Not only did the adults suffer during the Holocaust: the children did, too, and they were treated just as badly. Such as was the case of young Ruben Ostrowicz, a little Jewish boy of Polish extraction, who happened to be born handicapped. This was written prior to his death. (He was gassed to death.)
I am so scared I don't know what to do. I don't know what is to become of me, or my family, and I fear for them.
I don't know why we are here, or what we may have done to have pissed off the people who are in charge of this camp. Ever since we came here, we have been treated very badly, and all I have heard since we have been here are people yelling in a language I don't understand, or people screaming or crying as they were seperated from loved ones. I haven't seen my mama or my papa in days, and I am worried what may have become of them.
I have also been treated very badly, and I have been made to lie on this hard, cold table, while strange men examined me thoroughly and have taken away my crutches and my braces. (I was born with weak legs.) I haven't been able to get around since except by dragging myself around, and when I don't come when they call, they beat me repeatedly, and they laugh when I cry out for help or ask for my braces and crutches, or when they strike me with a thick stick. On bare skin it hurts so horribly, and I am so covered with bruises and cuts it's a wonder I have any skin left after they have beaten me! They call me an "undesirable" (whatever that means, but it can't be good!), and they keep telling me that they have "plans" for me. Whenever I ask what they are going to do, they just laugh in speak in that ugly, gutteral language of theirs and tell me to shut up and to mind my own business.
I have had to have my hair shaved off, and I wear ill-fitting clothes; and I also have had to go around naked; and with other people looking at me, it is uncomfortable, and it makes me very unhappy. It is very cold here in these camps, and people have gotten sick; and disease has ran rampant, and people have gotten so bad they have died. There is typhus about, and I am scared that I will get it next (that is, if I don't get beaten to death or whatever plans the Germans have for me)! I have eaten but very little, and what I HAVE eaten has tasted nasty, and I would much rather eat poop or drink pee than to eat or drink the awful stuff that the Germans leave for us here at the camp!
Life has been very hard for all of us, and every day, I see more and more bodies piling up, or smell the horrifying stench of burning flesh or hair or hear people crying or screaming or see people being beaten, and it is all very scary, especially to a little boy like myself. (I am only eight years old.) It is during these times where I wish I could see my mama or papa again, and I wish I were still at home in Warsaw! I wish I were still at home in my little bed or safe in mama's arms while she would sing to me; I still can remember her telling me that she loved me so much, and that I was her angel! I also remember papa's strong arms and his big, booming laugh; but then the War came, and it changed everything; and now I am here, and I don't know what I may have done to deserve being here at Oswiecim (Auschwitz, as it is known by today)! I am only a little boy who can't walk, and I didn't ask to be captured by the Germans or taken to this strange and awful place where death is so real and horrifying! I didn't ask to be born a Jew, and I certainly didn't ask to be born handicapped! Now it seems that is exactly why I am here, at Oswiecim, at this camp, and I am so scared!!
All I can do now while I wait is pray for God to take me now to Heaven or to ask Him to stop all these killings; I don't know if I can take much more of all the screaming or crying or the sickening smells that fill the air or my nostrils!
(A day after this was written, little Ruben Abraham Ostrowicz was gassed to death. He was all but eight years old, an innocent little victim of the Holocaust. In just three years, over 1.5 million people died just at Auschwitz; but a grand total of anywhere between 6,000,000 and 12,000,000 people perished in the Holocaust.)
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Reviewed by Peter Schlosser
1/19/2010
This is really powerful Karen. The fact that it was told in the first person makes it especially poignant. Many stories just like this. And a warning from history. I always say to people that Nazi Germany did not begin with Auschwitz. This can and will happen again. Maybe right here in America. Tyranny must be fought early and often. Once it gets hold, it leads to the Gulag, or to the re-education camps, or straight to the gas chambers of Treblinka. By then it's too late. Amazing write.
It is still going on today, when you demean someone , because of his race, sex, or being, animal, or human, when you objectify beings, it usually starts with, it's only a Gypsy, a Jew, a Moslem, a Dog, it's only Indians, look back into history, your own, and see the horrendeous perscecution of native people, yes they use different methods, but to them it was as it was to that poor child you write about. I lived next to these poor people, some of them were friends, and old people, some that lived in a open getto, I used to water their flower boxes, for a bag of candy, all gone one night with all they had on their back, no questions were asked, and when no questions are asked, and no one cares for the minority, the dispossesed the different, it can happen again, and again, it already has, and is, only in smaller proportions, the only thing lacking is the ruthless effiency of the Nazis, but hurt they do, all of them. Right wing politics has a streak of that in their thinking, see prisoners in Cuba, bending the laws of liberty just enough to suit an agenda foreign to feeling the others value as a being. Still man hasn't learned from history, will he ever? You have done a great service to humanity to keep it's profane illusions in the light of reality, may they read it in all the places, and there are many, where it is needed today, I think you know, I need not mention them.
May that little Angel rest in peace and bless you! Jasmin Horst
How horribly sad. Whenever I see or read of the Holocaust I am reminded that I am a Jew and that those at the camps are my people and I thank God that above being a Jew I am an American and was lucky enough to be born of parents that became second generation Americans.
Very sad, very well written story, Karen. Thank you for reminding me who I am. Your friend in Southern California, Mark.
I am so scared I don't know what to do. I don't know what is to become of me, or my family, and I fear for them.
