The gendarmes once came into the house and took all the food we brought along from the pantry, and we go to bed at 9 p.m. every night, and from now on we are supposed to get up at five o’clock in the morning. This has also been ordered by the gendarmes who took everything away from us.
I have no idea how things are going to be now. Every time I think that this is the end, things couldn’t possibly be worse, and then I find out that it’s always possible for everything to get worse, and it gets even much more worse than I could ever imagine. Until now we had food, but from now on, there won’t be anything to eat. No one here really cares about starving. All they say is that if we stay alive, we will be able to fix all of the problems. There is no way we could possibly fix anything with the gendarmes in the way. We used to be able to walk around inside the ghetto, and now we won’t be able to leave the house. Every child could wash up in warm water in the bathtub, and now they’ve taken all the wood from the basement, and we won’t be able to heat water to wash in any more.
I once woke up in the middle of the night and overheard my aunt and uncle talking. They work at a hospital and said that people aren’t only beaten at Dreher, but also get electric shocks. My aunt said that from Dreher, people are brought to the hospital bleeding at the mouth and ears, and some of them also with teeth missing and the soles of their feet swollen so that they can’t stand. All of a sudden I heard someone getting up. It was my grandpa. He had overheard their conversation as well, and decided to be a part of it. My grandpa said that here in the ghetto, there are many people who commit suicide. In the ghetto pharmacy, where my grandpa works, there is enough poison to go around, and he gives it to the older people who ask for it. He insisted that he and my grandma take a little, for their own good. At that very moment, my heart began to beat faster and faster every second. Nothing good could come out of that. I was terrified. My grandpa could take some poison at the pharmacy, and never come home. I know he wanted to take some for his own good, so he wouldn’t have to suffer, but that was no good. Life will get better, I know it will, I have a feeling it will. I heard my aunt weeping and crawled over to my Grandpa’s mattress in the dark and said to him that with patience, this can’t go on much longer. Grandma was awake as well and said that she really didn’t want to die. She thought that we would live to see a better world, and all those people who are now so inhuman and wicked will soon be punished. I sure hope so. It has been nothing but hell since I got here, and I am ready to go back home.
