In the summer of 1944, the Jews from Theresienstadt arrived in Birkenau. They looked like ghosts. Men, women, and children were only skin and bones. Poor Jews, they had been starved for years in Theresienstadt. These skeletons hardly moved; their clothes were infested; their weakened bodies could not survive much longer.
Men in striped rags carried away the dead daily, loaded in two rows on a cart, their stiffened bodies on top of one another. Men, women, and children. The dead looked like wooden logs.
The few who lived a few more days ate the green bitter soup, the so-called food that was given to us in Lager C. Under the electrified barbed wires, we pushed the bitter, dirty, green soup through to the starving Jews from Theresienstadt.
Then one day, Lager C was closed. We had to stay in our barracks, and the Jews from Theresienstadt disappeared. In the Czech Lager, there were no more starving, dying Jews.
When I asked an adult where they had gone, she said, “Don’t worry, child. They were transferred to a warmer climate.” I wondered how she knew where those Czech Jews were taken.
Every day for the last two months, I had seen the four tall chimneys pouring ash and fire into the sky, yet I had not realized in what kind of place I was.