Chapter 99 Chapter 98

The usual stack of letters upon returning from patrol lay on Byron's bunk. Among them was a heavy manila envelope from his father.Byron lunged at it.Inside was a handwritten letter pinned to a thick sheaf of paper. Dear Byron; I know you are at sea, so I opened the letters from Europe.These are the letters you are reading now.For fear of losing these letters, I have made copies of them.Natalie's experience horrified both Pamela and me. The word "terror" is still used too lightly.We still can't fathom that an American woman would go through such torture, but it looks like she hit a spot.

Here, in America, the truth is only now beginning to emerge.General Eisenhower sent journalists to Buchenwald, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, and all that.Newspapers ran full-page photos and reports of this.Natalie's survival is a testament to her fortitude, and it may be due to the power of our prayers.Prayer, however, did not save the millions who were slaughtered.This time it was all thanks to this man named Rabinowitz, whose people were working in Thuringia at the time.I call this the salvation of the gods.I believe that she owed her life to God's blessing.His letter details what happened.

For many days Pamela has been asking me, "Why is this ugly war going on? Why did your son have to be sacrificed? What have we achieved? Now the matter is clear. We must bring that This evil and rampant political system has been purged from this planet. It is very tenacious. The combined forces of the Russians, the British and us have managed to contain its power. Otherwise, it can run rampant all over the world No bogey.Because the Japanese are united with this force, so we have to bring Japan down too. Warren died for a great just cause. Now I understand this, and I will never change in the future This kind of thinking.

Your child has been away from Theresienstadt for several months and has been doing well, because Natalie saw pictures of him taken on his farm outside Prague.Don't you lose heart.It may take a long time to find him.If you want to call me, you can call the Office of the Adjutant of the Navy at the White House.That's my new job.You can call us at our apartment at night, the number there is 4698 Republic. Pam p.s. hello. On June 14, 1945, on a piece of letterhead with "Army Medical Corps" printed on the top, Byron saw these few lines typed on a typewriter: Dear Byron: I'm better now son.In July last year, Barrel came to Theresienstadt and took Louis away.Later, I received a photo of the child on a farm outside Prague.He looks fine.They will find him, Afran said.I love you.

Natalie, May 20, 1945 (The above dictation was written by Nurse Emily Dani, Army Sergeant, U.S. Nursing Corps) The quivering signature is written in green ink. Avran.A long letter by Rabinowitz, typed on thin onion paper, was signed with the same pen. Dear Byron: I speak better English than I write, and I am very busy.So, I'll keep this letter short and let you know what's going on.First of all, she was cured of typhus.She needs recuperation now and is very weak.It was a stupid woman who was interviewed by the War Refugee Relief Committee, so what Natalie said in the statement sounded like a stupid person.Now she is sober and speaks coherently, but she cries easily and does not want to talk about what happened to her.After those visits, she had a fever for three days.This situation will not be allowed to happen again.She asked me to write this letter to you.You can see that her hand shakes when she writes, because she is weak.Besides, she didn't want to recall and write about those things.

To make a long story short, one of the relief groups I belonged to had its offices in Paris, and I won't go into the trivial details here.We are cleaning up the areas that were destroyed by the Nazis, sending some homeless and starving Jews to refugee camps to restore their health, and then depart for Palestine.This is a very difficult job.When Germany collapsed, the SS didn't know what to do with the Jews who were not slaughtered by them.The situation changed so quickly that they didn't have time to kill all the Jews and cover up the concentration camps, even though they had tried.They drove the Jews around, or locked them in trains, without order, without destination, and without food or drinking water. When the U.S. or Russian troops arrived, the Germans simply ran away and took the Jews away. They were all left where they had been left, and I don't know tens of millions of them scattered all over Europe.Our staff found Natalie in a train from Ravensbrück, where there was a women's concentration camp, and it was blocked in a forest outside Weimar, and it just stopped there.Perhaps the car was going to Buchenwald.Natalie lay beside the train on the railway embankment.She climbed out of the car because the women around the car died one by one.I was in another team and the staff called me at night and they told me they found a woman under the car.She said she was American.There are many Jews who pretend to be Americans in order to get better care.The staff didn't speak English so I drove from Erfurt and didn't expect to find your wife, oh my god, but I've come across more than this in this kind of work Stranger things.She was hard to spot, skinny and a little delirious, but I knew her, and she kept talking about Louis and Byron.So I went to U.S. Army Command and reported to them that we had found an American woman.It was midnight and they immediately dispatched a field ambulance to pick her up.Because she was American, the army took good care of her.

The troops are trying to get her to Paris, and I'm sure it can be done.There is a good American hospital in Paris, where Natalie worked for a while.The hospital steward still remembered her; although the hospital was full, the steward was willing to accept her.However, the bureaucracy is too heavy. For example, the staff in the army are still trying to make up a passport for her, but everything will be done.As for your son, there is indeed no news at all.You could see in that statement how the two of them were separated, and Natalie was right about that.She did it very bravely.However, it was not easy for us to go to Prague to do this, because the Russians occupied that place and they would not cooperate with us.Even so, our staff has been conducting investigations in that area, but there is no clue yet.Just before the Russian troops arrived in Prague, there were many riots in that place, and one riot, the Germans killed some Communists and others, and when they retreated, the Germans looted many farms around there. They were set on fire, so it's hard to say what happened there afterwards.It seems that your child is definitely still there, but finding him is like "finding a needle in a haystack".Street Jewish children are a problem in themselves, thousands of them, wandering all over Europe, some have become wild men and wolf children, their parents have been killed, they learn to steal to get by.The damage done by the Germans can never be repaired.The Red Cross, the Federation, the Red Federation, and other organizations are collecting a large number of card indexes in Paris and Geneva, but until now, these materials have still been missing.I've given the information about your son to our document reviewers, but it's just too much for them to handle.Work will take a while.So here it is, and I'm sorry it couldn't be more satisfying, but at least Natalie is alive and well and starting to recover.She has a bad appetite, otherwise she would recover faster.Your letter will be very useful to her, and it would be best if you send it to me, and I will arrange for it to be read by her.When writing a letter, you should try to use a pleasant tone and tell her: You believe that your son is safe, and we will find him.

Faithful Afran.Rabinowitz's statement of May 17, 1945 was a single-line copy on carbon paper. The handwriting on the stained paper was dim and the sentences were broken, so that Byron could hardly understand some parts.It doesn't look like Natalie wrote it at all.It was obvious that the interviewer had made notes first, and then hastily typed them out on a typewriter.Starting from Siena in peacetime, it describes how she fell into disaster after the attack on Pearl Harbor and a series of encounters thereafter.Most of Byron knew about the events before the meeting between the two in Marseilles.The long narratives about Theresienstadt, especially the descriptions of the SS basement, terrified him (although she or the interviewer had omitted the obscenities).The head of the statement states that there were three visits, but there are fewer accounts from Theresienstadt onwards.About Ellen.Gerotero's last deeds are written with extraordinary simplicity.

We were just about to board the train when a member of the deportation team separated us.I never saw my uncle again.Later I heard that all the "famous persons" deported that time were gassed to death.He is an old and infirm man.They only picked out a few young and strong ones to stay, so I'm sure he's dead. That's all the above sentences.The following account of Auschwitz is not coherent: she vaguely remembers how she had her head shaved, how she had a number tattooed on her arm, how she wore tattered clothes, and that the brick houses where the women lived were What is the situation, what is the state of sanitation and food supply.A friend from Theresienstadt, Udam, got her a job in a warehouse where Jewish property was confiscated.She was sent to the children's toy department to take apart doll figures, teddy bears, and other stuffed toys, search them for money and valuables hidden inside, and restore them for sale or distribution to German children.In the entire statement, the most vivid paragraph describes the situation of being punished for doing this kind of work.

I learned to take those toys apart and put them back together very skillfully.There are mountains of toys, each one representing a child killed by the Germans.But we don't think about those things, our minds are numb.Many toys are of the same style and made in the same factories.Sometimes we find something: gems, gold coins, or banknotes.Of course, there are also people who steal.We hid these items at the risk of our lives because we were searched every afternoon when we left Canada.The area around the warehouse was called "Canada," because the Poles considered Canada a land of gold.We must steal in order to exchange those stolen things for food.Think about it carefully, whose property is this?They are not German!I never got caught, but once, for absolutely no reason, I was almost beaten to death.I took apart a battered teddy bear and there was nothing inside.But then there was no way to fix it up.It fell apart in my hand.The overseer was a damned Greek-Jewish woman dressed up like an SS woman and walking around with those big thorns all the time.She hated me because I was American, and would have liked to find a chance to make a case against me.She reported me to the SS.I was convicted of stripping naked and smoking twenty canes "for conspiracy to destroy German property".I was tortured in front of all the workers called to "Canada".I had to be naked, lying on a wooden frame, and a male SS beat me.I've never suffered like that.He hasn't used up his punishment yet, and I've passed out.Udam and some of my female companions carried me to the house and Udam took me to the hospital.If it wasn't for him, I would have bled to death.I couldn't walk for a week.However, I found that my own constitution is really strong.My wounds healed and I went back to the job.The Greek woman seemed all right.

Here is a fragmented account of life in Auschwitz in general: how dead bodies were dug up from mass burials and burned, with the stench; How a good SS man befriends a woman in the house and brings them lots of good food.The statement describes how the rumors of the Russian army's arrival were spread, how the sound of artillery was heard in the distance, how thousands of women walked to the terminal station in the snow for three consecutive days, and took the open coal train to Lafayette. Vincebrück.She went to work in a garment factory and was often worried about Ravensbrück's medical experiments, because she had heard rumors about it as early as Auschwitz.The brothels for the SS and the Armed Forces recruited war prostitutes to this concentration camp; her feelings about these things, although mixed with the thoughts and tone of the interviewer, still sounded poignant and pitiful. This threat has little effect on me.I used to be considered attractive, but those few months in Auschwitz were a blessing in disguise.Forget it, luckily they only take the youngest and brightest Jewish girls.Some of the Hungarian Jewish women who came to Ravensbrück were really delicate beauties.Besides, I haven't been able to get more food since I came to Ravensbrück, and I was as thin as a skeleton then.Also, I wouldn't have passed the physical because I had those scars.German men wouldn't like that. In April thousands of us were loaded onto the train together.We heard that the war was coming to an end, that the Russian and American armies were about to join forces, and we were counting the dates on our fingers, praying for liberation.But the Germans packed us into a closed cattle car and drove to nowhere, with no food, no drinking water, no medical treatment.Typhus had begun to spread in the concentration camps.In the car, the disease became more and more contagious.Since leaving Ravensbrück, I have very little recollection of that time.All I know is that the situation in the car was dire and I've never seen anything worse.The car I was in became a morgue, and almost all the women were dead or dying.It is said that I was found under the car.I don't know how I got there; I don't know how I'm still alive.If there's one strength that's kept me going all these months, it's the hope that one day I'll be able to see my son again.I believe it was this hope that gave me the strength to get out of that car.I can't tell you who opened the door and how I got out.I've told you everything I know.