When we speak about Israel, we cannot go beyond a crude and raw reality, that took place in Europe during the second World War and remains a discussion point until today: the Shoah. The memory of the extermination of 6 million Jews in the gas chambers in Germany and in Poland, remains until today alive in many Israeli families. Some months ago we got to know Ester Manheim at a prayer meeting where she had been invited to give her testimony. Her experience, told here, still today leaves us with dismay and unbelief about the cruelty and the inhumanity that took place in a “Christian” Europe only 60 years ago.
Lioba

«It all began in September 1939. I was living in Kraków, Poland at the time: a young and careless 14 year old girl with my whole life before me. It was precisely September 1st and I had just returned home from a summer scout camp. That same day we heard something for the first time: the alarm sirens. The Germans had arrived in Poland. I did not imagine that my life, like that of all the Jews in Europe, was about to be radically changed. The next day there were new signs at the shop doors: “Entrance prohibited to dogs and jews!”. I felt profoundly humiliated but life continued. We lived in a very large apartment in a very nice area of the city so that when the situation for the Jews got worse my grandparents and other family members came to stay with us. I had to give up my lovely room and this made me cry. However I still was alright and we were all together with everything that we needed, for the time being. I went to a private school, but I began to notice that as time passed some of the teachers didn’t show up anymore. One day the school Director came into our class and announced: “Jewish children have no right to study, from tomorrow you cannot return here”. Day by day the situation got worse. One day they told us that we would have to wear a badge with the star of David, another day we were forbidden to use the train and the tram anymore. I suffered as I couldn’t understand the reason for all this. In reality this was not suffering, it was nothing at all.

In the Kraków Ghetto
On the 13th of March 1941 we were forced to leave our house and we moved to the area of Podgórze, the place chosen for the establishment of a Ghetto for the Kraków Jews. The day that I arrived in the Ghetto I felt as though someone had tied a thick and heavy chain around me and this chain got tighter and tighter around my neck every day, so much so that I failed to breathe. I still have a strong memory of the bitter cold and the sadness in my heart. From that point onwards the deportations began. It was May of 1942 and I remember that I was standing at the window watching our neighbours with their children that were loaded onto a truck. Two days later the second deportation followed: this time my cousin was taken. After we had to change ‘house’ again. There were 14 of us in the house and we slept on the floor and the only furniture that we had was a small table where 2 or 3 of us ate at a time. The young people were still hopeful that things would improve. We met together in an underground room where we sang and told stories and spoke with nostalgia about the past. In reality however the chain was getting tighter. During this same year on the 23rd of October, my grandmother died on her bed and on the 27th of that same month my grandfather also died. We felt that something terrible was about to happen. That night, with our grandfathers corpse beside us, my mother held us tight as we were not able to sleep. In the morning we went to work. My sister and I worked in the same place but our mother was assigned to a different area. That morning however my mother took my sister with her: she had a strange sensation, one of fear, as if something terrible was about to take place. I went to work and suddenly I began to cry: I felt that my mother was in danger.
Inside I felt as if something dreadful had happened to her. That evening when I arrived home my sister came running to me shouting: “Stenia, they have taken our mother!” My blood froze: I felt paralyzed, I wanted to cry, shout, but not a sound came out. I knew what “they have taken” meant, I knew that she would never return again. We did not have time to mourn for her, the very next day we had to return to work. My heart felt lacerated. The people around us were in the very same situation. Death began to penetrated everywhere. During this time I became seriously ill, it seemed to be typhus but is was not. I was in quarantine when the news reached us that the Germans had surrounded the Ghetto. All night long I walked up and down in order to regain strength and to force myself to walk well. I was very weak, but nonetheless the next day I left the hospital and returned to work. That day I was not able to work, but I was there, present. It was the 13th of March 1943 and the Nazis, under the command of the SS- Hauptsturmführer Amon Göth, began the ‘liquidation’ (closure) of the Ghetto.

Relocation to the Płaszów labour camp
That same day we were relocated from the Kraków Ghetto to the Płaszów labour camp. There were 8,000 Jews considered ‘able workers’, whilst those who was considered incapable (around 2,000 prisoners) were killed on the streets of the Ghetto or were sent to die in Auschwitz. Płaszów was built on a Jewish cemetery and as a dark omen of the near future, the boundary wall and the streets were built using the tombstones that had been taken from the cemetery. In Płaszów the men and the women were separated into different barracks. I was together with my sister and this made me happy. We didn’t eat anything all day but at least we were together. Every morning at 6am we had the roll-call in the square and from there we went to work. My father, my sister and I worked in a paper factory. It was a good job, but the climate of fear was certainly not softened. The Nazis did not waste even one day for sowing fear among the prisoners. One day they hung some people, another, during the roll-call, the tenth prisoner was taken to be shot. Otherwise they would take us by chance and whip us and afterwards we had to thank them: after they had whip us we were not able to sit for days. Every day there was something new, every day we heard about the death of someone else, when we left in the morning we did not know if we would return alive to the barracks. Then came the month of May 1944, it was Monday and they called us for the roll-call. They told us that we were going to have a visit from a doctor to improve our health. The doctor called out a list of the chosen people at the roll-call. The people knew that they would be taken to Auschwitz and so they began to panic. All of the children in the camp were taken: the smaller ones were wrenched from their mothers arms. On returning to the barracks one could see people crying and shouting everywhere. I recognised a man that had been a famous doctor in Kraków: he held the shoes of his small daughter in his hand and he continued to speak to the shoes as if they were his daughter. That was a dark night, we felt this darkness, this desperation inside of us. The next day we returned to work. In August of that same year my father was deported to the labour camp at Mauthausen and in the following October the Płaszów camp was liquidated. We were sent to Auschwitz and at the same time the news began to spread that the Russians were getting closer.

The second part will follow soon.

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