[35] 22 August. What should we do? It is becoming worse and worse. Lvov is starved. Deliveries are forbidden. All turnpikes are guarded by the police, who confiscate all merchandise. Not risking it to come into the city, the peasants are trading outside the city limits. The optimists are predicting that this “transitory period” will continue for a short while, so one need not do anything to survive. But the slogan “anything for survival”, which has been topical everywhere for two and a half years, has become too unpopular as it was too often and too naïvely overused under all wartime conditions. Everybody is already well aware that our standard of living has fallen below a human level. Even though our mentality and consciousness are perhaps reluctant to admit it, increasingly large doses are making us more and more callous with every day. We are adapting very quickly. We have already become sub-human and have only the most primitive wishes and requirements: a piece of bread or soup to stay alive … Survive … how? Live on what? Live how? Live where? The mind will not answer these questions. But a sub-human does not reason as instincts are the only active mechanism.
27 August. The life of the Community. The organisation is proceeding fast. The best administrative, self-governmental, communal, legal, and medical professionals are offering their services for free. There is already a surplus of clerks. So far the following departments have been organised: the Department of Labour, the Department of Housing, and the Department of Services (for furniture, taxes, furnishings, etc.). The Jewish self-government is slowly being established of its own accord. We have already had a foretaste of the Jewish administration. We still do not know the extent and scope of the Community’s power, but we can already see that it is enormous, for the Community makes decisions in matters such as on deportation to forced labour and camps, imposition of taxes and tributes, confiscation of furniture and furnishings, and loss or acquisition of a flat or assigned accommodation. The doctors’ commissions, which exempt the sick from forced labour, are biased, merciless, thoughtless, and uncivil. They extort money from workers to exempt them from forced labour. This vile procedure does not differ at all from the most primitive bargaining of peddlers, conducted with the same accompaniment of curses, threats, trickery, and criminal methods. [36] Nor is obtaining an unpaid job in the Community an easy or simple matter. One cannot achieve anything without favouritism. One must force one’s way through with one’s elbows, scream, lie, and cheat. Fair methods will achieve
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