I no longer remember the time when I met you. I have often been abandoned by my memory. I know that our friendship, formed in a moment when time stood still, in suffering, continues, alive today.
Do you remember the entire loaves stolen from the stores in Frankfurt? More aware of the danger I was facing, you were very scared for me.
And our awkwardness in front of that huge weaving machine in Zillertal whose noise and speed made our heads spin? But in fact that was the one place in all those years where we were not treated like nothing but useless numbers.
You were so good at reciting poems, with that great dreamer’s look of yours. I would listen to you ardently, so little did I know compared to you.
I can still hear the lice cracking under our nails, and our teeth chattering with cold and with fear, under the frozen tent in Ravensbrück. Death was grasping our hand so powerfully.
Whenever courage let me down, your look would call me back to life.
Do you remember, on our journey of exodus, how our hearts were beating when we left the convoy? There should have been three of us, but five of us gathered in the thick brambles, waiting for our liberators. We spent six long days without food in the forest of Bischofferode.7 There, you were scared that I would abandon you. You doubted my friendship, but you were so weak, consumed with fever and scabies.
After the Liberation we did not see each other much, but time does not exist for us. We need no excuses or explanations. We have learned to read closed lips.
How many feelings I could never have expressed or which would never have had the same life in me without your friendship.
I am carried away with joy and hope by a smile or a look. This friendship remains a source of energy in me, and I still drink from those living waters.