Her care was faithful but she seemed oblivious to the hungry soul inside me. She washed my scalp wound but made no attempt to comb my matted hair. Each passing day there were fewer and fewer bits of dried blood on the pillow. Finally she cut my hair on the two spots of my scalp in order to keep the wound clean. The deep round hole in front of my ankle and the wounds in my back were still painful. The torments of my mind partially overcome, I wanted to ask questions, yet I did not. As long as I did not know definitely, I could hope. At such moments I was almost glad of the woman’s lack of sympathy. Her most expressive kindness was when she placed her hand on my head when I felt nauseated, but that hand was too much of a reality and always a fresh spur to loneliness. The nausea attacks became routine under the incessant crying. The woman did everything in her power to relieve them, everything except to extend a sympathetic word. Uncertainty was tearing my heart. One minute I longed desperately for the woman to talk. The next minute I watched her with horror for fear she would. Perhaps she was waiting for me to grow strong enough to hear the truth--the last thing I wanted to hear. If I could only be told that the others were being cared for, I would not murmur at this temporary separation, and the pain would not be so great. The moment came when my torture boiled to the surface. The woman was dressing my wounds when the desire to know the answers became overwhelming. “Where am I?” I whispered. She hesitated, then in a low voice I could hardly catch, she said, “In a little room underneath a house.” Then she added, after a pause, “It is very dangerous; never talk aloud lest someone might hear.” “The others?” I gasped. It was out--the question. If I could only retrieve it. Suspense. I thought she never would answer. She turned her face away and said, “All gone. Please ask me no more, that is all I know.” She rushed to the ladder and went away. All gone. I had known it all the time but would not admit it. Yet everything had happened so quickly, I could not be sure. The excitement, the running up and down the stairs, the confusion, the room filled with rough-looking men. The woman with dishevelled hair; who was she? Was all this a vision or a reality? To this day I’ll never know. Yurovsky, the most vicious man in the world swaggered after Father, whispering things I could not hear. Father’s shocked face, Mother’s trembling, her slumping back in her chair: all this horror together kept reappearing in my consciousness. The words, “All gone,” whirled around my head flying out at me from all directions at once. Those soft blue clouds which I imagined carried them rapidly through the clear skies. I still could not believe it. Perhaps only Father and Mother are gone, and brother and sisters are somewhere in a prison.