Status Updates From But You Did Not Come Back

I have dinner with some friends who survived, we laugh together, even about the camp, in our own way. And I see Simone too. I’ve watched her take teaspoons in cafés and restaurants and slip them into her handbag; she’d been a minister, an important woman in France, an imposing person, but she still hoards worthless teaspoons so she doesn’t have to lap up the terrible soup of Birkenau.

I don’t like my body. It’s as if it still bears the mark of the first man who ever looked at me, a Nazi. I’d never been seen naked before that, never, especially not with my new young woman’s body that had just given me breasts and all the rest; modesty was obligatory in the family. So for a long time, I associated getting undressed with death, with hatred, with the icy stare of Mengele

I knew where your cell was, so when I was sent to mop the floors in the hallways, I’d sing “O sole mio” really loud, so you’d hear me coming, and one of my girl scout songs too, “We can only see the sky, only feel the sun, Goodbye, goodbye, We’re off to find the wind, the mountain road is long.” Why can I still remember that stupid propaganda song but none of your final words to me?

"The minister could have simply said you were missing, but he decided you were dead. An administrative slip of the pen by a country that declares your death as if it had arranged it".