Trying to Overcome Depression

As we searched for the spare bread and stinky yellow cheese that we took with us, we noticed that our delivered belongings were missing. So was my personal diary and pen. As my mother planned to save the spare bread for the time we would again be working, we could not complain. Still, we were quite dismayed at not eating it in the cattle trucks, as our health weakened considerably.

Since being "enlightened" as to our destiny at Bergen-Belsen - unceasing tears covered my eyes for days. With such an appearance, I ran into a former classmate of mine, Hilda. With an astonished look on her face, she stared at me, then keenly, took interest in my embittered sentiment. After hearing me out, she comforted me with a kind smiling face. "No, Irene," she said. "You will see the time will come. We will survive, outlive the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. We are definitely not going to perish here. Be patient and, sure enough, freedom will be ours again. Just put your trust in the Almighty as always. He is our ever-ready guardian angel."

I gave careful consideration to my friend Hilda's words. Maybe she is right... Then each of us went her own way. She lived in a different barrack with her family. During our six month stay at Bergen-Belsen, we only met on two other occasions. Hilda's words of comfort, with the bromide drug mixed in our food, worked miraculously to stop my flowing tears.

Daily, we had to stand wearisome hours outside to be counted during roll calls. The sick, weak, old, small children - in rain, snow, storm or piercing cold. On each occasion, the wood-headed SS Nazi soldier counted us over and over again. Their being just a short distance away, a gripping fear always seized me. This was true all the more so when I sometimes had to bear witness to the cruelty of our own fellow Jew - a barrack leader, Mr. Torok, from Szeged. He could slap an old, bawling, sickly woman for not standing upright.

Just a few days after arriving in Bergen-Belsen, in the evening, I walked into our barrack and noticed a fine young gentleman, Mr. Beck, muttering to himself: "This unhappy existence, I can bear it no longer. I felt very sorry for him. He could have been around the age of fifty, and had no family members with him there - so, I had to remember him. This memory serves as his tombstone. The following morning, at early dawn, I walked near Mr. Beck's bunk bed. Just then, some people were carrying Mr. Beck's lifeless, rigid corpse to be burnt at the crematorium. Mr. Beck's unjust, unfair early death was just one of the innumerable daily deaths here. In Bergen Belsen, death took its victims without distinction from any age.

© David Muskal, 2001