Tag #116069 - Interview #91352 (Chasia Spanerflig)

It is difficult to describe our life in the ghetto, to speak of the atrocities committed by the Fascists, and our constant daunting fear of imminent execution. A human being can get used to anything and it seemed to me then that we couldn’t have a different life. People tried to make their lives better. Two surreptitious schools were opened in the ghetto, where children were taught. There was a Jewish library with a pretty good selection of books. Even an amateur theater was organized. Here wonderful unforgettable plays by Sholem Aleichem [22] and other playwrights were staged. The strangest thing was that even Hitler’s soldiers attended those performances at leisure. They sympathized with the characters and even cried, watching the suffering. It seemed that humanity was not alien to them, but they forgot human feelings when they had to fulfill the orders of their commander.