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Gertrud Kolmar: The Woman and the Beasts:
“I Am Going the Way 1 Have Chosen to Go. . . .”
- Abstract
ON OCTOBER 26, 1941, a Jewish woman in Berlin wrote a letter to a relative who had reached a haven of safety outside Germany. At that time the deportation of German Jews to the extermination camps in the East had been proceeding for more than a year and a half, and the sense of their lost liberty, and of their helplessness and hopelessness in the face of the menacing future, weighed heavily on those still remaining behind. She wrote: “Believe me when I say that come what may I shall not be unhappy, I shall not despair, because I know that I am going the way I have chosen in my heart to go…. So many of us, through the centuries, have gone that way, why should I wish a different one? Even now, in these last moments, my father thought of emigrating to Uruguay to join his brother. There is a question whether it is still possible to do that; he wanted to leave for my sake-his own life he regards as ended -but I said no. It would be something forced
on me solely by external circumstances; I don’t want to run away from what I feel in my heart I ought to undergo. In the past I never knew, as I know now, how strong I am, and knowing this makes me very happy….”
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