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By Root 2127 0

Like wreckage barely human, we clung to each other so as not to go under. We were both feverish, but my fathers fever was different from mine. He was already sick. Dense, irresistible human waves divided us. We shouted, found each other again. They were giving out hot coffee at the gate. Should we go and get some? No, better not. Better not risk being separated in the roiling, hysterical crowd. We decided to wait for soup. It would come, it would come, but we needed it soon. I had my father sit down on a nearby pallet as I ran to the gate where they were giving out food. When I came back, my father was gone. In a panic, I asked around, but no one had seen him. I put the rations down and went looking for him, and suddenly there he was. He had gone to the latrine. He was sick, my father was sick, and I was desperate.

Many years later Jorge Semprun and I were exchanging memories of Buchenwald. He had been in the main camp. Working in the Schreibstube, the office, he did not endure the hunger and cold. He knew the small camp at a distance. The fate of the Jews was unlike that of the non-Jews. We were in the same place, and yet.

My father was getting worse. He was dying. It was the darkest day of my life, a day heavy with meaning. I was weak and sick myself. Though I ached to help him, I did not know how. I would have done anything, would have gladly given him my blood, my life. I was ready to die in his place. Except that my time had not yet come.

I pleaded with the doctors, the Stubendienst, the Creator Himself: Do something for my father. They were all merciless. Several times we were driven outside to clean the barracks. My father couldn’t move. I wanted to stay with him, but was driven out with clubs. I pretended to be sick or dying. My father was calling for me, and I didn’t want to let him down. He was talking to me, but his words were incoherent. Was he trying to leave me his last will? At one point he whispered something about the jewelry we had buried, about the money we had given to Christian friends for safekeeping. I refused to listen. I didn’t care about all the world’s riches. My father was dying and I was in pain. He shuddered and called my name. I tried to get up, tried to crawl to him, but the torturers were there, forbidding all movement. I wanted to cry out, Hold on, Father, hold on. In a minute, a second, I’ll be at your side, I’ll listen to you, talk to you, I won’t let you die alone. My father was dying and I was bursting with pain. I didn’t want to leave him, but I did. I was forced to. They were beating me, I was losing consciousness. He moaned, and I waited for the torturers to go away. He was weeping softly, like a child, and I felt my chest coming apart. He groaned, and my body crumbled. Powerless, crushed by remorse, I knew that however long I lived, I would never be able to free myself of that guilt: My father was twisting with pain, dying, and I was near him, but helpless. My father called to me and I could not rush to hold his hand. Suddenly I saw Grandma Nissel. I begged her to accompany me to the House of Study. We opened the ark, prayed to the Holy Torah to intercede for my dying father. She held out her hand, but I touched only emptiness. I bit my knuckles until they hurt, I wanted to howl, but the pain was so bad I could only murmur, the pain was so bad I wanted to die.

I was sixteen years old when my father died. My father was dead and the pain was gone. I no longer felt anything. Someone had died inside me, and that someone was me.

I couldn’t cry. My heart was broken, but I had no more tears. I had taken leave of myself: the dead do not weep. Hardly anyone wept in the camp, as though fearing that if you started, you could never stop. Freedom, for us, would mean being able to weep again.

I lurched across the camp, reeling, staggering, my mind numb. I saw myself among the dead, seeking my father as if to tell him, Look, I’m with you, I’m here at your side.

The truth is I had no need to tell him. He knew everything, as I knew everything about him. Just before he died he had a terrifying