Alfred Derkminsta

Alfred Derkminsta

December 2, 1938

I don’t know what but for some reason today doesn’t feel like a regular day. It doesn’t feels like any other normal working day for me as it probably does for any other SS officer. I just cant put my finger on it. The role call was normal. The Jews were all here, all 10,000 of them were counted and sent to work. Selection was normal, people got chosen to go to the crematorium and others were sent back to go to work. Personally in their situation I would rather be put to rest forever then work this undeserved torture. As I have written before and I will restate this now, the only reason that I am an SS officer is because I only joined because I wanted to go with what everyone else was doing and now I am afraid of what would happen if I quit. After selection the others got there soup and there ration of bread. I feel sad to see the Jews fight each other for food and I wish I could give them more. It’s a war going on with the prisoners, a war of survival. sons turning on fathers for food, friends nearly killing each other for that little left over soup in their bowl. After that another roll call went on and nothing different exept for the Jews that were already cremated, so there was a little more then 100 Jews that couldn’t be accounted for. Then when all the prisoners were sent to the blocks so they could rest and more can come in. New Jews were already waiting to be selected. I watched as the commander picked out the weak and the strong that were worthy to keep. I noticed that most of the people who were chosen to live were within 18 to 40 years old and they were male. As for the females, I only saw a good 5 that were allowed to live and deep down I knew that they will die soon and won’t live through all of this tragedy.