Translation of a chapter from Vasily Grossman's book "Life and Fate"

A translation project for Holocaust Remembrance Day, published in a variety of online sources and continues to be published on each Holocaust Remembrance Day for years.
The text is taken from Vasily Grossman's novel "Life and Fate" and is based on the last letter Vasily Grossman received from his mother, who was imprisoned in the Berdichev ghetto. Until the end of his life, Grossman continued to write letters to his dead mother, and the content of the last letter he received from her he published in full in his book as the last letter sent by the mother of one of the novel's protagonists to her son, the physicist Viktor Strum.