KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
and child was rounded up every day at six o’clock in the morning, and guards walked us about three kilometers to work on the road construction. Small children and old people, too, were forced to go to the road construction site. My sister Chava and I worked on the road. My job was to break large stones into pebbles. I sat on a big rock and hammered all day long to break up the stones. There were approximately twenty peo- ple of all ages, a whole row of people sitting and smashing rocks into pebbles. Once we had a pile, women would come with hand platforms, and we would shovel the pebbles onto the platforms. Then the pebbles would be brought over to the road construction site and put where the foreman wanted them. There was a military kitchen, just a big kettle of water in which they boiled a small clump of kasha, and at noon there was a break for a half hour. Every little bit of food was precious. People made sure no crumb fell on the ground. We used to march with our shovels over our shoulders, and one day, as I was walking, I slipped, and my shovel fell. It hit the heel of my right foot and seriously injured it, although it did not cut through all the way to the tendon. I had a lot of trouble getting bet- ter. The wound would appear to heal — a scab would form — but then it would start to ooze all over again. I could not put a shoe on that foot so I wore a sandal instead. After working twelve- to fourteen-hour days, we were giv- en a small portion of bread, not more than 200 grams and usu- ally about half that much, and some watery soup. Those who could not do physical labor — small children, the sick, and the elderly—got nothing. They had to share the forced laborers’ ra- tions, but the workers were already so weak from lack of food that many of them could not continue to work. Housewives cooked meals from nothing. Infants had nothing to eat. Their moth- ers’ milk had long since dried up, and there were no domestic animals to milk. Some ate grass and a few dared to knock on peas- ants’ doors to ask for potatoes.
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