Less Food, More Poison

Since moving to block thirty-six, roll calls were almost completely omitted, and bread distribution was postponed to longer and longer periods. Before, as we received our portion on time (almost), we could divide it so that it would last until the next bread distribution. Meager as it was, we at least had something to put in our stomach each day. Also, we received our portion at random times, not once every twenty-four hours between the distribution of dorge-muse. We would sit and wait from morning till three o'clock in the early morning the following day, when our dorge-muse lunch finally arrived at our barrack. With all of us half fainted from starvation, we received this "hearty" lunch which contained only a few small pieces of cooked cattle-beets swimming in a dirty liquid mixed with bromide.

This period beginning February 1945 till our liberation was the most dreadful for us. Our unbearable conditions worsened by the hour - by the minute - with bread distribution never on time. The Nazi authorities excuse: the allies were dropping bombs on Hanover, at the bakery which produced our bread.

It was during this period of harshest starvation that the barrack doctor distributed some gray powder in a small jar to us. He instructed us to lick this stuff, which contained "vitamins" in place of the bread and dorge-muse which we are not receiving on time - or at all. Only once I licked this so-called vitamin, but never again. I felt very weak from it. I thought I was going to die soon. I was overcome by a sensation of almost a total darkness. I felt my life hanging only on a hairbreadth. Never before did I experience such a strange fear of death.

All I could think was asking the Almighty for help. Without a sound, but with all my soul and the last drop of my will power, I prayed, begged and promised: "Oh, my Mighty Kind Creator, please help me to stay alive, to walk out alive from this death factory. As before, and even more, I will try to abide by our holy Bible teachings."

© David Muskal, 2001