Rutka’s first entry dated January 19, 1943, begins: “I cannot grasp that it is already 1943, four years since this hell began. The days pass by quickly; each day looks just like the previous one. Every day it’s the same frozen and oppressive boredom.”
In these early days of Rutka’s captivity, Rutka sees friends, talks about the book she reads and describes her physical appearance. Although her tone is still hopeful, on January 27, 1943, she writes: “I would like to pour out on paper all the turmoil I am feeling inside but I’m absolutely incapable.”
On January 30, 1943, Rutka writes: “The rope around us is getting tighter and tighter. Next month there should already be a ghetto, a real one, surrounded by walls. In the summer it will be unbearable.”
By February 5, 1943, she is having existential dilemmas. Rutka writes: “Oh, good Lord. Well, Rutka, you’ve probably gone completely crazy. You are calling upon God as if He exists. The little faith I used to have has been completely shattered. If God existed, He would have certainly not permitted those human beings be thrown alive into furnaces, and the heads of little toddlers be smashed with butts of guns or be shoved into sacks and gassed to death…It sounds like a fairy tale. Those who haven’t seen this would never believe it’s not a legend; it’s the truth. Or the time when they beat an old man until he became unconscious, because he didn’t cross the street properly. This is already absurd; it’s nothing as long as there won’t be Auschwitz…and a green card…The end…When will it come?”
On February 6, 1943, Rutka writes: “Something has broken in me. When I pass a German, everything shrinks in me. I don’t know whether it is out of fear or hatred…” In this same entry, Rutka discusses her newly awakened feelings of womanhood and a boy named Janek for whom she has conflicting emotions.
Later in this entry, Rutka writes: “Oh, I forgot the most important thing. I saw how a soldier tore a baby, who was only a few months old, out of its mother’s hands and bashed his head against an electric pylon. The baby’s brain splashed on the wood. The mother went crazy.
“I am writing this as if nothing has happened. As if I were in an army experienced in cruelty. But I’m young, I’m 14, and I haven’t seen much in my life, and I’m already so indifferent. Now I am terrified when I see “uniforms.” I’m turning into an animal waiting to die. One can lose one’s mind thinking about this.”
On March 7, 1943, Rutka’s deepening depression is expressed: “I don’t understand why I can’t pour out my heart even on paper.” Rutka’s depression is certainly understandable. Her dreams are often of escape, either into sleep or into visions of pure flight – anywhere to get away from what she describes later in the March 7 entry as “all this grayish rottenness.”
“And now it’s enough, let’s go to sleep. There is nothing like sleep, as it says in the poem “The Happy House” [by] [Ch]odasiewicz…
“Bitter ashes in a sad heart
Quiet sleep in a dark glass
Who hasn’t drunk from a dark glass?
When bitter ashes are in your heart
And in the glass lies quiet sleep?”
