User:NjHistorian/sandbox

Sergis Hutyrczyk Koldichevo Concentration Camp Guard

ADMINISTRATION: Guards at Koldichevo, like those detained, imprisoned and executed there, were drawn from among the local Belorussian population. The only non-Belorussian official at Koldichevo was its chief administrator, a German, known as the `Black Commander,' whose succumb to cancer prior to the camp's closure.

SURVIVOR IDENTIFICATION OF HUTYRCZYK: What profession requires an individual to focus upon and brings them into extraordinarily frequent and close proximity to both the face and head of another, rendering them capable and so uniquely qualified years, even decades later, to recall and identify those with whom they had previously come into contact? Koldichevo had but one barber, Sol, a Polish Jew. It was his job to cut the hair and shave members of the camp staff - administrator and guards, including that of Sergis Hutryczyk.

On one occasion, a guard entered the small room at Koldichevo which Sol was assigned to and used as a barber shop, handed him a loaded pistol and offered an ominous bit of advice. `You better escape from here soon or you will not live much longer.'

Stunned by the warning, gift of a loaded gun and, on its face, what appeared the compassion of a camp guard, Sol wondered if he was being set up. If caught with a pistol, either loaded, or otherwise, he would be killed on the spot. If he exited the room, was someone waiting to confront and search him outside? Someone who knew he had a gun? Someone who wanted to kill him? Years later, Sol observed, `I think he fell in love with me.'

Sol exited the room, approached the woman who he would help escape and later become his second wife. Looking her in the eye he said, `if you tell anyone about this gun, the first person I will shoot is you.'

Sol led a successful escape, together with his future wife and a hand full of others. They both survived the war and eventually immigrated to the U.S., settling down in Englishtown, New Jersey.

Unbeknown, either to Sol, or his wife, just a few miles West, in the towns of South River, East Brunswick, New Brunswick, Highland Park and Somerset, New Jersey was a nest of thousands of Belorussian post-war emigres, mass murderers, those who had once welcomed, worked for and along side their Nazis masters. A group which had identified, rounded up, supervised and exterminated 1/4 of the entire civilian population of Belorussia.

Just a few miles West, in the morning shadow of South River, East Brunswick and Highland Park was the Franklin Township residence of Sergis Hutyrczyk, a former guard at Koldichevo, frequent visitor to Sol's makeshift barber shop and occupant of Sol's chair.

Photo Spread Identification Black Commander