The_Holokaust_-_origins,_implementation,_aftermath

UNDER A CRUEL STAR
at an even pace, cane in hand, searching for those who needed his help.
Medications were in pitifully short supply, but he would say that often just
the appearance of a doctor would make a patient feel a little better. I was glad
when he accepted my offer to help him. The two of us wandered together from
one hovel to the next, climbing thousands of stairs, often unable to offer the
sick more than the comfort of a few kind words. Frequently, I had to bring in a
pail of water first and wash and tidy up around the patient before the doctor
could examine him.
One day we entered an almost bare but spotlessly scrubbed room where a
child lay on a heap of rags, a little boy of four, just a small skeleton with huge
eyes. His mother, so thin that she herself looked like a child, was crying quietly
in the corner. The doctor took out his stethoscope, listened for a while, patted
the little boy’s head and sighed; he could do no more. At that moment, the
child turned toward his mother and sternly, like an adult, said, “You see Mother
I told you all the time I was hungry but you didn’t give me anything to eat.
And now I’m going to die.”
As we left the house, we were stopped by an elderly woman who asked us
to call in at the next building. There was a sick man there, she said, who had
not been seen for several days. The building was deserted, split in two from
the roof all the way down to the cellar, and looked on the verge of collapse. It
took some time before we found the one room which still had a door. We
knocked, but there was no answer. Then the doctor opened the door, and we
walked in. A torn mattress lay on the narrow strip of floor. There was a pile of
dirty rags and refuse in one corner; next to the mattress was a suitcase halffilled
with books. Lying on the mattress was a dead man, his body swarming
with a myriad of fat white lice. They also crawled over the face of the Venus de
Milo, who smiled serenely from a page of the open book on the man’s chest.
The book had dropped from his hand as he lay dying.
I leaned over him. It was my professor.
The doctor said, “He’s only been dead a few hours.”
About a year later, at work, I heard the bell of the ghetto’s one fire engine.
Although this was nearly a daily occurrence at the time, I somehow knew that
the fire was at the house where I was living. It was strictly forbidden to leave
a place of work, but I sneaked out and ran along the walls toward the half-ruin
where we were housed. I arrived breathless to find only my mother, throwing
some essentials into a suitcase. My father came running a moment later and,
although he had already grown quite weak by that time, began darting back
and forth trying to help. My cousin Jindrisek was lying motionless in a heap,
nailed to the floor by tuberculosis of almost every organ in his body. His black
hopeless eyes followed our every move. Firemen surrounded the house. There
was lots of smoke and screaming. The cold was bitter and the water did not
run, but people did not panic. Even then, resignation prevailed. I remember
how, with my father, I dragged out two suitcases, sat my mother down on
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