“I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education.
My request is: Help your children become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths or educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.” Dr. Haim Ginott |
How are you? It feels like forever since I have seen you. I hope to see you again, and so does Miriam. I know that it is wishful to think you are still alive, but I can still believe it.
As you can see, the Russians made it to Auschwitz. You should have seen the Nazis before they arrived; it was as if they were chickens without heads! They weren’t paying attention to us for the most part; it allowed me to escape for a few moments. I returned because I couldn’t leave Miriam alone, but what I saw outside shocked me. I went all the way to where there was a river, and on the other side there was a girl. I was so jealous of that girl, with her hair and her nice dresses. She was cleaner than I could remember being for years. She didn’t know how lucky she was. Miriam and I were left behind from the march. It was good that we hid, because they were probably going to another camp; the officers saving themselves. I wonder if the Russians found them too. When they came, we were all so excited. Miriam and I ran over to them, half in disbelief. They gave us food, chocolates even! When was the last time you can remember eating chocolate? It was like heaven. The best part, though, was not when the Russians actually got to the camp, but it was when somebody came running in to our barrack, shouting that we were free. And now Mama, we are free. Your daughters are free. |
It is hard to get bread; Jews are driven away from all the “queues.” They are
seized, hauled off to labor, and beaten to a pulp. Hell has caught fire. Gangs of hooligans pounce on Jewish shops; looters plunder with impunity. Fewer Jews are visible in the streets; my father and brothers never venture out. Every knock on the door is terrifying; the slightest noise freezes the blood in our veins. Violent feelings rage within me... What more will this day bring? Shrieks, terror, blows, abductions, imprisonment, messengers, humiliation and disgrace, posters with laws - a sea of posters, white, green, red, yellow, new ones each day, but always with the same message: Jews are forbidden... to buy, sell, study, pray, gather, eat, etc., a string of prohibitions with no end! Would that the night would never end, that we could have some peace, some balm for the tumult in our hearts... |
March 18, 1938: Dear Brother-in-law and Sister-in-law: First of all I want to thank you for the two letters that we recieved. Ten days ago I sent you a tallis as a sample. Answer right away if you received it and if you had to pay duty. It is a gift. I added a bunch of silk tzitzit and they are kosher. For you, dear brother-in-law I sent a nice tallis and you should wear it with pleasure. God should not forget you. You should have a good and steady job and should be able to afford everything, and your wife should not have to work. By now your have heard that Vienna has been occupied by the Germans. Unfortunatey, we are dancing at the same wedding. This has cost me thousands of zlotys which are owed to me. I am very nervous and cannot write anymore. Regards and kisses. These are the weeks of your honeymoon. Yours Truly, Israel
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Shortly before the first large deportation of Warsaw Jews to Treblinka in the summer of 1942, German officials detained Miriam, her family, and other Jews bearing foreign passports in the infamous Pawiak Prison. German authorities eventually transferred the family to the Vittel internment camp in France, and allowed them to emigrate to the United States in 1944. Published under the penname “Mary Berg” in February 1945, Miriam Wattenberg's diary was one of the very few eyewitness accounts of the Warsaw ghetto available to readers in the English-speaking world before the end of World War II.
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