As She Headed to Auschwitz Gas Chamber She Wrote This

Source-Newser- That Vilma Grunwalds letter even exists is extraordinary. She penned it in the minutes before she was gassed at Auschwitz addressed it to her husband and handed it to a Nazi guard who did the improbabledelivered it to the man who was also imprisoned at the camp. The Washington Post reports she accompanied her eldest child a 16-year-old named John who limped to the gas chambers. The Indianapolis Star has the story of the July 11 1944 letter which has for the last four years resided at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Im always reluctant to say its the only such document ever created says the museums chief acquisitions curator but to the best of our knowledge it is the only surviving letter written at the concentration camp prior to a gassing. Grunwalds son Misa (who now goes by Frank and lives northeast of Indianapolis) learned of the letter as an 11-year-old in 1946 but did not read it until after his fathers 1967 death. Frank tells the Star that what he found most moving was the 11-sentence letters tone: free of anger or resentment and focused only on him and his father. It reads in part: The famous trucks are already here and we are waiting for it to begin.