I Have Lived a Thousand Years

“For you, the third generation, the Holocaust has slipped into the realm of history, or legend. Or, into the realm of sensational subjects on the silver screen. Reading my personal account I believe you will feel — you will know — that the Holocaust was neither a legend nor a Hollywood fiction but a lesson for the future. A lesson to help future generations prevent the causes of the twentieth-century catastrophe from being transmitted into the twenty-first.” 

Bitton-Jackson’s memoir is classified as a young adult book, and this section addresses her audience of teen readers two generations removed from the Holocaust. They are growing up in a world of rapid technological advancement, which has become even more marked in the more than twenty years that have passed since her book’s publication. Responsibility is a theme of her book, and here she applies it to the next generation. It will be up to them to ensure the future does not repeat the horrors of the past. 

“Why should Daddy show me the spot? Why? Why should I know about the jewels? Why? Tell me, why? Tell me! I don’t want to know the spot! I don’t want to be the one to survive! I don’t want to survive alone! Alone, I don’t want to live. Oh, God, I don’t want to live if you don’t! I don’t want to know about anything! I don’t want to know!” 

Before being deported to the ghetto, Jewish residents surrender their valuables to authorities. The Friedmanns hide their most precious and valuable items in their house’s cellar. Markus shows each family member the hiding place since they do not know who will survive. Bitton-Jackson cannot bear the thought of surviving alone. She is just thirteen years old, still a child, but asked to take on the responsibility of an adult.  

“I don’t know if I am proud to be a Jew. I had never thought about it. But I know I do not want to be marked as a Jew or as anything else. I am hurt and outraged at being made to wear a glaring label, a thing intended to set me apart and humiliate me. A criminal, or Jew, what’s the difference in their intent? What’s the difference in my shame? I am no longer a human being. I am singled out at will, an object.” 

Following the German occupation, one of the first changes authorities institute is mandating that all Jewish residents wear a yellow Star of David. It is intended to mark them as “other” and enable monitoring of the Jewish population.