I Have Lived a Thousand Years by Livia Bitton-Jackson

cooked meal. It’s a bowlful of pottage, or cabbage soup with grain.
    This morning the food arrived early. As it stood for hours in the sun, it became putrefied and alive with worms. I noticed a long, white worm wiggling in Mommy’s spoon as she lifted it to her mouth. I shrieked with horror. Mommy was startled; she looked at me with astonishment. “What happened?”
    “Mommy, there’s a worm on your spoon! Look, Mommy, there are hundreds of worms in your bowl! And in mine! Look!”
    “Nonsense! These are not worms. Eat, and leave me alone.”
    “But Mommy, these are worms. Live worms. They crawl. Look.”
    I pick one of the swarming insects out of my bowl and place it on the ground. It begins crawling. Then I pick another. It, too, begins crawling.
    Mommy looks at me with helpless despair. “What are you trying to do? What is your objective? Tell me, what do you want of me?”
    I do not understand. I wanted to save Mommy from a horrible fate: disease, or death. Or simply from the horror of swallowing worms. Instead, she is furious with me. My mother, the finicky lady who had been reluctant to eat in restaurants, and even in friends’ houses, for fear the vegetables, or hands, were not washed thoroughly enough; who baked, not only cookies and cakes, but even our daily bread at home, for fear the flour in bakery goods had not been carefully sifted, now is glaring at me.
    “I can’t leave this food. I am very hungry. Do you want me to die of hunger?” Her voice is beyond recognition. Her facial expression is beyond recognition as she goes on, “And there are no worms in it! Say no more of it!”
    As Mommy continues eating I turn my bowl over, spilling its contents on the ground, and run. I sit on a boulder at a distance, and begin to cry. My God. My dear God, is this actually happening?

A LIEN H EROES
    PLASZOW, JULY 1944
    One hot day in July, about three weeks after our arrival, our lunch is interrupted by an unusual sight. We are working in the Planierung commando that day, digging and leveling the hilltop right above the camp. We are sitting on the slope and eating our soup directly overlooking the camp’s main square, when large covered vans appear.
    Men and women in civilian clothes descend from the vans, and are roughly herded into the SS command barrack. The civilians are well dressed and have an air of independence about them. Like people. Not like camp inmates.
    One of the men makes a defiant gesture as an SS man jostles him forward with the point of his gun. The civilian, a tall man in a gray trench coat, turns and jostles the German. A shot is heard and the civilian in the trench coat collapses. Then he stands up and starts to run. Another shot. The civilian tumbles. A third shot levels him prone on the ground. The civilian begins to crawl, drawing a line of red in the dust. The German soldier goes wild. He discharges a barrage of bullets into the crawling figure, then starts kicking him uncontrollably. All the other civilians are jostled and shoved at gunpoint until they disappear behind the door of the SS command barrack. The single figure in the gray trench coat remains lying in the dust in the centerof the square, a pool of blood ever widening about him.
    We go on eating our soup. There is no time to pause: This is Jacko’s commando, the Kapo under whom there is no talking, no stopping for rest, and barely enough time to finish your soup.
    The windows of our Block face the windows of the SS command barrack, and in the evening we can see the interrogation. The civilians are brought into the room of the commandant one by one, and questioned. They are severely beaten in the course of questioning. The shouts of the SS and the shrieks of pain keep us awake all night long.
    At the morning Zählappell in the main square I chance a surreptitious glance toward the flagpole, where the civilians, about sixty people, are lined up. This morning they look more like rag dolls than people. They are haggard,