is it like?” I ask. “To belong to a man?” I’m not asking about sex, not
entirely. Of course passion interests me. More so, the idea of daily
belonging. In her sigh I hear the echo of something beautiful,
unharmed by loss. For a few minutes, as she talks, I see marriage not
as my parents lived it but as something luminous. It’s brighter even
than the peaceful comfort of my grandparents’ affection. It sounds like
love, whole love.
* * *When my mother said to me, “I’m glad you have brains because you
have no looks,” those words stoked my fear that I was inadequate,
worthless. But at Auschwitz, my mother’s voice rang in my ears with a
different signiĕcance. I’ve got brains. I’m smart. I’m going to figure
things out. e words I heard inside my head made a tremendous
difference in my ability to maintain hope. is was true for other
inmates as well. We were able to discover an inner strength we could
draw on—a way to talk to ourselves that helped us feel free inside, that
kept us grounded in our own morality, that gave us foundation and
assurance even when the external forces sought to control and
obliterate us. I’m good, we learned to say. I’m innocent. Somehow,
something good will come of this.
I knew a girl at Auschwitz who was very ill and wasting away. Every
morning I expected to ĕnd her dead on her bunk, and I feared at
every selection line that she’d be sent toward death. But she surprised
me. She managed to gather strength each morning to work another
day and kept a lively spark in her eyes each time she faced Mengele’s
pointing ĕnger in a selection line. At night she would collapse onto her
bunk, breathing in rasps. I asked her how she was managing to go on.
“I heard we’re going to be liberated by Christmas,” she said. She kept a
meticulous calendar in her head, counting down the days and then
the hours until our liberation, determined to live to be free.