I have been here for over six weeks and still don't know anything about my family: Mama, my little brother Friddie, and especially my Papa.  

I wonder if they're even still alive or perhaps, dead.  I pray to G-d not, but somehow I must not let my hope rise too high; too many people have already died or disappeared ...

As long as I am here in this g-dforsaken place, Bergen-Belsen,  I must do the Nazis' bidding.  I must rise with the sun (oftentimes well beforehand) anre report to work, where I and my fellow prisoners break rocks with hammers.  

It is tiring, backbreaking, mind-numbing work; if we fail to report to duty or let ourselves relax in any way, we are beaten; some unfortunate souls are shot right on premises.  Men, women, children -- it does not matter; the Nazis care for nobody except to make our lives as miserable as possible.

I look at the sea of prisoners about me in the hopes of seeing a familiar face, but everybody seems to be a complete stranger: I seem to know no one; we all look alike with our shorn heads, prison uniforms with the telltale yellow star sewn on the front (or stars of other colors: green, pink, purple, blue, red, which denotes to the Nazis what "type" of prisoner we happen to be).  I am Jew; therefore, I wear a yellow, six-pointed star with the word "Jude" written in glaring black within its borders.

It is very degrading.  I am made to feel terrible about myself, my very heritage ...

I suddenly wish I had been born in another country, into a different family.  I hate my Jewish heritage and I feel that this is my fault why I am here, separated from the ones I love the most.  I wonder if I will even live to see another day, let alone see my family again, especially my beloved Papa .... I must do all I can to find them again, even if it means escaping this hellhole known as Bergen-Belsen ...

~To be continued.~