European Resistance Archive/European Resistance Archive (ERA)

I had no tears; not for the aunt, for nobody.

I did not cry one single tear for anybody,

although I was really suffering about not being able to see these people.

Father had already died in August 1943.

I had forgotten all about him.

Whenever someone asked me:

“Are you sad that your mother won’t come any more?”

I always answered: “No, I’m not sad.”

I said that out of defiance and out of furiousness.

I got so furious when someone asked me about that.

I either didn’t answer at all or I just coldly said: “No, I’m not sad at all.”

Although I was very sad, really, that nobody would come back to the house of my birth.

Two aunts got killed with the partisans,

my mother and one aunt died in the concentration camp in Ravensbrück.

Two uncles died in Dachau

and one cousin got killed with the partisans,

one uncle fell in Russia.

Altogether

it added up to 12 people that died.

They were my closest relatives, who I grew up with, who were near and dear to me.