Night Diary Entries

Chapter 9

Dear Diary,

The SS shoved all of us into a train miles-long with a hundred in every car.

During the ride, my father slept still, and I couldn't help thinking he had died, and I no longer had any reason to live and go on.

The train stopped to throw out the dead and in front of me, a man was stripped of his clothes and thrown out of the wagon.

After him, they started to move towards my father and I forced him to wake up from his deep slumber. As I failed to convince them of his beating heart as I also tried to convince myself, he fortunately woke and was faintly breathing.

We were never given food so the snow on the ground became our only subsistence.

Once, a passing worker threw a piece of bread into a wagon and a stampede of half-dead, starving men lunged after it.

Soon, a crowd had gathered around the train throwing bread into the wagons. An elderly man had hidden some of the bread and decided to eat some of it until his son followed suit and killed him for it. 

The son was soon killed for the bread and the two bodies lay next to me. 

Finally, we had arrived at our destination, Buchenwald, the place where I thought I would die. My father had given up because now he knew that he was slowly dying within.

I argued with him and soon, I understood that I was not arguing with him but with the Angel of Death himself. 

After the sirens started to blare, everything blended into a confusing blur. When I woke up, I went to look for my father.

Finally, I heard faint whisper coming from behind me. Like the Rabbi's son, I became reluctant to offer my food to him. As the days passed, my father's health weakened.

After returning from bread distribution, I learned from my father that our neighbors were beating him for his food.

I tried to defend him, but they mocked me for trying to save him. 

One of the doctors gave me some advice and told me that I am hurting myself by protecting him, and I should be taking his rations. 

My father pleaded for water because his claimed his insides were burning up. So, an SS clubbed my father violently to the head for not quieting down. At the end of the day, I climbed into my bunk above my father and I knew that he was still alive.

I woke on January 29, 1945, and underneath my bunk was a stranger. My father's last words to me had been my name when he called out to me, but I did not respond.

Elie