Life in the ghetto was dehumanizing, at best. The worst thing was walking down the street and seeing children, mostly orphans, laying or sitting around like tiny skeletons, starved to the point where they didn't even look human anymore. At first I did whatever I could to help them – give them scraps of food, or any spare clothing I had – but as time went on the survival of myself and my family became more of a priority. It was the same for everyone. It seemed as if the supply of starving children increased exponentially, but compassion toward fellow human beings began to run dry as we all found ourselves in life or death situations. Handing out food to orphans might not seem like a huge sacrifice, but after a while very few people had anything to spare. Giving handouts one day might mean starving to death the next, and we all seemed to lose our consciences as fear took over.

Children were not the only victims, of course. There were many people living on the streets, each growing thinner and more ragged by the day. It was not uncommon to step over bodies of the deceased as you walked down the street, and after only a short amount of time in the ghetto, most people learned to ignore the remains of these casualties. There was a sense among the general population that if you did not block out what was really happening, you would go mad. So these corpses soon became just another dismal part of the background, carted off each morning to a mass grave in the cemetery, only to be replaced with new corpses on the street by the next day.

There were, of course, small bits of humanity peering out from behind the wall of despair. There were soup kitchens, for example, which were supplied almost entirely by the small children who sneaked across the barricade to the Aryan side of the wall to smuggle food into the ghetto. And there were those who tried to keep our culture alive, running illegal newpapers, schools, even organizing symphonies. If you knew where to look, it was possible to seem small glimmers of of hope, and despite everything there were still good people around.

One of my favorite people in the ghetto was a man known as Pan Doktor, who ran an orphanage, and with whom I had the pleasure of working in my spare time. Within months of moving into the ghetto, my parents and the Cotswolds had agreed to allow two more families to move into our apartment, and it had become so unbearably cramped that I spent as little time at home as I could. So when I was not working at the hospital, I often found myself entertaining the children at the orphanage, and offering whatever medical services I could provide with my limited resources. My life was as far from ideal as it could be, but my time spent helping others was likely the only thing that kept me sane.

X

Despite having the most resources available to him, my father was the first victim of the ghetto in our apartment, about five months after we'd been living there.

I came home from the hospital one day to find my mother sitting in the kitchen, looking nervous.

"Your father is in bed," she said, "Go see if you can help him."

He was asleep on the mattress on the floor, and when I approached him he opened his eyes blearily at me, staring in confusion.

"How are you feeling?" I asked, sitting next to him on the mattress. He looked clammy and uncomfortable. He stared at me for a moment, and then sighed regretfully.

"I know what's wrong with me, Kyle, and I think you do too," he said, taking my hand and placing it over his forehead. He was burning up.

When he pushed his open shirt aside, I could see that he had rosy spots on his chest, and his stomach looked distended. All symptoms of Typhoid Fever.

"Fuck," I muttered, pulling his shirt closed.

"Language, Kyle," he said mildly, and when I glanced at his face he was laying back, looking almost corpse-like. I tried to shake that thought from my head, with no success.

"Do you want to go to the hospital?" I asked, getting to my feet.

"Can they do anything for me?"

"No... not really. Nothing I couldn't do here at home, anyway," I said, honestly. There was very little that could be done about Typhoid Fever anyway, without the right resources, none of which we had in the ghetto. Either he'd get better, or he'd die. That's all there was to it.

"I'd rather stay here," he said, "Dying in a crowded hospital room seems undignified."

"You might not die. It's not always fatal," I said, but he just shook his head.

A week later, he was gone.

X

The weeks blurred into each other for quite some time. I think anyone who has experienced a great loss knows what I mean when I talk about the mindless blur that time becomes when you're consumed with grief. Nothing seems real, and when you look back at that period at a later date, you can't remember much of what happened. It's as though your brain just shuts itself off.

I know I was still working at the hospital, and I know I was still volunteering at the orphanage, but otherwise most of what took place during a great part of that year is just a blur to me.

My mother took to praying a lot, which I thought was ridiculous, since God had obviously forsaken us.

When we had any time alone, which was rare, I allowed Mark to give me comfort in the only way he could. I didn't love him, nor did he love me, but a few moments of mindless bliss was a welcome reprieve from the devastation that continued to escalate around us.

Life went on, sort of. New residents were being shipped in on a daily basis, and the overcrowding would have been unbearable, except that more and more people died every day. A brisk round of Typhus went through the ghetto, killing more people than I can count. It was yet another thing we could not treat at the hospital, which made my job more and more frustrating.

And if the Typhus didn't kill you, you were lucky if you didn't starve to death. Sometimes you'd see the same people on the street for weeks on end, growing thinner and thinner as time went on. There was one man who sticks out in my mind. When he moved to the ghetto he had a wife and four children. The wife died of some disease, and after that the man spent all of his time on the street with his children, begging for help and singing, "Ich dank dir Got, az ich bin a Yid." I thank God that I am a Jew.

One by one his children died of starvation, and he was left alone. His suffering was unbearable to me, but there was nothing that could be done.

It wasn't as if we didn't all have our share of problems. The people living in our apartment began to drop like flies. Typhus killed half of them, and several others were shot by the SS for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The dead were often replaced by new people who were searching for a place to stay, but many of them died as well. Of the original 16 people who had been living in the flat, only Mark, Rebecca, my mother, and I remained.

The day Rebecca was shot was one of the most difficult of my life, at least up to that point. I was working at the hospital when she was brought in, but I hadn't even known she was there until I found her bleeding out on the floor of a hallway. I did everything I could to save her, but it was no good. Despite my good intentions she died in my arms, with a stream of blood painting her face. I was heartbroken. And I had to be the one to bring Mark the bad news.

It went as badly as could be expected. She was his only remaining family, after all, and they had been very close their whole lives. Still, life in the ghetto was so awful that there was an underlying feeling of relief, and maybe even jealousy. Death had become seen as a welcome escape from our misery, and there were many who sought it out just to end their suffering.

"I want to be with her," Mark said to me, and though I understood why, I held him back from doing anything rash. His sorrow turned to anger, and we ended up having sex so violent that I was left bleeding from it. Still, I felt so guilty that she had died in my own hospital that I didn't complain.

It was only a few weeks later that I came home to find my mother looking despondent, and though any number of things could have been wrong, I had a gut feeling as to what the matter was.

"Mark's been killed," she said, "One of my friends saw it happen. He was forced to clear a street with some other men, and when they were finished the SS officers lined them all up against a wall and opened fire on them. There was no reason for it..." she trailed off, staring at the wall as if it had answers for her. I knew she was thinking that the same could happen to me some day.

I realized at that point how very old she looked. Living in the ghetto had aged her so much in such a short time span, and my heart hurt to see her looking so worn down. I know the loss of my father was the biggest blow for her, and she had never really recovered from it. I was all she had left, and I didn't know if she'd survive if she lost me, too.

I took the news about Mark as well as could be expected, and I spent the rest of the day in the bed we'd shared, clutching his pillow and feeling sorry for myself. Having him around had been a great comfort to me, and I would miss him very much. Still, none of it surprised me. I half-expected to have the same fate as him, as many of the boys our age had been eliminated in such a manner. There was no rhyme or reason to the Nazis' treatment of those of us in the ghetto... Death would come to all of us one way or another, so perhaps it was best to take such a blasé approach to it.

Some time in July of 1942, the rumors began to spread that the Nazis were to eliminate us all, once and for all. Some scoffed at this idea, since many people in the Warsaw ghetto were used as slave labor in the factories, including those that supplied the Nazi war machine, but many of us believed it. After all, wasn't that what they'd slowly been doing to us all along? There was talk of escaping to the Aryan side of the wall, but few considered it a real option, as Jews who were caught over there were shot immediately.

It wasn't much safer in the ghetto, though. In the weeks leading up to the deportations, the SS men went from building to building, shooting down entire families as they pleased. It was the so-called "intelligentsia" that was targeted most: teachers, lawyers, businessmen, and even doctors. The Nazis wanted to create panic and confusion within the ghetto, and it worked very well. I remember running home from work every day, terrified that I'd find nothing but corpses in my apartment.

It was somewhere around this time that notices started to go up, telling us we would be "resettled" somewhere out East. If we went voluntarily to the Umschlagplatz, the place at which we would be loaded onto the trains, we would be given 2 kilos of bread and 1 kilo of jam, if these promises were to be believed. Apparently the Nazis were betting that our desperate hunger would make us stupid. But those who didn't go voluntarily would be forced to go anyway, so there were some who took them up on their offer.

Hospital staff was exempted, which was only a small relief to me, since I knew it was only a matter of time before we would no longer be useful. Factory workers also had a temporary respite, and thousands of people scrambled to get a job, and to get the right paperwork that would supposedly save them. The rules changed every day, and it was so difficult to keep up with them that even though who had valid employment would often end up on the trains. It was unsettling to see the once-crowded streets become emptier by the day, as more and more buildings were completely cleared out, their residents sent off or shot, and their belongings looted or scattered about like refuse.

There were rumors of a resistance movement, which gave us all hope, despite the fact that we all knew what our ultimate fate would be. We didn't know where these deportations were actually taking people, but we all knew the claims of resettlement were nothing but a ruse.

Throughout the entire time I'd spent in the ghetto, I'd resolved myself to never give up. These Nazi bastards wanted to break all our spirits, and despite everything I'd gone through, I fought as hard as I could not to let that happen to me. It was in August that I finally broke.

On August 5th, the orphanage at which I had volunteered was surrounded by SS men, and Pan Doktor and his staff were notified that they were to be deported. Instead of letting on that he knew what would happen, he told the children in his care that they would be going on a trip to the countryside, leaving the barren wasteland of the ghetto for green fields. He had them all dress in their finest clothes, and he went with them to the Umschlagplatz, maintaining the calm, kind demeanor for which he had become known. He was offered sanctuary several times, as he was actually a well-known author of childrens' books, but he refused each time, saying that he would not abandon the children. They were all loaded onto the trains together, never to be heard from again.

I was depressed from this, but it was nothing compared to what happened only a few days later.

Anyone who remained in the ghetto was ordered to stay at their places of work at all times. I worked, ate, and slept at the hospital, but like many people, I would often sneak out at night to visit people and ferry around supplies. Usually I would go to the factory at which my mother had been hired after she lost her previous job. One night, she was gone. I frantically asked around, but was ignored by nearly everyone. That was typical of life in the ghetto, as there were often panicked family members screaming into peoples' faces about the fate of their relatives. Finally one of my mother's friends pulled me aside and told me what happened.

Earlier that day, the SS had made the usual rounds of all the factories. They rounded up dozens of people at random, as they were wont to do, and took them into the courtyard and shot them. My mother was one of the day's victims.

The woman who told me this seemed sympathetic, but I walked away from her without even saying anything. I don't remember going back to the hospital, but I awoke the next morning on the cot on which I usually slept, my face a teary mess, and my fingers bloody from where I'd bitten my nails off.

I was done. There was nothing left for me in Warsaw, and though I didn't know what would await me at the other end of the railroad tracks, I went to the Umschlagplatz on my own, ready to embrace resettlement, or death, or whatever I might have coming to me.

The car they loaded us into was full to the brim with people. Once it was full the doors were shut, and the windows were barred, but we remained at the station for several hours, locked up tightly. It was so hot and stuffy that none of us could breathe properly, and there was no room for any of us to sit down, either. I was crushed against a wall, pushed and crowded by those who were trying to get some fresh air through the cracks in the wood panels. I didn't care. I had a pretty good idea as to what would happen to us, and I didn't even struggle anymore.

As the train finally pulled away from the station, I heard the old man's voice in my head: "Ich dank dir Got, az ich bin a Yid."

XXX

A/N: So much to say here. First, an apology for the lag between chapters. I'm a full-time student and I work at 4am 5-6 days a week, so I have very little free time to devote to this. Second, um, oh what to say about this chapter. I hope I did a good job of balancing what really happened in the Warsaw Ghetto and making it at least moderately entertaining? Nothing I could write can even begin to do this situation justice, but if you're interested in the subject matter, my main resource for information was a book called Words to Outlive Us, which is a collection of first-hand accounts about the ghetto. The story of Pan Doktor (whose real name was Janusz Korczak) is true, as is the one of the man who sang "Ich dank dir Got, as ich bin a Yid." I tried make everything else as historically accurate as possible.

Thanks for reading!