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Then one of them told me that because of me they would be killed. They could easily march but I was holding them up because I was unable to walk. The Serbians did not want to abandon me any more than my two commrades. . . . Accordingly I said: "My friends, do as you think best. If you want to go-go. You may go-don't consider me, try to save your lives. I, unfortunately, can do only so much. If I fail, I fail— my life up to this day has only been a rescued forfeit anyway"...

The Serbians listened attentively to my sad speech and understood what our conversation was about. One of them interrupts us and says: "Listen, in a neighbouring farmstead a Swabian used to live, but he has fled. There is a small pigsty there and nobody will think of looking for people there. If they hear a noise they will think it comes from the pigs. This is my advice—and there is not much time left for argument." So we went to the pigsty.... After 11 o'clock they... gave us food and told us: As long as the Russians have not come, nothing can be done, and we cannot visit you either. They locked the door and went. And we stayed behind, crowded, panicky with fear, afraid to breathe. Our hearts sank when we heard the slightest knock. It was only the movements of the pigs underneath us that slightly allayed our fears. My stomach was hurting because of the food I had eaten, especially because of the liquid food that I had taken after such a long period of starvation. I had diarrhoea but was afraid to climb down. We could hear the conversation of the SS-men. They would run around and search all day long as if they were lunatics. Every so often they would open fire-I don't know on whom. And throughout the time we kept trembling in the pigsty.... We spent there a day and a night. We did not know whether the morning had come because the door was locked. We only heard firing from the distance. We sat there until 9 o'clock, waiting and hoping... At 9 o'clock the Serbian comes in and shouts: "The Russians have come", happily he flings the door wide open, helps us down, kisses us and embraces us--he and his sister.

In the courtyard they took hold of us and took us into a house of a Swabian who had fled. They covered beds for us; we lie down properly and they say: "Now you have nothing to fear any more, this is your house!" There were in the house all kinds of preserves and other tasty food stuffs to which they helped us. Immediately the Serbians of the village also brought us food and drink: wine, brandy, grapes and a whole range of cooked dishes. We kept asking them: Please don't bring us so much. . . .

In the evening the Serbian women came in with a Russian soldier who shook our hands. She told him everything and he was very sorry for us and said that he would take revenge for it. Then Russian officers came and looked

at us and nodded their heads in astonishment when they heard our story. They said that the next day we should report to the hospital. Indeed the next morning we were given medical treatment by the Russians who dressed our wounds. We then already felt slightly better. We washed, kept clean, ate more and felt some of our strength returning. I was already able to open my mouth a little, perhaps a centimetre. . . . The front was not far away and we could hear the firing very well. Many people said that it would perhaps be a good idea if we moved a few kilometres inland because at the front one could never know what the next day would bring; the Russians might suddenly retreat a little and then the Germans could complete the work that they had started on us. But we did not leave. Several days passed peacefully and the front moved further away.

In the meantime we heard about Auschwitz and the disaster that had come over the Jewish people. In our conversations they told us that as soon as we had regained our strength the whole village would make an effort to help us settle down and to find wives for us. They had already begun to talk about certain girls, they said, nice girls, and daughters of decent families. After all, they said, where could we turn to now that the Jews had been destroyed? And who knows if anyone of our family was left alive? This was quite true, for I had no one left. And as to our property, they said, it has undoubtedly vanished. And this proved true as well.

We stayed there another three weeks. During that time we used to call on the short German doctor who had given us first aid. Then he told us what my condition had really been-he said that he had ordered the Serbians to dig a grave for me.... He examined my heart and said that it was overstrained but that it must be made of steel if it had withstood all this how it did, he could not understand. He then extracted the grenade splinter from my foot and showed it to me. It was large and pointed, about the size of a coin.... We returned to our house. After a few days we heard that the town of Szabadka had fallen and that the road was now open to the pre-1938 Hungarian border. We took leave of our hosts, expressed our thanks, especially to the woman who had given us refuge and whom we had been calling all the time "Mother"—it was thanks to her that we were alive, because she had saved us through her cleverness. She implored us in silent tears not to go-she said we might get lost, because we were still sick and after all the sufferings we had undergone we were still in a state of nervous tension as can be easily imagined. We kissed her hands and took the addresses of all of them and said that we were going to find out what had happened. Afterwards, we said, maybe we would return.

Final Letters

From Jewish Members of the French Resistance Many Jews in France sacrificed their lives fighting against the Germans in various French resistance groups. The resistants whose final letters are reprinted below were members of the Communist resistance organization, the FTP (FrancsTireures et Partisans). From Héros juifs de la résistance française, ed. David Diamant (Paris: Éditions Renouveau, 1962), pp.169-70, 175-77. Translation by Anne Molineu.

Golda Bancic was born in Bessarabia in 1912. At age twelve she had to go to work as an apprentice mattress-maker. As an apprentice she took part in a strike, which earned her a prison sentence, despite her youth. She remained a militant worker and came to France in 1938. During the German occupation, she left her child with friends and joined the FTP, the Communist resistance organization, making bombs and taking part in actions against the Germans. She was arrested by the Gestapo in the fall of 1943 and sentenced to death. However, this sentence was temporarily suspended in order to allow more questioning, as well as torture. Transferred to Stuttgart, she was again condemned to death and was executed on her thrity-second birthday, 10 May 1944. She wrote a final letter to her daughter in care of a friend.

Dear Madame,

I beg you to be willing to take this letter to my little daughter, Dolores, after the war. This is the last wish of a mother who lives another twelve hours. Thank you.

My dear little daughter, my dear little love, Your mother writes her last letter, my dear one. Tomorrow at 6 o'clock, the 10th of May, I will be no more.

My love, don't cry; your mother cries no longer. I die with a good conscience and with all the conviction that tomorrow you will have a life and future happier than your mother's. You will suffer no longer. Be proud of your mother, my little one. I always have your picture before me.

I believe that you still see your father. I have the hope that he will have another destiny. Tell him that I always thought about him, like you. I love you with all my heart. You two are my dearest. My dear child, your father is also a mother for you. He loves you very much.

You will not feel the hand of your mother.

My dear child, I finish my letter with the hope that you will be happy for all your life with your father, with everyone. I embrace with all my heart, a great deal, a great deal. Goodbye, my love.

Your mother

Golda Bancic

Maurice Fingercwajg was born in Warsaw in 1923, moving to France with his family at age three. He joined the Communist youth with his two older brothers in 1941. The oldest brother was interned at Beaune-la-Rolande. In July 1942 his father was deported, as was his other older brother. Maurice joined the FTP, the armed Communist resistance, taking part in numerous actions against the Germans, including train derailments, until his arrest with some of his comrades. He was executed on 21 February 1944, leaving the following final letter to a friend of the family.

Madame,

I write you these last words by my hand and say to you farewell to the life which I wanted more than ever but which wasn't to be.

If my parents and my brothers have the good fortune to return one day, surviving their torment, you will be able to tell them I died bravely, thinking of them. This life which I had before was not a life, and I don't know how to explain all the confused thoughts that fill my head. I am sending you some clothes, which you will give to my parents when perhaps they return one day. I thought of you for this final request, knowing the value of your devotion.

The day of deliverance has arrived for me in this land which I loved and in which I go to rest.... My thoughts go also to your husband, who was good to me, and to my little friend from school, Robert, who will say to all my friends at school that I did not forget the good moments we spent together. My thoughts stop at the end of my pen. I leave you in the hope that you will sometimes think about little Maurice. Maurice Fingercwaig

P.S. I embrace with all my heart your little Jean and Suzanne, who served me such pleasant dishes. For always yours.

[Two different spellings of the surname are used in the text.]

Last Messages from Deportees

Messages that became last letters were often written by inmates of ghettos or camps in hope of getting word to relatives and friends as to their fate. Many notes were hidden and later found after the war, and many others were dropped from the trains during deportation. The following letters were written just before the authors were taken from their homes to unknown destinations.

Reprinted from Reuvan Dafni and Yehudit Keliman, eds., Final Letters (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991), 44-47, 74-78, 126–28.

Five days after seventeen-year-old Pinchas Eisner wrote this letter to his older brother, Mordechai, he was taken from the family home in Budapest to Csomad, in the vicinity of the capital. There, on 3 November 1944, with seventy other Jews he was led to a nearby forest. They were

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Goodbye! Think of our talk that night. I felt as one with you. I knew that, if it were you whose life would end, I would go on living as if I had lost half of my body and soul. You said that, if I die, you will kill yourself. Think of what I told you, that if you stay alive I will live on within you. I would have liked to continue my life, with you and with our family. Plans, desires, hopes were before me. I longed for the unknown. I would have liked to know, to live, to see, to do, to love. . . . But now it is all over. In the city, Jews were exterminated from entire streets. There is no escape. Tonight or at the latest tomorrow it will be our turn. At seventeen I have to face certain death. There is no escape. We thought that we would be exceptions, but fate made no exceptions. I always felt the pull of the depth, about which I have written to you. . . . I believe, I also felt, that I would die young. It seems like fate put a curse on each of us. After Jisrael [eldest brother, who died at nineteen] it is now my turn together with my father, mother and Sorele [sister]. I hope you will survive us. Farewell and forgive me if ever I have offended you. (For the first time my eyes begin to fill with tears. I am careful not to cry as there are others present.) Because I loved you I see you as you smile, (the vein on your brow is swelling) as you are thinking, as you eat, as you smoke, as you sleep and I feel great tenderness, great love and my eyes are filled with tears. Farewell. Live happily, all the best to you my dear brother, lots of success, much love and happiness, don't weep, don't cry. (I felt so bad hearing you cry that night.) Think of me lovingly. Remember me with good heart and, if there is another world (how much I discussed it with you, too-now I'll find out! My poem 'What Will Happen to Me?' comes to my mind... I felt it already then), then I will pray to God to help you in whatever you do. Farewell, my dear only brother! If you are interested to know my state of mind (you see I am thinking of this, too) I will try to describe it and also that of our home.

The calamity started last evening. By nightfall, the Jews of [houses no.] 64 and 54 had already been taken away. There was a pool of blood on the pavement, but by morning it was washed away. I was awake the whole night. R.J. and K.S. [friends] were here. Poor R.J. could hardly stand on his feet he was so full of fright. At first we hoped that the police and the army would protect us, but after a phone call we learned everything. Slowly morning arrived, but the events

of the day made our situation hopeless. K.S. came at 6. He was about to faint after he fought with four Nazis who beat him terribly. He barely escaped with his life. He was stumbling and trembling and could not start talking because of what he had seen and been through. I write fast, who knows if I will have time to finish? K.S. offered to take Sorele to a safe place. She promptly jumped at the suggestion and wanted to go immediately. But Mummy stepped in front of her and with a completely calm voice said that she would not let her go because the Nazis might catch them on the street. Sorele was crying and hysterical. She wanted to go, she wants to live. Finally Mother proposed that if I go too then she will give her consent. You should have heard the way she said that. Sorele wanted to go, I stayed... I could not leave our mother and father. (Do you remember our discussion about hiding in the safe hide of a bear? It came to my mind at once.) So mother did not let Sorele go and K.S. did not force it any longer, he, too, stayed. Sorele cried and screamed, Father was praying the whole night. He still has some hope left, but he is talking about this world as being like a vestibule to prepare ourselves to the real world to come.

Mother and Father are telling religious parables to K.S. about the inevitability of destiny. Mathild [an aunt] is sitting next to us and listens. Sorele is outside and I am writing. I am relatively calm, facing death my thoughts are coherent. (Yesterday at dawn I even wrote a steno-composition, you might find it in my notebook.) It is not fear that I feel but the terrible considered bitter and painful realization of things to come. I hope I'll get it over with quickly, only it will be terrible to see each other's agony. God will help us and we will be over it.

Farewell, dear, sweet Brother. Farewell! Remember me. I hope that I, too, will be able to think of you even from over there. I would like to hug and kiss you once more. But who knows to whom I write these lines? Are you alive?! Farewell, my dear brother, my sweet Mordechele, live happily. Kissing you for the last time-till we meet again,

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see you before my departure, but now I know that this cannot be. I do not want to endanger you. We are leaving on Monday, now it is Friday evening. We are going-Daddy, Pola, and I-with 51 other fellow nationals to an unknown destination. I do not know, my dear child, if I will ever see you again. I take with me from home your picture, which I love so much, I am taking along your lovely chatter, the smell of your innocent, little body, the rhythm of your innocent breathing, your smile, and your tears which my heart, the heart of a mother, could not allay. I take along your last image, as I saw you on 13 December 1943, your prematurely adult look, the sweet taste of your childish kisses, and the hug of your tiny arms. That is what will accompany me on my way. Could it be that Providence will allow me to survive this nightmare and to regain you, my treasure? Should this happen, I will explain to you many things you have not understood so far and which you will probably never be able to understand, since you will be in other surroundings, and brought up in an atmosphere of freedom. My sweetheart! I want you to read this, when, by God's will, you are grown up and mature and able to criticize our behaviour toward you. I desire, my dear and beloved child, that you should not condemn us, that you should love our memory and our entire loathed people from which you originate. It is my desire that you should neither be ashamed of your provenance nor deny it. I want you to know that your father was a person of rare qualities there are not many like him in the world—and that you can be proud of him. He dedicated his whole life to doing good to other people; may God bless every step of his, protect him, and allow him to regain you! My beloved treasure, you are your father's whole world, his only ambition, his only satisfaction for all his sufferings and pain. Therefore I wish you to keep a good memory of him, if fate should prove unfavorable to us . . . I want you to remember your grandfathers and grandmothers, your aunts and uncles—people of great value-and the whole family. Remember us and do not blame us! As for me, your mother-forgive me . . . Forgive me, my dear child, for having given birth to you I wanted to bear you for our and your pride and joy, and it is not our fault that things took a different course. Thus, I im

plore you, my one and only darling, don't blame us. Try to be as good as your father and your ancestors. Love your foster parents and their family, who surely will tell you about us. I ask you to appreciate the self-sacrifice of your foster parents and to be their pride, so that they should never have any reason to regret the commitment which they have taken on voluntarily. There is one thing more I want you to know: that your mother was a proud person, despite our enemies' scorn and mistreatment, and when she was going to die, she did so without moaning and crying, but with a smile of contempt for the enemy on her lips!

I hug and kiss you affectionately; receive all the blessings of my heart. Your loving Mother

What can I say to my only child, truly the person dearest to me in the world? One should open one's heart and reveal its inside-no pen is able to describe what goes on in there just now. But I believed firmly that we will all survive and offer our hearts to one another.

Your Father

This testament was found among the remains of the Shavli (Siauliai) Ghetto in Lithuania. It was written on the eve of the ghetto's final liquidation. [Editor's note]

Siauliai Document

We attest that on 7 July 1944 the order for the evacuation of the ghetto of Shavli was issued.

We want our names to be known for the generations to come: (1) Shmuel Minzberg, son of Shimon of the city of Lodz (Poland); (2) his wife Reizele née Saks of Vaiguva; (3) Feigele Saks, the latter's sister; and (4) Friedele Niselevitch of Vaiguva, Nahum Zvi's daughter.

We do not know to what destination they are sending us. In the ghetto 2,000 Jews are waiting for the order to leave. Our fate is unknown. Our state of mind is awful.

May the Kingdom of Israel arrive soon, in our days.

Shmuel Minzberg

Resistance

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