My dear ones,
This is a farewell letter. We are going to a concentration camp in France, to Drancy. You know already what will happen to us after this. I ask you urgently: send a message via Paris to Ana and to my mother. Perhaps one can still do something for us. I have the impression that everything is all right in Titmoning. Write to Father. The situation is distressing. Perhaps a quick rescue might still help. My dear ones, keep this letter, it is perhaps the last one and perhaps you will show it one day to my dear mother. Tell her that I was with her in my thoughts until the last moment of my life. If my father should be rescued, take care of him and see to it that he does not do, God forbid, something stupid. Life without me will be unbearable for mother. I implore you, do whatever is still possible to rescue me. Thank you very much for everything you have done for me, most of all, thanks to mother. I conclude because my heart bursts with pain. Remember me and do everything via Paris. Kisses from me, Yours, Hela My darling,
On this, the last night of my life, I bid you farewell. Our days of happiness were short-lived, but beautiful. At this moment I am remembering our love, from its beautiful beginning until its cruel end. You were the love of my life, and I would willingly have sacrificed everything to save you. And our innocent little Otto – why has it been decreed that this rough, ruthless hand should put an end to his short life? I remember my loved ones for the last time. If you are lucky enough to see them again, I send a last kiss to my beloved sister, to my brother and Olga, to Maxi and Lidi, and especially to Danny and Lianka, with all my heart. I wish them all a happier life than our own. They must fight bravely for our freedom and avenge the innocent blood of their loved ones. My darling, thank you with all my heart for your devotion, your love, and for the happiness you have given me. Stay the way you are today – a dauntless hero who never gives in. I will think of you and pray for your rescue until my last breath. Lastly, please send my best wishes to all your friends. Farewell, love of my life! Ellie and your little Otto send you kisses for the last time! Goodbye Auschwitz Birkenau My dear Steffi,
Thinking of you in joy and in sorrow, I am informing you, my dearest, that my verdict has been announced today and that I must part from this world, am sentenced to death. Please remain strong and trust in our dear God who decides the fate of each one of us. I could not change anything any more, otherwise I would have spared you and Gerta all this. Please forgive me, therefore, I did not want to cause you this pain, but unfortunately it cannot be changed any more. I am ready to die since this is the will of God and His will be done. You must resign yourself to this. I ask you again, please forget the pain which I inflicted upon you, my dear ones, and keep quiet about it. After all, I have only saved human beings, even if they were Jews, and this was my death. Just as I have always done everything for other people, I have also sacrificed everything for other people. Everything else you will hear, because a comrade will visit you and he will tell you how the court judges. Please do read the letters 1-4 which you are sure to receive, you will understand from them that I had intended it differently, but I considered you, my dear ones. My dear ones, I beg you again, please forget me, it had to be this way, fate has willed it like that. I am concluding these last lines which I am still writing to you and I send many greetings and kisses to the two of you and to you my dearest one in this world and in the other world where I shall be soon in God's hand and I remain your ever loving. Toni |
I am still alive. A carpenter, I lived in Warsaw in apartment 40 on 14 Krochmalna Street. On 15.2.1944, I worked at 8 Chucinska Street. I am still alive. I don’t know if I will be tomorrow. I write at a time when there are no longer any Jews in Warsaw. I would like to see my beloved wife and my two beloved children, Wareczyk and Jurek. I wonder if I will still see them. These are terrible days for me. I want to live, I feel the end coming.
Kalezyk If anyone should find what I have written, publish it in a newspaper, so that my relatives - who may have survived - will know that at this time I was still alive. To the S.S. officer, former commander of the Auschwitz death camp:
It is finally time for you to hear these things from me, the former inmate, number 17724 of Auschwitz. It is I who was led with my family like cattle, in a train cart made for cattle, in suffocating-crowdedness, for two nights and days to your camp, without given any water or the possibility of relieving myself for the duration of the trip. There was no room to sit down so we had to take turns doing so. It is I, who was brutally dragged out of the cart when we arrived at that dreadful place, immediately separated from my family, most of whom I never saw again, stripped down and led naked, while bitten, in a herd of other animalized human-beings for selection. I was chosen to live for now, and suffer, until the last drop of marrow is drained and used out, from inside of me. It was I who was made to wear a slim striped pajama and two left handed wooden shoes, had a number tattooed into my flesh and thrown together with countless others to a giant pen called "the Gypsy camp". It was I who was humiliated in every possible way, starved beyond recognition and given porridge made out of unwashed cattle beet in a chamber pot taken from the belongings of Jews. I had to feed myself together with nine other inmates, to sip without a fork or spoon, while staring at my friends' hands making sure they are not eating more then their share. It was I who was given fifteen lashes with a heavy electrical wire for trying to take a potato peel from the waste of the S.S. kitchen. It was I who was slaved for sixteen hours in a salt mine for 160 grams of bread and half a litter of liquids a day. It was I who ran, ducked and jumped at the whim of the duty officer who occasionally made life-and-death selections. The testing scale for life was how far you could jump and how fast you could run. And I survived, although many times the thought of putting an end to the struggle has crossed my mind. Here is a segment for you, from a newspaper published this week in Israel: “a delegation of 50 youths, from the united kibbutz movement made a memorial ceremony, laid a flower-bouquet and raised the Israeli flag. At the end of the ceremony one of the boys chanted the mourners kaddish and they all sang together the Israeli national anthem, ha-tikva, the hope. Can you guess where the ceremony took place? It was in Auschwitz! I wanted you to know that one of the girls in the delegation is my granddaughter, the granddaughter of an ex-prisoner of Auschwitz. 42 years have passed, and in all that time I could not have gotten over one giltfull feeling – why did I not rise up? and I was shamed to tell my sons about my personal history and almost did not do so. I almost did not tell them about my experiences there – in that foreign planet, because I thought I aloud myself to be led like a lamb to the slaughter. And out of all people it was my grandchildren, all “made in Israel” who helped me realize the truth: I did rise up-in the face of death! I did fight back! Because you wanted me dead there, so you may scatter my ashes alongside with the ashes of countless others in the fields of Auschwitz. I did not surrender to you. And now there is a future and there is life. My granddaughter went through the cursed gates of Auschwitz, a proud young woman, a member of an Israeli delegation waving the Israeli flag! And there in that valley of death, the Israeli national anthem was sung. So you see, I did not walk like a lamb to the slaughter, I fought and rebelled and struggled. I carried on despite everything. There was a war between us, and I won. The proof of my triumph is my grandchildren. Signed Tzvi Ha-Meiri Grandfather of Sagit from the deligation. A kibbutz member from Israel – the land of the Jews |