CHAPTER
SEVEN
It should now be clear that memory is crucial in the process of construction of a life narrative. We have seen the disruption in Ruth’s life narrative, which is a direct result of her inability to remember rather major events and time periods in her life. I have also presented a number of stories that were told by the other survivors, all showing references to memory and all having been influenced by the relative ability or lack of ability to remember. Here, I will present Henry’s narrative in order to show what happens when an individual remembers nearly everything about his or her life.
Indeed, Henry’s narrative is different from Ruth’s in every facet imaginable. These two case studies were chosen in part because Ruth and Henry do, in many ways, represent the extremes of a continuum of memory. On one end is Ruth, who was often only able to recount specific dates and times, with very few added details. Scattered along the middle of the scale would be many of the other survivors, who were able to present elaborated stories, but still had frequent difficulties remembering some rather minor elements within them. On the other polar end of the scale, Henry is able and willing to describe a tremendous number of life stories with a painstaking and exquisite attention to detail.
However, Henry is not presented here in opposition to Ruth. The over-arching goal in presenting the two of them here is to show the variety of issues that exist for Holocaust survivors during the course of reconstructing their lives and building their life narratives. No value judgments should be placed on either of them. Neither is “better” or “worse” than the other; they merely represent the range of personal differences. In fact, they both illustrate types of “disruption” in some ways, but certainly with different causes and consequences.
Henry is a mere three months
older than Ruth, so the variation in memory abilities that will be clear
shortly cannot be explained in terms of age.
Their experiences during the war were drastically different, but this
does not necessarily account for the disparity in childhood memories. Although their respective tendencies to
elaborate on the stories they told were in complete opposition to each other,
both showed a relatively lesser degree of interest and willingness to tell
stories about their post-war life than about their wartime experiences. Above all else, both Henry and Ruth believe
themselves to be tremendously resilient, as do the other eighteen
subjects. Again, one must look both to
the form and content of the individuals’ life narratives in order to understand
their perspectives on themselves and their lives. To this end, below is the narrative of Henry Starer, presented
through his eyes as much as possible.
Henry was my eighth interviewee, and we spent over nine hours together in total. Since I have discussed him throughout the thesis—most notably in the introduction—my hope is that the reader already has a good idea of who he is and what he meant to me. As background for understanding his narrative, however, I must mention again that he wrote a book on his experiences during the Holocaust. The day before our interview, he gave me a copy of his book and asked me to read it before I came over the next day. Although it was difficult and emotional for me, I stayed up most of the night reading. I assumed that having so much background information would help to make the interview itself shorter, as he would not have to go into so much detail.
However, Henry actually ended up reiterating a great deal of the stories and events he discussed in the book, often in the same words and even whole sentences. At the time, I found this frustrating and draining, as hearing the stories the first time had been hard enough to bear. Looking back on it now, though, I have realized that having both the book and the transcript contributes to my deeper understanding of Henry on so many levels. Being able to compare the narrative he told to an anonymous audience in his book to the narrative he chose to tell to me is a tremendous gift. Indeed, there were often dramatic differences between the two types of narratives, which only served to further my belief in the powerful influence the interviewer and interviewing context can have on the “data” that is received.
Unfortunately, given the space constraints in this thesis, I am not able to delve into the differences in Henry’s construction of these two narratives. In fact, I have struggled for a long time with this chapter, hitting “walls” wherever I turned in my attempt to find a way to present Henry’s voice with power and respect. Because his interview was over four times as long as Ruth’s, with a transcript of over 150 pages, I was not in the position of being able to reprint his Holocaust narrative in its entirety as I did with Ruth. Henry’s manner of presenting and organizing his narrative was also so different that this would have been impossible on many different levels.
I struggled because I wanted
Henry to have a space in this chapter to speak on his own, uninterrupted by my
voice or analysis. I wanted his stories
to come through in their vividness, and I wanted the reader to be able to
understand the connections that exist between stories and the emotions that are
involved in them. I am still not sure
whether all of these goals are achievable, but I have attempted to do so. I will begin with an overview of the interview. Short sections of my own narration and
analysis are threaded throughout in order to enhance the reader’s comprehension
of the progression of the interview and to sensitize the reader to a number of
key issues within Henry’s narrative.
Henry and I began our
interview by discussing his book. He
told me that he had written it in sixteen evenings, and described the
circumstances surrounding his reasons for writing it. He seemed to know that he was reiterating a story that he had actually
told in the book, as he said, “I
don’t know if you got to the part why I wrote it,” and “I think I mentioned
that in the book too.” He then
revealed, “And my children, I didn’t tell them until they asked me. You
see? And there came a point [when] they
did ask me. And I just told them as
much as they asked me. They never asked
me, like you, let me start from the beginning and to the end.”[1]
Clearly,
Henry understood here what I wanted from him, and he seemed willing and able to
give me his narrative “from the beginning and to the end.” As will be seen later, however, this became
increasingly impossible to achieve.
Nonetheless, this was our initial jumping-off point. It is important to note here that Henry did
not begin his narrative with his birth, or with a mention of his country of
origin, or even with a specific date.
In fact, he only told me the year of his birth in response to my later
questioning, and he rarely pinpointed dates in any of his stories.
After further discussion
of some other tangential issues, Henry asked me, “I would like to, if you don’t mind, I would like to start with my
life, as far as I remember?” Of course,
I agreed. He began by describing his
early childhood and his parents’ style of parenting. He gave a number of elaborate examples of how “wonderful” his
childhood was, many of which will be discussed later in the chapter. When Henry began to discuss his religious
upbringing, however, he decided that the narrative he had begun was not enough
to explain the message he was attempting to impart. He told me, “I do have to go back, I think, to how my father
grew up.”[2] He then told me a relatively elaborate
chronology of the events of his father’s life, beginning with his birth and the
remarriage of his father’s father to another woman. Henry discussed how his father was thrown out of the house and
ultimately disowned for wanting to study at gymnasium. “My father,” Henry said, “I do have to brag,
he was mental giant.”[3] Henry continued discussing his father’s
early life in great detail: his
matriculation in law, his marriage to Henry’s mother, his practice of law.
Finally,
Henry told me, “So anyway, we had a wonderful time.”[4] He then returned to his own childhood, restarting
his pre-war narrative at age three. He
never really went back to the story he had begun before, regarding his
religious education. However, Henry
went further into his childhood than he had initially gone, discussing a
variety of incidents that he experienced at a very young age. He made a number of connections between his
childhood and his later ability to “cope with life.” At this point in the interview, it was clear to me that Henry was
capable of going into tremendous detail about his childhood and pre-war
life. He told a number of stories that
do not even appear in his book, all elaborated and multi-faceted in their
description. I then gently
steered Henry back to the “beginning,” because I was specifically interested in
the temperament differences between him and his twin brother. He had already alluded to some personality
differences, so I asked him to elaborate.
Henry answered with multiple stories. At one point, he told me, “And me, then, he
was always referred by my mother, as…the small one. And I as…the big one. And
she bragged…everybody was told what a pleasure I am. I eat, and I eat. I think
to the very day, because I eat tremendous amounts. I must still think I’m pleasing my mother subconsciously. [My
wife] used to make six pounds of roast beef, with potatoes, and I finished it
in one sitting. I used to work at the
business was in the fruit market, I used to bring down eighty size Macintosh, a
case. I used to eat thirty at one
sitting. I never in my life really felt
uncomfortabl[y full]. I mean, to me,
when I had trouble with my esophagus, you know, it was like terrible, the end
of the line. But now, I mean, if you
will see me eat, you know, you can’t believe it. [My brother still] eats abnormally little. He’s thin.
He was always thin.”[5]
This particular story represents one of many instances of
Henry’s ability to connect a childhood story with his later life. Here, the subtle theme seems to be “basic
personality traits stay the same, no matter what.” When he said that he is the same way “to the very day,” and that
his brother “was always thin” and still is, there was a clear point Henry was
attempting to make. While I may have
been expecting an answer to my question about personality differences that
would just describe how the two brothers were as children, I got a themed
answer about the differences between them throughout their entire lives, as
shown by this one example. Although the
story itself comes across as slightly less organized, it actually seems to
represent a highly evolved type of story-telling.
Henry
then went on to give another example of the differences between them, discussing
how he was more social and active as a child.
He again connected this with their present-day personalities, saying,
“And to the very day, he’s a pessimist, anticipates the negative, and I am [the
opposite]… He was always, as a kid he was an instigator.” He went on to say, “He’s a successful
person. [But] his mood, you know? The—I think they’re not even mood
swings. It’s just that he sees the
glass always half…empty.”[6]
Henry then went back to his childhood memories and again
discussed the summers that his family spent on a farm. He went on to speak extensively about his
religious upbringing, and made his first reference to anti-Semitism, saying,
“And I want to tell you, it was not Hitler who taught the Austrians
anti-Semitism, it was the Austrians who taught it to Hitler. There was blatant anti-Semitic [sentiment]
for hundreds of years. They became the
future hunters. The future guards in
the concentration camps.”[7]
Henry then turned to 1938 and Hitler’s
crossing of the border into Austria, recalling that “The people lined the
street and applauded, and swooned when the German army, on Friday, the 11th,
he crossed the border into Austria, and they arrived in Vienna on March 13, the
Sunday, the following Sunday. Well, I
remember [my father] was listening to the radio this Friday, and he’s standing
there. I still see him standing there. It was in my sister’s room. And he was silent. I said, ‘What’s the matter, Papa?’ And he said, ‘It’s not good.’
I said, ‘What the matter?’ ‘The
Reich chancellor …of Germany, he entered Austria. That’s not good. That’s
absolutely no good.’ It was one of the
few—maybe the only time I saw him really with a serious, worried face. The perpetrators of the Holocaust actually
were the Austrians. The Jews in Germany
were relatively much better off.”[8]
This story has a number of interesting dimensions. First, this is one of the few times that
Henry mentioned a specific date without being prodded to do so. Since this is a date that is relatively
well-known and experienced by many, one can assume that its inclusion in the
narrative is the result of research after the fact. Second, this appears to be a highly vivid image in Henry’s mind,
as seen in his use of the present tense (“he’s standing there”) as well as his
reference to the image itself (“I still see him standing there”).
Third,
Henry made explicit the uniqueness of this story and memory, when he mentioned
that it was “maybe the only time” that he saw his father upset. Because his father was not a major player in
most of Henry’s post-childhood narrative, this appears to have held meaning for
him. Finally, Henry ended his story
with a relation back to the statements before it, regarding Austrian
anti-Semitism. He thus showed the
ability to make his often seemingly disparate stories relate to each other in a
manner that would be clear to his listeners.
At this point in the
interview, Henry chose to discuss his feelings about the human tendency to
“hate or to heal”: “You have to understand that none
of us is born to hate or to heal… This is given to us, taught to us. Nobody’s born a doctor, and nobody’s born to
kill somebody as such. That is
taught. We all have a beast in us. Only with some it takes a long time to wake
it up, with some it never wakes up, and with some it takes just a snap. But we all have the—call it the gift, or the
capability to do bad. Certainly, we all
have the gift to do good. That slowly,
but surely, things do improve. We might
go two, three steps forward and two steps then back. But I believe that slowly, but surely, it will be a better world. That I believe. I have no proof.”[9] Again, Henry mixed his story with
connections to both the past and the present (and the future). The story itself is clearly related to the
previous discussion of anti-Semitism and the perpetration of these crimes, but
it turns into a more philosophical, generalized speech about the world and the
future of humanity. Thus, it shows that
Henry was able to step away from his narrative at times and link it to more
global, general themes in his life and even beyond.
Henry then discussed
Hitler’s politics, the progression of his rise to power, and the building of
the concentration camps, along with the accompanying religious persecution of
the Jews at the time. He asserted that “the world would be better off,
would have been better off, without any religion.”[10] Then Henry went back and talked about his
family being chased out of their apartment and forced to work, digging graves
and planting vegetables in a Jewish cemetery.
Directly
after this, he told with tremendous clarity and detail a relatively short story
about his sister: “My sister went out
with a gentleman in 1939. So she was
about almost 18… I remember, he came to the house, and he asked my mother for
her hand. He was a rabbi. He says—he’s also a young gentleman. He says he’s leaving for the United States,
and if they get married, she can come.
My sister didn’t want to leave us.
Yes. Absolutely did not want to
leave us. He was a nice looking man, I
remember. I can still see him.”[11] This story, perhaps more than any of the
others, shows Henry’s tremendous memory capacity. The details of this account seem less than relevant to his life
narrative, and yet, Henry remembered so many of them. He mentioned that he remembered how the man looked, and that “I
can still see him.” In the grand scheme
of his narrative and the scope of his memories, this can be considered a
remarkable display of memorial ability.
Henry then told a number
of stories about Dora, a very close friend of the family who allowed them to
live with her for a period of time. In
this particularly evaluative section, emotion is central, as seen in the
multiple references to how much she loved them: “Unfortunately,
[the Gestapo] caught her a couple weeks, a couple of months later, and they
sent her back again. So that was
Dora. Fond memories. She loved my brother. She took him many times home with her for
the weekend. To her he was like her own
child. He also—she loved him. I guess
he was small and he—I don’t know. She
loved him and she loved us all. I mean,
she bought my sister a baby grand piano.
Yeah, she loved us all. So now
came the time, we were thrown out of that apartment. Didn’t take much. You did
not have to have eviction notice. You
know, somebody [just] walked in.”[12] Although Henry ends this account with a
rather distant discussion of the family having been thrown out of the apartment,
most of the story shows a great deal of affection and positive memories.
Henry
told a variety of other stories centered in this time period, during which the
family was essentially hiding. He again
peppered his stories with evaluation and connections between them and his life
today. Then, Henry embarked on what I
can now see as his Holocaust narrative.
He began by saying, “We came to the concentration camp. There are certain things happened, I can’t
remember all these things. But we came
to the first concentration camp. We
came to Theresienstadt, which was a concentration camp, not an extermination
camp. The details you can read in the
book.”[13]
He gave
a substantial amount of history about the camp, which I can again only assume
he learned from doing research for his book.
He told me, “Theresienstadt was originally a lived-in village. Theresienstadt was a fortress which was
built by Joseph the Second, named after his mother, Maria Teresia, which was
empress of Austria. And against
Frederick the Great of Germany, you have the details there in the book.”[14] Twice here he told me to refer to the book
for more “details.” This is also the
first time that Henry told me that he “can’t remember all these things.” His memories appear so extraordinarily present
throughout his narrative that it is significant that he chose to tell me here
that he does not remember everything.
Henry made a short reference to Auschwitz in the
beginning of his discussion of Theresienstadt, telling me, “Not only did we know
about Auschwitz, but it said in Auschwitz, ‘In by the door, by the gate, out by
the chimney.’ So, but you could not
conceive it like—you know?” At this
point, I asked him whether this time period was 1941 or 1942, to which he
responded, “1942. Toward the end. I came October 1942 into the first
camp. Not October, September, I’m
sorry.”[15]
I
noticed early on that Henry was either not interested in or capable of
grounding his narrative in temporal terms, and I made a consistent and constant
effort to push his stories into a more chronological organization. This was also not the first time that he
would go back and forth from his discussion of one camp to a story about
another. His lack of foundation in the
chronological progression of events often made it difficult for me to
understand where in the overall sequence he was at any given time. Indeed, it took a while for me to realize
that his stories were organized thematically and not sequentially. Had I known this at the time, I believe the
interview would have been easier and less frustrating for me to follow.
Back in
his narrative, Henry spent a great deal of time describing Theresienstadt and
the living conditions there in excruciating detail, beginning with a lengthy
illustration of his arrival there.
Then, while telling me about the family leaving Vienna, Henry said, “oh,
I do have to go back,” and described the experience of being loaded into the
train cars bound for the camp. He then
mentioned that he was still with his mother and sister. At this point, I asked where his father
was. He responded that his father “was
gone already. He was killed. He was killed. My mother said he died, and [we were told that] he was killed, in
this country, on April 28, 1938, 1939.
I’m sorry, sorry. 1939.” When I probed further, asking if he knew any
of the details, Henry replied simply, “No.”[16] He then changed the subject back to
Theresienstadt, telling an elaborate story about the living conditions.
After
this account, Henry again decided, “By the way, I have to go backwards.” He proceeded to tell me about the time he
spent in a gymnasium in his hometown, waiting to be taken to the camp. He gave a lengthy description of the crowded
atmosphere and the toilet situation.
Henry digressed again in the middle of the story, mentioning that he had
“to go back” to a story about his Bar Mitzvah.
He finished the first story, then discussed the “first time in my life
[when] I saw democracy in action,” describing in detail a specific night in the
gymnasium. Directly after this story,
Henry said, “If I may go back now, please, I want to explain [to] you that I
was Bar Mitzvahed. My mother was,
perhaps like me, a born optimist. And
she believed like many other people that Hitler cannot last forever. Not only forever, he’ll be finished. So when it came 1941, and in November 1941,
we would have been thirteen years old.
She found a person to educate us for the Bar Mitzvah, an old Jewish man.”[17] Henry further described his Bar Mitzvah,
again in intense detail.
After
this, he told me, “Now I’m going back again, if you don’t mind,” proceeding
with a story about his early religious education. He then spent a significant amount of time discussing his
father’s funeral. The two stories were
connected to each other, and to a third, by the thread of religion and belief
in God, which will be cited in further detail later. At this point, I attempted to push Henry back into talking about
Theresienstadt, as I was still laboring under the hope that I would get a
chronological narrative of his Holocaust experience. He gave me a short synopsis of how “Theresienstadt was a horror,”
but then continued in a different vein, discussing at length Hitler’s laws
regarding Jewish identity. He kept
telling me explicitly that he was “jumping ahead” or “going back,” to the
extent that I became thoroughly confused as to the original starting point, or
whether there ever was one. He then proceeded
to discuss the “opportunism” of the Germans, and the way in which the Holocaust
produced quite lucrative job opportunities.[18]
He finally continued with his account of Theresienstadt
at this point, stating, “now Theresienstadt, since we mentioned the
crematorium, and it really doesn’t have to be in sequence, this part. For a while it was my job, with some other
people, to burn the people.” An
intricately detailed story came next, complete with statements about the land
on which the crematoria were built and the coffins and procedures that were
used as part of the job. He went
on: “To me, when I once pushed a child
in, the child rose, like this, from the heat, and I thought to myself that
perhaps how the people, I still believed in God then—it was before
Auschwitz. That perhaps the people
believed that the soul went up to heaven, because then the body collapsed
back. Made up my own little story. I don’t know, what was I, thirteen, fourteen
years old? So this was this crematorium
bit.”[19]
It is
significant here that Henry mentioned that this story “really doesn’t have to
be in sequence.” Perhaps he was
starting to realize that I was having a difficult time understanding the
chronology of events. Perhaps he wanted
to emphasize that this story stands alone, or is relatable to a number of other
issues (such as religious beliefs or meaning-making). Nonetheless, the account was told with incredible clarity and
imagery. It is also evaluated at the
end, when he mentions that he “made up my own little story.”
Henry then told an elaborated story about the first time
he ever stole in a camp. He prefaced
his discussion by telling me that there was a “tremendous penalty” for
stealing, perhaps in an effort to set up a “hero tale.” He described the scenario: “And I took this potato…a nice-sized potato,
put it in my pocket, and went up to where my mother lived… I took out the
potato, and I said, ‘Here.’ She says,
‘Where did you get it from?’ I said,
‘It fell off a truck, which was being unloaded. I took it, I stole it.’
And there were people in the same room as my mother who obviously knew
us from Vienna, I don’t remember the details anymore, and a couple in unison
said, ‘Lucky your father that he didn’t see the day when his son became a
thief.’ Can you imagine these high
morals that people had? And I looked at
my mother, and she gave me such an approving look, which of course, settled
that. And I became, eventually, a
master thief.”[20]
After
asking me if the story was of interest to me, Henry continued with another
lengthy description of the progression of his thieving abilities. He made hand gestures, stood up to
demonstrate facets of the story when it was necessary, asked questions like
“Can you picture that?” and appeared tremendously animated and alive while
telling these accounts. He ended with
an admission that his stealing, and the job he had that afforded him the opportunities
to do so, “added to my life.”[21] These stories are again examples of what I
would call “hero tales,” and they are told in the same manner as those in
Ruth’s narrative. Ruth’s stories of
this nature most often placed her father as the main character, however; while
Henry is the central figure in his own hero tales. These were some of the most detailed and vivid stories in the
entire narrative, and their significance to Henry’s survival seems evident in
the extensive description that they were given.
In the process of telling one of these stories, Henry
mentioned, “My friend and partner, Ernest, he’s one of the few people I
mentioned before, for I’ve mentioned only people in the book who affected my
life. I mean, my brother got [a] short
[amount of space in the book]. He
really didn’t affect my life.”[22] Henry proceeded to tell a number of stories
about Ernest, related to the centrality of food and eating in
Theresienstadt. All of these accounts,
clustered together, seemed connected to each other by this central theme of the
importance of food and the need to steal in order to survive.
Henry
then switched gears and spent a substantial amount of time talking about the
Jews in the camp who were in charge of deciding who was to be sent to
Auschwitz, and how they always chose the older people first, attempting to keep
the young ones in Theresienstadt (and away from death) as long as
possible. Henry mentioned that
“actually we became aware—that was not a posted policy. But I became aware of it. You know, I was in this camp two years at
least. I became aware of it then after
the war. I read about it.”[23] This marks the first time Henry made an
explicit reference to the research he had conducted after the war. Although he told the story as if he knew
about the “policy” at the time, he did make this disclaimer at the end, which
is significant.
Henry then talked about the hunger and starvation in
Theresienstadt, how he was surrounded by bloated faces, and how he never saw a
pregnant or menstruating woman. Again,
related to the food/hunger thread of conversation, he told a lengthy story
about his mother’s bout with scurvy at this point. Halfway through the account, however, Henry succeeded at
completely derailing himself from the initial story he had set out to tell,
proceeding to give me a long story about a friend and the course of his
post-war life. Finally, he got back to
the original story, and continued in an extremely elaborate and vivid
discussion of his attempts to steal fruit to keep his mother from dying. He went on to create more “hero tales” with
himself as the main character.
Henry
then told another seemingly tangential story about another friend in the camps
to illustrate a related point, and then went back to his life in Vienna to talk
about an incident that reiterated his point a second time. He ended with, “I figure I have to go back
and tell you that. Theresienstadt, how
should I say, you live of course in a situation like this, there is no grand
plans. What am I going to do next
week? Rather you live from moment to
moment, and hope you live from moment to moment, and from day to day.”[24]
At this
point, Henry had gotten progressively further from any semblance of organization
in his narrative. Rather, he had embarked
on a process of telling a variety of stories that were connected to each other,
but not at all connected to a global theme.
He seemed to have threads running through each set of stories, but the
themes themselves were rarely related to each other. Similarly, because the main character in many of the stories was
not always Henry, the cohesion of the groups of stories as part of Henry’s life
narrative as a whole began to suffer.
He then
began to tell me an account that I had read in the book, so I cut him off
courteously by telling him I had read about it. He responded by again saying, “I have to jump ahead,” and going
on to discuss heroes in the camps and the varied tendencies to avoid or seek
danger. Henry then jumped back again,
telling me, “we have to go back to Auschwitz then.” He began a story about the latrines in Auschwitz, and I again
told him I had read this section in the book.
Although I enjoyed our time together, and although Henry was a wonderful
story-teller, there were times that I became frustrated both by the increasing
length of the interview and by his tendency to repeat stories. As I mentioned before, it was rather
consistently difficult for me to listen to such intensely detailed descriptions
of often-horrific circumstances. Henry
nonetheless continued, describing his work in the latrines. When I asked him how he could stand it, he
replied, “You get used to it. And you
know, my mother, let her rest in peace, she used to say…‘God shouldn’t send
what a person can’t endure.’ What a
person can’t endure should be never sent to him. You know?
“The
pain, the agony, the discomfort. You
might think, ‘I never could live through that.’ Don’t ever say that. I
mean, you should never have to live [through it], but if for one reason or the
other, there’s a will to live. You will
tolerate, or even scheme, to ladle out a latrine. Because the most important thing is to stay alive. Yeah.
I ate rainworms with gusto.
Gusto because I was hungry. I
didn’t know about calories then, or minerals, or—. But I ate the rainworms.
Unfortunately, the rainworms they diminished. Especially the other people had the same ideas. You know?
Who say, ‘I never can.’ There
were a lot of people who gave up. You
see? I would not say they did not want
to survive. I think deep down, almost
everybody [wanted to survive]. They
just gave up. And, unfortunately, there
were many, many, many people who wanted to live and they did not survive.”
After a
series of questions on my part, many of the answers to which will be discussed
later, Henry switched gears, talking again about the Judenrat and the
often-unscrupulous nature of a number of Jews in the camps. Then he launched into a relatively cohesive
narrative of his time in Auschwitz, which will be presented in greater detail
shortly. He began with his journey to
Auschwitz, describing with vivid imagery the conditions in the cattle
cars. Henry continued with his arrival
there and his first confrontation with Dr. Mengele, but then skipped back again
to the cattle cars and the circumstances surrounding his entrance into the
camp. Here I asked with whom Henry was
at this point in his journey, and he responded, “I still was with the whole—my
mother, my father…I’m sorry. My mother,
my sister, my brother, me.”[25] This last comment is not the only one in
which Henry shows an initial inability to correctly remember seemingly
important details, such as the date and the main “characters.”
Henry
went on with his description of his arrival in Auschwitz: “Relations of many years, close relations,
like husband and wife, the separation took seconds, thanks to the SS. You know?
And the last thing my mother said to me, she says, ‘Take the hair out of
your face, out of your eyes.’ I always
had unruly hair. Still, whatever I have
is unruly. It’s not much left. And I guess that’s one of her concerns. You know?
That’s the last time I saw her, too.
And I have to say, it was the last time I saw my sister. Even so, I will mention later that I thought
I saw her again, but, remind me if I forget to tell you that.”[26]
Henry
then gave a brutally vivid description of the shaving process and the showers
at Auschwitz. He went on to talk about
being issued shoes and clothes. At this
point, I asked him in which year this had all taken place, to which he replied,
“It was 1944. In July, 1944, I think I
wrote in the book, explains it the book.
July or August. It doesn’t
really matter.”[27] Again, here Henry showed a general lack of
interest in dates, and steered me to the book to get “the facts.” His comment that “It doesn’t really matter”
is significant, seeming to imply not only a disinterest in, but also a rather
active disregard for a chronological organization of his stories.
Henry then mentioned that he never saw a bird in Auschwitz,
saying, “It was dreadful.” He mentioned
again his mother’s motto that “God shouldn’t send what a person can’t endure,”
and segued into a discussion of the prisoners in Auschwitz who committed
suicide. He told me, “perhaps they
would have never survived.” When I
asked him what he thought about their actions, he replied, “I did not give them
a second thought. You see? I certainly did not plan to do it. I did not see them as my role models, or
that they’re wise people… Absolutely not.
But I certainly, you see, I don’t know if that was in him—in me, rather,
but at this point my only concern was my brother, and me, and my brother, and
me, and my brother, and me. You know, I
did not—perhaps it helps you to survive, too… So my interest became very—how
should I say? Some people would call it
selfish, but I would rather say very narrow.
And this thing stood with me for the rest of my life. I was always concerned about my immediate
family.”[28]
At this point, he digressed to talk about his post-war
successes in the domestic and professional realm, many of which he had
discussed before. I prodded him back to
talking about Auschwitz, asking him if he worked there. Henry obliged for a short time, and then
went further to talk about the types of punishments that were took place at
Auschwitz, one of which was being forced to jump into the latrine, another
which involved being “put over a block, and two SS men hit you on your behind
and your testicles. And they got exhausted
doing it. They did it with such relish. And you had to count. And if you fainted, they had a pail of
water, and it started from count one again.
And when you were finished, and you didn’t get up and say, ‘Thank you
very much,’ it started from the beginning again. There was a certain ritual.”
This particular account strikes me even now, and certainly struck me
then, as incredibly brutal. In light of
the fact that Henry went on to tell me that this type of punishment never
happened to him, I am left wondering why he chose to discuss this at all. He never came across to me as someone who
was interested in “shock value,” but this story certainly appears that way.
“I do
have to say,” Henry then told me, “that, as a whole, the mood of the prisoners
was as low or lower than one can imagine.
As a whole.” When I asked him
whether his mood was also low, Henry replied, “No. It never was. And
neither—I was together with my brother who turned out in his later life to be a
pessimist… And when one anticipates a negative, I was not aware that he was
down. I guess as long—it’s the same
here with me and my cancer now. As long
as my mood is upbeat, my wife’s mood is upbeat. You know? It has
something to do, there’s a connection, I think.” He went on to say, “I was always, to the very day I’m an
optimist. I mean, more than an
optimist. I wasn’t in self-denial then,
and I’m not in self-denial now. I just
don’t anticipate the negative.” When I
asked Henry whether he ever gave up, he responded, “Never! Never, never did I believe that I will die. Never, never in my life [did I want to
die]. And I could not…understand, let’s
use that word, that people ran into the barbed wire and killed themselves.”[29]
Henry switched topics at this point, again discussing the
role of the Austrians in the Holocaust.
He then went back to the subject of Hitler’s politics. In another drastic leap in topics, Henry
went on to discuss his “philosophy” of survival: “most of us realize there’s a certain finality. Like I wrote at the beginning of the book,
‘One is born so one can die.’ It’s a
finality. It’s all right.” Here, I asked Henry, “So what helped you
through it?” He replied, “I don’t need
help. I really don’t need help. Because I know that I was born, I mean, you
see, I didn’t even need help in the first concentration camp…
“[And
I’m not going to say that] I developed such a great philosophy, because I
didn’t. I mean, I would be lying to say
that at ten, which is after my father went, or when I was thirteen in the first
concentration camp, that I became another Hegel, or Plato, and I developed a
philosophy and I lived by it? I would
be lying. You know, I just faced every
day and I realized the next day has to be faced. And the next day. And I
adjusted. You know, adjustment… You
have to adjust. Adjustment is
maturing. I think I mentioned that to
you before. Adjusting, and adjusting,
and adjusting, and adjusting, without giving up your identity. Without buckling under.”
I took this opportunity to segue into my questions, and
this was around the period of time that Henry’s Holocaust narrative ended; or
perhaps, I ended it for him. After a
number of questions, I finally asked him to give me a “brief” overview of what
happened after Auschwitz. Because his
narrative had jumped around so frequently, I had a rather muddled picture of
the sequence of events, but I knew that he had ended the general narrative with
Auschwitz. Henry responded with a
series of stories, none of which involved his liberation. He began by telling me: “I went back to Vienna. I was in Vienna from, I think, it was July
2, 1945. And we left Vienna. It was September. I think it was Rosh Hashanah, 1946. And come to the United States.
And, it was a deal, too. I want
to jump back to something.
“Because
I say ‘a deal.’ And when I came to this
country, it was, first of all, it was a culture shock. But second of all, I went hungry again. In Vienna I went hungry too, but you had
such great expectations of the United States.
Not that I believed the streets are paved in gold. No. But you certainly did not think you would go hungry. So, in a certain way, while in the
concentration camp, we were all in the same misery, which helps tremendously. You know, not that misery likes misery, or
whatever, but it helps. Like if you
would have been the only one, you know, it would have been probably
unbearable. But here, you came to the
country and these food stores, you know, there were many, many different little
food stores. And there mirrors behind,
and the food looked delicious. And the
bakery smelled delicious. And you had
no money to buy that stuff. And you
were still hungry. That was quite
painful.”[30]
Because this was a rather discrete and specific story
rather than an overall chronology of events in America, I began to recognize
the need (similar to what I experienced during Ruth’s interview) to probe for
post-war information. I asked Henry
with whom he had stayed when he first arrived in America, and he responded with
the following story: “When we first
stayed here, they found—it was thirty dollars a month for a furnished room by a
distant cousin who was paralyzed. And I
guess I felt we will help him pay the rent.
His whole rent for the apartment was $22. We paid thirty dollars and we had to adjust for the bill. They billed us as $50 or $60. We had to buy our own bed. And we had no kitchen privileges. And there was no shower. And $30 a month. And I came here on December 20, 1946. And January 2, I started working in a paper factory, and I made
$18. I’ve still got the stubs down
there.”[31]
Henry showed here, with both the account of his hunger in
America and the following discussion of his rent situation, that he was willing
to talk about his post-Holocaust life.
Whereas Ruth often gave me very closed answers to my questions about her
life after the war, Henry obliged with lengthy stories (often only semi-related
to my questions). However, the telling
of distinct stories in response to specific probing and the telling of an entire
narrative in response to an open-ended question are two different things.
When I
asked for a “brief overview” of his life after the war, I again expected a
narrative of the events that occurred.
I knew better, at that point, to expect a chronological
narrative, but I did expect Henry to tell me a series of stories connected by
the global theme of “life after the Holocaust.” What I received, however, was one specific story, prefaced by
Henry’s statement that he wanted “to jump back to something.” From then on, my side of the interview
followed a course similar to that of the corresponding section in Ruth’s
interview. While his stories were
considerably more elaborated, they were still simply answers to my
questions. Henry never just told a full
narrative of this time in his life, as he did with his Holocaust narrative.
The implication here, therefore, is that perhaps Henry
was feeling something similar to what Ruth felt during this part of her
interview—that post-war life is not as interesting to the “general public” as
the Holocaust. Even though I kept
asking about it, the conditioning on this level has been powerful. I simply may not have been able to convince
them (or perhaps, any of my subjects) that I did indeed want to know about
their lives and experiences after the war.
Although Henry clearly was not quite as “conditioned” as Ruth seems to
be, as seen in the details he presented and the lengthy stories he was willing
to tell me, he still confined his discussion of this period to answers to my
questions. In reality, perhaps the only
difference between Henry and Ruth in this domain is simply that he talks
more. Compared to his protracted
stories about other experiences in his life, these stories are surprisingly
shorter. In this sense, then, the
tendency to assume disinterest in topics unrelated to the Holocaust could very
well be much more prominent in Holocaust survivors than I originally thought.
Henry went on to describe how he was able to eat on such
a meager allowance, and how he traveled “on somebody else’s nickel” by sneaking
into the line of subway-goers during rush hour. After a number of stories related to his survival during a rather
desperate time in his life, I finally said, “So then you met your wife.” He responded, “Yeah.” Faced with having to probe yet again, I countered
with, “How did you meet her?” He
replied, “This person we moved into who was paralyzed was a distant
cousin. I tell you, he was actually a
nephew of my grandmother, who came to the United States well, many years
ago. And being that there were so many
children, he probably was the age of my grandma’s. And he was paralyzed. He
was the black sheep in the family…”[32]
Henry
then went into a long, elaborate story about the circumstances leading up to
his first meeting with his wife, the main characters involved, and a variety of
details that seemed related to the inner story but irrelevant to the global
story, which was supposed to be the answer to my question. He never actually talked about his wife or
their initial meeting itself, only ending with, “And that’s how the whole thing
started.”[33]
Soon after this, Henry showed signs of being
“finished.” He finally said, “And—what
can I tell you?” I answered with
another probe, because I had still not received a real narrative of his
marriage or any other facet of his life after the war: “So you had a son and then a daughter?” He responded, “Son and a daughter. My son—my brother has one son and two
daughters. The two daughters are
physicians. The youngest daughter, both
were valedictorian in an excellent high school.”[34] Henry then proceeded to give detailed
descriptions of his brother’s children, how smart they are, their occupations,
and a host of other details. His
explicit choice to talk extensively about his brother’s children and not his
own is striking. In fact, although his
son appeared in a number of stories about Henry’s post-war life and accomplishments,
his daughter is surprisingly absent from many of these tales. Clearly, Henry showed a reluctance to talk
about his domestic life, at least in the “chronological” narrative. The subject comes up again later, through
the course of my questions, but Henry never offers a full narrative of this
facet of his life.
At first glance, Henry’s narrative seems incoherent in a
number of different ways. First, there
is very little chronological or geographical ordering, which makes it difficult
to understand the background behind certain stories or events. Without at least a mention of his age at the
time, or the year, or where a given story takes place, one is often left
without the necessary grounding to fully comprehend and interpret the
story. This also increases the difficulty
of understanding relations between stories and thought process behind the
presentation of each particular account.
Second,
Henry tended to bounce from subject to subject and from time period to time
period, often without providing any type of initial “road map” of where he was
going with each story and why he was telling it. This is seen clearly in his initial discussion of his childhood,
followed directly by his decision to go back and describe his father’s
childhood. He similarly switched from
descriptions of Theresienstadt to descriptions of Auschwitz, and jumped to
topics related to religion repeatedly throughout the narrative.
Third, Henry had such a firm grasp on the often-minute
details of so many of the events and circumstances in his life that nearly
every story he told is filled with florid description and elaboration. Because he seemed to remember nearly
everything, everything he told me seemed meaningful and significant. Perhaps this is so. Generally, however, as we have seen before,
elaboration tends to be a sign of personal importance. If one assumes that this is the case with
Henry as well, his tendency to elaborate on every detail he could remember
makes it increasingly difficult to know what is especially meaningful to
him. It is possible, in fact, that his
memory itself is his most valuable asset.
Indeed, perhaps it is his enduring ability to recall each event that
makes every story powerful.
Ultimately, what one must realize is that these three
major issues that initially seem problematic in Henry’s narrative do not make
it incoherent; they make it unique and sophisticated. The most common, and certainly easiest to follow, form of
story-telling is the chronological account.
This is what we are used to hearing, and this is what we
understand. However, there are times
when stories are told as part of a theme or presentation of an argument. In this type of story-telling, temporal
ordering becomes less important because the thrust of the telling is centered
around grouping stories together to prove a point.
Although
I did not realize it at the time, I can see now that Henry told his narrative
this way: through themes, or series of
episodes. Rather than starting from
“the beginning” and giving his life narrative in chronological terms, he chose
to present what can be seen as a string of arguments, proving his points by
using specific stories as examples. I
was frustrated by what I perceived as incoherence during the interview because
I expected, and needed, a temporally-ordered account that I could follow
clearly and use to understand Henry’s full “life story.” When his specific aims and arguments become
clear through analysis of his narrative, however, one realizes that his life
story is an intricately-woven, internally consistent, and personally meaningful
tale of survival, optimism, and love.
While I was able to find a number of different themes threaded throughout his narrative, the three most central are the following: 1) childhood; 2) religion; and 3) camp life. These ideas appeared and reappeared throughout Henry’s entire narrative, a sign of significance and meaning. Although these were certainly not the only ideas that Henry must have wanted to convey to me, they were clearly important to him and they require attention in my discussion of him. In each of the sections below, I will illustrate the nature of these themes and how they appeared in Henry’s narrative by using one or two specific cases. Because his interview was so extensive and multi-faceted, I am not able to present some of the intricacies of the themes. However, the examples that are set out below are indicative of the ways in which Henry often spoke and the manner in which he presented his stories.
Henry presented his childhood in glowing terms. His message was twofold: first, that he had a happy and peaceful
childhood; and second, that the positive experiences and upbringing that he had
as a child prepared (and perhaps inoculated) him for his later negative experiences. He began by telling me: “I had the most wonderful childhood. I don’t want to use the cliché ‘close
family,’ which it certainly was. I
would rather say a very understanding family. I mean my mother, my father as I said, never raised his hand or
voice. My mother, in her own way, had a
little bit of a loose hand, but it was, well, looking back, it was not out of
order. You know we were two boys,
twins. We had a way to drive our
sister, who was seven years older, nuts. If one was good, the other one instigated. So it was not a house which, I mean I
certainly appreciate it, which had such strict discipline, which was not
unusual in Europe at this time.”[35]
This
first section constitutes Henry’s presentation of the first part of his
argument, which is most clearly seen in his opening line: “I had the most wonderful childhood.” He then explained his definition of
“wonderful” by using synonyms like “close,” and “understanding.” This segment is a summary; indeed, it is
more of what Riessman would call a “habitual narrative.” It gives the listener a clear sense of
Henry’s childhood, but it does not place the reader physically into a
particular situation. In order to make
his point more explicit, then, Henry continued with a specific example of this
lack of “strict discipline,” strengthening his argument with evidence.
“I remember we must have been two, because I do remember
a lot of things when I was very, very young.
Certainly we weren’t three yet.
And we schlepped, from the kitchen, a can of oil. Now I don’t know if it was five liters or
five gallons, but my mother was a very proud and great cook. She had, it was a, certainly to us it was
tremendous. It looked to me almost as
big as we were. I don’t think it was
completely full, but we schlepped it from the kitchen into my father’s
office, and spilled it on the parquet floor.
That spot never was removed, even though you know, somebody came
in every two weeks and polished the floor and waxed the floor. Not for that reason—in general, the whole
apartment. So my mother said, ‘Wait
till your father come[s] home,’ she probably gave us a smack too yet, I
don’t remember that, exactly. But this
I remember. My father came home. He thought it was the biggest joke. He laughed! He just laughed. Never
got upset, never got angry.” [36] Here again, Henry was still proving his
first point: that his childhood was
happy and free from undue punishment.
He did this successfully by presenting a vivid and descriptive episode
of his childhood.
Later, when Henry
returned to a discussion of his early life after a number of digressions, he
continued: “As I said, my mother, from the earliest age, had such confidence
in us, that we were let loose, free, without shoes. And you know…when they cut wheat, you know,
there remains certain things, and it scratches you, you know, you step
on it, you know? But it didn’t matter,
we [didn’t care]. And cows have a habit
to relieve themselves in the fields, and the sun bakes it, the top at
least. And it’s very hard for a
person, a kid who runs around to distinguish between the color of the ground
[and the cow manure]. So you slip in
that stuff too. You know, and that’s why I bought my farm. The smell of cow manure, I’ve associated
with such good time. Like if your
mother used to bake something as a kid, and you pass a place, and you
smell this, it reminds you of the enjoyment you had. To me it was the smell of cow manure. But to me also,
because it showed me the freedom—.
And I’m, and I think, part of this also helped me to cope with
life, whatever life brought me, later
on! And she had a whistle, a police
whistle. And when it came to lunch, or
supper, whatever, she blew the whistle!”[37]
This segment is the most significant contribution to the second aim of Henry’s presentation of his childhood. He began with another description of a childhood experience, again showing how happy and unencumbered he was. Notably, then, he segued directly into the meaning this experience held for him even after the war, and the effect of his upbringing on his later identity and coping abilities. His statement, “part of this also helped me to cope with life, whatever life brought me, later on!” is a clear evaluation of his childhood in light of his later experiences, particularly the Holocaust.
Henry also infused this story with references to bodily
senses and tactile sensations, as when he said, “it scratches you,” “you step on it,” and with references
to “the smell of cow manure.” All of
these story-telling strategies serve to pull the listener in, to evoke emotion,
and to imply vividness and importance.
Ultimately, however, Henry’s seamless transition from past experience to
present significance, and his evaluation of both, is what makes this story
powerful and meaningful.
Finally, I would like to bring to the reader’s attention
one of many sections in Henry’s book that describes his childhood. Although he made similar statements in the
interview, I believe taking this segment from the book will make Henry’s
self-presentation even clearer. He
wrote:
Two warnings were given to me by my mother: never stand under a tree during a thunderstorm
and stay away from snakes with a head shaped like a triangle. The oval head of the nonpoisonous snake took
on a triangular shape due to the poison sacs on the bottom of the head. My older sister told me not to taste or eat
anything—no matter how nice-looking—if I never ate it before. Very good advice this little girl gave
me. All this great trust and confidence
my parents had in me, a very young little boy, in my ability to take care of
myself, without giving up their love and care for me, together with this almost
complete freedom certainly were instrumental in shaping my ability to cope with
many of those unforeseen events which were in the future for me.[38]
This account is significant in a variety of ways. First, the theme of “advice given by family members” is clear here. It is also a powerful testament to memory that Henry was able to remember such intricate details of a moment that happened so long ago. Second, although the first half of the story is very past-centered, Henry makes an interesting comment when he says, “Very good advice this little girl gave me.” While in the previous sentence, she had been referred to as “My older sister,” in this statement, she becomes a little girl. I find the image of the 70-year-old Henry looking back on his older sister as a little girl to be highly meaningful. Because she died in Auschwitz, this is, of course, the only image he has left of her. He similarly refers to himself in the next sentence as “a very young little boy,” but his present-centered voice is clear throughout the passage.
Finally, the second half of this section is clearly
Henry’s presentation of his main argument, which is that his childhood shaped
his personality and later coping abilities.
The relation of his early life to his later life, and the evaluation of
his childhood in light of the Holocaust is highly sophisticated. Rather than idealizing his childhood simply
because it could not have been worse than the Holocaust, as many survivors tend
to do implicitly, Henry directly connects both periods in his life, and further
connects them both to his identity and narrative. He explains why his childhood was so “wonderful,” and he
discusses how the freedom with which he was entrusted then served him well
later. The foreboding nature of his
last sentence is clear, and it also makes explicit Henry’s hindsight
perspective in this case. What is thus
most important here is that Henry has reinterpreted his childhood in order to
understand the events that occurred in his life afterwards, and the manner in
which he dealt with them. This suggests
a powerful mechanism of meaning-making.
Henry discussed religion in general, and his religious
upbringing specifically, in great detail throughout his narrative. Although there were many examples of such
references, I have chosen two related stories that were told in
succession. Henry’s presentation of
these accounts had two related themes:
1) his feelings about organized religion and why he rejected it; and 2)
how this rejection of religion and God aided his survival in the camps.
Because
his father played a rather minor role in Henry’s overall narrative, the prominence
of his father’s death in the first story and the meaning the funeral held could
also be considered a significant thread.
Henry’s statements about religion were generally adamant and strenuously
presented, and many of his stories on this topic were clear presentations of
arguments about the uselessness of religion.
Although the reader does not have to agree with any of these
declarations, what is significant about them is that Henry was able to use his
feelings about religion to strengthen his vision of himself.
His
first story centered around his father’s funeral. He told me, “So here was my father in this closed coffin. My sister, two little boys, and my
mother. And the rabbi came in, strange
person to us. A stranger, rather, not a
strange person. A stranger to us. And my mother in her agony, threw herself on
the coffin and yelled out, and I translate it from German, ‘God, why did you do
that me? Oh God, how could you do that
to me?’ The rabbi stopped the services,
took out time to explain to us children that our mother was blasphemous. She questioned God’s will—took time out to
tell us that, and left us, with the coffin… And right then and there, I broke
off with all of God, all of God’s deputies.
And I was ten. Absolutely. But I still believed in God, and programmed
as I was, when I came into the first concentration camp, I honestly believed,
and I suffered. And I honestly believed
that I was being punished by God for being sometimes a bad boy. And I still prayed to him. I’m going to jump ahead…”
This is
perhaps the only time that Henry discusses his father’s death with any emotion,
although the emotion in this story is still not his own. It is not clear, however, whether he “broke
off with…all of God’s deputies” because of his father’s death, his mother’s
behavior, or the rabbi’s reprimands. It
is nonetheless significant that Henry says later, “I honestly believed, and I
suffered.” The connection between
religious belief and suffering is interesting, especially in the context of the
concentration camp where suffering was so pervasive on all levels. Henry appears to be setting the stage here
for another dramatic “break” from religion and belief. His next story, in fact, shows exactly this.
“As I
said, I still believed in God. But when
I came into Auschwitz, and I saw this mountain of little children thrown, shot,
dead, I said to myself—I don’t even want to tell how they got dead. I said to myself, ‘What sins could these
little babies have committed?’ And I
said to myself, ‘If there is a God who watches over this, he’s no damn
good. Or there’s no God.’ And there stood little me, skinny little me,
on the platform of Auschwitz, surrounded by barbed wire, machine gun towers,
SS, guard dogs, and I was a free man. I
was free of God. I never asked him for
anything anymore, certainly never prayed to him anymore, and I relied on
myself. And I think that’s 99 percent
of the reason that I survived.”[39]
This
story is powerful and moving. Henry’s
reference to being “a free man” amidst the “barbed wire, machine gun towers,
SS, guard dogs” of Auschwitz certainly creates a compelling image. Similarly, his declaration that he “relied
on myself” and that this is why he survived seems to hold a great deal of
meaning for him. Henry went further to
reiterate: “That is what religion did
to these people. It made them sheep for
the slaughter. This kind of twisted
morality, this wrong belief in God, that He will come and save them—I guess the
Hassidim feel the same way—is a crime in itself. I mean, I lived by my wits, as I always did, and I realized
there’s nobody to rely on. And that
certainly was an important factor besides my innate ability to adjust, and to
adjust, and to adjust, which helped me survive.”[40] Again, it is at the end of a sequence of
stories that Henry brings in the final thread of his argument—in this case,
that his rejection of religion and God actually facilitated his survival.
Henry mentions that he “lived by my wits” and “realized there’s nobody to rely on.” In this context, this is seen as a positive contributor to his overall ability to cope. Ultimately, Henry does here the same thing he did with his series of childhood stories, as he relates the past to the present and both to his identity as a survivor. He again shows the ability to reinterpret a potentially negative life experience in a positive light, in his belief that his “break” with God actually permitted him to survive. Henry also notes that some amount of his survival was the result of an “innate ability to adjust,” thus showing that he recognizes multiple facets of and influences on his identity and personality.
In just these few stories, Henry has successfully presented and supported an argument that religion is useless to him and that his ultimate rejection of God contributed to his survival. It is in this context that the power and usefulness of a themed narrative becomes clear. Neither of the first two episodes was presented in any chronological fashion, and the last segment—being primarily evaluative in nature—could have been told at any point in the overall narrative. However, Henry chose to tell these three accounts together, and in a specific order. He did so to prove a point, and he succeeded.
Henry told a great deal of stories about the time he
spent in Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.
Again, I am only able to present a few of them here. This collection of stories represents a
theme only insofar as it recurred throughout Henry’s overall narrative. He repeatedly bounced back to Auschwitz when
memories needed to be recounted, when points needed to be proven, and when
messages needed to be made. He told
these stories in such exquisite detail, and I knew at the time of our interview
that he was watching each scene flash through his mind as he talked about
it. I present these sections here in
order to allow the reader into Henry’s mind and into his life. He had no specific argument other than to
show the sheer brutality and horror that he underwent.
“We arrived in Auschwitz in these cattle cars. Cattle cars are like boxcars, and I cannot
believe that they ever shipped cattle in such dismal condition as they shipped
us… But since it’s referred to as cattle cars, I shall call it cattle
cars. And they were shut and then
locked from the outside. And the sanitary
conditions were nonexistent. And these
are, to the best of my knowledge… I think when we were loaded in, we were
given, I think, a slice of bread and maybe something else. I do not recall water. And it was a long trip. I think it was two days and three nights or
three days and two nights. It was a
long trip…actually, you got stiff standing packed like sardines. And people died on the trip. Anyway, we arrived in Auschwitz and we had
not the foggiest idea where we were.
And there [were] no signs at Auschwitz, but certainly we knew we are not
going to something better. It just
didn’t exist that they would ship you, you know, something better than before.”[41]
After a short digression, he continued: “You know, stiff as you were from not
moving, so it was expected that you—for these people to tumble out of that
boxcar. And you were actually chased,
and all this SS was down there yelling.
And some had whips and pushed you, or hit you… It was not a pretty
sight, even to people like me, who was already conditioned to certain
brutalities, you know. It somehow
became part of your life. Not willing
to accept it, but it became part of life.
It was expected brutality. And
men and women were separated and little children, with their mothers, which
was—we found out later—for both a death sentence. Mother and child went into the gas chamber.”[42]
After
some related statements, he went on:
“Then you were hustled, and—so this was the place. You had to drop all your clothes. You were—every hair on the body was shaved,
and rather butchered, because he used his straight razors. There are these rusty straight razors—you
are more butchered. You had all kinds
of cuts and scrapes—pubic area, you know, and on the chest I didn’t have any
hair, but there were men who had it who were bleeding. And I was bleeding. Then they wrapped something—that was all
done by prisoners—they wrapped some, it felt like acid, but it [was] probably
some kind of disinfectant on the head, they cut the hair. I think there were many concerns about lice
and the typhus. Not the typhus for us,
but typhus that the guards might catch.
And [an SS guard] pointed to a guy—and it was a prisoner who was
shaved—to cut off his penis. And the
other went and [did it]. And he was
left there to bleed to death. I mean,
that was just for fun to them, to him.
You know, there was no purpose.
There was no purpose.
“And then we walked into a room…and we walked in and
there was a sign, in German, that means shower. And I understand, I never was in there, but the gas chambers had
the same sign. And we walked in there,
and we were packed too tight, and there were pipes. There were pipes with holes in there, all along the pipes. There were also pipes, and boiling water
came out, and you couldn’t—if there was any more room for you—space for you to
step aside. You were packed in so tight
and you became lobster red, and eventually it turned to blisters. It seems like an eternity, but you know,
when you’re uncomfortable time seems so slow.
It seems like an eternity, but perhaps it was ten minutes. Or whatever it is.
“And it
was October. And in the area in Poland,
it was already winter… And you walked out—you actually walked out on ice,
because the previous people who got the shower, dry dripped and it froze on the
ground. And there you stood nude… So we
stood there, for quite a while, quite uncomfortable, the red turned to blue…
And we were issued—all of our clothes were left there…[43]
“And we
were thirsty. We were hungry. But this was not unusual. And then, of course, I think it was
noontime, or afternoon time, we got some black coffee, coffee without
sugar. And I shouldn’t call it
coffee. It was some dark liquid. You know?
Not that I’m an expert on coffee, but I’m sure that was not coffee, as
we know it. And we were not issued any
utensils. We got served for five people
in a washbasin. And we had to lay on
the floor and lick it up doggy-style.
And, I mean there are things—it was just another way to humiliate,
break, whatever. They wanted [to] break
[us] down, or maybe they got fun watching it.
What do I know? I mean, I do
believe that they’re a sadistic bunch.
I still cannot believe that anybody—a normal human being, if there’s
such a thing as complete normal, but anybody who [has] some kind of decency
could either order to do such a thing or watch a human being be subjected
to…and think that a soldier or an SS man is supposed to follow an order. It’s no excuse.[44]
“And five of us got—he shoved a blanket, a little
blanket, maybe three by five, maybe four by five. Who knows? And five of us
had to make a decision if to put it on the floor, on the concrete, and lay on
it, or lay the way we were on the concrete and cover ourselves. And I think we came to the right conclusion,
as in most of them did it this way too.
We covered ourselves. At least it retained the warmth the
body gives out. You know? It was certainly too thin to make the
concrete softer. I mean, we were very
exhausted, and we were very tired. And
it was, how should you say, an uncomfortable sleep, not a comfortable
[sleep]. It was like a horrible
sleep. You fell asleep and you woke
up. But you slept. And I think four o’clock we were woken
up. I think that was the time. It was four o’clock, to be counted. So you stood outside for two, three hours
‘til you were counted.”[45]
These fragments give an enormous amount of detail about
Henry’s arrival in Auschwitz and the daily obstacles that he faced. There are also subtle hints of a post-war
perspective and evaluation, which can be seen here as signs of integration
between Henry’s Holocaust experiences and his life afterwards. For instance, he stated that people like him
were “already conditioned to certain brutalities,” going further to say that it
“somehow became part of your life.” His
repetition of the phrase, “there was no purpose,” when speaking of the
unwarranted violence the SS guards inflicted on many of the prisoners also
attests to Henry’s post-war analysis of these events. Overall, he consistently seemed to employ a higher-order analysis
of the circumstances he described. This
analysis, coupled with his extraordinary attention to detail, serve the
co-functions of pulling the listener into the story and allowing him or her to
truly understand what occurred at the same time.
Henry also made a number of references to his memory
abilities and his evaluation of them after the fact. When he spoke of standing outside after the shower, for instance,
he said, “It seems like an eternity, but you know, when you’re uncomfortable
time seems so slow. It seems like an
eternity, but perhaps it was ten minutes.”
Again, he is simultaneously conveying both what this experience felt
like for him, and how he assumes it actually occurred from an “objective”
point of view. Henry similarly
mentioned a number of small details that he was unable to remember, as when he
told me, “I do not recall water,” and when he described “a little
blanket, maybe three by five, maybe four by five. Who knows?” Unlike the
other participants who were clearly bothered by their inability to remember
these types of details, Henry tended to summarily dismiss as relatively
inconsequential the elements that he did not recall. Because he was often able to recount so much of a given story,
the minor details that he could not retrieve were seemingly completely
unimportant to him.
The second-to-last section of Henry’s Auschwitz narrative that I presented above is particularly striking on the dimensions I have already discussed. Henry described the activity that he and his fellow prisoners were made to do, and then continued to analyze it in terms of the mentality among the SS guards. When he mentioned, “They wanted [to] break [us] down, or maybe they got fun watching it. What do I know? I mean, I do believe that they’re a sadistic bunch,” it seemed that he was looking back upon this experience from a vantage point of the post-war survivor. He went further to say that the traditional “following orders” explanation is simply “no excuse.” Again, here Henry was mixing his wartime experiences with his beliefs from after the war. Throughout his narrative, he continually peppered his powerful descriptions with analysis and evaluation in light of his post-war perspective.
It is hopefully clear by now that Henry had a tremendous
capacity for memory, for evaluation of his memory, and for integration of his
earlier memories with his later memories (and both with his daily life at the
time). He was thus able to build a
comprehensive life narrative out of these interconnected memories, and his
sense of identity has come directly out of this cohesive narrative. He would argue that he was able to achieve
all of these things through love, optimism, and an inherent strength and
ability to “adjust.” Because I interviewed
Henry at a crucial period of his life, when he was dealing with the rather late
stages of lung cancer and aggressive chemotherapy treatments along with it, I
believe it is particularly important and meaningful to look at his views on
life and of his own sense of resilience.
Although all of the individuals I interviewed are coping with the
challenges of aging and the later life stages, Henry was in a slightly more
direct confrontation with issues surrounding his own mortality.
Thus, I would like to present here a number of Henry’s
answers to my questions regarding his survival, both of the Holocaust and in
his life at the time. When I asked him
why and how he never gave up during any of the time he spent in camps, he told
me, “If you see heaps of smelling dead bodies, crawled over by all kinds—they
let them lay for days. I just didn’t
want to become part of that heap. I
mean, you might get the same feeling.
If nothing else. Besides, I had
such a zest for life, like to the very day.
Of course, cancer…will kill me.
I mean, I know… in camp I fought the system. Here, I have to fight my own body, and I know I’m licked…and it’s
just a matter of time.”[46]
I then asked Henry if he believed things happen for a
reason, to which he responded, “No.
What reason, because it’s supposed to happen? The reason is that Hitler came.
Yeah, it happened because Hitler came.
But that there’s a reason that I was born? I mean, pardon me. If my
father would have put the prophylactic on, or masturbated, I would not have
been here. I want to tell you something. If you look back…I was here and came to this
country, and created jobs for some people.
I had two children. One of them
is a physician. He does help
people. I married a lady. I gave her a good amount of luxuries, we
were able to have. If you look at this
as a purpose. But I want to tell you
something. I love children, as I love
life. And in my younger days, I would
have had a dozen children. Right? I really love children.”[47]
After a
brief interlude, he continued: “But why
do I tell you that? I wasn’t even going
to tell you that. To have children,
please don’t misunderstand, is a very selfish endeavor. Because with every moment of pleasure in
life, there can be—perhaps will be—hours of discomfort. And even if your children scoot through life
not being affected by this ratio, their children, or their grandchildren might
be up to the threshold. So I started
something because I love children.
Therefore, I feel, and I always said it, my children don’t owe me
anything. I owe them everything. I don’t want—I don’t even ask them for
respect. I don’t even ask them for
love. They do give me love. Respect?
I think respect is the worst thing one can demand, because respect is
based on fear. You have to want to love
me.”[48]
After reading a short poem, he continued: “It’s love… If you love a person, and when I
mean love, like I love my wife, and I love my children. You don’t have to do anything. That is—you know, the greatest feeling is to
love. Being loved doesn’t mean a
thing. The feeling is the ability to
love. Being loved is nice. But you never let anyone in. It’s a good feeling. But loving. You see? And I know my limitations. I love my wife very much. I don’t even think she is aware how much. I love my brother, my children, and my
grandchildren.”[49] Henry reiterated later, “I give
unconditional love. I don’t ask
anything in return. I do this if you do
that, right? No… For me, I don’t ask
for anything. I just feel happy and
good that I’m able to give it.”[50]
In these segments, Henry showed a great deal of
acceptance and contentment with his life.
As a general rule, he believed himself to be an optimist, and he showed
signs of this optimism, tempered with realism, throughout his discussion. He told me, “I had such a zest for life,”
even “to the very day. Of course,
cancer…will kill me.” Indeed, he seemed
to be at a level of resolution with his cancer that is unusual. Henry’s thoughts on fate and the reasons for
his survival were similarly realistic.
Although he did not believe there was a specific reason for him to be
alive (over anyone else), he was nonetheless able to find meaning in the life
he has led. His family was clearly an
important part of this meaning, and he mentioned that building healthy
relationships with his wife and children could be perceived “as a purpose.” Above all, Henry argued, the ability to love
was his most cherished gift and most meaningful pursuit. It is indeed significant that Henry believed
that giving “unconditional love” was perhaps his most important
contribution. In fact, he said, “the
greatest feeling is to love.” In light
of all the potential emotions he could have mentioned, and all the
repercussions of his Holocaust experiences, it is remarkable that Henry so
completely salvaged this ability.
Beyond the powerful force that love had in his life, Henry discussed a number of fundamental beliefs that clearly carried him through both the Holocaust and his later life. When I asked him what “surviving resiliently” would mean to him, for instance, Henry replied, “Well, with me it was adjustment. But you—under the best of circumstances, under the most favorable of circumstances…you’re a survivor of life. What makes you go? What greases you through life? What is your oil? The magic thing. It’s an individual [thing], it can be either your charm, or you were able to fool some people into letting you scoot through. Right? I don’t know. With me it was definitely to adjust, and to the very day, [even] to adjust to cancer. You know there are some other people, you see them there at chemo. They’re completely finished… I believe I’m a survivor and that my adjustment is my resiliency… I said, because I think the way I came out of the oven, I mean, my mother’s womb. I believe that [I was resilient from the beginning].”[51]
When I asked Henry what he thought was the biggest effect
the Holocaust had on his sense of self and his identity, he again pointed
(indirectly) to this ability to adjust.
He mentioned a turning point that contributed to his basic acceptance of
his own mortality: “it was summer, and it was hot, and I was laying in my boxer
shorts on the bed—I probably was reading, and all of a sudden I looked at my
toes, and my toes were wiggling. And I
said to myself, how old was I? ‘55—twenty-seven
years old. I looked at my toes and I
said, ‘You know, myself,’ I said, ‘One day you will lay like this and the toes
won’t wiggle any more.’ You know? And perhaps to this point, certain outlooks
of life were a reaction to—perhaps some of the reactions to my experiences in
the concentration camp and Holocaust.
Thereafter, whatever reactions were rather to the fact that I accepted
that one day, there is a finality. You
see? It was like a changing point.”[52]
This is a dramatic statement both about Henry’s
perception of his own life and about his sense of identity in relation to the
Holocaust. His statement that his
outlook on life before this moment had been more of a reaction to his
experiences during the war shows a great deal of introspection, and the fact
that this changed in an instant is significant. The turning point, therefore, was when Henry stopped arranging
his life and identity around the Holocaust and issues of daily survival, and
began to view his own ultimate mortality as inevitable and thus, something of
which he could let go. In fact, he
“accepted” the “finality” of his existence.
It was this moment that allowed Henry to invest himself fully in his other
interests, such as family and love and work.
It was this moment that freed him from living a life only in response to
the Holocaust.
When I asked him if his outlook changed at all when he
was diagnosed with cancer, he responded, “It did not—it’s disgusting how little
it affected me. I was operated on, and
I found out that it spread. I found out
there were traces in the liver. My
moods never went down a millimeter. I’m
not—to say I’m optimistic about my condition would be, perhaps part of a
lie. I know it’s a terminal thing. But every day which passes, and I have no
pain, you know, I appreciate it. And
even though my son was very frank with me, said to me, ‘Look, Dad, this cancer,
no remission. Sooner or later it hits you like a ton of bricks, and you hope
just then that it’s over fast.’ You
know? I’m not lying to myself. But it’s not in mind. I mean, every day—to be honest with you, my
concern is I always took care of my wife, and you know, handled all the stuff. I’m concerned what will happen with
her. And, I mean, she certainly has
enough money to live to a couple of hundred years, but, so, I have my
son-in-law… And hopefully she will be taken care of. The children—children are born hopefully to lose their
parents. You know? Before they go. Hopefully.”[53]
Again, Henry showed a tremendous amount of acceptance in
this segment of talk, saying that he appreciated “every day which passes, and I
have no pain.” What is important here
is that cancer represents Henry’s second major battle with potential death, and
yet, he does not relate this situation to the Holocaust. This is further evidence of the turning
point that he discussed before—his reactions to life events are not driven by
his Holocaust experiences anymore. His
acceptance of his own mortality allowed him to accept his diagnosis, and to
turn his attention to supposedly more important issues, such as his wife and
“what will happen with her.”
Ultimately, this is an even more powerful example of Henry’s integration
of his Holocaust experiences with his later life experiences. He is able to take each event as it is, in
its own unique context. The Holocaust
is not his only frame of reference; it has become simply another event, or time
period, in his life.
Indeed, when I asked Henry if he would do anything in his
life over if he could, he responded, “No.
Nothing. No regrets. I mean, there were certain things beyond my
control. So, I mean I don’t want to
live through the camp again, but really, it—as I said before, I don’t want to
relive it, but it was very interesting.
Now.”[54] Again, this shows Henry’s tremendous ability
to accept the events in his life as they are, and to understand that they have
all had their own unique impacts on his life (for better or worse). I went further to ask Henry if he thought
anything positive had come out of the Holocaust, to which he replied, “Oh,
definitely… Let’s put it this way. Yes,
it had a positive [effect]. Probably.”[55]
When I
then asked him if he would take the Holocaust out of his life if it were
possible, he told me, “Well, if I could take the Holocaust out of my life, my
mother would have been alive. My
father, my sister would be alive.
Yeah. But I would realize I
cannot take it out of my life, so I tell you, that my mind doesn’t work this
way. Right? It’s perhaps a terrible thing to say, but I think some people
would be better off if they would have had a couple of months, knowing that
they would survive it. They ought to go
through life—they would be a much happier people. You know what I mean? In
their life, they would not have to cry if their husband doesn’t buy them…a
little piece of jewelry or something.”[56] Henry’s statements here again exhibited a
great deal of acceptance. He understood
that the Holocaust caused the deaths of many people, but he also understood
that his experiences made him who he was.
This was a difficult question for many of my subjects; some of them seemed, in fact, a little insulted that I could even conceive of them saying that they would have wanted the Holocaust to take place. Of course, it was not that I expected any of the participants to tell me that the Holocaust was a positive event. The question was more aimed at understanding each individual’s view of their lives in relation to their experiences during the war. My hypothesis was that if they saw themselves as having gained something out of these experiences—be it a survival instinct, greater strength, or a more balanced view of the world—they would recognize the role of the Holocaust in that personal growth. Thus, they would be more likely to accept its place in their lives and be able to integrate the lessons they learned from it into their identities and worldviews. This was, in fact, what I saw in many of the survivors. Those who were able to see the impact the Holocaust had on their personalities and ways of living today had a greater tendency to, more or less, accept the place of the Holocaust in their life narratives.
Similar to Henry, many of my subjects told me that they would not want anyone to die (certainly not their relatives), and would not want to go through that period of their lives again, but could see how it impacted their lives. Because they viewed the Holocaust as, in part, making them who they are today, many of them simply could not conceive of what they would be like without it. Henry told me later, “I don’t have any pain, that I’m aware that I have a pain. And as I said, I’m not in self-denial… You know there’s an old song in German, which goes…‘Happy the one who forgets what can never be changed again’… What does one want to grieve over spilt milk. That’s unfortunate… And when I was in Vienna, I said, ‘Gee, what would I have been if Hitler would not [have] been?’ I would have been an intellectual snob! You know? Probably with a certain amount of arrogance, and intolerance, to people I think they are not up to my level. Because that’s what would have happened if I would have gone through this educational system, which my parents planned for me… Why should I wipe it away? I mean, it was part of my life.”[57]
Because Henry was able to view the Holocaust as a part of his life like any other, his view of life and his own place in the world was less negatively altered as a result of his experiences during the war. Thus, many of the questions I asked that were aimed at understanding his systems of meaning and sense of identity tended to bring out the decidedly non-central place that the Holocaust held in his life. For instance, when I asked him what he would characterize as his most vivid memory, he replied, “I have so many memories. I couldn’t really go now through all these memories. I’ll try to think about that, but I really… Well, I’m not saying they’re all equally [vivid]. Obviously, they were not. But I cannot really pick a vivid memory. Pleasant memories. I’m very pleased with my son.”[58] Clearly, this response could be, in part, a consequence of the overwhelming wealth of memories that Henry holds. However, I believe it is significant that he did not immediately point to a Holocaust-related memory. In fact, if he had to pick any especially vivid memories, he said, he would actually have chosen “pleasant memories.”
Henry went on to tell me about “two very pleasant
experiences,” both of which occurred after the war and both of which were
related to the themes of his family’s cohesion and the positive relationships
Henry had with both his wife and his son.
He concluded by saying, “I think that was a very wonderful memory. You asked me. Traumatic memories, perhaps there were too many to pick out one
in particular. That’s because there were
so many unpleasant things in life.”[59] This is a powerful statement that Henry made
here, acknowledging the multitude of “unpleasant things in life,” and still
choosing to tell me about the positive memories he owns.
Ultimately, Henry told me, he is the most proud “That I
was able to keep my family together and straight up. I think that’s a tremendous accomplishment. In our entire life, and especially later on
that I’m on excellent terms with my children.
You know? And that I’m on very
good terms with my wife. Right? But, of course, you know with a wife it’s
different because you have sexual relations.
Sometimes at times when she’s not a very willing partner, you know? That starts some friction. But otherwise I think the greatest
accomplishment in life is not that I survived the concentration camp, but since
able to keep the family together in the most friendliest and pleasant of
terms. Which is not the case in many
cases.”[60]
For Henry, this says it all. His experiences in the Holocaust are simply not the most central facet of his life. From that moment when he realized and accepted his own mortality, he was able to place his Holocaust narrative within the context of his overall life narrative, and he was thus able to view it and react to it in perspective with the rest of his life. This integration allowed him to live a meaningful and contented life, even in the face of another threat to his survival. Love became his guiding force, and constant adjustment was his mode of functioning. He ceased to make his life merely a response to his possible death, and thus, he was able to open himself up to new experiences, emotions, and realizations. All of these things, for Henry, constitute resilience.
[1] HS transcript, part 1: 1-2.
[2] HS transcript, part 1: 5.
[3] HS transcript, part 1: 9.
[4] HS transcript, part 1: 17.
[5] HS transcript, part 2: 7-8.
[6] HS transcript, part 2: 8-9.
[7] HS transcript, part 2: 14.
[8] HS transcript, part 2: 16-17.
[9] HS transcript, part 2: 17-18.
[10] HS transcript, part 3: 1-2.
[11] HS transcript, part 3: 2.
[12] HS transcript, part 3: 3.
[13] HS transcript, part 3: 6.
[14] HS transcript, part 3: 6.
[15] HS transcript, part 3: 7.
[16] HS transcript, part 3: 7-8.
[17] HS transcript, part 3: 10.
[18] HS transcript, part 4: 5.
[19] HS transcript, part 4: 5-6.
[20] HS transcript, part 4: 6-7.
[21] HS transcript, part 4: 6-8.
[22] HS transcript, part 4: 8.
[23] HS transcript, part 5: 2.
[24] HS transcript, part 5: 12-13.
[25] HS transcript, part 7: 1.
[26] HS transcript, part 7: 2.
[27] HS transcript, part 7: 5.
[28] HS transcript, part 7: 8-9.
[29] HS transcript, part 8: 1-3.
[30] HS transcript, part 11: 2-3.
[31] HS transcript, part 11: 3.
[32] HS transcript, part 11: 6.
[33] HS transcript, part 11: 7.
[34] HS transcript, part 11: 8.
[35] HS transcript, part 1: 4.
[36] HS transcript, part 1: 5.
[37] HS transcript, part 2: 1-2.
[38] Starer 42.
[39] HS transcript, part 4: 2-3.
[40] HS transcript, part 4: 3.
[41] HS transcript, part 7: 1.
[42] HS transcript, part 7: 2.
[43] HS transcript, part 7: 3-4.
[44] HS transcript, part 7: 7.
[45] HS transcript, part 7: 7-8.
[46] HS transcript, part 6: 3.
[47] HS transcript, part 6: 3-4.
[48] HS transcript, part 6: 4.
[49] HS transcript, part 6: 6.
[50] HS transcript, part 9: 7-8.
[51] HS transcript, part 10: 10.
[52] HS transcript, part 9: 2-3.
[53] HS transcript, part 9: 5-6.
[54] HS transcript, part 10: 14.
[55] HS transcript, part 9: 4.
[56] HS transcript, part 9: 4.
[57] HS transcript, part 9: 12-13.
[58] HS transcript, part 8: 10.
[59] HS transcript, part 8: 12-13.
[60] HS transcript, part 10: 14.