Time to sleep, Amara, time to sleep, says a sensible voice inside a dark room that she persists in regarding as the place of internal tribunals. But there’s an echo and her words return to her doubled. People seem different in that empty room. But who can be there other than that tiresome pain in the arse, her maltreated conscience?
Her fingers, of their own free will, open, run and give signals and her eyes follow, drowsy but attentive. All she can do is return to Emanuele’s words that spring to life again in those pencil markings, if sometimes so weak and faint as to be almost invisible.
Łódź. 15 May ’42
This morning on my way to work I saw a woman crouched on the dry mud selling early cherries. I went up to her thinking to buy a few, but had a severe shock. Three marks each. I took one in my hand just to smell it, but the woman made a scene. If you eat it I’ll force you to spit it out, she said, either you pay or nothing, don’t touch it! I abused her in a loud voice, calling her a thief, and she answered in verse: Filthy boy, can’t you see yourself? Got no hair and covered with scabs! Go and piss somewhere else! But if she’s selling those cherries it must mean someone is buying them. There are distinctions even here in the ghetto, where some Jews have rights and others don’t, rich Jews and poor Jews. Only rich in a manner of speaking, of course, but a little less stricken than we who were once seriously rich and are now the lowest of the low.
Łódź. 3 June ’42
Papà has been arrested. He was on a list of workers of low productivity. They took him away. We’ve heard nothing of him for days. Mamma in her invincible optimism says they’ll have sent him home. But I don’t believe it. I’m afraid they’ve deported him, like Uncle Eduard who disappeared into the void after he was thrown onto a lorry at five in the morning. There’s no longer talk of shootings, only of goods trains leaving for Chełmno or Auschwitz or even Dachau. We don’t really know what goes on inside the camps. The Germans call them labour camps. But there’s a rumour doing the rounds that anyone who can’t work is shut in a large room and suffocated with gas. That’s what’s being said. By voices overheard by the sharp ears of people who know German well and work in the SS kitchens or barber shop.
Łódź. 6 June ’42
This morning on Zidowska Street I saw three girls with scarves on their heads and stars on their chests running away. Two German soldiers were after them. They ran quickly, leaping over any obstacles: buckets, shovels, dead bodies. Then one of the soldiers shouted ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot!’ All three went on running so both soldiers fired together. The girls fell, first the one at the back, striking her face on the pavement; then the second, dressed in black, who curled up on the ground and shook as if with St Vitus’ Dance. The third, though hit, continued to run. The stronger of the soldiers shouted and chased her. The other stopped to make sure the two fallen girls were dead. The wounded girl had nearly reached the corner of the street when the SS man reached her, knocked her down with the butt of his rifle and shot her in the head.
Łódź. 8 June ’42
Despite the hunger that torments me, but perhaps precisely so as not to think about it, I slipped into the theatre on Krawiecka Street where on Saturdays they put on concerts or funny plays to raise morale. It seems strange to have theatre performances in a besieged ghetto. But it’s the only thing they can do. That’s what they say. The hall was packed. There was a strong smell of feet. But also intense concentration. One comedian mimicked the wretches in the camp. Another set to music all the things he would have liked to eat. Two girls danced like bears. Everyone laughed. At the end they went round with a small plate. Some people gave two pfennigs, some half a pfennig. I was ashamed: I had nothing in my pocket, nothing at all. The hand holding the plate was trembling. I pulled out the slice of bread I had kept for my supper and gave that. She thanked me with a click of the tongue.
9 June ’42
Papà has been found dead with his chest ripped open by bayonet thrusts. A woman working at same textile factory as Mamma found him, thrown down near the wall of the ghetto. Mutti tried to drag him away to bury him, but two guards came at once with rifles cocked and sent her back to work. We recited the Kaddish at home at night in memory of him. Two neighbours joined us, Kasimir and Maximilian, boys who have lost their father and mother and work with me at the carpentry shop. They are from Vienna too. They brought some barley coffee, a great luxury these days, and we sat on the floor to talk. Max is extremely well informed. It seems he is friends with a young SS girl who supervises the ghetto hospital. Every now and then she gives him something to eat in exchange for a little sex. That’s what his brother says but there may be a touch of malice in it because they always go out together but Kasimir comes home with empty hands, while Max always has something in his pocket: half an apple, a slice of bread, a potato. Max says they are emptying the hospital. They have already taken away the old and ill and no one knows where to. Certainly not to work, so it must be to the cemetery. But now it seems they want to take away the children too. But to send them where?
Łódź. 11 July ’42
It’s my birthday today, Amara. But I’m so tired I can hardly write. Even so I will write, so long as there’s anything left of my pencil. Because I want what’s happening in this place to be known. Max, who is so well nourished that I think Kasimir must be right to say Max is ready to sell himself for a bowl of soup, has told me the Nazis are winning on all fronts. He doesn’t seem desperate when he says it; he has a mocking smile I don’t like. He says Sebastopol has fallen and the Führer’s armies have reached the Don district. He says that in the Chełmno and Auschwitz camps children are being shut in gas chambers and, once dead, are burned in cremation ovens. But who tells you all these horrible things? objects Mamma who as always wants to look on the bright side. She doesn’t believe the rumours but thinks they are poison spread by the SS to terrorise the Jews. Shut your nasty mouth, Max, she says angrily, but Max just looks her up and down with a cold, ironic stare that brings shudders to the spine.
Łódź. 5 September ’42