999 by Heather Dune Macadam

Author:Heather Dune Macadam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Citadel Press
Published: 2019-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

ROSH HASHANAH, THE Jewish New Year and High Holy days, arrived with the first blush of fall. Golden birch leaves flickered to the ground, covering the mass burial pits with blankets of yellow. Murmurations of starlings swooped above a sea of suffering humanity. With new arrivals coming into the camp, the first girls were able to learn when Yom Kippur started. As the sun went down behind the watchtowers, many girls, despite their gnawing hunger, began to fast.

“What did I fast from?” Bertha Berkowitz (#1048) asks. “We fasted all the year, but I fasted.”

Fasting renewed their faith and spirit, gave them courage to resist the temptation of despair. Despite the daily injustices they were suffering, the SS could not take away their faith.

It was not unusual for the SS to use Jewish holidays as an opportunity to punish Jews and foul sacred traditions. A few weeks after Yom Kippur, the Jewish harvest holiday arrived. Sukkot is considered a happy celebration of harvest and plenty, so it was the perfect moment to make a harvest of Jews. Starting on the first of October and over the next three days, the women’s camp did no work at all. Instead, the girls were forced to stand at attention all day long—naked—waiting to march past the selection committee, which gave the thumb to life or the thumb to death—to the left or to the right. By the end of Sukkot, 5,812 women had been sent to the gas. The hospital ward was empty.

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