She does not have to fear for her fate. She will not die of exhaustion or starvation. She will soon lose her mind and go mad.
I walk back the same route. It is sunny. Beggars [. . .] in the sun, hoping that the warm sunbeams will provide them with life-giving [. . .], with calories, with strength, and with a remedy for hunger, diseases, and cold. A kolumniarz64 or pogotownik65 walks up to one of the boys and kicks him with the tip of his boot to wake him up. This pogotownik bought his boots for 1,000 zlotys and he spent another thousand on his beautiful uniform cap and badge, but the expenses paid off within 6 weeks. What can you do? You have to invest no matter the occupation. Now this 18-year-old employee of the Samaritan service walks around his beat, performing his sanitarian and Samaritan duties in exemplary fashion: he kicks the beggar boy and curses at him. He tells him [. . .] to get out and not to disturb the peace in his beat. The child does not say a word or [. . .] to this brutality. Repulsed, the kolumniarz grabs the boy by the rags and throws him towards the gate. Oh, he has fulfilled his duty conscientiously, or so he feels . . . [. . .] smooth operators, specialists’ pupils, [. . .]. Thus, for instance, this one has clothes [. . .] rags for “professional begging.” This one has learnt to beg in exemplary Polish: “Ladies and gentlemen, take pity on a wretched Jew.” This one does not complain [. . .] Still another one attracts attention with his horribly contorted [. . .]
[25] [. . .] one asks for just 5 groszes. Another one argues that if each passer-by gave him just 5 groszes he would live decently. In his naïveté he cannot comprehend why something so simple is so difficult to execute. Another one wants as many as 10 groszes. Still another begs for just a cup of coffee or tea. But when I told one of them to go a Judenrat or Cento66 aid centre, he altered his demeanour at the very sound of the word Centos. He lost his humble, pleading, miserable expression. He hurled abuse on me and spat on
