Night Memoir
In English we just finished reading Night, and we're doing, naturally a project. The teacher gave us "ID" cards from the Holocaust museum, and we're supposed to do a butterfly project (completely overwrought, no significance here) and write a memoir for the person.
This was the one I finished last night, for Bertha Adler.
I remember that it was my 11th birthday I was given such a gruesome present. June 20, in 1940, I was at school. The girls admired my new dress, my favorite birthday present. The next I was to receive later, when I went home.
Perhaps I had not noticed at the time, but I remember now, with light gently sliding off them like the glint of sunlight on armor, the silver and filigree crosses that some of my friends wore, their edges as sharp as blades, the posture of the half-defined figure less morose than resigned, waiting.
When I returned to my house, buoyed with the adulations of cheer I received in the streets of Liege from my neighbors. I heard the sound of voices in the kitchen-not entirely unusual, because my mother loved to cook. My sisters would have been with her perhaps. But I heard my mother’s creamy voice, soft in the warmth of the kitchen, and my father’s huskier voice, low but urgent.
I ran into the kitchen, suspecting jubilation and congratulations. But my father smiled wanly at me, and left. My mother looked at me, and tried to smile. “The Germans have a present for you, too, Bertha,” she said, almost pleadingly, “now that they are in this city.” I moved around the table towards her, unthinkingly, and she fixed a yellow star to my chest, careful not to pierce my skin with the pin.
That was the first day I was aware of my own transition into being a component of a massive, undesirable sea of existence, to be hated and scorned by the people on the streets, who but a day before had wished me “Happy Birthday.”
Two years later, I stood before my school. The liquid French words I had spoken in their building had flowed out of me like satin ribbons as I walked with my sister died, like ashes in my mouth. They would not let me in, “Jew,” they shouted at me, and I wished that I could rip the Yiddish language from my throat, the Hebrew my mother taught me from my mind, and my God from my heart. I wished I could disguise it all with smooth French and a shining silver cross. But I was thirteen, and angry at my family, my teachers.
I was angry, too, when my mother packed my things in a suitcase, and we left the house in the middle of the night, my younger sister clutching at me for comfort that I had not the compassion to give her. I needed all my comfort for myself.
For two years, I coated my language, my religion in foreign veneers. I smiled and laughed in French. In our house, like our Catholic neighbors, the cross was hung up in our parlor. I did not hear the round vowels, the throaty consonants of Hungarian, of Yiddish, that my parents had spoken at home. My life was ordinary, enjoyable. I befriended the girls at school, even some of the boys, but my parents stayed largely on their own. They spoke constantly of being grateful to the Catholic friends who had helped us escape. I, flighty and cheerful, barely remembered them.
My father worked hard to earn us money. He could not make the money he had in the city, and feared for our well-being. Even I could notice how gaunt his already aquiline face was growing, how deep-sunk in shadows his eyes became. Soon he became ill, and went to the hospital. On Sunday, I told him, I would bring him shaving cream. My father was a very neat man, almost fussy about his hygiene. There was no other gesture of compassion I could think to make.
On Saturday I walked with a girl from school down the streets of the village, laughing. Her mother gave us cookies when we stopped in, and I laughed at her when the steaming chocolate stained her face. On Sunday, I awoke at 5 a.m. as the Gestapo broke down our door and shouted for us in voices that seemed almost teasing. My younger sister, not much younger than my lofty fifteen years, shrieked and cried like a child. My older sister shook uncontrollably, eyes terrified and dry. My mother greeted them with quiet dignity, so stiff! She would not show them fear.
I let tears pour down my cheeks in fear, felt as if I would fall to the ground-I almost wet myself, as my self-control wavered. And oh, the shame of it. I was fifteen years old, reduced to a mewling child. But a day ago the mark of sweat on my brow would have shamed me. But here I stood, as weak as a baby.
When they took me away I did not wet myself, but I sobbed so loudly, and my sister’s screams must have waken the neighbors. Behind one shuttered window I saw dim lights flicker on, saw the shadow of a body, a human, a living thing stand for long moment by the window. Then the light disappeared.
All the other houses remained dark.
I do not remember the intervening time, much, but for crowding, and hunger, and a feeling of malevolent desperation. The smell was horrible, and I must have been hit, because when we were released from the cars I could feel bumps and scratches on my face, and from one cut blood still dripped.
In Auschwitz, there was an old man. Something in those carts had ruined the old man, taken his mind and his daughter. He thought I was her, and spoke to me, in a broken combination of German, and French when it occurred to him I could not understand. “Schatz, don’t leave me,” he would croon, hunched over. “You’ll be safe, cherie. Echt, echt. Geh nicht… a pretty thing like you, they could not. Non. Nein. Could do nothing.” Others looked at me and snickered, some cried for want of even that mistaken affection. I did not know where my family was. Whether my father was still ill-surely this squalor would not have sat easy with him. My mother’s calm, I thought, could not have lasted so long.
I remember seeing that glint of light, breathlessly following it with my eyes as if I would melt into if I stared hard enough. It slid over cold metal, pooled along edges and sharp corners. Then the man moved, pulled his gun away and it was gone. I remember how something so ugly was still beautiful, and how it because so repugnant. I remember.
The first day in Auschwitz it was warm, beautiful. The sun smiled down at me; I felt blessed, as though it was a promise to me, to me, that I was special. I could not leave this place, but I had a promise. Beyond the gates I could see flowers. The night was cold, though, and the clothes they had given us were not enough. I dared not huddle for warmth with these strange, foreign creatures. The crazed old man had disappeared.
The next morning they lined the women up. I stood straight as I could as they moved down the line, looking at us. Then they called out numbers. These numbers were accompanied by great cries, moans, like the beams of a ceiling snapping under pressure. Some sobbed, others screamed. I kept my eyes upwards, fixed my eyes on the sun till I closed my eyes from the glare.
“-A4772-”
My breath locked in my chest; I felt as though every muscle in my body had frozen, turned to cold ice. Stay still, a part of my mind whispered, perhaps if you wait it was a mistake. As they called out number after number, I did not move. Perhaps I could melt into the earth.
The sun brushed over my face. It was if there was silence all around me, a completely still reverie. Then the women around me began to move, and cry out like wounded animals. The women, whose numbers had been called, moved out of the line, slowly, slumping like cripples after them. I was still immobile, until the women around me, so grateful to have been spared, pushed me forward, hit me and slapped me to rouse me, eager to let me go for their own survival.
They lined us up again, this new list of women; they had us strip naked. I-I stood naked in front of these strangers. I could barely stand to dress myself in front of my sisters, in my shyness. But we stood before them as bare as children playing, as if we were strange new creatures crawled from some deformed mother’s womb.
I could not see the sun.
The next time they called my number, I did not hear it. I had closed my eyes, closed my senses to the world. In my mind I tried to conjugate French verbs, tried to remember any words of French at all. I could not think in Yiddish, either. In my mind all I heard was Hebrew, and I felt like an animal caged in a trap. I would have done anything, to rip it away, to burn away its mark on me until I could no longer even conceive in my mind the simplest word of Hebrew.
With the others who had been selected, I walked like a corpse walking wherever we were lead. I could not see. All that I heard was Hebrew words winding their way through my mind until I was ready to strike my own head against the wall until my mind went blessedly blank. A window went by, high and small-my head whipped around painfully past to reach for the sunlight, but the tides of this sea of humanity bore me forward too fast.
The chamber that they stuffed us into held others beyond the group of women I had been given to. Around me there were screams and cries and moaning, until I thought the noise would come together and crush me under its weight. I looked up, into a dull ceiling, searched desperately for some kind of light.
I saw nothing, a single still figure in a pulsating, writhing mass of desperate, horrifically ugly creatures, looking skyward from a coffin. Even the dead search for God.
I felt the movements of those around me begin to still.
My breath caught in my chest.
I.
I.
I-
This was the one I finished last night, for Bertha Adler.
I remember that it was my 11th birthday I was given such a gruesome present. June 20, in 1940, I was at school. The girls admired my new dress, my favorite birthday present. The next I was to receive later, when I went home.
Perhaps I had not noticed at the time, but I remember now, with light gently sliding off them like the glint of sunlight on armor, the silver and filigree crosses that some of my friends wore, their edges as sharp as blades, the posture of the half-defined figure less morose than resigned, waiting.
When I returned to my house, buoyed with the adulations of cheer I received in the streets of Liege from my neighbors. I heard the sound of voices in the kitchen-not entirely unusual, because my mother loved to cook. My sisters would have been with her perhaps. But I heard my mother’s creamy voice, soft in the warmth of the kitchen, and my father’s huskier voice, low but urgent.
I ran into the kitchen, suspecting jubilation and congratulations. But my father smiled wanly at me, and left. My mother looked at me, and tried to smile. “The Germans have a present for you, too, Bertha,” she said, almost pleadingly, “now that they are in this city.” I moved around the table towards her, unthinkingly, and she fixed a yellow star to my chest, careful not to pierce my skin with the pin.
That was the first day I was aware of my own transition into being a component of a massive, undesirable sea of existence, to be hated and scorned by the people on the streets, who but a day before had wished me “Happy Birthday.”
Two years later, I stood before my school. The liquid French words I had spoken in their building had flowed out of me like satin ribbons as I walked with my sister died, like ashes in my mouth. They would not let me in, “Jew,” they shouted at me, and I wished that I could rip the Yiddish language from my throat, the Hebrew my mother taught me from my mind, and my God from my heart. I wished I could disguise it all with smooth French and a shining silver cross. But I was thirteen, and angry at my family, my teachers.
I was angry, too, when my mother packed my things in a suitcase, and we left the house in the middle of the night, my younger sister clutching at me for comfort that I had not the compassion to give her. I needed all my comfort for myself.
For two years, I coated my language, my religion in foreign veneers. I smiled and laughed in French. In our house, like our Catholic neighbors, the cross was hung up in our parlor. I did not hear the round vowels, the throaty consonants of Hungarian, of Yiddish, that my parents had spoken at home. My life was ordinary, enjoyable. I befriended the girls at school, even some of the boys, but my parents stayed largely on their own. They spoke constantly of being grateful to the Catholic friends who had helped us escape. I, flighty and cheerful, barely remembered them.
My father worked hard to earn us money. He could not make the money he had in the city, and feared for our well-being. Even I could notice how gaunt his already aquiline face was growing, how deep-sunk in shadows his eyes became. Soon he became ill, and went to the hospital. On Sunday, I told him, I would bring him shaving cream. My father was a very neat man, almost fussy about his hygiene. There was no other gesture of compassion I could think to make.
On Saturday I walked with a girl from school down the streets of the village, laughing. Her mother gave us cookies when we stopped in, and I laughed at her when the steaming chocolate stained her face. On Sunday, I awoke at 5 a.m. as the Gestapo broke down our door and shouted for us in voices that seemed almost teasing. My younger sister, not much younger than my lofty fifteen years, shrieked and cried like a child. My older sister shook uncontrollably, eyes terrified and dry. My mother greeted them with quiet dignity, so stiff! She would not show them fear.
I let tears pour down my cheeks in fear, felt as if I would fall to the ground-I almost wet myself, as my self-control wavered. And oh, the shame of it. I was fifteen years old, reduced to a mewling child. But a day ago the mark of sweat on my brow would have shamed me. But here I stood, as weak as a baby.
When they took me away I did not wet myself, but I sobbed so loudly, and my sister’s screams must have waken the neighbors. Behind one shuttered window I saw dim lights flicker on, saw the shadow of a body, a human, a living thing stand for long moment by the window. Then the light disappeared.
All the other houses remained dark.
I do not remember the intervening time, much, but for crowding, and hunger, and a feeling of malevolent desperation. The smell was horrible, and I must have been hit, because when we were released from the cars I could feel bumps and scratches on my face, and from one cut blood still dripped.
In Auschwitz, there was an old man. Something in those carts had ruined the old man, taken his mind and his daughter. He thought I was her, and spoke to me, in a broken combination of German, and French when it occurred to him I could not understand. “Schatz, don’t leave me,” he would croon, hunched over. “You’ll be safe, cherie. Echt, echt. Geh nicht… a pretty thing like you, they could not. Non. Nein. Could do nothing.” Others looked at me and snickered, some cried for want of even that mistaken affection. I did not know where my family was. Whether my father was still ill-surely this squalor would not have sat easy with him. My mother’s calm, I thought, could not have lasted so long.
I remember seeing that glint of light, breathlessly following it with my eyes as if I would melt into if I stared hard enough. It slid over cold metal, pooled along edges and sharp corners. Then the man moved, pulled his gun away and it was gone. I remember how something so ugly was still beautiful, and how it because so repugnant. I remember.
The first day in Auschwitz it was warm, beautiful. The sun smiled down at me; I felt blessed, as though it was a promise to me, to me, that I was special. I could not leave this place, but I had a promise. Beyond the gates I could see flowers. The night was cold, though, and the clothes they had given us were not enough. I dared not huddle for warmth with these strange, foreign creatures. The crazed old man had disappeared.
The next morning they lined the women up. I stood straight as I could as they moved down the line, looking at us. Then they called out numbers. These numbers were accompanied by great cries, moans, like the beams of a ceiling snapping under pressure. Some sobbed, others screamed. I kept my eyes upwards, fixed my eyes on the sun till I closed my eyes from the glare.
“-A4772-”
My breath locked in my chest; I felt as though every muscle in my body had frozen, turned to cold ice. Stay still, a part of my mind whispered, perhaps if you wait it was a mistake. As they called out number after number, I did not move. Perhaps I could melt into the earth.
The sun brushed over my face. It was if there was silence all around me, a completely still reverie. Then the women around me began to move, and cry out like wounded animals. The women, whose numbers had been called, moved out of the line, slowly, slumping like cripples after them. I was still immobile, until the women around me, so grateful to have been spared, pushed me forward, hit me and slapped me to rouse me, eager to let me go for their own survival.
They lined us up again, this new list of women; they had us strip naked. I-I stood naked in front of these strangers. I could barely stand to dress myself in front of my sisters, in my shyness. But we stood before them as bare as children playing, as if we were strange new creatures crawled from some deformed mother’s womb.
I could not see the sun.
The next time they called my number, I did not hear it. I had closed my eyes, closed my senses to the world. In my mind I tried to conjugate French verbs, tried to remember any words of French at all. I could not think in Yiddish, either. In my mind all I heard was Hebrew, and I felt like an animal caged in a trap. I would have done anything, to rip it away, to burn away its mark on me until I could no longer even conceive in my mind the simplest word of Hebrew.
With the others who had been selected, I walked like a corpse walking wherever we were lead. I could not see. All that I heard was Hebrew words winding their way through my mind until I was ready to strike my own head against the wall until my mind went blessedly blank. A window went by, high and small-my head whipped around painfully past to reach for the sunlight, but the tides of this sea of humanity bore me forward too fast.
The chamber that they stuffed us into held others beyond the group of women I had been given to. Around me there were screams and cries and moaning, until I thought the noise would come together and crush me under its weight. I looked up, into a dull ceiling, searched desperately for some kind of light.
I saw nothing, a single still figure in a pulsating, writhing mass of desperate, horrifically ugly creatures, looking skyward from a coffin. Even the dead search for God.
I felt the movements of those around me begin to still.
My breath caught in my chest.
I.
I.
I-