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This material, copyright 1990 by Sidney Iwens, is excerpted from his prize-winning book "How Dark the Heavens". This material may not be reprinted or reproduced in any form without the expressed written permission of Sidney Iwens.
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Throughout the war it seemed very important to me, as it did to many others, that there be left an authentic record of what actually happened to us. And although we had very little hope of survival and the ability to tell all, something compelled me to record dates and make notations on scraps of paper. In effect this became a crude sort of diary. Even in the midst of these experiences, part of my mind seemed to be observing, and committing to memory in sharp detail, the events I was witnessing. My personal reactions often surprised me. I was struck by the fact that, in extreme situations, people don't always react in the expected way. The scraps of paper, along with all my other personal effects, disappeared when I arrived at Concentration Camp Stutthoff, thirty kilometers east of Danzig (now Gdansk), in July of 1944, but the memories have always remained clear and sharp in my mind. I was liberated on the last day of April in 1945, and about a month later, as soon as I was well enough, I once again compiled the dates and began to record all that had happened to me during the war. My primary concern then was to get everything down on paper, and though the diary was written in an irregular and rambling fashion--I could only work at it when time permitted--after some years I managed to set down a great deal of relevant information.
It was always my hope that I could some day arrange the material in a manner that would make clear exactly what had happened to us. But it was not until 1983 that my personal circumstances finally permitted me to devote the necessary time to the work I had started thirty-eight years earlier. I knew full well that there were great difficulties in trying to convey everything I saw, experienced, and thought during those years. To simplify this task, I decided to record everything in chronological order as the events unfolded. The entries document events occurring between June 22, 1941, in Janova, Lithuania, and April 30, 1945, in Camp Allach near Munich. These events were a microcosm of the Jewish experience throughout the Baltic States, during which, especially in the first few months of the war, most of the Baltic Jews were murdered. The notes I took down in 1945 were a major resource. But there is no discrepancy between what I remember now and what I write shortly after the war. For, on a certain level, I have never really left those times behind. I relive them every day.
I am grateful for the support and encouragement of my wife Ita, and of my children, Ilana and Richard Kennell, and Judy and Roy Eidelson.