My Holocaust

by Tova Reich

  He understood, however, that he could not wait there indefinitely until the staff strolled leisurely in, belching their breakfasts of black bread and blood sausage, to continue their cynical diversion of the profits from the spoils of this mind-boggling Jew-killing project in which every last one of them was directly or indirectly complicit. He wanted at least to be able to truthfully report to Arlene, and have witnesses who could corroborate his story, that he had tried—that he had gotten past the gate of the convent and maybe through the front door, even if he never actually succeeded in seeing Nechama. And what if by some miracle he did get to see her? He was on a very tight schedule, with a commitment in concrete to meet the others by two in Birkenau. So, giving that stubborn door a furious kick, which, he recognized instantly, hurt him more than it would ever hurt them, he hobbled around to the back of the administration building, where, suddenly, rising to his right, he was confronted by the wrought-iron entrance gate to the original camp with that terrific old sick joke immortalized on top, “Arbeit Macht Frei,” and its underlying meaning, Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate, showing through like the sepia cartoon of the creator’s true intention and design. Beyond that gate he could see the black wooden kitchen alongside of which the camp orchestra used to be stationed morning and night, setting the beat—adagio, andante, allegretto, allegro, presto—the highest cultural expression of the most advanced civilized nation on earth, playing Beethoven and Schubert for the self-improvement and edification not to mention the enjoyment of the slaves as they marched in their wooden clogs through the gate to and from the work that the motto above promised would set them free. Who is the bigot who claims that Huns have no sense of humor?

  The Arbeit Macht Frei gate was padlocked, Norman could see, but the orchestra space was filled with dazed creatures who had been overcome by the subtext, who had entered there and abandoned all hope, wandering about lost and aimless like a fresh crop of the dead newly delivered to the Inferno. This was Mickey Fisher’s crowd, Norman realized—Buddhists, Hare Krishnas, Christian monks and nuns, Sufis, New Age Jews, Rastafarians, Native Americans, Vietnam veterans, holistic healers, hippies, Rainbow Family and spiritual seekers of all ages. They were locked into the death camp, while he, Norman, clutching the iron stakes of the gate in both translucent white-knuckled fists, was locked out. A young spectacularly freckled woman wearing a long ruffled gauzy orange skirt and nothing else other than a wreath of wildflowers in her tangled red hair approached. “I just want to say that I’m wearing this skirt out of deference to the dead,” she felt it necessary to explain, assuming, in her endearing self-absorption, which reminded him so poignantly of Nechama when she was younger, that Norman had recognized at once that she was compromising her principles as an ideological nudist. “Like, I’m into the Body-Image Holocaust? But they said I can’t go all the way here at Auschwitz, it would offend too many people? So, like, I just wanted you to know?” Norman nodded; he was cool. He was straining not to let his eyes descend below the speckled tip of her nose, though an earlier glance had impressed him with the rich density of her freckles, which seemed almost like a pointillist mantle thrown modestly over her shoulders, her pale brown nipples merely somewhat larger spots, barely noticeable. Jutting his jaw in the direction of the throng milling about on her side of the gate, floating in that early-morning ether like the damned, he asked, “What’s happening?” “Oh, we’re like just hanging out—waiting for someone to come and open the gate so that we can go to Birkenau to meditate? Everyone’s all spaced out—you know? We’ve been up all night—because of that shofar? It was so, like, yeah—it just blew our minds.”

  Amazingly, it was only then, when she mentioned the shofar, that Norman became aware that the high-pitched wail that had been irritating him so acutely from the minute he had arrived at the camp that morning and that had been making him, he now realized, so excruciatingly tense, as if a string stretched too tightly inside his head had been plucked and would not stop vibrating, was not the screeching of a kind of internal alarm that had jammed, but rather an actual ram’s horn that was such an integral part of his tribal references—how could he have missed it?—and it was coming piercingly and relentlessly from outside of him. He shook his head in disbelief at his own obtuseness. He had not questioned that sound; he had just accepted it, endured it as the subliminal undertone of Auschwitz, the keening of the massing dead that had penetrated him, a thing that came with the territory. “Who’s blowing?” Norman asked the girl, peering over her head into the depths of the camp as if to search out for himself the source of those shofar blasts. “Oh, Jake. Jake Gilguli? You know him? Over at Execution Wall? Like, he’s trying to raise the dead? He was killed here once, during the Holocaust—in the gas chamber? But now he’s been reincarnated, and he wants to get all the others resurrected too? It’s, like, way out of sight, yeah—way way far out.”

  Norman would have truly wanted to find out more, not only about Gilguli but also about the elusive Marano who had teased and tormented him so cruelly yesterday, but he was growing increasingly uncomfortable conversing here of all places with this half-naked girl. What if some dignitary or member of the press who happened to be on a VIP tour of the death camp today walked by and recognized him from his international, high-profile Holocaust work? How would it look with him standing here chatting so familiarly with this topless—over-the-top!—exhibitionist? It could cause a major scandal, it could be very damaging not only to himself personally and to his family, but also to the museum and, above all, to the Holocaust and the six million. If only that emaciated Hare Krishna fellow over there with the shaved head and the saffron-colored robe would come over, or that turned-on-looking priest in the collar and jeans, so that he could talk to them instead. But no, they showed no signs at all of knowing who he was, they seemed not even to notice him at all. Not that it mattered one way or another. He had no time at the moment to spare for these dropouts or to satisfy his recreational curiosity regarding Gilguli or Marano or any other freak. The morning had been set aside for Nechama; it was his only chance to accomplish something constructive with regard to her case. They were leaving that evening for Warsaw, and tomorrow it was back to the States.

  Giving the ideological nudist a jaunty little salute and mumbling a neutral, impersonal, impeccably unincriminating good-bye, Norman turned away from this potential big problem that he needed like a hole in the head, luring him from inside the camp like a siren, planted there to entrap him, and walked back around administration and across the parking lot, resolved to waste no more time. He would head straight to the convent now. Once there, he would just play it by ear and hope for the best, it was all he could do. Arlene would just have to take it or leave it, let’s see if she could do better. As he emerged from the main entrance of the camp into the street that ran along its perimeter, however, he noticed a small stand draped in a skirt of red and white plastic streamers, the colors of the Polish flag, that he was one hundred percent sure had not been there when he had been driven up in the limo just a short while earlier. Behind the stand, the lanky, olive-complexioned proprietor with dark curly hair, wearing a lavender shirt made from some shimmery synthetic material open to mid-chest to reveal festoons of bright gold chains—Turkish or North African or Iberian Peninsula or thereabouts, Norman figured, guest worker type, in other words—was unpacking his merchandise from two worn black plastic garbage bags patched with duct tape and laying it out on the tabletop. Apart from your usual tourist souvenirs, T-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, postcards, guide booklets, and so forth, there were also faith-specific paraphernalia and trinkets, such as prayer books, memorial candles, and yarmulkes for the Jews, and for the Christians, crosses, rosaries, and glossy holy pictures that shifted from a depiction of Jesus to Mary depending on how you angled them, and a similar one in that line that slid back and forth hypnotically between the images of the two local Auschwitz saints, Father Maximilian Kolbe, the anti-Semitic pamphleteer, prisoner number 16670, and Sister Teresa Bene
dicta of the Cross, the Jewish girl Edith Stein, number 44070. This, of course, was all kitsch, junk, which Norman dismissed at once. Not so that dusty, forsaken-looking pile of rags in the corner over there, which caught his eye immediately. An astute shopper with an expertise in the area of Holocaust art (the daring piece My Mother’s Holocaust Quilt VI, a real collector’s item by abstract artist Sherri Shapiro-Pecker, had pride of place in his study—Arlene refused to let it into the living room) and memorabilia, Norman instantly recognized these strips of cloth as genuine ghetto and concentration-camp artifacts, extremely rare and of excellent quality, with a value that, he was certain, this hustler could in no way appreciate. Here was an opportunity to pick up an incredible bargain, perhaps even something that could eventually be incorporated into the museum’s permanent exhibition after the usual curator-and-committee red tape runaround, with a discreet and dignified plaque affixed to the display case honoring him as the collector and donor. There was even an original blue-and-white-striped concentration camp uniform including matching cap, in perfect condition, complete with certificate of authenticity, which Norman was sorely tempted to buy, picturing himself showing up at the convent costumed in this—the ghost of crimes past, the nuns would have to let him in if only as a small down payment on atonement. But he rejected it as too large an object, too bulky and cumbersome to lug about with the busy schedule ahead of him; he couldn’t very well walk around wearing it all day either, turning the place into some kind of ossified theme park, nor could he trust this sleazebag vendor to ship it if he paid in advance, as the guy would no doubt demand.

  Although Norman knew that it was imperative that he hurry and get to Nechama and take care of his affairs at the convent in order to meet the others in Birkenau by two, he rationalized his delay as he casually flipped through the cloths in that pile, shrewdly taking pains to conceal his throbbing excitement over this fantastic find, by telling himself that he was performing the necessary and obligatory function of buying gifts for his family to bring home from the trip. He pulled out four armbands—a kapo armband for his father, ghetto police for his mother, pink homosexual triangle for Arlene, and the yellow Star of David with the word Jude for Nechama, which would have the added bonus of transmitting to Sister Consolatia of the Cross a very subtle message concerning her roots, he decided—and pushed them across the counter. “How much?” he inquired with a show of nonchalance. “Ten thousand dollars,” the vendor replied with a suave Mediterranean inflection, in a tone that implied that these goods were meant for a customer of a higher class and a deeper pocket than the one blocking his view at the moment. Norman’s eyebrows arced up and his jaw bowed down; this fellow was far more formidable than he had given him credit for, he needed to be alert. They began to haggle, an activity, like spotting a metziyah such as these rare artifacts, at which Norman reckoned himself to be singularly adept, closing the deal finally at three thousand dollars, which Norman regarded as a personal triumph. Already he was congratulating himself, already he was itching to tell someone about it, picturing how he would prod Arlene to guess how much he had paid—go on, honey, take a guess.

  “Do you take credit cards?” Norman inquired.

  Credit cards! The vendor looked around expressively at their bizarre environs, the dilapidated Zasole commercial district of the Polish town of Oswiecim, the anus of the world, well within the contaminated zone of the Auschwitz slave labor and death camp where they happened to be situated at the moment, and then he turned his attention back to Norman as if to an extraterrestrial that had just alit from a spaceship from some distant planet, and answered in one word: “Green.” Norman complied by peeling the dollar bills out from the special robbery-proof travel security pouches hidden under his clothing—one thousand strapped to each calf and another thousand secreted frontally inside the waistband of his pants—and paying in full; the amount was just about all the cash he had left to his name at this final leg of the trip. Almost as an afterthought, he asked the peddler if he happened to have a business card for future reference. He was immediately handed the one the fellow had been using throughout their transaction to pick his teeth, soggy and dog-eared. Norman read out loud: “Tommy Messiah, Specialist.”

  “You Jewish?” Norman asked.

  “I am a Jew,” Tommy Messiah said. “I don’t know anything about ish.”

  What kind of specialist? Norman was thinking of asking, but dismissed the question as pointless and idle for a nonentity like this who most likely just plucked the word specialist from the airwaves, imagining it sounded impressive. Instead, as he was about to set off again for the dreaded showdown at the Carmelite convent, Norman inquired if there might be anything else of historic or antiquarian interest worth looking at. He had been so intensely, so exquisitely focused on consummating the deal involving those precious armbands to the exclusion of everything else around him that it was not until then, not until Tommy Messiah bent down behind his stand and drew out from under it a pile of steel Nazi helmets, one nestled cozily inside the other like teacups, that Norman registered the presence of the pregnant woman sitting in a striped collapsible beach chair off to the side in the shadow of the scraggly trees growing along the camp fence. “Hiya, Normie,” she said softly in her unplaceable accent.

  Shaken, Norman appealed to Tommy Messiah for support. “You know her?” he entreated.

  “Everyone knows Marano,” Tommy Messiah answered enigmatically, dumping the helmets on the table with a raucous clatter.

  “I don’t know her,” Norman insisted. “She seems to know me, but I never saw her in my life—until yesterday.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Normie, don’t be such a drag. Of course you know me. Wait, I’ll give you a hint.” Removing her round, steel-framed glasses and lifting her necklaces of silver, turquoise, and amber beads over her head, she leaned over with difficulty and set them down under her beach chair. She braced her two hands on the plastic armrests, planted her feet firmly apart on the ground, heaving her massively pregnant body in its capacious Indian embroidered and mirrored caftan to a standing position. Without further ado, with the death camp crouched behind her like a stalking beast waiting to pounce, she launched into her routine. “Bo-bo skee wotten-dotten, hey hey hey!” she sang out the cheer with infectious vim, vigor, and vitality, her arms with fingers fluttering like pompoms shooting up into the air, first to one side of her head, then to the other. “Ees-ke wotten, bees-ke dotten, hey hey hey!” Her expansive hips, hands framing them for flirtatious emphasis, swung right, left, right. “Boom-a-lay, Bam-a-lay, wah wah wah!” One swollen, purple-veined leg sprang out in a peppy kick, followed snappily by the other. “Camp Ziona, rah rah rah!” With arms jackknifing up and out in a stirring V for victory, she leaped into the air so precipitously that Norman nearly collapsed in terror.

  “Baby pops out at Auschwitz,” Tommy Messiah commented blandly. He applauded ironically, “Brava Marano!” But Norman only shook his head in slow, discomfited recognition. “Camp Ziona, of course,” he enunciated like a new dawning, “Mara Lieb of the rousing bo-bo-skee-wotten-dotten cheer—how could I not have known? But, of course, you were just a little brat in Tadpoles then while I was already a big-man junior counselor. Still, who would have ever thought we’d one day have a camp reunion, here of all places? All roads lead to Auschwitz, as they say. So—how ya doin’, Mara?”

  But she turned on him suddenly, poking a finger in imperious censure. “Do not call me Mara,” she declared with passion. “Call me Mara-no. I am not Mara anymore. Mara is bitterness, Mara is delusion. I have rejected and shed that past life. I am now in a negative transition stage, working on myself toward the next stage, toward my rebirth, toward no longer being Mara but her permutation—toward evolving into Rama.” Breathless with agitation, she squatted on the ground, groped around among the weeds and rubbish for her glasses and necklaces, rearmed herself in them, and then, as if deflating in a full-body sigh, sank back down into her beach chair.