Camp Majdanek

Chapter 5: My Name; The Number

     The car jolted as we came to a stop. I looked out of the crack and saw big buildings. They had an intimidating and empty look to them. A soldier opened the door and let us out. I was so glad to smell the fresh air again, even through the frigidness.

We were taken by soldiers. There were so many of them. They led us into the building. It was very dark and worn down inside. The beds were on shelves and had only a bit of hay on each for padding.

We got to a huge mob and at the front people were going to the left and to the right. I tried to pick out who was going where, age, gender, ethnicity, but it all seemed random. When we got close enough I heard a guard yelling at the people. He would raise his hand to the left and boom out, "Women and children to the left!" Then he switched his hand to the right and yelled, "Men to the right!" It was chaos. They were once more taking something away from us. The most important thing we have. Family. Splitting everyone up and sending them off to a destination and a fate unknown to us all.

We were all people under God: Jew, Gypsy, or people with disabilities. We were all unique in God's eyes, but the one thing that we all had in common with each other, but different from the Germans in the room, was we were accused of doing something wrong. Otherwise why would we be here? We had to be punished for something. But what it was, we could not identify.

My family and I all approached the man and, as predicted, my father got sent to the right. The rest of us slumped off to the left joining the crowd of other people. I turned to look at my father who was looking at us. I could see the sorrow in his eyes. He reached his hand to his mouth, blew a kiss and mouthed something which looked like "my princess". Yes, that was right. I had always been his little princess. I put my hand to my mouth and did the same. Then I turned around, back into the mob. We headed into a dark room and there was a stench like one of mildew that hung in your nose. As we moved a little further the smell grew stronger and it didn't smell of mildew anymore. I started to get slightly nauseous so I pulled my shirt to my nose to block the smell. Others started coughing. It seemed poisonous.

We lined up into a room that I couldn't see.

After a while, we came to the door. I saw people inside stripping their clothes and were lined up in front of a man with a razor head. Soon enough it was our turn. I took off my clothes and covered parts with my hands. The man shaved my head. I had never felt anything weirder or sad. I started crying. My hair was down to my waist. I got bumped along to the next station, tattoos.

I had seen people with tattoos before. I even asked my uncle once if it hurt and he said it was the most pain he ever felt. It was my turn next. I held mother's hand and flinched when the needle pierced my skin. After it was over my wrist burned. The tattoo was a combination of numbers and letters. The man told me that it was my new name; my number.

We finally got to get dressed in old, dirty clothes that weren't ours. One old man watching us said to the group of people,"Those are the clothes of people who died here. You don't want to be like them, " he said with a disgusting yellow grin

His teeth were rotten. It looked like he hadn't brushed them in years. I got a blouse and pants that were too small but it was all they had.

There was a big bell that rang every hour. It just rang at six o'clock. We had to line up for roll call. There were a lot of people so it took a long time. Our last name is Berkeley so we would get called pretty early on. Turns out, we couldn't go after they called our name. We had to stay for the whole thing.

By the time we were done, it was nine o'clock and we had to stand the whole time. We now had to do work. Most of it was building more barracks, but that was for the adults. The kids under eighteen chopped wood for them. All the excessive chopping hurt my back and I wanted to be done, but we would have to do it every day to earn our food.