Goran Rosenberg - A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz

What happens next is that Uncle Zygmunt is killed in a car accident.

This happens during your first week as a traveling salesman in costume jewelry. You get home late Friday night, and I can’t get to sleep until you’re back, and by Saturday morning Uncle Zygmunt is dead. The telephone rings and you answer and I realize something terrible has happened.

Much later, I realize that this is the morning you give up. You’ve left the factory for untrodden forest and you’re all too alone again and darkness is falling. Sheer momentum keeps you traveling for a few more weeks, and I find it hard to get to sleep in the evenings and dream of your little Beetle being crushed beneath a huge semitrailer truck, just like Uncle Zygmunt’s Volvo in the glossy photo in the brown envelope on the chest of drawers in the hall.

On December 15, 1959, you’re unquestionably home again, writing a letter to Natek about what has happened. You wait four weeks before you tell him, and when you finally do your tone is neutral, almost unconcerned, and has an obviously false ring to it. “Everything will sort itself out, health permitting,” you write in Swedish, and continuing in Polish, you say that “all is fine at home.” About me you write that I’m “still a comfort and delight, thank heavens.” About Lilian you write that she’s “coming on wonderfully, thank heavens.” About yourself you say almost nothing. You merely write that you’re back home and will consider your future once the weekend is over.

On January 13, 1960, another letter to Natek. You’re still considering what to do next: “I’m at home for now, and haven’t looked for any other work but am taking a little rest.… Göran and Lilian are hale and hearty, thank heavens.”

Doesn’t anybody notice how ill you are?

I don’t.

The international news roundup in the local paper, January 9, 1960: “Several ugly instances of anti-Semitism have been reported in recent weeks, not only in West Germany but also in England and Holland.”

The front page of the local paper the same day:

In protest against anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi incidents, a torchlight procession held in West Berlin on Friday evening attracted tens of thousands of young people.… Large white banners carried at the head of the procession bore slogans such as “Against Racial Hatred,” “Against anti-Semitism,” and “No Nazis at our University.”

The first page of the local paper on January 27, 1960:

A more thorough education about the true nature of Nazism and the methods of anti-Semitism have been demanded by young people at Sweden’s schools, represented by eight pupil organizations due to present their demands on Thursday to the Minister of Education and Ecclesiastical Affairs.… [A working group from these organizations] has carried out a survey of modern school textbooks and found coverage of the political history of the 1930s and 40s to be totally inadequate.

The front page of the local paper on March 2, 1960: “The well-oiled training machine at Scania Vabis. Every employee will get an opportunity to improve at his trade.”

The local paper’s cinema advertisements on April 25, 1960: “Eagerly anticipated Paramount premiere. Danny Kaye and Louis Armstrong in The Five Pennies . Captivating tunes. Inspiring rhythms. Laughter galore.”

Patient record no. 200/60, opened on April 26, 1960: “[The patient] has been in a progressively depressed state. Adm. [admitted] 4/20 u.d. [under the diagnosis of] Neurosis to Ulvsunda nursing home. Scarcely admitted before attempting to drown himself. Taken to the general hospital and revived following tracheotomy and respirator treatm.”

Letter from Mom to Uncle Natek on April 29, 1960:

I’ve thought of writing to you many times, but felt I had no right to worry you. But now David has written to you himself about his mental breakdown after so many failed attempts to tear himself away from the factory. After Rosenblum’s accident his nerves went to pieces and he fell into a depression. He stopped sleeping at night, the pills didn’t work any longer, and he was signed off sick [in Swedish] for a while. To get over his anxiety he wanted to start work again at any cost, even if it was only temporary because of his other plans. So he went back to Scania-Vabis even though it was like facing his own death sentence and the whole experience triggered a reaction in him that I could never in my life have foreseen. He completely lost all his self-confidence and the usual medical care could do nothing for him anymore. God knows that it is with a heavy heart I share this with you, and perhaps I ought not to, but you are his only brother. So David was admitted to hospital for treatment on 4/19, and on 4/20 when I went over to visit him (David’s alive and will get better) I couldn’t find him, because he was in a serious condition after an unsuccessful suicide attempt. He had thrown himself in the water. The staff realized and got him out after 15 minutes. But he’d swallowed an awful lot of dirty water. It took him 12 hours to come around and he was in critical condition. They kept him on a respirator for 3 days, which was one of the things that saved his life. His physical condition soon started improving, but the anxiety stayed for a long time. David’s now in the general hospital but as soon as his physical health is restored they’ll move him to a psychiatric hospital. He’s probably going to have what they call electric shock treatment, which we hope will have positive results. The children know nothing about this and neither do any of our close acquaintances. This is for David’s sake. This is harder for me than anything in my life before, but with the way things are, I have to stay strong if I’m not to break down.

Whom do I see The Five Pennies with, if not you? I remember it was with you, even if, much later, I realize it can’t have been.

No, the children are told nothing. The children are wrapped up in their own affairs. The memory fragments are few, far between, and firmly trampled into the darkness and silence. Your mute back one cold winter’s day on the way to Havsbadet. The gray herringbone coat flapping around your legs and hanging heavily on your shoulders. You want to go on your own but I’ve asked to come too. Why are we going to Havsbadet in winter? An early morning at the start of summer in Auntie Ilonka and Uncle Birger’s summer cottage by a seawater inlet south of Södertälje. The day before, we rowed out together, you and I, and jigged for herring in the sound. We jigged bucket after bucket of herring, and you promise we’ll row out and jig for more the next day, but the following morning you get up very early and row out on your own and come home with a zander, which you put in a bucket outside the door. The zander, unable to stretch out straight, is curled into a circle as it moves gently in the bucket. An hour or two later, it’s floating belly up. We go back to the rowanberry avenue that same afternoon. At the annual music school concert, I play the second part in Vivaldi’s Concerto in A Minor for Two Violins and Piano.

You’re there, aren’t you?

Jean Améry doesn’t want to pathologize the Auschwitz survivors’ irreconcilability, or their mistrust, or their restlessness, or their fear of losing a foothold. Jean Améry thinks it’s the world, which moves forward without looking back, that ought to be pathologized, not the survivors.

Easy to say for those who have the ability to write a world of their own.

Harder for those who find that the world is against them.

Not that easy for Améry either, when I think about it, since he sees all too well how lonely he is, with his irreconcilability and his bitterness and his inability to move on as if nothing has happened, and at the end of the day he draws the logical conclusions from his predicament and kills himself. Before that he writes a book about suicide, or as he prefers to call it, voluntary death, Freitod , in which he maintains that a life of humiliation and helplessness might be worth bringing to an end, that suicide might be an act of dignity and not an act of resignation.