Alec Croft

Alec Croft had survived the Second World War and then the horrors of the concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland but lost half his hand in an unsafe press while working alongside my father at Plastic Products. After his accident he had begun working as the janitor at my school. He was trim and gentlemanly and had the innate grace and erect dignity of a soldier in uniform rather than a janitor. He wore pressed kakis, had slicked back black hair and looked a little like the actor Clark Gable, pencil moustache and all.

One afternoon shortly after he began his new job he asked me in exotic, British accented English, “lad, you are Joe’s son aren’t you” and when I answered yes, he said that I should say hello from Alec Croft. I noticed the numbers etched in a neat row on the inside of his wrist even before I saw the stumps where his fingers had been. With a boy’s ingenuousness I asked why he had numbers on his arm but didn´t ask about his fingers. We sat in the sun on the bench outside the janitor’s office and he told me the story behind them. I was eleven about to be twelve.

He explained clearly and simply about the concentration camps in Europe, leaving out the horrible details even if I did know some of them. The Nuremberg Trials and film clips of the liberation of the camps had been shown on the TV news and in war documentaries. He explained about being captured by the Germans and  the  long ride in a freight car with the other prisoners, hungry and thirsty not knowing what fate awaited him, feeling doomed, wondering if he was going to be hanged or shot. He finally came to Auschwitz, the largest and most infamous of the Nazi concentration camps.

He was herded under the wrought iron sign that hung over the gate with its message in German "Arbeit Macht Frei" "work sets you free." But there was no freedom there.

 People were sent to Auschwitz- Birkenau to die and most people that passed under that sign, over a million all told never came out again.  He was sucked into that implausible nightmare; a maelstrom of smells and sounds and desperation. With the ”stiff upper lip" that the British were known for, he told me how the guards shaved his head and how he was registered and the numbers scratched into his arm and smeared with blue ink. He described the selection lines where Jewish families were separated and the old and feeble along with the children were sent immediately to the gas chambers. He told me about the electrified fences and the spartan and overcrowded barracks and their gaunt inhabitants.

Alex was a British prisoner of war and one of the lucky ones and was sent to a forced labor camp where the conditions were tolerable and the Red Cross had access in accordance with the Geneva Convention.  He said that British prisoners were far better off than the Jewish prisoners who risked execution if they fell ill or were unable to work. He was released at the end of the war in 1945 and was repatriated to England and then emigrated to the U.S. in the mid 1950’s ending up in Connecticut, first in the plastic factory working alongside my father and then in my school. Dad told me about the missing fingers. Alec had stuck his hand into the press to clear out a molded plastic ashtray at the same time he depressed the foot pedal and sent several tons of steel down on his left hand. Dad wrapped the bloody mess in a towel and drove him, bleeding and in shock to the emergency room, then went back and like a short order cook scraping his grill, cleaned up after the severed fingers before the next shift began.