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Appendix: The Diaryby Agi Rubinwith commentary by Sidney BolkoskyPart I: DescriptionApril 20, 1945. 10:00 p. m.We are surrounded by flames. Our liberators arecoming. And our enemies are also approaching. So we,forsaken, tired and hungry, are walking toward liberation.The marching mass, the long line of the transport,drags itself along. It moves slowly and painfully, onand on.I see only four people. A dying woman who stillwants to live, her two daughters, and myself. Wesurround the dying one, and we are begging her to lookat us. She must go on. She wants to continue, but shefalls back. Her strength is gone. She cannot move.There is nothing to do. We are not going either. Letthem shoot us. That is all we can expect from theGerman overlords.I look around: flames, terrible screams comingfrom the line. I look up at the sky. I call for my fatherwho is suffering somewhere in Russia. "Help me,Father. You are the only one. Only you are waitingfor me. I still have to live for your sake. " I receive noanswer. Only dying words.[Mr. Bolkosky's commentariestion. ]are set off by indenta-One day after her official liberation, onApril 23, 1945, Agi Rubin began herjournal to retell the final days of herpersonal experience of the Holocaust. PartI, a descriptive account, begins near theend, on a road from Ravensbruck concentrationcamp. It concludes in a barn in aprisoner of war camp near the small townof Mulberg. Before the death march fromRavensbruck, there was Auschwitz, andthe death march in January. And beforethat, Agi faced the flames of the crematoriumat Auschwitz every day from May1944 until November. She and her family,along with more than 25, 000 other Jews,had been tom from their home inMunkacs, an Orthodox and Hasidic centerin Carpatho-Ruthenia. In 1939, Hungaryhad occupied the region, and in 1944 theGermans came. Shortly after that, Agi'sfather was taken to forced labor in Russia.Sometime after May 15, 1944, membersof the Hungarian fascist Arrow CrossParty forced the Jews of Munkacz into abrick yard where they kept them for fourweeks. Then came the deportation — thedividing line in so many lives: the stench,the darkness, starvation and thirst anddying of the cattle car. Auschwitz, sherecalled in an interview, made her "divided,forlorn" forever as her mother, aunt,and little brother went to one side and she,reluctantly, to the other. In Auschwitz,Agi clung to her two girlfriends fromhome and their mother. They adoptedeach other and she became the "lagersister"[camp sister] and daughter to "MyLady, " her "lager-mother. " Their Auschwitzfamily survived even the first deathmarch from Auschwitz to Gleiwitz andthen to Ravensbruck.By April 1945, the western Allies hadreached Bergen-Belsen and drawn withinsixty miles of Ravensbruck; the Russiansapproached from the east and had reacheda point some thirty miles from the camp.In a host of evacuations that served nopurpose other than the agonizing murderof thousands of prisoners, the Germansevacuated Ravensbruck on April 15.Seventeen thousand women and 40, 000men struggled westward amidst flames andshooting. Martin Gilbert has quoted oneRed Cross observer of this march: "As Iapproached them, I could see that theyhad sunken cheeks, distended bellies andswollen ankles. . . All of a sudden, a wholecolumn of those starving wretches appeared.In each row a sick woman wassupported or dragged along by her fellowdetainees.A young SS woman supervisorwith a police dog on a leash led the column,followed by two girls who incessantlyhurled abuse at the poor women. " Hundredsdied of exhaustion and hundredsmore were shot. ' For Agi, yet anotherdividing point in her life came as themarch arrived at a wooded area outsidethe town of Malchow — another of what shelater called her "foundations, " an event76 GENOCIDE