In August of 1944 the Lodz ghetto of Poland was liquidated. That meant all the Jews were sent to Auschwitz. But the Germans kept my father and the people in his factory together. The officer in charge told my father his group was ultimately going to be sent to a Siemens factory in Germany. Apparently my father had created such an efficient team that the Germans wanted to keep them intact.
When they arrived at Auschwitz my father's group was not processed like most prisoners meaning; children and any one frail right to gas chambers, the others shaved, tattooed. etc. They kept my father's group sitting on grassy hill. The other prisoners who worked for the Germans were stunned. They had never seen something like this before.
A German officer finally came with soldiers who carried a bunch of stuff. The German officer would hold up an item and ask if my father's group could make such a thing. Eventually the men and women were separated into their individual camps, however for the next 5 days they all remained unassigned in Auschwitz.
At one point my father was standing next to the barbed wire and saw my mother across the way in the women's camp. The distance between them was the width of a typical residential street including the side walks. There was a high fence of barbed wire on each side. At this point they still had some paper and they would write notes to each other, wrap the note in a rock and throw it across. My mother didn't have much of an arm, and her notes would land in no man's land. My father's notes did reach my mother.
Each day they would meet at a certain time at the barbed wire. But then one day as my father thew a note he was caught by a German guard. "What are you doing?" he barked. My father explained in German he was thowing a note to his wife. My father thought he was dead for sure. But the guard merely said, "Away from the wire" and moved on.
The next day the Siemen's transfer was cancelled and they were processed into Auschwitz. That was the last time my mother and father would see each other, until a year and half later, after the war was long over.
My mother said she never forgot the last note. She translated it as saying, "My sweet, don't worry, we will be together again and I will kiss you and hold you in my arms."