The Testimony by Halina Wagowska Read Free Book Online Page A

approaching danger. Frieda was a novice who didn’t—perhaps couldn’t—focus entirely on each moment. She made many comments that were global in nature and therefore a bit abstract for me, whose education comprised all of three years of primary school.
    Frieda wondered how humanity would regard these events, whether this war would change the social order the way the French Revolution had; perhaps it would serve to eliminate barbarians and racism. Such concepts were rather too grand for me, and spoken in a language of which I had only a colloquial command. But whenever I looked puzzled, Frieda explained patiently. She wondered how Dante would have written his Inferno had he spent time in Stutthof. I asked who was Dante and what was his Inferno, and Frieda told me about this thirteenth-century Florentine poet at length.
    With no work of any sort to be done, nor the energy to carry it out, there were endless empty hours between the daily count of prisoners at dawn and the distribution of ‘bread’, ‘soup’ and ‘coffee’ late in the day. Frieda and I talked while we performed the main activity of the day, which was delousing by a popular and effective method: clothes were folded and stacked into a narrow parcel, then pressure was applied from above. Within minutes most lice were in the top layer, where they could be massacred wholesale. It then remained to squash their eggs, which were usually found along the seams of garments and were also pressed, between one’s thumbnails. Hair that grew between successive head shaves also required delousing, and this was done—on a reciprocal basis—by your neighbour. The extra clothes one needed to wear during this operation were obtained by stripping them from the dead on the pile outside.
    Occasionally we talked about a possible future. What on earth maintained this flicker of hope in us? A few months into the war, the phrase ‘If we survive’ started to precede thoughts and statements about the future. Hope had to be qualified. Inmates were making resolutions: ‘If I survive I’ll never ever be fussy about food, nor waste any.’ ‘If I survive I’ll value every free day and never complain about any trivial thing,’ and so on. My mother hoped that, if I survived, I would be normal in mind and body or, as she put it, sane and not maimed. I hoped desperately that my parents would survive. Goldie hoped that these hellish events would somehow create a better world—as if evil would burn itself out here. Frieda kept repeating that if we survived we should have to testify and bear witness for the rest of our lives.
    For me, to encounter a great intellect is like standing before a magnificent mountain or panorama. Though it makes me feel small and insignificant, I would not want to miss such an enrichment of life. But I now think that behind the barbed wire a highly developed intellect hindered the chances of survival. For those with little education—the young or the dull—it was a short step back on the ladder of development to the primitive condition of self-preservation instincts, not distracted by reflections or despair. To reflect was to be off guard. The effects of malnutrition, constant harassment, fear and beating concentrated my wits on the immediate problems of survival.
    One’s wits had to be concentrated on immediate survival: to watch and listen, to interpret sounds and silences in terms of approaching danger, the better to hide if possible. I was rather like a primitive creature living in the undergrowth of the jungle, surrounded by predators. From down there, given the practicalities of survival, one can see only the bit of the canvas that is in front of one’s face.
    But from the height of a well-developed intellect it was difficult to regress that far. From that height the whole panorama of the Holocaust could be seen and contemplated: its horror could overwhelm.
    On reflection, only much later did I realise how overwhelmed Frieda must have been by