The improvised wooden pencil used by the prisoner Bruno Marcus to document his suffering and the horrors of the camp while he was incarcerated in the Theresienstadt camp. Theresienstadt, 1944.
Bruno Marcus was taken to Theresienstadt at the age of 66, where he was imprisoned from January 1944 until July 1945. During his time in the camp, despite the immense suffering, Bruno decided to document the horrors of daily life. Using the improvised pencil before us, which he ingeniously fashioned from a tree branch in the camp, along with scraps of paper he found, he described the “Small Fortress” area of the camp. This section was where Jews were sent, and approximately 10,000 people died there annually. He recorded the process of extermination, storage of corpses, their cremation, the transportation of ash urns outside the camp, and other camp events.
Marcus secretly wrote in the camp about what he and the prisoners around him endured, usually in great brevity, for fear of being caught while writing. These notes were later published in his book, “I Saw a Thousand Jews Pass Into Nothingness, ” which was released at the end of the war in 1945 (see Dynasty auction 24, item 158). Marcus wrote about his experiences and those of his fellow prisoners with great brevity, often out of fear of being caught in the act of writing. For example, he described eating potato peels—remnants of another inmate’s meal—and consuming a dirty piece of bread he found on the ground: “I scrape leftovers from others’ plates and bowls; you don’t think about hygiene when hunger strikes you day by day, hour by hour, when you lose 20 kilos and feel the weakness in every part of your body…” (from the notes published in “I Saw a Thousand Jews Pass Into Nothingness”). Among his harrowing accounts, Marcus described the execution of 25 prisoners, the youngest being just 16 years old, and how the camp’s censors erased letters he had written to his mother. One particularly painful entry recounted a young man being taken for execution while his father pleaded to die in his place; the Nazis, however, insisted on taking the son. He also documented the condition of Jews who arrived at the camp after four weeks of horrific train journeys—packed tightly, without food or water, in squalid conditions surrounded by filth and excrement. At one point, believing he would not survive, Marcus wrote for future generations: “Among these mountains where so many dead lie, I, too, old and weary, will lay for my final rest.” His book includes accounts of events he heard from inmates who had been in Auschwitz and other camps prior to 1944. Miraculously, Marcus survived. In his notes, he wrote: that when he learned the International Red Cross was working to liberate the camp, he was on the brink of death, suffering from the violent form of dysentery known as enteritis. However, the hope of imminent liberation renewed his strength, and despite his advanced age, he managed to survive.
A confirmation of ownership will be provided to the buyer upon request.
Length: 19 cm. Condition: Good.
