By 1943, my father and I had ended up in the Southeastern territory of Nice, France. However, during this time Nice was under Italian control. This was a great help because Italians were not interested in persecuting Jews. Life had just begun to turn itself around. I was finally learning a little bit of French and adjusting to my new life which, now included a new stepmom. She was Jewish as well. Nice had become a Jewish refuge in France with over 5,000 Jews.
We had adapted to more open lifestyle, using our real names to book hotels, openly congregating in the streets, having a home that was safe. All of that was lovely until the Germans found out the Italians had signed the armistice and, they began to raid the hotels in Nice. Germans began deporting more than 1,500 Jews from Nice and I was one of them. When we were loaded onto the trains, we were told we were going to Auschwitz but no one knew of the gas chambers there.
Once we had arrived in Auschwitz, I was at once, pulled out of the box car and separated from my father. I wish I knew what this meant. One of us was likely to die immediately and the other likely to die after some months of laborious work, but would he be killed or would I? I never saw him again. I cried out to him but could not comprehend his muffled response.
Me and the people in my line were herded and shoved into a room where they shaved every inch of our bodies. Germans used human hair to make fabrics like wool to utilize during the winter. Furthermore, shaving helped deal with lice in concentration camps. They harvested the hair from Jews to make cloth for uniforms, rope, carpets, boot liners, and even bombs. Women's hair was valued more than men's because it was thicker and longer. Work prisoners would have their heads shaved upon entrance of the camp and immediately after death in the gas chambers, hair would be "shorn" off the heads of corpses.
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