I Am A Star

For this week's post I went a bit further back, to Inge Auerbacher's 1993 memoir I Am A Star. I cam across this book purely by accident, when I picked it up at a garage sale several years ago. While lacking the name recognition of Anne Frank or Elie Wiesel, Inge Auerbacher's story is just as heartbreaking and eye-opening as the more well-known looks into the Holocaust.

I Am A Star tells the story of how Inge, along with her parents, were taken to the Terezin concentration camp in 1942, just before her eighth birthday. She recounts the horrors that she witnessed, the pain she suffered, and incorporates the poems she wrote as a young, free girl to help her cope with the life she was forced into. One of those poem "An Angel in Hell" was written about a Czech woman, Mrs. Rinder and her husband, who were kind to Inge, treated her as their own child, shared food and made her a mattress. A deep friendship formed between Inge and the couple. They and their young son Tommy were deported to the gas chamber in Auschwitz in 1944.

"Both would never leave the abyss,
Or be touched again by life's kiss.
I search my heart for an answer, Why, why?
Where was justice, why their sentences to die?"

In another poem,  "Soup", she details the hunger felt by her and her fellow prisoners, describing the soup they were fed as not even fit for animals or completely without taste. Still, the prisoners pushed and fought one another for a bowl and scraped the barrel clean each day.

"Hold Me Tight" was written about Inge's best friend, Ruth, who shared a bunk with Inge for two years. The girls were as close as sisters and shared not only their dreams of the future, but their confusion for the present. Ruth was half-Jewish, but raised Christian. She and her parents were part of the last transports to Auschwitz.

"No, no, don't look at the chimneys--see the blue sky,
My arm is around you to protect you; don't cry.
Come close--let the blows fall on me,
There'll be a day when again, we'll be free."

Even when her and her parents are liberated, having survived the three year hell, she does not feel the sense of relief she expected. Many of the survivors were still suffering from diseases, including typhus and tuberculosis. They were left to wander the outer camps until a bus finally arrived to return them to their homes. Inge writes that of the twelve-hundred who were in their original transport to Terezin, only thirteen survived, including Inge and her parents.

About a year after their liberation, Inge and her parents immigrated to America. She became a US Citizen and went on to earn her college degree fro Queen College. She worked as a chemist for nearly four decades and has go on to publish several books about her experiences at Terezin. She is currently 84 years old.

So why should our young readers read such a devastating story? Why should they relive these horrors? I would say that it's important to remember the past, to avoid making the same mistakes, especially today, when fear and ignorance have begun to take over where open-mindedness and grace used to be. Or that creating a sense of empathy and sympathy will lead to a more compassionate generation. But Inge Auerbacher says it best: "Why should one remember these dreadful events? The death of one innocent child is a catastrophe; the loss of such numbers is unimaginable. Their silent voices must be heard today."