Louis Salomon recalls his room mates in Theresienstadt:
“The room elder was from Vienna, a native Hungarian, 74 years old, an otherwise good guy, but very irascible, he did all kinds of trading with gold, clothing, and such more. No. 2 was an attorney from Breisberg, he too was over 70, a very nice person. No. 3, a physician from the Protectorate, was a very genteel sir who was always hungry. No. 4 was a bank manager, a Zionist and in spite of his profession spurner of money. No. 5 a diploma tradesman from Berlin, a Zionist and a youth leader. No. 6 a fur dealer from Vienna, of Polish nationality. No. 7 a sir from Vienna, who wanted to understand everything, but people didn’t trust him. No. 8 a retired high ranking civil servant in the railways from Prague, who was a nationalistic Czech and thought little of Judaism. No. 9 was a jeweler from Vienna, who would put on talis and tefillin in the morning, but later trick people. No. 10 was a sales representative from Breslau, quarrelsome and opinionated. No. 11 a textile manufacturer from Breslau, a very nice person. No. 12 a holder of a furniture factory in Breslau, a not too pleasant guy. No. 13 a peltmonger from Berlin, who had a shop in the north of the city. No. 15 an invalid traveller from Berlin, stemming from the lowest classes, a cormorant, who couldn’t differentiate between mine and yours. No. 16. a cavalry officer, but I think a cavalry officer from a horse breeding farm, a Hungarian, who was really very unpleasant and everyone tried to avoid him. The house elder was a Czech, too, a former small innkeeper in the countryside, who did his utmost to disadvantage us, German Jews. I too did not belong among his friends, as he neglected me and gave those extra rations to which I as a laborer was entitled to as to someone else.”
YV, O33, 1560
Tonight, we will mark the beginning of #yomhashoah, the day when we commemorate the Jewish Holocaust victims. I am a Holocaust historian, I think of them every day. In my work, I put the Jewish history of the Shoah front and I focus on the experience of the victims.