I fill my mind as much as I can, trying to drown out the sounds of the men’s screams.

One: The potato. The thought of it makes my mouth water, even now.

Two: I have Mutti, we are together.

Three: I have Greta. That’s two people who love me, who I see every single day. It’s more than most people have now.

Four: We heard from Vati and Otto last week, so I know that they are still here, and still alive – or at least they were a week ago.

One of the men who runs the kitchen fought alongside Vati on the Czech front. I think he and Vati are like Greta and me: they will do anything they can to help each other. He’s called Kem. He’s in here because he is from the Roma community: the only people treated as badly as the Jews.

Kem risked his life to bring a note from Vati. He managed to pass it to Mutti while she was preparing the soup.

Otto and I are fine. Stay strong. Love you always.

We couldn’t keep the note, of course. Mutti wanted to. I had to prise it out of her hand.

I went outside and stamped it into the mud, my heart thumping so hard I thought it might beat straight out of my chest. It wouldn’t surprise me if that were possible. I have so little flesh covering me that my ribs stick out like a carcass of an animal that has been picked dry by predators.

But now, here, as I fill my mind with everything I can to block out the screams, I thank whatever God I desperately try to persuade myself might exist that I forced Mutti to let me throw Vati’s note away.

It could be him in front of us now.

The bile rises with that thought and I drag my list of good things back to my mind.

Five: Thereza.

Thereza is our cat. Mine and Greta’s. She isn’t as friendly as Felix and we don’t see her as often, but she is always around somewhere.

We named her after – well, it’s not hard to see what she was named after. Theresienstadt: our holiday home, our model village, our place of safety where no one will harm us!

Did we ever believe those lies? The lies they fed us before we came here and the lies they still spin to the world out there. There are tiny parts of this place that look almost like a holiday camp. Whenever anyone comes to inspect, that is where they take them. That is what they show the world. See, this is how we treat the Jews. We’re doing nothing wrong. They are happy here.

Everything about this place is a lie.