A Nazi labor camp prisoner's secret notebook

Friday, November 28, 2003

A Nazi labor camp prisoner's secret notebook
Each night after drawing, he hid it in the barracks floor

By CLAUDIA ROWE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

When George Gordon discusses his 14 months in the Nazi forced labor camps, his voice becomes flatter and blunter the more horrific his memories. Some are so graphic they are nearly beyond belief.

But then Gordon pulls a small notebook from the large, wooden desk in his study and opens the yellowed pages. Here is the guard tower at Buchenwald, drawn in pencil, with a boy's shaky hand. There is Gordon's work crew, wheeling dead bodies to the crematoria. One page shows barbed wire fences. Another has a guard with a long, sinuous whip.


		Joshua Trujillo / P-I
	Gordon's notebook: "I wanted someone to ... know what happened here, but I thought if they didn't understand Polish they might just throw it away. So I made pictures."

"This is when I did not know if I would survive," says Gordon, now 77 and living in Seattle. "I wanted someone to discover it and know what happened here, but I thought if they didn't understand Polish they might just throw it away. So I made pictures."

The notebook, with its faded green cover, was officially available only to Nazi officers through the camp commissary. Gordon traded a day's rations to a worker who smuggled it to him. Each night after drawing, he hid the tablet inside a crack in the barracks floor.

"A prisoner's dreams," says the Polish title under a still life showing a bowl of soup and hunk of bread.

Gordon's hatred for his captors grew so strong that, after liberation, he said he had to restrain himself from attacking anyone who spoke German. But the last pages of his picture book suggest a brighter outlook. Here, he lists English words, early vocabulary lessons from a Jewish bunk mate at Buchenwald.

First entry: Blue.

In May 1945, he and the other survivors were liberated by Gen. George Patton's troops, who showered them with whatever candy and chocolate they had in their pants pockets.

Over the following three months, Gordon remained at Buchenwald, fed and debriefed by American soldiers, who continued his tutelage. It was through them that he learned his first truly American phrase: "Coca-Cola."

P-I reporter Claudia Rowe can be reached at 206-448-8320 or claudiarowe@seattlepi.com

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