On April 3rd, 1945, a prisoner at Dachau, Zerubawel Rosenzweig, found a piece of paper that was the label of a milk container. On the back of the paper he wrote a letter expressing his feelings. Here is the translation of the letter, the original text and attached. ------------------- Here we are in the middle of Passover. Today is the last day of Chol-HaMoad. I sit inside the Schononengass-barrack and stare out the window, my entire view is divided into small identical squares. Behind this fence I have sat for the last four years. The sky is overcast, a cold wind is blowing over a bleak landscape. Here and there greenery is beginning to show. But most of all what is seen is the Bavarian gravel. Far away you can see the hands of Israel working, moving gravel from here to there. Foolish childish work, work whose only purpose is to abuse the workers, to torment the body of the surviving Israelite pushed into this corner of the world. Today is the 3rd of April, 45, when we are starting to feel, when an echo is starting to penetrate like a lightning bolt, the echo of the breath of freedom that the new world is starting to breathe. We are still inside a medieval prison, with hope, but not knowing the direction to freedom. All Europe has been liberated. A third, or more than a third of Germany, is already free, but we are a forgotten group of eight thousand Jews in Oberbayern [Dachau County] still living the life of slaves. Ones soul wraps itself in grief and sorrow when thinking about it. After four years of wandering, prison, hunger, cold, hard labor, persecution of all kinds, now it will be the end of us. All this happened to us in vain. And anger attacks you when there is nothing in our hands against it. It is in their hands whether we live or die. Now, in the last days of the war, they give us the bare minimum of food and require the maximum work. Rain begins to fall. The sky is getting darker. Germans, pass by the fence, running from the rain. In the field remain only the children of Israel to work without jackets, hungry, wrapped in grief, but in their hearts will nest the hope for a brighter future Zerubawel Rosenzweig Labor camp number 1, near Landsberg, near the river Lech.
Posted on: Sun, 04 May 2014 13:22:24 +0000
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