Deportation to Auschwitz

Most of the Jews who were deported to Auschwitz were murdered immediately upon their arrival. For this reason, the testimonies about Auschwitz in our possession are naturally those of the survivors of the camp. The vast majority of the Jews who were deported to Auschwitz were murdered in the gas chambers minutes or hours after their arrival. In the cases we are about to read, Eva Heyman and Moshe Flinker were murdered in Auschwitz. Eva Schloss, Celinka and Erika survived the camp, but lost their families, friends and acquaintances. They lost a considerable part of themselves there: their individuality, their childhood, their innocence, their faith in the world.
"Written in pencil in the sealed cattle-car" by Dan Pagis:

"Here in this Carload

I am Eve
With my son Abel
If you see my older boy
Cain son of Adam
Tell him that I..."

Source: Pagis Dan, "Written in Pencil in The Sealed Railway-Car", in The selected poetry of Dan Pagis, translated by Mitchell Stephan, University of California Press 1989, p. 29.


Eva Heyman:

"May 30, 1944
...We even know already that we can take along one knapsack for every two persons. It is forbidden to put in it more than one change of underwear; no bedding. Rumor has it that food is allowed, but who has any food left? …It is so quiet you can hear a fly buzz. …dear diary, I don't want to die; I want to live even if it means that I'll be the only person here allowed to stay. I would wait for the end of the war in some celler, or on the roof, or in some secret cranny. I would even let the crossed-eyed gendarme, the one who took our flour away from us, kiss me, just as long as they didn't kill me, only that they should let me live. Now I see that the friendly gendarme has let Mariska come in. I can't write anymore, dear diary, the tears run from my eyes, I'm hurrying over to Mariska..."

Source: Eva Heyman, The Diary of Eva Heyman - Child of The Holocaust, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1988, pp. 103-104.