Photos Renew Bond Between Holocaust Survivors, Liberators

They looked at the photographs of the filthy, emaciated men, and the memories came pouring out, with stories they had never told their closest loved ones.

The black-and-white photos showed images of themselves as young men--really, not much more than boys--in the Nazi slave labor camp where they were taken when their families were marched off to Auschwitz.

Stanley Tysch touched the hauntingly soft face of the 19-year-old Polish youth that he once was, in the days when his name was Stanley Tyszler. A pile of bodies lies behind him in the photo. He weighed less than 80 pounds that day.

On Tuesday, Tysch, 74, and other former Nazi prisoners from Los Angeles gathered with the American World War II veterans who liberated the survivors at the German camp of Ahlem on that day in April 1945. The grimy, gaunt faces of the prisoners had astonished Vernon Tott, a 20-year-old GI from Sioux City, Iowa. He had pulled a camera from his pocket and begun to take photographs.

Tysch never saw Tott again--until Tuesday, when other soldiers and Holocaust survivors met at a veterans’ gathering in Torrance and pored over the only record of their shared hell. And finally, the memories spilled out.

“Every day was a different story to tell in how to survive,” Tysch said. “I did everything possible, but eventually I didn’t care if I lived or died. My life was worth nothing.” Tysch put his arm around Tott.

“I call him a hero,” Tysch said. “This is what I lived. This is what I survived.”

Stefan Mandel, 72, a prisoner who escaped a few days before American tanks arrived, studied the photos of the upturned, listless faces of men too weak to get up and greet their liberators. They stared up from wooden beds in the dark bunk room. Here’s a friend who passed away; another who now lives in Israel.

And Mandel’s family? His voice choked, his shoulders trembled, and his eyes grew bright. He emerged from the camp to find that his mother, sister and others had perished at Auschwitz.

He found a sister who survived the camp at Bergen-Belsen along with a 19-year-old bunkmate. That friend, weak from typhus, had lost 47 relatives; her only surviving sister would die of tuberculosis two months after the Allied victory.

The young woman became his wife, Ella Mandel.

“I lost all my family,” she said. “Fortunately, I met my husband and created a new family.”

Connie Mandel-Seft, one of their two children, who is herself a mother of two, said her parents were silent about their experiences for years until the photographs emerged.

“Survivors never share their experiences with their children. They want to protect them,” said Mandel-Seft. “This prompted [my father] to share his experiences with me and my brother.”

It was half a century after the liberation of Ahlem that Tott was reminded of the photos he had taken by a letter sent to the Railsplitter, the newsletter for the 84th Infantry Division, which was known as the Lincoln Division. A former prisoner at Ahlem wrote to thank his liberators and find the photographs taken by the young American soldier that day.

Tott descended to his basement in Iowa and dug out an old shoe box. He lifted the lid and the faces of the survivors stared up at him. Then he began the painstaking process of contacting camp survivors.

So far, he has found 23--half of whom appear in the photos--and created a network of soldiers and survivors whose bonds redefine the kind of fraternity combat veterans often share.

Since then, his photographs have been copied for Holocaust exhibitions in Germany, Jewish archives in the United States and, of course, for the survivors themselves.

“These people call me an angel,” Tott said. “They just can’t believe I’ve come across all this material after all these years. They had nothing showing their lives in the camps. They were so excited.”

But the photos also revived painful memories. Many survivors cried when they saw them. Some had insomnia or nightmares. But all wanted copies.

Even Stanley Tysch, for whom the photos were a reminder of the day the Nazis rounded up the healthy prisoners and marched them toward Bergen-Belsen, fleeing the advancing Allied forces. Tysch hid in a shed and stayed behind with the sick.

Some of the prisoners believed the Nazis were going to return and execute them. Others feared the foreign troops would be Soviets.

When Tysch heard the rumble of troops in the distance, “I was afraid. I was on my hands and knees so no one could see me.”

But then he peered out and saw that soldiers were tossing a baseball back and forth as they marched. A tank stopped and Tott climbed down, held out some Camel cigarettes and food rations--and pulled his camera out of his pocket.