Re: "By their fruits you will know them"
Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2010 10:40 pm America/Denver
"THE ARRIVAL"
We have arrived. We have arrived where? Where are we?
Young men in striped prison suits are rushing about, emptying the cattle cars. "Out! Out! Everybody out! FAST! Fast!"
The Germans were alwys in such a hurry. Death was always urgent with them--Jewish death. The earth had to be cleansed of Jews. We already knew that. We just didn't know that sharing the planet for another minute was more than this super-race could live with. The air for them was befouled by Jewish breath, and they must have fresh air.
The men in the prison suits were part of the Sonderkommandos, the people whose assignment was death, who filled the ovens with the bodies of human beings, Jews who were stripped naked, given soap, and led into the showers, showers of death, the gas chambers.
We are being rushed out of the cattle cars. Chicha and I are desperately searching for our cigarettes. We cannot find them.
"What are you looking for, pretty girls? Cigarettes? you won't need them. Tomorrow you will be sorry you were ever born."
What did he mean by that? Could there be something worse than the cattle-car ride? There can't be. No one can devise something even more foul. They're just scaring us. But we cannot have our cigarettes, and we have wasted precious moments. We have to push and run to catch up with the rest of the family. We have just spotted the back of my mother's head when Mengele, the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele, points to my sister and me and says, "Die swei." This trim, very good-looking German, with a flick of his thumb and a whistle, is selecting who is to live and who is to die.
Suddenly we are standing on the "life" side. Mengele has selected us to live. But I have to catch up with my mother.
Where are they going?
Mama! Turn around. I must see you before you go to wherever you are going. Mama, turn around. You've got to. We have to say good-bye. Mama! If you don't turn around I'll run after you. But they won't let me. I must stay on the "life" side.
Mama!
(Taken from the book "Fragments of Isabella--a Memoir of Auschwitz" written by Isabella Leitner)
We have arrived. We have arrived where? Where are we?
Young men in striped prison suits are rushing about, emptying the cattle cars. "Out! Out! Everybody out! FAST! Fast!"
The Germans were alwys in such a hurry. Death was always urgent with them--Jewish death. The earth had to be cleansed of Jews. We already knew that. We just didn't know that sharing the planet for another minute was more than this super-race could live with. The air for them was befouled by Jewish breath, and they must have fresh air.
The men in the prison suits were part of the Sonderkommandos, the people whose assignment was death, who filled the ovens with the bodies of human beings, Jews who were stripped naked, given soap, and led into the showers, showers of death, the gas chambers.
We are being rushed out of the cattle cars. Chicha and I are desperately searching for our cigarettes. We cannot find them.
"What are you looking for, pretty girls? Cigarettes? you won't need them. Tomorrow you will be sorry you were ever born."
What did he mean by that? Could there be something worse than the cattle-car ride? There can't be. No one can devise something even more foul. They're just scaring us. But we cannot have our cigarettes, and we have wasted precious moments. We have to push and run to catch up with the rest of the family. We have just spotted the back of my mother's head when Mengele, the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele, points to my sister and me and says, "Die swei." This trim, very good-looking German, with a flick of his thumb and a whistle, is selecting who is to live and who is to die.
Suddenly we are standing on the "life" side. Mengele has selected us to live. But I have to catch up with my mother.
Where are they going?
Mama! Turn around. I must see you before you go to wherever you are going. Mama, turn around. You've got to. We have to say good-bye. Mama! If you don't turn around I'll run after you. But they won't let me. I must stay on the "life" side.
Mama!
(Taken from the book "Fragments of Isabella--a Memoir of Auschwitz" written by Isabella Leitner)