by Simon Jacobson, as heard from a Holocaust survivor, who was an 11-year-old child in the camps. Today he is living in the United States.
Chanukah 1944, Auschwitz
I will never forget the last Chanukah in the barracks. Most of us were so consumed with scraping together any morsel while avoiding the attention of the guards that we had no inkling which day in the year it was. Especially in those last weeks before the liberation, the Nazis were particularly unpredictable and cruel, and the chaos only made matters worse.
Yet there were a few who always knew the exact dates. They would tell the rest of us that today is Shabbos, Pesach and other significant days. On this particular day a man would tell me that it was Chanukah.
That morning I went to the infirmary to try smuggling out some balm - anything to help relieve my father's open sores. His disease - I am not sure what it was - was eating his body away, and whenever I could sneak over to see him I would see him silently struggling for some relief. As a child I was completely overcome by the sight of my suffering father.
That particular day, when I finally snuck over to my father's bunk, he was no longer there. I became frantic.
An older gentleman, whom I did not know but I had often seen talking to my father, came over to console me. He too did not know when my father was taken, to this day I don't know if it was the disease or a Nazi bullet that took my father to heaven, but his was a calming presence.
