‘When did you realise that your family was in danger?’

I cannot remember when I became aware that my family could be in danger. But when I did, I knew it was the kind of danger that all Jews faced, not just our family. The thought must have been taking root for a long time before it reached the surface of my consciousness in my teens.

It started when I was 14 years old and in love with a man who worked at the post office. Rumours of war were in the air, and schools were training young people to be of use in case conflict broke out. We were allowed to choose a field in which we would learn to be helpful. Some chose the hospital to learn nursing, others the police force, and I wanted to go into the postal service.

We were six students who walked over to the post office, led by our art teacher. I was happy and excited. I was on my way to see my sweetheart and would be learning Morse code, something I was very keen on. We were greeted by the postmaster, who welcomed us ceremoniously, explaining the uncertain political climate and the importance of the postal service in this context. How everything that happens at the post office is classified … Here, he broke off sharply, looked around, and said, ‘I presume that everyone in this room is Romanian?’

The teacher looked at me and said, hesitantly, ‘Nooo, not everyone.’

The postmaster put down the paper in his hand and said, ‘In that case, we can’t continue.’ We had to go home.

I came home that day howling, and Mama was terrified. She feared the worst. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, over and over again. I just kept sobbing. Finally, I managed to tell her. I was so angry and humiliated that I wanted Mama to promise me that we would leave the country. I could not keep living in a place that looked down on me, that saw me as a second-class citizen. Meanwhile, Papa also came home for lunch, and both of them had their hands full trying to comfort me, to make me change my mind. They tried to explain that we did not have anywhere to go, that anti-Semitism exists in all the countries of the world, and as long as we did not have a country of our own, we had no choice; we had to get used to it. I did not want to get used to it, I was not going to accept it, but eventually I calmed down. That was probably my first awakening.

As time passed, the threat came ever closer. The Jews were in danger, and that included my family. I cannot remember any conscious fear. It was, rather, an inexplicable, dull yet unremitting pressure in my chest, sometimes more intense, sometimes weaker, but it never let up. A human being does not want to believe that wicked things may happen to her. I, too, wanted to believe the officer from the SS (Hitler’s elite police force) who told my father that everything he’d heard about the persecution of Jews was just rumours; Germans are civilised people, he said.

Sometimes, I think about what Mama said about getting used to it, and how easy it is.

I will never get used to it, I said then. But when I look back, that is exactly what I did. A human being’s will to live is so strong that she will not give up until she can feel the knife’s edge against her throat. And by then she may have become so apathetic that she simply thinks to herself: ‘It doesn’t matter, just let it be quick.’ That was what I thought when, as we arrived at Auschwitz, I was told by a male prisoner that we had entered an extermination camp. So it was death that lay in store? Let it be quick, then.

Later, when I was separated from my mother, a feeling of relief crept into me. I realised that the young were being spared. But at the same time, a heavy sorrow washed over me. ‘Mama, what is going to happen to my mama?’ And to this day, I still dare not carry that thought to its conclusion.

Injustices must be nipped in the bud. In Germany, there should have been protests by the beginning of the 1930s. Only a couple of years later, it was too late.