Butterfly Project

"Lights Out"

... Three young boys ran away. For that we have already had a week of "confinement to barracks" and "light's out." We walk only on columns to work, and after six o'clock in the evening, no one is allowed on the street. We come home from work in the dark and in the morning we go to work in the dark. We dress and undress by the touch system. Our windows must be darkened and it is forbidden to have any sort of light. Tomorrow I'm going to the Hamburg barracks for bread and I'll manage to see Mom...
     "Confinement" has been cancelled, but "lights out" continues, evidently for the whole winter. We have to save on electricity. Each of the different blocks gets it every third day in turn. We many use candles for light, but they don't last long. Supplies from home are being used up and we can't manage to get more. It is terribly stupid, we can't even read in the evening. Without light everything is so sad and gloomy. I am awfully homesick for Prague. Evening after evening Franka and I recall things in Prague far into the night and often we dream of it in our sleep...
     Last night I had a beautiful dream. I dreamed that I was at home, I saw quite clearly our flat and street. Now I am disappointed and out of sorts, because I awoke in the bunk instead of my own bed. But maybe this was some sort of omen of an early end. Then there should be permanent "lights out" all over Germany...


     Old people's transport. Ten thousand sick, crippled, dying, all of them over sixty-five years old.
     It's horrible everywhere. The rays of the sun fall exactly on my bunk and reach on farther, I try in vain to get away from them into the shade. Today I shan't go and report for "Service." I haven't left out a day yet, but I am too exhausted to stand the sight of misery and suffering again. The old people's transport, the young people cannot volunteer. Children have to let their old parents go off and can't help them. Why do they want to send these defenseless people away? If they want to get rid of us young people, I can understand that, maybe they are afraid of us, don't want us to give birth to any more Jewish children. But how can these old people be dangerous? If they had to come here to Terezin isn't that enough, can't they let them die in peace here? After all, these old people can't hope for anything else...


     The barracks by the physical culture hall mus be cleared out, a special dinner is being cooked, and the reception center is getting ready. They say some Polish children are coming. This is all incomprehensible. Why, and how does it happen that they are brought here from Poland?
     They came yesterday at five o'clock. No one is allowed near them. In the night they called some nurses, guards, and doctors. Besides these no is allowed near the barracks... You can see them a little from the fortress wall, and then they went in the morning to the reception center... They are bare legged and only a very few have shoes. They returned from the reception center with their heads shaved, they have lice. They all have such frightened eyes...
     Yesterday they were taken off, doctors, nurses, and guards with them...
     Where they came from we never found out, nor where they were taken either. Rumors were circulating about deportation to Palestine, but no one believes this. They have gone. All that is left is a few lines scribbled on the wall of the barracks that hardly anyone and figure out.


                                                                                                                                From the diary of
                                                                                                                                 Helga Weissova

I commented on Dena's blog, Gabe's blog, Edgar's blog, Mario's blog, and Clement's blog