Goran Rosenberg - A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz

Yet I don’t remember that we stop going to Havsbadet.

That we ever stop going to Havsbadet.

Havsbadet continues to be a place we go, I remember, for the sand and the light, and the scent of resin and pine needles along the path through the trees.

What makes you go back to Łódź? I have no memory of your doing so and for a long time I live with the certainty that you would never have done so, but on April 24, 1958, you unquestionably write a letter to Natek from Łódź. It’s clear from the letter that you have a cousin, Jerzyk, still alive in Łódź and that he meets you at Kaliska station, although you have trouble recognizing him because you haven’t met for twenty years, but he recognizes you from the photo you’ve sent in advance. You write of how glad you are to see each other again, and how common memories have brought you close, and how cordially his “little family” welcomes you, but I find it hard to believe that you return to Łódź to meet a cousin, even if he’s the only cousin you have who’s still alive. I suspect you return to Łódź to confirm with your own eyes that the world you once made into your own no longer exists. I suspect, too, that it has something to do with the horizon, the one that’s not really opening, and with the Project, the one threatening to stall.

Your search for confirmation is soon over. “As for Łódź, the town made the most terrible impression on me, and I had a heavy heart those first days. All I wanted was to fly away, back home again. I haven’t felt so forsaken since the war. Like a child.”

No, there’s nothing left in Łódź of the world you once made into your own.

Not even the graves. You go with Jerzyk to the Jewish cemetery to look for your father Gershon and your brother Salek. You’re quite sure that Gershon’s grave, at least, must be there somewhere, since it’s registered in a document. In a small box, on the thin airmail paper the letter’s written on, you’ve made a note of the date of death given in the register, July 25, 1943.

So you stay in Łódź for three weeks instead of the planned two, to continue the search, but you don’t find the graves. Nor do you find much else from the world that was once yours. “There are so few Jews left here. Even in Stockholm, you’re more likely to bump into a Jid .”

You discuss the next leg of the journey with Jerzyk. His journey, not yours. As soon as the opportunity arises he wants to move on, ideally to America but more likely to Israel. There’s nothing to stay in Łódź for.

And your journey? Do you consider it over?

One day we take the train to Stockholm, you and I. I don’t know why it’s just the two of us or why we’re not at school and work, respectively. It must be fall: you’re wearing your herringbone-patterned coat and black hat, and the station platforms, wet with rain, are glistening yellow, and I rush to the compartment window to catch sight of the black canal running vertiginously far below the railroad bridge before the train almost immediately stops in Östertälje. The station names along the way are reassuringly familiar, whereas Stockholm remains a thoroughly strange and scary city. I hold your hand from the instant we get off the train until we’ve gone through a tall front doorway and into a big entrance hall with a red carpet on a marble floor and solid walls of dark wood, and into the first-ever elevator of my life. I let go of your hand only when you tell me I can press the elevator button. It’s a big moment, the first press of my first elevator button, and I get a faint sinking feeling in my stomach as the elevator silently carries us up past floor after floor of dark wood doors and shiny brass plates. On the floor where we get out of the elevator and go through a door, a long corridor with yet more doors is revealed, and from the corridor with all the doors a short man with a bent back comes toward us, greets you, and addresses me by name, asking me to wait in a room smelling of cigars while he talks to you on your own.

I remember the trip mainly for the watch. After meeting the man in the building with the elevator, we go to a fancy shop and you buy me a watch, an Atlantic. I haven’t asked for a watch, nor is it my birthday, but perhaps you have something else to celebrate. You seem happy.

We celebrate the new watch together by counting the minutes and seconds between the stations on the way home.

On November 5, 1959, I too write a letter to Natek. I write that I’m sorry for not writing sooner. Why am I sorry? Why do I write the letter at all? I’ve just had my eleventh birthday and I write a letter to my uncle in Tel Aviv with a pen I have just been given by my Auntie Kerstin and my cousin Assa, who have come to visit us that day. They’re divorced, Natek and Kerstin, and by this time they’ve also divided up my two cousins Assa and Anders, both about my age, Assa to Borås and Anders to Tel Aviv. I see them increasingly rarely, and before long hardly at all, but I don’t miss them. Not in the way I realize, much later on, that you must miss your brother and Mom must miss her sister, making your letters to each other loaded with longing, admonitions, and guilt.

Why haven’t you written? Why this silence? Is there anything wrong? Please, don’t wait to answer!

As for me, I pen a very dutiful and self-absorbed letter, prompted by the fuss of my cousin’s rare visit, which serves as a reminder of how small our family is, how scattered and fragile, and how important, therefore, it is for me to take up my new pen and write a letter to Uncle Natek and cousin Anders in Tel Aviv, and how I really ought to apologize in some way for not having written earlier. So I make my excuses and complete the correspondence duties imposed on me in a rapid, careless hand:

We have already had a bit of snow but it melted right away. We have bought a TV too. I am still playing the violin and getting on very well. Lilian is getting big now and goes to preschool. I have my model train out at the moment, it is a Märklin train and really good. It is quite rainy and there are big puddles in the roads and sometimes it literally pours, so I mainly stay at home and play with my train or read a book. On my birthday (Oct. 11) I got a game which I play sometimes. Tomorrow I will start going to school by train. I used to go by bike. At school we are going to learn about Iceland in Geography.

We often watch TV because there are lots of interesting programs full of information. And we are mostly at home so it is useful to have that (the TV, I mean, not the information). I played the violin for Assa and Auntie Kerstin, and they thought I played well, but it takes more than that before you can be called good. I mostly play classical music, e.g. Pleyel, Bela Bartok, Mozart, Bach and Handel. My teacher, who is from Borås, is very keen on modern music. I am going to perform at Christmas. I will be playing a Pleyel duet with my teacher.

With my letter to Natek, starting on the same sheet, comes a letter from Mom in which she apologizes for my “chaotic” account, giving as an excuse the fact that I have been exposed to “too many impressions all at once.” She’s also keen to supplement my uncritical image of television:

It has revolutionized social life here. People largely stay at home, because TV has something for everyone, just like the radio. The programs are mainly broadcast in the evenings, and even if one has guests, everything and everyone is focused on the TV.

How are you both? Why don’t you write more often? We know you are very busy with your work but you must have a little time to set aside for your brother.

You’re not at home when Auntie Kerstin and cousin Assa come to see us and the two letters to Natek are being written.