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Golda's Stories of the Holocaust Part III - Elevation Section 2 – Immigration to Israel Chapter 2 – My memories' notebooks They are thrown away to
the sea together with our entire luggage. After several weeks on the sea, we
received suddenly a special instruction from the commanders: Every one of us,
six hundred passengers, must throw away immediately his entire luggage to the
sea. Dump them within a moment. It is forbidden to leave anything. From Italy sailed six hundred men
in an illegal immigration. Their ship was damaged in the high
seas. All of them had to go up aboard
'Haim Arlozorov" and continue with us. We did not leave anything for
ourselves. I too threw away all the things which
I brought. I left for myself only the coat
that I bought in Norksheping. I said in my heart that it will
be a souvenir from Sweden. I will make a little cushion out of it, which I will
put under my head when I will go to sleep, and so it will not take a lot of
space. In Vingoker, when I didn't work
yet, I did not have what to do. Therefore I decided to write all the affairs
that happened to me from the beginning of the war. I wrote many stories. I had nothing else to think about.
I wanted that one day they will be
published, and the world will know how much people had suffered. When everybody slept, I, every
night, used to deal with the memories. There was on the nights a patrol
of two Swedish guards, who checked if the girls are asleep and there are no
problems. They saw me regulary sit and
write by the window. They used to ask with their
hands: "What do you write"? I did not know yet to explain it in
Swedish. I had to indicate with my finger that
there are shootings and there is war, I marked on the arm the symbol of Hitler,
or touched the neck and demonstrated the suffering and death. They used to knock on the window
quietly, laugh and go away. I wrote a huge diary. I gathered many stories, which I
wrote during a long time. There was already a suitcase
filled with paperwork. When we threw away to the sea all
our objects, I threw also this suitcase to the waves. I threw it away horribly, in a
lot of anger and frustration. A lot of work went down to the
drain. The passengers from the damaged
ship came aboard, and brought with them their entire luggage. The ship got filled to the brim. We were crowded as herrings, on
the floor and everywhere else. We accepted this in peace. We
threw our stuff in dignity. The atmosphere was good. We felt
okay, and did not quarrel. |