not to get anything to eat until the next morning. November 22, 1933 They woke us at 5:00 or 5:30 each morning. There were about 300 or 400 men to a barrack. We had double or triple bunks. The bunks were actually single beds, but two people had to sleep on one bunk. We laid on straw. We were told to get out of the barracks as fast as we could. We were arranged in groups of five with just small distances between us. The SS trooper would come by and start counting one, two, three, four, five. If he miscounted, he went over it again we stood there two hours. I kept wondering why none of us tried to overpower this lone guard who had just a small pistol. In the morning we got metal cups and spoons. We were each given two slices of bread or watered down oatmeal. The coffee was toasted acorns ground up. It tasted terrible. Soup was served at lunch time around twelve or one o'clock. We got soup or just plain water in a metal tin like a mess kit. It wasn’t even hot. We each had a spoon, and we were fishing all the time in the soup to see if there was anything in it to eat, unfortunately we rarely found anything in there. In the evening we got a slice of bread about a quarter of an inch thick. November 23 1933 There was always this sickly sweet smell in the air. We saw a large chimney belching smoke 24 hours a day. We saw German military trucks and buses going back and forth. December 5.1933 We made the best we could of the situation. My brother Phil had hidden a book by the German poet Goethe. We read it twice. We memorized it. We quoted from it. We had a deck of cards. We played card games. There wasn't anything else we could do, we tried to keep occupied so we didn’t have to face reality. December 8,1933 I was assigned laying stone for the road. They only gave us half a portion of food, I am getting weaker everyday. December 14, 1933 Nothing grew in Auschwitz. There was not a tree, not a , no grass ...
