[1] St[anisław] Różycki
March 1942
I cross Śliska Street early in the morning. At the mouth of Komitetowa Street I am struck by an everyday, sadly commonplace image: the corpse of a little girl is lying on the sidewalk. Hence, I am not struck by that fact itself, but by the fact that the corpse is naked. Have the beggars already managed to rob the corpse of the last of its rags? Meanwhile, before I reach the spot, some “merciful” people perform a macabre ghetto ceremonial, already consecrated by tradition—that is, they cover the corpse with a newspaper, which they weigh down with stones on the sides. I come closer, I take a closer look: a sick girl no older than 10, an emaciated, skinny body deformed by diseases but still very fresh. I am thinking about the mystery of the nakedness of this [2] unknown and unidentified child and despite the commonness of such images I cannot explain it to myself.
After a while a black cart rolls up. It looks as if from the times of epidemics, when the plague-stricken or those infected with cholera were brought to the cemetery in large numbers. A hearse driver wheels around his beat, collecting the corpses on his streets like a garbage man or like a dogcatcher—a “murderer” of dogs, who also cleans the streets by catching stray vagabonds. He skilfully put [the body] into the black abyss of a big, closed box which reeks with a rotten putrid stench, then closed it and left. From then
