
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 28, 1995                   TAG: 9501310030
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: JIM STRATTON DAILY PRESS
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS (AP)                                 LENGTH: Medium

VA. AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR RECALLS DEADLY `GAME'

They dreamed up ``the game'' on a bitter afternoon during the Christmas season of 1942. The compound was icy, and the Nazi officer in charge for the day - the one in the well-tailored uniform and shiny black boots - wanted sand spread around to make walking less treacherous. So he pulled together several hundred prisoners and there, not far from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Christmas tree, made them play the game.

The rules were simple: Race down to a sand pit, scoop up a load, and run back to drop the sand on the icy spots. Along the way, try to avoid the wild shovel blows aimed at your head by Nazi guards.

If you were successful, you were allowed another turn. If you were hit and knocked unconscious - as many were - you were killed. Usually on the spot. Usually by the blade of a shovel driven into your windpipe.

Then, as the game went on around you, you were dragged across the frozen ground and dumped beneath the camp Christmas tree: a still warm gift to the Master Race. A testament to sadism.

Samuel Althaus survived the game, but talking about it doesn't come easy. It's too gruesome, he says, too upsetting.

``I was always reluctant to tell that story,'' says the 70-year-old caterer and restaurateur. ``Even though I don't celebrate it, Christmas is such a beautiful time of the year.''

Althaus and his family were part of the ocean of prisoners who passed through Auschwitz during World War II.

They arrived at the Birkenau section of Auschwitz in early November 1942. The Germans had overrun their home in the Polish town of Ciechanow and ordered the Jews living there onto a transport train.

``Once you got there, your name literally ceased existing,'' he says. ``That was the first thing they did to you.''

When the Althaus family reached Birkenau, Samuel's mother and two young sisters were separated from the rest of the family. With just a glance, a Nazi official had determined they served no purpose.

``I never saw them again,'' says Althaus. ``I asked a gentleman - a prisoner - the next day what happened to my mother, and he pointed to some fields off in the distance. There was smoke and flames and the sickly odor of burning flesh. Then I knew.''

Althaus pauses, staring with watery blue eyes out a nearby window.

``I remember being overcome by a nightmare feeling,'' he says finally. ``I remember asking myself: `Where is God?'''

by CNB