‘Were you afraid of death?’

Death was not something that I was afraid of. What felt worse was the uncertainty, the endless waiting, the anxiety. The anxiety never let up. It was like a humming in the background, and would only give way when a sharper, more acute fear set in.

What I was afraid of was how death would come. Ceasing to exist was our greatest wish, but it was the road there that frightened us. The studied cruelty of the Nazis could cause much pain before death arrived. That was what I feared.

I remember wondering in the morning when I woke up: ‘Will I make it through the day?’ But there was no time to meditate. The yells and blows of the SS officers made me leap out of bed and set about dealing with the prescribed agenda: ‘making’ the straw bed, visiting the latrine, and then lining up to be counted. The march to work followed, and it was not until I got back into bed at night that I had the strength to think.

I usually ended the day by remembering a poem by the Hungarian poet János Arany, which, in amateur translation, goes roughly like this:

Thank you, God

for evening’s return

The suffering Earth

now rests peacefully.