The Worst Way

As a teenager, I was a curious one, I wondered about everything and anything, usually after some snooping around I would find my answer, but there was one thing I could never understand. What was the worst way to die for a human being? I am pretty sure the easiest way to die would be in one’s sleep, but what was the worst one? What was the most terrible death imaginable to man? I’ve read about one man who died in Italy from lack of sleep, that must’ve been a terrible fate. Was it the worst fate though?

I asked everyone from friends to my parents, each time I got another answer, some said Tuberculosis or The Plague, and others said that death by burning was the worst. One of my teachers even said dying due to madness was the worst, back then I didn’t even think it was possible.

Right now, I know for sure, you can die from madness.

I even asked my Rabbi what he thinks about the worst way to die, he said that a man who is humiliated and stripped of his pride (referring to some sort of Judaic martyrdom) before death, regardless of the cause of death is the worst kind of death for a man. From a Jewish religious standpoint, I guess he is right, if a man is condemned to die and everything that represents him turns to the tool of his destruction that is horrid. The Rabbi’s answer, as wise as he was, did not satisfy me and the question, what is the worst death imaginable to humans, stood unresolved.

Back in thirty-nine, the Germans conquered Poland, they were far more advanced than us, it’s a shame to admit but our once prosperous country was reduced to ruble in three weeks. The way they were treating the local population was inhuman, they saw the Poles as nothing more than wild dirty animals that needed to be shackled and later put down. As bad as it seemed, we had it far worse, the Gypsies and we.

They forced the whole Jewish population of Lodz and the whole area around it into a tiny square made up of two kilometers in each direction. Almost half of the tiny cage we were shoved into had no buildings at all. Can you imagine this?

Back then, I couldn’t imagine this kind of scenario to live in too, as for right now, well that’s my home now and I guess I am fine with it.

The Germans forced us to wear this yellow badge on our clothes, and were forbidden from leaving this new Ghetto they’ve built for us. It was bad, but it was bearable. What became unbearable under the German occupation was the fact that we were put on rations, small food rations for each person living inside the ghetto. We were supposed to get around the eleven hundred calories a day, but even this tiny kind of intake never came.

I was working at a textile factory as a nineteen year old. Every day at noon, we would get our lunch. A bowl of watery green soup with about four pieces of potato swimming in there, after drinking this so called soup we had to get back to work, it was a hard time. We were working the machines on low energy, but we tried forgetting the one thing that was on all of our minds, with humor and other ways to lift our spirits.

Hunger

The hunger never our minds, it never left our bodies. I recall people counting the pieces of potato they got in their bowls and every time there were less than four pieces, people would ask the catering girls to put another piece of potato or two in their bowls. Usually they got the missing pieces back, but sometimes they did not.

Hunger

Everyone was affected by this, at a certain point my family and I, we managed to save a loaf of bread up to eight days at a time, imagine this – a two-kilogram bread loaf shared between five people lasting up to eight days. My youngest brother, he had it the worst, so I would give him my piece for the next day, sometimes even the day after that. When those days came and I had no slices of bread left for myself, I would go outside pluck some grass and have my mother cook it for me with some salt.

Hunger

The lack of food drove us all mad, we started make believing that whenever we were eating bread or some sort of usually uneaten vegetation it was something better, something like a herring or pierogi. We all started deceiving ourselves that bread and grass or potato peels were gourmet dishes.

Hunger

I used to own a dog, a black Labrador retriever, named Cienmy, for his dark fur color.  The dog died from starvation a few months into our introduction to the ghetto.

We made sausage out of him.

Hunger

We did not care, not one bit that our faith forbade it, we didn’t even care what our Lord would do to us for this, honestly, it never even crossed our minds.

Hunger

We were driven to the point of making food from the beloved family pet, and hell it tasted great at that point.

Hunger

We cut this sausage into tiny slices and ate it with our bread, we’d sniff it like it had the most delightful odor in the world, We’d sniff these tiny pieces of dog sausage as if they were Roses freshly picked from a fine garden.

Hunger

We would take the sausage off the bread before taking a bite; we would save Cienmy for last.

Hunger

I found my own dog to have a great taste.

Around a year after the beginning of the rations, people had gone thin. People whom I was used to seeing as fat and wide were now as thin as I was, everyone became thin and skeletal, and no one was spared the effects of starvation. Our bodies became weak and limp. I used to play football with my friends in the past, but by that point, I couldn’t stir up enough energy to take part in any kind of sportive activity. In addition, I’ve become distant from everyone by that point. I’ve become apathetic to everything and everyone around me.

We all became like this; cold, distant, not caring only seeking to fill our bellies somehow, bellies that by that point looked loose and bloated.

Do you see yourself dying from a cold? No?

Well, that’s what was happening here, once a person was starting to cough or sneeze, it was a matter of time until they’d just pass from this Hell to the afterlife, hopefully to The Most High’s graceful lap.

Hunger

Everyone had gone weak and sick.

Hunger

We were all just shades of what we were a few years prior.

Hunger

We couldn’t walk, we were too weak and too scared. Once you fell, you couldn’t get up on your own.

Hunger

I saw people fall in the middle of the street and just lay there, hopeless, unable to move themselves upwards. Most did not even try to get up.

Hunger

People just passed the fallen and didn’t even take a glimpse at their direction. Most were too scared to do so in fear of falling themselves.

Hunger

The lack of vitamins and calcium caught up to me too, I felt my legs losing strength.

Hunger

I fell down today, unable to feel my legs, I did not even try to get up, I just looked up at the sky. The sky is beautiful. Full of shades of blue and white, clouds forming all these lovely shapes, the sun shines as it always did, unaware of the hell beneath its gleaming light.

Hunger

Hunger would not leave my mind, not even as I lay down here, in the middle of the road.

Well at last, I’ve my answer.

Oh God, My chest feels like it is being crushed from both sides, for the first time in three years a feeling has overshadowed my constant hunger. Thank God…

Even if it is this terrible pain… thank God, I am feeling something other than hunger!

Hahahaha, It’s so good to feel something other than hunger for once…

Hahahahaha… and I’ve also….

Hahahahahaha…

Found what is the worst way to…