Chapter 2

The year seemed to drag on endlessly as I slaved in the labor camps. I had seen many elderly die, from exposure to the burning sun, the strikes from the German boots (and whips), or from a weak heart. I woke up each morning praying that the past day had been a nightmare and I had to face the awful truth that my family and all the Jews amounted to nothing. As far as the Germans were concerned we were put on this earth to serve and then be killed by them.

In August 1940, their came the official announcement that the city would be divided into three quarters; one for the Germans, one for the Polish and one for the Jews.

For the nest 4 months a mad scramble began in Warsaw as everyone received apartments in the quarter where they were to live. For the Jews transport to the Jewish quarter was extremely difficult. No Jew that I knew had his own vehicle to be able to carry his furniture. Because of this some carts and trolley cars all marked with the Star of David, were given to us to enable us to take with us the heaviest pieces of furniture which we had been allowed to keep.

My family and I began our trip to our new home early on October, carrying our possessions on our backs. Throughout the journey we had the halt many times by force, when German authorities passed us, irrespective of the load of the load on our backs. My brother Miep had cried a great deal of the way, hungry and cold and we arrived art our quarter weak and frustrated. I remember thinking "Poor Mien", a prisoner already at the age of one year.

This thought of imprisonment was further heightened in my mind when before us at the ghetto entrance a ten-foot high solid wall topped with barbed wire, glared down on us.

The Germans stood outside helping us in, kicking, spitting and laughing at us as we stumbled past. I saw an old lady with a hunchback who was told to straighten herself. When she couldn’t the German whipped her and threw her inside as she screamed in terror.

It wasn’t long before I had realized that our quarter was nothing but a forsaken slum. We entered a narrow street, cracked and lined with rows of apartment buildings, equally cracked and wretched. It was amazing that they were still standing and this was, to us, our new home.

Soon we had ended our journey at 38 Karmelicka Street. Walking in we found few other Jews in our apartment that had been there for a month. That night 8 of us were sleeping practically on top of each other in a tiny room. It took me a great time to get used to sleeping with so many odorous bodies, absorbing the air around me.

The streets offered no relief from the incredible overcrowding we had to endure. Looking out from the window I saw my new neighborhood for how it really was - a cage. A sea of thousands of heads flooded the entire street from end to end. Pushing your way through the great throng that flowed by like waves in a storm was like trying to part the waves of the Red Sea. Peoples of all ages stood on the sidewalks, dragging the belongings which they held in their hands; clothing, tools, pans – anything that could b exchanged for a piece of bread. The rations were still minimal and my mother and Miep had to survive on the food that my father and I received each day at the labor camp.

But, on the sixteenth of November as my father and I and many other males gathered at the entrance of the ghetto, in order to leave for work, we were not allowed to exit. German and Polish police guards had blocked the exit telling us to return to our homes. The ghetto had been sealed. Nearly all contact with non-Jews was terminated.

We walked back to our slum in a state of shock. We were trapped in this hell, aged in by streets with no form of recreation. There was hardly a tree in sight; nothing could brighten our day even in the slightest.

I couldn’t bear to see the look on my mother’s face when we told her what had happened.

"No", she cried. "No it is not true" and then accepting what she knew to be true she burst into heavy sobs. Not one day had gone by without the tears of any mother being shed. Oh what despair!

Those who were living with us were destroyed as well. Reihne, his wife Anna, and his son Rosen had purposely left a good portion of their stocks outside the ghetto since any attempt to move them would have meant risking the loss of their source of income. Now they had been like us with what we were able to carry on our backs. Marcus, who also lived with us, did not have many possessions but now he knew he would never be able to see the grave of his parents ever again. They had been killed whilst fighting against the Germans’ actions.

We went to bed stricken with anxiety and grief, not knowing what the nest day would bring. I woke up in the middle of the night, my heart beat pounding in my ears at a violent rate. I sat up on the hard mattress (shared by Marcus), in the darkness. A glimmer of light from the moon was all that enabled me to see the few walls surrounding me. They had been caving in on me for what seemed like years.

Clad in only my undergarments I walked slowly over to where Miep lay. He was breathing through his mouth as his nose was congested, just like our lives had been. Looking over him, a large sob came to my throat as if to choke me. Soundlessly tears trickled down my cheek, pitying the life of this deprived child. Suddenly I heard thumping sounds outside. I crept to the window and looked outside to a pitiful sight. The Jewish police were coming down the street collecting the corpses, which had been thrown there to prevent diseases from spreading through the buildings. They placed them in the truck on the way to the ghetto cemetery.

For a while I was never able to comprehend the indifference shown by the police, himself or herself Jews like me, towards the dead they daily extracted from the streets. But later on I discovered that, like myself, they had become desensitized by the countless number of corpses they came across. Human life no longer showed any significance.