Dear F.

I have been in London since yesterday. My thoughts are even more confused than they were after my release. I came here by plane after violent arguments with the Gestapo, which ended with me having 24 hours to leave the country. H. collected me, I am living at her place now, and I would be quite lost without her. I am barely capable of speaking the language and this enormous city has made a powerful impression on me. I really don’t know whether I like it, it is so big. But that will wear off in the end and is beside the point. It’s much more important to be really free and to be able at last to talk for once without fear and trepidation. You see, the transition to humanity took place rather quickly, and my head feels as dull as it did in the camp.

It is getting better slowly now, since I have been able to talk to H. She is a marvellous person and helps me in all sorts of ways. I really don’t know how I got like this, but I have become a frightful egotist and accept all her help as a matter of course.

Yes, I really wanted to write to you about my experiences in the camp, but it is difficult. however I want to try to describe some of it for you. I will write to you more often, and so you will hear the most important things in small doses.

So, listen: I was picked up on ….. (at the end of May), was kept in a school with many other Jews and waited for what was to happen. Two days later, on Monday, we were suddenly loaded into cars and began the guessing game about where we were going. First along the Elisabethpromenade, then by the Landesgericht [regional court], then up the Mariahilferstraβe. Well, as soon as I saw that I felt much better: then suddenly we were off to Dachau. The journey (to) Dachau was endless torture. Those beasts beat, stabbed and killed. I can’t tell you any more about the journey and don’t want to, because constantly talking about death and murder is now for me – just boring. Enough, I survived.

In Dachau yet another short, delightful and raucous reception. Then it was changing, haircutting and after a 14-hour journey and 12 hours of changing the reception formalities were concluded. Then to work. Ten hours a day of shovelling and pushing wheelbarrows, without looking up, a hellish tempo, and then standing for the Zählappelle, standing, standing and more standing. With this Frondienst it is no surprise that morale in Dachau is poor. Most of the Aryan politische Häftlinge, who were our Vorarbeiter or the Stubenälteste in our barracks, had got into the habit of adopting the SS’s methods of torture. So I was very happy when after three weeks I found a decent Vorarbeiter who took me into his Arbeitskommando and protected me. He was a young student and former member of the SS, who had become convinced that his views were wrong soon after the Machtergreifung. You need a lot of strength or strong friends to see people dying beside you every day.

But F., I can’t be writing to you constantly about the camp, with every word I write another thousand things occur to me. I won’t write any more about the camp for now. Only one thing more, so that you don’t think we had lost all our sense of humour. These verses were thought up in Buchenwald:

In Buchenwald, in Buchenwald

Da sitz' ich viele Wochen bald

Es walten guten milden Geister

Unter den Namen Gildemeister [Gildemeester]

Sind es Menschen oder weiße Schatten

Die hier durch die Sch…. Waten?

[In Buchenwald, in Buchenwald / I’ve been sitting here for weeks now / Kindly spirits are at work /Under the name of Gildermeister [Gildemeester]. / Are they men or white shadows / Who are wading through the sh.... here?]

But now I want to know from you how you got out, what you are doing, etc. Please, dear F., write soon and in detail, I’m very curious. Finally, thank you so much for your telegram.

Greetings to you

Your old friend