Holocaust Monologue: Memoir of Eva Bookbinder (from Torn Threads by Anne Isaacs) My name is Eva Bookbinder. I have many family members that live with me in the fenced in ghetto of Bedding, Poland; my father, Papa, my sister, Rachel, my aunt, River, Uncle Nathaniel, and my cousin, David. Papa, Rachel, and I used to live in the proper part of town in Bedding, but once Hitler came to power he made many laws that condemned us because we were Jewish. In the winter of 1942 we were forced to move to the ghetto where we were fenced in and given rations.
Once we were in the heath many people were assigned Jobs, but some, like Papa, were able to keep their professions and go into the city to work and earn a descent pay
.... Rachel and I did not get to go to school anymore. Rachel was always sick; in the summer of 1943 she started to feel a little bit better and wanted to go outside. Reluctantly I agreed. That night we had the first raid, where the Nazi's, grabbed teenagers and young adults off the streets and took them to concentration camps. Rachel was taken.
The next weeks were very hard for Papa and l, not knowing whether Rachel was alive on a incineration camp or shot because she was too weak. Since Papa got to go into town to work, he asked some of our trustworthy friends to find out how and where Rachel was. After a few more weeks Papa came home from work extremely late. I was terrified something horrible had happened. When he got home he tol
me that Rachel was fine on a concentration camp and that the next morning I would get on a train and go to the same concentration camp.
I would take all my clothes?all the ones I could wear, or it would look too suspicious for the guards. After a long, unwelcoming, train ride, many days, with nothing to eat or drink I arrived at Parachutist. When I arrived I could not find Rachel. There were at least 500 girls in my barrack with three floors! Luckily, I found one of her friends and she led me to Rachel. On Sundays' we do not get rations and after the many days of not eating on the train I was welcoming to the small piece of bread and broth with bitter coffee I got that morning.
That day I learned we walk half way, five kilometers, and ride on a train half way to Turnout, where the factory is located. I worked on the fourth floor of a textile mill where I tied broken threads back together and cleaned the axle of the machine continuously. We get one hour for lunch and the work until seven, but then we must ride and walk back to camp at Parachutist. We do this every day of the week except Sunday; every week of the year. Rachel being sick when well fed meant that when she wasn't well fed she was always sick. It made the daily walk and work hard.
I did many extra things, knitting and cooking, to get extra food for Rachel, but nothing mimed to be able to keep her well. In November of 1944 1
was so tired from the walk, the work, the extra knitting, and cooking I was in a daze that day at work. I wasn't thinking and my hair got pulled into the machine. When I woke up the next day they sent me to work. My head hurt so badly. Two months later the textile mill closed. We were confined to the camp in Parachutist, always locked in, never going out again. So our rations became the water they cooked potatoes in for the guards. En clay we woke up Ana tenure was no one In slang. All ten Germans Ana mea, cause the Russians had come to close to the camp. The faucets inside that barracks had been shut off so we had no food or water inside the barracks. We ended up breaking the windows to get fresh air and hopefully food and water in the kitchen. By this point everyone was so frail they could barely walk or couldn't anymore. Rachel had contracted typhus and was extremely sick; making her so tiny I could almost fit my hands around waist. I tried to take care of her, but it took me an hour Just to get small bowl of water.
We had been stuck inside the camp with only eater for several days now. I had lost count how many days. I had prayed that we would get liberation, and finally we had the Germans had come! When they arrived they helped Rachel get better and made enough food for the survivors to fill their bellies constantly and gain some weight. Once they release Rachel we headed back to Bedding by train
only to find that Papa, River, Uncle Nathaniel, and David had all died at Auschwitz. Rachel and I realizing we had no need to stay in Bedding escaped to Canada where we both have sons named Samuel in honor of our Father.
