Term 2 Lesson 4: War - Living Hell

Dear Diary,

I suspect I do not have much time. I can hear the crumbling of my neighbouring apartment as a mortar shell from a German tank hit it squarely. I can hear the angry roar of the raging fire, the shattering of glass windows, the collapsing of wooden rafters, all so close yet seem so remote. The scalding heat radiating from the glowing red-hot walls, make it all the more impossible to write…

It all started three years ago in 1940, when the Nazis concentrated us into the Warsaw Ghetto. Thus marked the beginning of the nightmare we can never wake up. The tall walls surrounding the ghetto completely cut off our contacts with the outside world. People were afraid to leave their homes, but German bullets reached them through the windows. The Jews, spat upon and slaughtered without even the slightest cause, lived in constant apprehension. One was never treated as a human being. I once saw with my own eyes a pregnant woman tripping while crossing the street. A German shot her there and then.

Hunger raged in the ghetto. One can often see six-year-old boys risking a bullet from a policeman to crawl through barbed wire, in order to obtain food "on the other side". Every morning, funeral carts collected more than a dozen corpses on the streets. Spotted fever also became rampant. All hospitals were overwhelmed. Thousands were dying and they were viewed impatiently -- let them die quicker for the next one! The grave-diggers simply could not dig fast enough…

The membrane in my throat feels so dry… No, I must concentrate…

When the first report that approximately 100,000 Jews had died in the Chelmno gas chambers reached us, people tried to convince themselves that it was not true. A normal human being is simply unable to conceive that a difference in eye or hair colour is a sufficient cause for murder. Then the mass deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp, under the guise of “resettlement to the East", began. People were forced out of their houses before being squeezed into waiting railway cars and sent to their deaths. The crowd was so thick that it has to be mashed in with rifle butts. No words of human language are strong enough to describe this mass murder.

We had to fight back.

This morning, platoons of Germans and armoured vehicles entered the ghetto and assembled at the streets. There was a moment of silence. The Germans smirked haughtily. Suddenly, hand grenades began exploding over their heads while machine gun shots rang through the air. Rifle shots sealed their escape routes. From every window bullets sought hated German hearts. Two tanks were destroyed by our incendiary bottles. German dead littered the streets. When the soldiers approached the apartments, mines exploded under their feet. Warsaw Ghetto could not be taken.

Then, the Germans began throwing flamethrowers at the houses block by block. Broken glass, together with the pavement, melted into a black sticky liquid. The stench of charred bodies was on every street. We were beaten by the flames, not the Germans!

Oh, the light just went out. The electricity supply must be cut. Let me light a candle… I can hear vigorous banging on my door. My time is running out. If you (if there are any “you” later on reading this) miraculously recover this diary, please, remember the atrocity of the Nazis and keep the memory of our comrades alive, forever. The lock is shot at. I grabbed my trusty pistol. A rifle butt smashed against the door. At this time, I would have preferred being offered cyanide, but I shall fight. We shall hit them just as badly as they hit us. Goodbye, my hypothetical friend…

David
Member of ZOB Resistance Group
Death before Dishonour