Author Description

'My parents were in despair because they heard that children were being taken. They tried for a while to hide me by pushing me into one of those handcarts and piling luggage on top of me. When they started searching the handcarts my father took me out. My mother took me with her into the rank where she was kneeling and wrapped me up in the coat she had been carrying and laid me in front of her as though I was a parcel. The Germans would walk up to a rank and inspect it. And everyone they thought was too feeble to be worth keeping would be yanked out, usually being struck first across the face with these heavy batons that they carried. But it didn't happen to my mother. I don't know why. Finally they ordered everyone to stand up and said we were going back to the ghetto. Of course I could not be a parcel now I was standing up. My mother put a coat over my head and other people had coats and piled them on top of that, and they pushed me on. I was a kind of walking parcel. They closed ranks behind me on the march back to the ghetto. We went back to our bare flat. And I remember my father sat on the stripped bed and wept. This is the only time I ever saw him cry and to cry...well to cry like that with ghastly dry sobbing, I'll never forget that.'