood. By dark, Martin’s mother, protected by a slip of paper — her American birth certificate — visits him and his father; bringing what food she can from home, where she waits with his sister. After four days, the Nazi thirst is sated. More than 7,000 are dead. Many more have been loaded onto trucks, with scarce room to breathe. No one knows where they will go.

A place to hide

Martin’s father, who works in the city tax department, has gotten word from a colleague that another deportation is coming. Martin and his father flee to the hiding place that has been prepared under the floorboards of a lumberyard. Right outside, Polish Fascists and German troops have gathered men and women from the ghetto and begun to slaughter those not loaded on the trucks.