Dr. Michel Bergman

... The second funeral, which took place either a day before or a day later, was for a small girl, four-year-old Basja Bergman, the only daughter of the Latin teacher, Dr. Michel Bergman, and his wife, Nusja. This small angel was smothered to death in our bunker on the first day of the liquidation when she awakened crying and we heard Nazi soldiers searching the house above. Returning to my house at night from the factory, I bur- ied the little girl in the garden, a few feet from the win- dow, through which her mother passed me her rigid corpse covered in a white sheet. Mrs. Bergman, unable to accept the reality of her daughter’s death, asked: ‘‘Maybe she is still alive?” ...