Four Scraps of Bread (5 page)
Read Four Scraps of Bread Online
Authors: Anthony T.; Magda; Fuller Hollander-Lafon
For thirty-seven years I have not stopped fighting against that adolescent who could not forgive herself for being alive, nor against that adult who had to start racing without any training. I was running to make up time, to look like everyone else. But on the inside, in silence, thousands of parasites were draining my blood. On the outside I became more and more noisy and overwhelming. I worked and studied and tried to become someone. My smile was the ideal adornment for an identity that was not my own.
I expended so much energy just on appearing. Why did I want to do everything for everyone? Was it not to obtain forgiveness? For what?
During my deportation I did not try to understand what was happening to me. I instinctively slipped into the situation by listening to my intuition. Intuition is the intelligence of life. It is the inspiration that does not come from us, but which draws us toward the light.
Death became a visible friend. I was not afraid of it. As soon as I accepted it, there was no barrier between death and myself. I was free to invent life. This confidence gave me energy, a life force, that came from beyond me.
Everyone was reduced to their own survival. I realized that attachments could only bring despair. If I had stayed with my mother or my sister, would I have survived?
I still ask myself that question today.
I felt there was a place inside me that the torturers could not reach. They could not have imagined the extent to which they represented absolute evil in my eyes.
I became impervious to emotions, indifferent to the lifeless bodies that surrounded me. My instinct to survive took precedence over the sufferings of others. They were not there.
Hunger and thirst have no morals. Hunger devoured me. I became Hunger. I became Thirst.
It was not words that spoke in Auschwitz, but faces, backs, feet, and hands.
I was never registered or tattooed. There were so many Hungarian Jews arriving that several of us simply slipped through the net. So many times I immediately obeyed my intuition when it told me to change lines, because the backs and feet in front of me said they would not live long. Not being tattooed helped me survive.
When I was young I was suffocated by silence.
My parents did not talk in front of us, but their faces spoke volumes.
I had to find someone to talk to; the tree I used to climb became my friend.
Each evening I would go to tell it all about my day, my happiness and my pain. The tree listened to me and shared my life.
The tree was not an object, and not even just a living being. It was a person that could console me.
It was too big for me to take it in my arms and show it how much I loved it, so I affectionately stroked its bark.
In Birkenau there was not one tree or bird. There was a crowd where no one existed. We were thought of as useless things toward which the Nazis could give full rein to their cruelty.
But they had no authority over the sky. They could not stop us from finding strength in its starry beauty.
“I asked the tree, âSpeak to me of God,' and it flowered.” These words of Rabindranath Tagore became mine.
In Auschwitz the wind brought me the gift of a little bird's feather. I cradled it in the palm of my hand as if it had come from another world.
At four o'clock in the morning I saw the stars shimmering in time with the beatings and the yelling.
I felt they were watching us, eyes glistening with tears, appalled at such cruelty in the world of humans.
Standing, exhausted, we looked for strength in these thousands of lights. I imagined my family, our families, were in each one, watching over us.
These rare moments made it a little easier to cope with the evil day that was beginning.
One Sunday afternoon in Birkenau, the sky was not shrouded in ash but had an aura of light. The wind hurried the clouds away, and the beauty of the dance fascinated me. I told myself that if the clouds could move then I could move too.
In my dreams I traveled all around the world on a cloud.
Memories rise up within me from the depths of my being. The thing that is remembered has an emotional quality. It relates to the surface of whatever I am feeling, lighter or heavier depending on my joy or my sadness.
Unexpected events reveal my memories, which appear thanks to a word, a situation, an upset, a suffering, or a thought. Everything is not contained in everything; each event is unique and leaves a unique trail both in history and in the memory of those who have gone through it.
I have emerged from the winter of my memory. I no longer turn away from my charred memory. I let it come to me. Writing is how I draw on what my heart remembers.
Has what I have gone through made me human or does it make me an eternal victim?
I have gone through the unimaginable.
I am alive.
Everything is possible â¦
Even the impossible.
With one look I can kill.
With one look I can help bring things to life.
I feel a responsibility for how I look at others.
A burst of emotion can melt an iceberg. A gesture says more than words.
I have treasured the kindness and total freedom of an act that remains engraved in my heart.
In the cattle wagon that took us to Auschwitz, I looked enviously at the morsel of sausage that someone was putting in their mouth. They saw me looking and offered me a slice, which I shared with my mother and my sister.
It was worth living simply for the chance to have savored this generous act of kindness.
On my journey, “yes” and “no” have caused problems for me. Saying “yes” to everyone wore me out. But “no” also left its marks: doubt, hesitation, fatigue.
What could I do to handle this better?
As a child, when I was not happy with myself, I instinctively spoke to myself. Hearing my own voice gave me a feeling of calm and of being alive. I would make up questions and answers for myself. I rarely understood what was going through my mind, but hearing my voice was calming.
In the camps I spoke to my feet. I asked them not to let go. Sometimes I was so focused that I did not notice the pain of beatings so much. I loved my feet, my eyes, and my hands. I rejected the rest of my body: it was disgustingly dirty. It was outside me. I took a long time to tame it. And to make it mine.
My body has an indelible memory. It inspires in me the truest words.
It was when I managed to say “yes” to my own limits and to accept myself where I was that I finally felt true to myself. From then I could say “yes” or “no.”
What I have gone through has taught me that nothing is owed to me.
Everything is gift.
I was alone with fears that were tearing me apart.
In May 1945, when I arrived with four deportee friends at Namur station, bread was waiting for us. It smelled good. We smiled at it like Cheshire cats. We were overwhelmed with joy, a feeling that we no longer knew.
Soon we needed to be counted and registered. The torrent of questions left me exhausted. My four friends filled out the forms for me.
A rabbi from the American army took charge of us. Given our physical condition, he took us to hospital.
After we were discharged, he set us up in a house so that we could rebuild our strength. That was the last time we saw his face. For three months we got money in the mail for food; but he never paid us the visit that we were expecting to ask how things were going. It was with sadness and disappointment that we came to the conclusion that we were a useless burden, and that no one was interested in us. The life that awaited us would be a desert.
I no longer knew why we should live or die. Everything was without explanation and could not be explained.
Looks and gestures allowed me to be born again.
So that I would not be alone before she left for America, the woman with the smile placed me in an orphanage, where I stayed for four years. It was there that I realized I was truly alone.
There was no shortage of bread and water in the home, but the weight of sadness and the absence of warmth hung over the place. If I had not been lucky enough to take lessons in French and Dutch in order to study for my college entrance exam, I would have sunk into a bottomless pit.
The woman with the smile sponsored me. The head of the orphanage trusted me and gave me great freedom outside of the classroom. I discovered Brussels, museums, books, and lunchtime concerts. I felt encouraged and brought to life inside, and that made things easier for me.
The camps stayed in my unconscious laboratory.
A new life was opening itself up to me; I took it, with both its darkness and its light.
One summer by the shore, the head of the orphanage felt that I had a gift for working with children. When I told her that I wanted to study how to take care of abandoned children, she encouraged me to the hilt. I studied for four years. I was happy to be working. I got my diploma as an educator and a psychologist because I was determined to support these children. My work has constantly helped me to understand myself and to accept people where they are.
I was constantly helping myself to get there. I cut out little pieces of colored card on which I wrote in
capital letters new words of encouragement every day: “Magda, you will succeed.” “Smile at life.” “Trust in yourself.” “Magda, you are helping yourself!” and “Don't listen to people who discourage you.” I kept them in my pocket and let my fingertips run over them whenever I lost confidence.
That was how I realized that depression is not an illness. It is moments when I undervalue the life that is in me. The color of the day depends on how I feel.
We are never healed. We are always journeying toward healing.
I grew up in a nonbelieving Jewish family. I came back from the camps with some painful questions about where I belonged.
Left to myself, without support and without reference points, who could I identify with? Who could I ask what a Jew was?
Isolated and lost, it was then that I felt the shame of being a Jew without a face, and the sadness of feeling ashamed.
It was hard to bear this emptiness in who I was. Tossed around, lost, I searched desperately for somewhere or something to hold me up, warily trusting those who I thought were free.
They
knew how to live, while I had everything to learn. But learn how? From whom?
Unexpected meetings showed me the way and helped me tend passionately to my roots. That was the only place from which I could be born again.
Contempt can pierce even the skin of a crocodile.
The hardest thing is to get back up after you have been humiliated.
Humiliation makes us small.
If the Nazis could imagine the unimaginable, the systematic murder of an entire people, can we not in turn imagine another unimaginable thingâa world which is more human and where people support each other, a world in the service of humanity?
If we were at peace with ourselves, would we wage war against others?
Generalization is a dangerous thing. It can be devastating. It gives rise to confusion, hatred, war, extermination: the French, the Germans, the Arabs, the Jews ⦠In a word, humanity becomes no more than a noun. Not all Germans are Nazis: Hitler put 500,000 Germans to death, finding them a nuisance. Not all French are anti-Semitic. Not all Muslims are fundamentalists. For centuries the image of Jews everywhere has been twisted by anti-Semitic myths and fantasies.
With the pronoun “they” anything can be said about anyone. All is supposition with “they.” Quietly, without naming anyone, the word “they” can impose a heavy burden of meaning and consequence.
“They” is an abstraction. Our lips can amplify it into a dangerous rumor which hurts, kills, and sows panic, but “they” will never know who started it. “They” is a word which denies and annihilates the person. We should be very prudent and vigilant when using this word!
To restore human dignity where humanity has been humiliated, subjugated, obliterated: at my humble level, this is the purpose I have tried to give my life.
Today I do not feel like a victim of the Holocaust, but a witness reconciled with myself.
I realized that I could not call anyone to be their best unless I myself was freed from my own wounds, fears, and violence. Only then can I meet someone where they are.
A genuine smile, gesture, word, or generative look can set us free and make us more trusting, more responsible, and more willing to support each other. With patience and the wisdom of time, we can become brokers of life, hope, and peace.
We are committed by our actions.
Everyone must choose to be human or to humiliate,
to become violent or to bring peace.
Everyone must say, and say again,
that life is sacred and unique,
and that it is by standing together and remembering
that humanity can be saved.
“
The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it
.”
âAlbert Einstein
Like me, my words are fragile. How can I pass on my memories without making them trite, weighing them down, or overwhelming the other person?