The Choice

CHAPTER 19

Leave a Stone

I can’t imagine going back to hell without Magda. “Fly to Kraków
tonight,” I beg Magda the next morning from the phone in the Hotel
zum Türken lobby. “Please come back to Auschwitz with me.”
I wouldn’t have survived without her. I can’t survive returning to
our prison now unless she is beside me, holding my hand. I know it’s
not possible to relive the past, to be who I used to be, to hug my
mother again, even once. ere is nothing that can alter the past, that
can make me different from who I am, change what was done to my
parents, done to me. ere is no going back. I know this. But I can’t
ignore the feeling that there is something waiting for me in my old
prison, something to recover. Or discover. Some long-lost part of me.
“What kind of a crazy masochist do you think I am?” Magda says.
“Why the hell would I go back there? Why would you?”
It’s a fair question. Am I only punishing myself? Reopening a
wound? Maybe I will regret it. But I think I will regret it more if I
don’t go back. No matter how many ways I try to convince her, Magda
refuses. Magda is choosing never to return, and I respect her for it. But
I will make a different choice.

*       *       *

Béla and I already have an invitation to visit Marianne’s old host
family in Copenhagen while we are in Europe, and we continue there
from Berchtesgaden as planned.