Diary of Bergen-Belsen

by Hanna Levy-Hass

  It’s at this moment that the wounded soul began to take on the outrage and shame that, later, would accumulate, forming a mountain of torture.

  B. B. | September 17, 1944

  Misery and pain suffocate me. And hatred. Happy are those who don’t suffer in hatred. Personally, I can’t help it. I constantly get tears in my eyes, tears of rage and shame. How bitter is the poisoned soul.… Tears of rage and shame suffocate me. The cry of unjustly and brutally suppressed feelings weakens me. It’s so hard, so hard, I am so afraid of feeling it all over again. Sobs of injustice and misery in the world. Sobs of injustice and misery within me tear me apart.

  B. B. | September 25, 1944

  They are building new barracks. For whom? No one knows. But we can guess. There is renewed talk of large convoys being sent to the camp. Rapidly, feverishly, in almost every bit of space between the old barracks, construction is going on. Everyone has been put to work. The hunt for laborers, roundups, curses, thrashings … all of it gets repeated, again and again, endlessly.

  In response to sabotage, the Germans are reducing our bread rations every day. The men are worn out. Undernourishment, the shortage of cigarettes for the smokers, and forced labor have pushed them to the brink. I see some men picking up cigarette butts that the Germans have thrown away in the courtyard or going to the trash cans near the kitchen to salvage some smelly remnants of food.

  Inside the barracks, the situation is hardly any better. Famine is devouring everyone. A nameless epidemic is invading the camp, affecting the women and children especially. It takes the form of a high fever that lasts two or three weeks, loss of consciousness, complete exhaustion, and the loss of all appetite. There is no perceptible pain. The doctors call it “camp fever” or “para-typhoid fever”—what do I know—and claim that the symptoms don’t allow for a precise diagnosis. One out of every two beds is almost always occupied by someone who’s sick.

  Then there are the abscesses and open wounds, due to the vermin or undernourishment; permanently oozing sores, boils, sprains, abnormal swelling (edemas), cramps, various infections … this has all become commonplace for us.

  Medication is rare or nonexistent. We understand that it’s out of the question to give medical assistance to the sick, true medical assistance; the point is to let them either get well or die, as chance would have it, depending on their own body’s strength.

  With all this, the faucets remain dry for no good reason three-quarters of the time. The pretext used this time is that the central baths need water for the showers … and yet, it’s been two and a half months since we’ve been given access to the baths.

  It’s plain to see that these interruptions in water supply strangely coincide with the spread of epidemics and the increasing need for water to guard against so much misery. We are deprived of the most essential thing necessary to maintain any cleanliness or minimal hygiene: water.

  Autumn is approaching, indifferently. The bleak perspective of a deadly winter makes us shudder with dread. In the meantime, rain and mud. All day long we move about surrounded by the noise of construction—the clatter of boards and the banging of hammers. They are building new barracks.

  B. B. | October 11, 1944

  Everything is relative, of course. Each one of us will speak of this camp of horror in his own way. There will be many of these “truths!” Different, relative, variable truths. Everything depends on the subjective point of view of your particular situation, where you position yourself in your observations and the individual prism through which you watch the whole scene.… I have recently learned some rather curious things: six to eight hundred of the seven thousand people who occupy our block are employed in various internal and external work. Thanks to their opportunistic attitude open to compromises of conscience—with the help of their ingratiating personality—these people are placed in exceptionally favorable situations and receive amazing quantities of the best supplies and clothing; in other words, they get or have the possibility of obtaining everything they need—and then some. Which means that, for some time now, they have completely forgotten the suffering of others. Numbed by the unprecedented abundance in which they live, they don’t realize that others are literally dying of hunger and would like a bite of bread, at least.… Some among them have lost all moral compass, all scruples. Happy to be alive and to eat, they can’t find enough good things to say about this or that German. They are perfectly comfortable developing theories that explain that the Germans are only rude and brutal because many of us are inept, clumsy, apathetic, and don’t know how to work. “It gets on the Germans’ nerves, you know, you have to understand, it’s revolting for them, with reason. Aside from that, the Germans are very well mannered, very polite toward honest, intelligent workers; they’re even very friendly toward them…”

  Pitiful reasoning, but frequent all the same, precisely in those among us who are considered “serious,” “solid,” “intellectuals.” R. the engineer is particularly good at this sort of logic. All the same … but there’s no point in arguing, he’s not an ignorant person. He knows very well that the Germans can only be polite and relatively human toward precisely those who show them sympathy and agreement, toward precisely those who are ready and determined, in words and in deeds, to side openly with the Nazis, their entire program and their methods. And that it’s highly doubtful that these Nazis seriously trust them, since they received their training at the school of chauvinistic lunacy and absolute disdain for others.… The wretch knows very well that the Germans’ behavior is far from “polite” and “well mannered” toward he who remains cold, passive, reserved toward them, showing clearly that he is conscious of his status as a deportee, a slave—and the Germans’ status as his enemy, nothing but his enemy. Obviously, the Germans don’t treat such a man gently.

  Still, these “lucky ones,” having succeeded in getting placed in favorable conditions, pursue the classic reasoning of cowards and opportunists: “The essential thing, right now, is to save your own skin, to get out alive, come what may.… And besides, we know what we think.” In the meantime they, their family, and their friends benefit greatly from their privilege. You can find these “lucky ones” who sometimes don’t hesitate to declare themselves overtly germanophile, everywhere—in the food and clothing storehouses, at internal and external work sites, at the train station, in the kitchens of the SS and other military personnel, in the kitchens of Camps 1 and 2.

  They try very hard to convince us that the well-being that they enjoy does not in any way harm the other internees or their basic interests as internees. They claim that their material comforts are not based on the dispossession of those in the camp who are starving, those who don’t enjoy the Nazis’ favors—that’s the way it is; it’s luck, you know!

  But the fact is that they hardly care about what goes on inside the blocks—inside the blocks infested with vermin, famine, fever, death, decay—not to mention the moral anguish. They close their eyes, cover their ears, they don’t want to see, they don’t want to hear—they haven’t the slightest clue about all this. And they’re the ones who say it, moreover. Most of them live in separate barracks where they are housed relatively well, where they have created a world of their own. It should come as no surprise to hear bursts of laughter and singing coming from their barracks, to see everyone in a good mood. They return from work well-nourished and in good disposition. They carefully groom themselves, organize dinner parties, feasts, cocktails, and concerts. Their wives have first-rate linens, their beds are perfumed. They have a knack for décor. They tell jokes and make love.

  And it goes without saying that they don’t neglect the camp administrators. They share their wealth with the barracks’ chiefs, those who do not work but nonetheless have contact, even if seemingly official, with the Germans, those who live under a special system, less harsh.… So this group laughs, flirts, and it’s so innocent: live and let live! Who knows what the future holds, etc.

  These people will have very dif
ferent things to tell about the camp, about the Germans, about everything that went on. There will even be some who will have fond memories of this place, memories of pleasant days, of the Germans’ “kindness,” of a vague feeling of happiness, of how “lucky” they will have been.… Everything is relative, of course, there’s no denying it.

  B. B. | October 17, 1944

  Something just happened in the next camp. Polish women are interned there, but it is not clear whether they are Jewish or political deportees. All we know is that they are treated worse than we are. Some of them live under special surveillance. They must have rebelled today, decided to do something and protested. The shockwaves came our way; an order was suddenly given to suspend all movement, the workers returned before the end of the workday, in the kitchens, they had to turn off the fire and the personnel evacuated the area. The doors separating our blocks from the rest of the camp were closed. Total silence and panic.

  We will never really know how things ended over there where the rebels are. But it’s clear that the Germans have “restored order” as they always do, committing further crimes. The crematoria are running nonstop, overtly, for all to see.

  Behind the complex of blocks where we are all piled up, there are still more barracks, in all directions, as far as the eye can see, where the political prisoners and criminals they call Häftlinge are interned; there’s a crowd of fifty to sixty thousand people, women and children who’ve been imprisoned for any excuse imaginable.

  And every day the processions of new arrivals drag themselves along on the roads between the blocks, an entire army of miserable souls being led to forced labor and already they are exhausted, famished, tormented. Several hundred of these new arrivals have been placed near us, a hundred steps away, on the other side of the barbed wire. We don’t dare approach them, but we would like to.… The Germans shoot, for fear that we might tell each other those horrible truths we hold—or they hold. They are afraid, the Germans, they are truly frightened of us—this human livestock that they have reduced to an inert and disconsolate mass. The proof of this lies in what happened today.

  B. B. | October 18, 1944

  Among the dead that were removed from the hospital today—the hospital, a barracks like any other—three had belonged to our barracks. And among these three was a young, fourteen-year-old girl. Before the war, she was a strong, beautiful child. In prison at Podgorica, i she already had a flu that quickly turned into tuberculosis. When we arrived here four months ago, she was already near the end. She was fading slowly every day, before our eyes. In the past couple of days her suffering reached its height. She was no longer able to move in the slightest. Her mother isn’t making a scene; she’s calm, resigned. She still has two daughters, younger, both very pretty, but they are also becoming shadows due to their constant hunger. These young bodies need to eat, to grow, or else they are like young plants that dry up.

  Their father disappeared two years ago when the Ustasaj took him. And now they are losing their older sister. This morning we saw her skinny young body, so skinny. A corpse, a few lifeless bones, wrapped in one of the camp’s light gray blankets. She was laid on two narrow old planks in a kind of laboratory. Right above her lifeless head were some dirty test tubes on a shelf, a modest, uncovered window looking out on the gray barbed-wire barrier and beyond, the lines of dull, gray barracks … and then the void, a cold, dreary, foggy, empty space, the rainy line of the pale, damp, mouse-colored Nordic horizon.…

  By way of a funeral, we were permitted to walk all of thirty paces to accompany the miserable wooden coffin to the central gate. There, the barbed wire fence was opened to let the corpse through, alone, on a cart; the little one went out toward “freedom.” She died at one o’clock, in the middle of the night. No doubt by now she has already been quickly consumed by the flames.

  B. B. | October 20, 1944

  This morning a small, elderly woman died in the barracks, very near to my bed. The family cried a little and then got rid of the body. An ended life, quickly forgotten. We are dazed. Each one of us is buried in our own misery. And yet, the color of this shared, collective misery gets clearer and clearer.

  There are cases of brain sicknesses now, a sort of cerebral inflammation. The camp epidemic is everywhere. The little children suffer from some peculiar illnesses. An adorable little four-year-old girl has been in bed for five weeks with excessively high fever. She’s covered with boils. When her mother sits her up on the bed, her head droops over her shoulder; she doesn’t have the strength to hold it upright. She watches her surroundings with a knowing, intelligent, and resigned look. Her marvelous, big eyes are the only part of her emaciated face that still has life. And once her little body is undressed, it is nothing but a skeleton … a skeleton that still breathes, lives, suffers, and falls silent. Without tears, without screams. Besides, she doesn’t have the strength for that. This morning, they lanced her boils—it’s horrible, so much pus. She sobbed just a little bit—and the rest of the time she was silent, immobile. A little martyr, a sad symbol of misfortune and resignation.

  B. B. | October 22, 1944

  Much commotion reigned in our barracks last week. As I have already observed, distrust and intolerance are common to everyone. Let’s add to this the fact that relationships imposed between the internees most often take unpleasant and unfortunate forms: corruption, deceit, trickery. Those who enjoy a certain “ability” or “skill” or who possess a “practical mind” or who keep close to the Germans (which is all one and the same, really), all those who have adopted an attitude devoid of scruples and principles toward men and the world in general, these people manage to benefit from any situation at the expense of other detainees.

  This is how things work, beginning at the top, with the Judenälteste, (“Jewish elder”) who is our “representative” to the Germans, on down through the various members of his entourage in charge of different “elite” operations in the camp, to the leaders of each barracks surrounded by their aides and accomplices. This creates very distinct castes in camp life: there are those who suffer, die of hunger and illness, work hard, are beaten and mistreated, without pity and at every turn—while the others live in relative tranquility, well-nourished, taken care of, protected at the expense of the rest of the detainees. Little by little they lose all consciousness of our shared fate and all sense of solidarity.

  In the beginning, I just observed all this and, feeling powerless, did not intervene, but stayed “neutral.” But inside our barracks, where the general state of things is faithfully reflected, the organized and systematic thefts, abuse, deceit, corruption, and all that flows from this have reached untenable proportions. The way in which these plots are carried out is so rude, so repugnant, and so cowardly that you are overcome by complete disgust. Everyone knows that large quantities of the food allocated for the barracks, and in particular a good portion of the daily soup, disappears mysteriously and methodically. A feverish, shameless market has erupted in our barracks. An entire system of orders, of supply and demand among those busy exchanging what the rest of us consider fantastic merchandise (silk stockings, rings, jewelry, furs, boots, gorgeous cosmetics, etc.) … and alongside all this, bowls filled with aromatic soup, all kinds of appetizing foodstuffs that make us dizzy, circulate openly and constantly, carving out a path for themselves among the starving, bewildered, dying masses. Indignation, jealousy, suspicion, doubt, in each and toward each, founded or unfounded … the air is completely poisoned.

  Our barracks is divided into two sections, one for the men and the other one for the women and children. The separation is not that strict, but even so.… Among the men, distrust appears sporadically, through outbursts of personal hatred, swearing, threats: “Thief, you’ll see …” “Son of a …” etc. As for the thief, he either reacts or doesn’t, depending on the situation, or else quite frequently he ends up corrupting his adversary. To rein in all this infamy, we would naturally need a shared, collective spirit of action, of unity, of agreemen
t and understanding. But that’s not our strong point.

  In the women’s section, it’s the same or nearly so. Sometimes it’s even noisier; you witness outbursts of hysteria, lamentation, curses—without anyone getting the slightest notion to do something concrete and effective. Nevertheless, above all because of the children they are responsible for, the women sometimes show more practical and collectivist tendencies. They stubbornly try to find a way out, sometimes demonstrating true courage, and are ready to make sacrifices if necessary. Last Saturday, you could notice a certain agitation accompanied by consultations among some of the women. Then they came to me and pleaded with me to take control of the situation. That’s how the battle began Saturday evening and continued throughout the entire week. We won, to everyone’s satisfaction. Here’s how it all went:

  First, after an improvised meeting near my bed and in the name of 120 women in the section, we demanded explanations from Mrs. R., the head of the section, about the distribution of food. She professed her loyalty; we let her know that if she wanted to dissipate any suspicions, all she had to do was to agree to cooperate with the delegates elected to help with distribution and to guarantee the supervision demanded by all the women. Mrs. R., who is also the wife of the barracks chief but who is not very energetic, seeing that her back was against the wall, could only yield to the decision of the majority.

  After that we made further demands, requiring that the men’s section put an end to the practice of giving an extra dish of soup, taken from our rations, to the soup carriers. Knowing these men, these six to eight vat carriers, freed up from any outside work and whose sole job consisted of carrying eight or ten soup vats a day, returning them empty to the kitchens—we demanded the immediate end of their undeserved privileges. Several considerations supported our demands: hundreds of workers without these advantages who went out daily to do forced labor, who were exposed to the Nazis’ indescribable torments for ten or twelve hours a day, and who never received any extra rations, any help from the collective, and who knew that they couldn’t even aspire to such things. On the other hand, those famous soup vat carriers, on the pretext of collecting their seemingly meager extra ration, engage in all sorts of wheeling and dealing, thanks especially to this monopoly over the vats. All this in such a way that the others cannot watch over them and see things for what they are.