title: The Muselmann: The Diary of a Jewish Slave Laborer
author: David Matzner
description: Born in Germany in 1914, Matzner, who died in 1991, left for Jerusalem in 1936. He returned, now a rabbi, to his native land in 1938, and before long the gestapo was at his door. Thus began the nightmare that would continue until 1945 in some 20 prisons and concentration camps in France, Poland and Germany. Matzner, fluent in German, Yiddish and French, used his talents as an amateur graphologist and astrologer to gain some privileges, but for most of these years he was a laborer, and on several occasions he came close to death. Hence the title, for in camp jargon a Muselmann was a prisoner considered on the verge of death. In his introduction, Matzner writes, "I do not expect to break new ground here." He doesn't, but like all memoirs of camp inmates, his book, written with freelancer Margolis, serves to demonstrate the brutalities humans are capable of. <BR>Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  A Sweatshop Romance
  
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  # A Sweatshop Romance
  
  
  ### Abraham Cahan
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  LEIZER
  
  
  Lipman was one of those contract tailors
  
  
  who are classed by their hands under the head of
  
  
  "cockroaches," which—translating the
  
  
  term into lay English—means that he ran a very
  
  
  small shop, giving employment to a single team of
  
  
  one sewing-machine operator, one baster, one
  
  
  finisher, and one presser.
  
  
  
  
  
  The shop was one of a suite of three rooms on
  
  
  the third floor of a rickety old tenement house on
  
  
  Essex Street, and did the additional duty of the
  
  
  family's kitchen and dining room. It faced a
  
  
  dingy little courtyard, and was connected by a
  
  
  windowless bedroom with the parlor, which
  
  
  commanded the very heart of the Jewish markets.
  
  
  Bundles of cloth, cut to be made into coats,
  
  
  littered the floor, lay in chaotic piles by one of
  
  
  the walls, cumbered Mrs. Lipma