EXCERPT FROM THE LONG NIGHT
Märkstadt
“I clearly remember one incident of prisoner abuse that outraged us all. Two young lads, both under the age of twenty, had been caught stealing from the food stores for which the Jewish Elder was responsible. They were both publicly beaten on the Appellplatz until they collapsed unconscious. The buckets of cold water were thrown over the motionless figures and they were unceremoniously rolled to one side. To add insult to injury, as one of the boys recovered Moischel Machtinger stepped up and urinated into his mouth. These horrific incidents inflamed our hatred of the Jewish Elder, Baruch Meister, and although later on he revealed a helpful side to his nature, he could never atone for all the evil for which he was responsible. (After the war, Meister roamed the world under a pseudonym until he apparently died in South America.)
Camp elder, Baruch Meister deployed a range of weapons against his fellow inmates. This rubber truncheon was used at Wiener Neudstadt camp in Austria [USHMM Collection, Gift of Eva Strauss-Marko]
