A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz (35 page)

Refusing to be reconciled to a world that wants to forget and move on becomes, for Améry, a way of resuming moral control over his life: “In two decades of contemplating what happened to me, I believe to have recognized that a forgiving and forgetting induced by social pressure is immoral [daß
ein durch sozialen Druck bewirktes Vergeben und Vergessen unmoralisch
ist].”

Améry thus mistrusts the attempt of “objective science” to pathologize the refusal to be reconciled. It may well be, writes Améry, that the survivors are marked by what has happened, and that this causes some to exhibit symptoms in common that can thus be grouped into a syndrome of some kind, Concentration Camp Survivor Syndrome, for example, which at a purely clinical level turns survival into an illness, but in that case it’s an illness that renders the survivors’ state morally and historically superior to the state of normality. At any event, there are no moral or historical reasons for the survivor to accept what has happened just because it has happened. The only world the survivor can be reconciled to is a world shaken to its very foundations by what has happened. Time may heal all wounds in social and biological terms, but morally it heals nothing. Morally, a human being has the right, and even the privilege, to revolt against what has happened and demand that the clock be turned back so that the perpetrator can be firmly nailed to his deed and “join his victim as a fellow human being [
als Mitmensch dem Opfer zugesellt sein
].”

Améry is naturally aware of the quixotic nature of his battle, aware that time is his enemy, and that what has happened, “such murder of millions as this, carried out by a highly civilized people, with organizational dependability and almost scientific precision,” will soon go down in history as one among many other acts of violence in “the Century of Barbarism,” and that “
We
, the victims, will appear as the truly incorrigible, irreconcilable ones, as the antihistorical reactionaries in the exact sense of the word, and in the end it will seem like a technical mishap that some of us still survived.”

The irreconcilability is not there from the beginning, of course. Initially Améry, like you I believe, is convinced that the
world afterward also belongs to you, and to those like you, that it can’t move on without you, that you are the traces it can’t lose sight of without losing itself.

The irreconcilability comes with the silence and the confusion of languages.

The irreconcilability, and the restlessness, and the fatigue, and the impulse to halt your steps and turn your heads and allow the shadows to catch up.

Morally to “annul time” so that the world is never allowed to forget what you’ve survived is Jean Améry’s condition for moving from surviving to living, and the longer I travel at your side along the road from Auschwitz, the more clearly do I see that this is your condition too.

The confusion of languages is exacerbated by the German reparations. In 1953, Germany (West Germany, to be more precise) decides to compensate the survivors with money. The financial reparations are provided as the result not primarily of German benevolence but of the victorious powers’ insistence that Germany provide them. To be considered for German reparations, the survivors have to prove that their time in Auschwitz, Stutthof, Wöbbelin, or their equivalents has inflicted permanent damage, rendering them wholly or partially unable to work. Those who can’t prove they’ve lost at least 25 percent of their capacity for work will not receive reparations. Those who have survived without suffering physical harm will not receive reparations. Psychological harm doesn’t count for much with the
Vertrauensärzte
, the medical examiners appointed and paid by
the German state for the task of deciding which survivors are to receive reparations and which are not. To claim German reparations, the survivors have to fill out an extensive form on which they’re required to show, in German and in minute detail, that they have suffered more than 25 percent damage as a result of the annihilation policy of Hitler’s Germany. Along with the form, claimants are to submit certified copies of all relevant documents, certified transcripts of sworn witness statements, and certified copies of medical records, on receipt of which the authorities will allow themselves a year, or maybe two, to verify the details provided, call for supplementary information, and, above all, await the report of their
Vertrauensarzt
. Germany demands that a
Vertrauensarzt
have a license to practice medicine in the survivor’s country of residence and be able to submit his or her report in German, which turns out to mean that in practice, the physicians for whom the survivors must bare themselves, literally and figuratively, are generally German-born or of German origin.

Among the most frequent grounds for rejection of reparation claims are contradictions in the survivor’s account. Even minimal contradictions, even irrelevant contradictions in largely correct accounts can be grounds for rejecting a claim. One survivor is refused reparations because a witness claims to have seen him in 1943 when he could have seen him only in 1942. One survivor is refused reparations because he has given contradictory information about his date of birth. Paragraph 7 of the law regulating German reparations, the
Bundesentschädigungsgesetz
(later
Bundesergänzungsgesetz
), makes it possible to refuse reparation to anyone making inexact statements with the intention of simplifying his or her account, or making inexact statements unintentionally and unconsciously, or making inexact statements
as a result of the confusion of languages, between German and Polish, say, or Yiddish. In applying for reparations, the claimant must submit to being treated as a suspected liar and fraud until he or she can prove the contrary. The German reparations authority is not required to prove anything or to let itself be troubled by contradictions concerning who was murdered by the German state when and where, but it can deem the slightest contradiction or inaccuracy on the claimant’s part to be grounds for throwing out the claim. In some cases, trivial inaccuracies identified at a subsequent stage trigger demands for repayment of reparations already granted. Having demonstrably survived Auschwitz carries less weight in the eyes of the reparators than a demonstrable inaccuracy in the account of an event and its consequences. Before the reparators’ court, the survivors must constantly turn and look back, recalling in detail every step along the road to and from Auschwitz and ensuring that every step along that road is substantiated by sworn witness statements and certified copies of original documents, and the slightest error can turn the survivor into a liar and a fraud.

In short, the reparations do as much harm as good and, much later, I’m better able to understand those who refuse to take up the offer. At the same time, I can’t help noticing how the reparations impose themselves on the survivors, tempting them with attention and confirmation during those very years when the silence and the confusion of languages is spreading, and the world is busy forgiving and forgetting, and the survivors are becoming more and more alone with their survival and therefore clutching at any straw liable to confirm that what happened really did happen, and that the world is a little shaken by it, after all.

Dr. Herbert Lindenbaum is the German Federal Republic’s
Vertrauensarzt
in Stockholm. He examines you on September 6,
1956, between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m., and his report of October 15, 1956, is written in impeccable German. I slowly read through the questions and answers on the eight-page form that precedes the verdict because I want to be on my guard against unintentional inaccuracies. How, for example, will you deal with the conflicting information about your date of birth? Somewhere along the road, your date of birth has been changed from May 14, 1923, to April 14, 1922, or it might be the other way around. We celebrate May 14 as your birthday, but in the sworn affirmation in German that you enclose with your application for reparations, you explain that April 14 is in fact correct and that the discrepancy is the result of a misunderstanding. At some juncture, someone has entered the date incorrectly. On your work permit, alien’s passport, and citizenship certificate, your date of birth is April 14.

So why do we celebrate your birthday on May 14? In a letter I write you on May 14, 1960, I’ve drawn a special garland around the date. “Since today is your birthday, we would like to send you our warmest congratulations,” I write in capital letters slanting boldly to the left. I’m evidently writing on behalf of the whole family. “We miss you very much. It’s so empty without you, in fact it feels worse than when you were off traveling.”

Presumably, then, May 14 is your actual birthday, but April 14 is the date reproduced on all your Swedish documents and is thus the one that runs the least risk of being contradicted by other sources. Do I detect a slight hesitation as you, under oath, forswear your actual birthday? May 14 doesn’t seem to be correct, you write.

Es scheint nicht richtig zu sein
.

That doesn’t sound entirely convincing.

The reparations impose themselves on you as early as the autumn of 1953, demanding that you prove what it is that you
have survived and what the consequences thereof are. On November 24, 1953, Josef Leib Goldstein and Feliks Zeligman affirm in a sworn declaration, an
Eidesstattliche Erklärung
, that they were in your company when you survived Łódź, Auschwitz, Vechelde bei Braunschweig, and Wöbbelin. On April 13, 1954, E. Öberg at the State Aliens Commission issues, for a stamp duty fee of 4 kronor, a certificate,
Bescheinigung
, to confirm that you came to Sweden from Germany on July 18, 1945, through the agency of the UN and the Red Cross and that you have been in possession of a Swedish alien’s passport since September 24, 1952.

Your first sworn affirmation, the
Eidesstattliche Versicherung
, is dated November 13, 1954, with the signature certified by notary public Gunnar Nordin in Södertälje, and bears the 2-kronor stamp fee as well as another official stamp for 1 krona. I can find only one inaccuracy in the sworn account of your road to and from Auschwitz. You write that you’re liberated from Vebelin on May 2, 1945. It ought to say “Wöbbelin.” It’s a brief, terse document. A single typewritten page. Clearly a case of better too little than too much. Under oath, you tell the Germans very little. Very little in which to find any inaccuracies. Nothing about damage or suffering or reduced capacity for work. Nothing at all, in fact.

Perhaps you thought Auschwitz, Wöbbelin, and the liquidation of your world would be enough?

Toward the end, an intimation that life has not turned out as you imagined. “When war broke out I was a student at a textile college. I have not been able to resume this activity in Sweden. I have slowly worked my way up to the job of pipe fitter.” But you write in German, of course:
Als der Krieg ausbrach, war ich Student in einer Textilschule. Diese Tätigkeit habe ich in Schweden
nicht fortsetzen können. Jetzt habe ich mich langsam zum Monteur heraufgearbeitet
.

Evidently supplementary information has been requested by the German authorities, such as an authorized German translation of your marriage certificate, but above all yet another sworn affirmation in which you put words to the physical injuries and suffering inflicted on you by the German state, and for which you are now claiming reparation. That’s what matters, after all, nothing else. I understand very well why as long as possible you postpone putting words to your injuries and suffering, but reparation demands words for everything, even for things for which there are no words, or at any rate, no words that can break through the confusion of languages.

So on August 27, 1956, you put German words to your injuries and suffering.

Kurze Schilderung des Verfolgstatbestandes unter Darlegung der gelten gemachten Körperschäden
.

I can find no adequate words in my own language for such a sentence.

Your affidavit is short, at any event, a bare page in length. In the ghetto you were forced to work far beyond what you had the strength for, you write. In the ghetto you were severely assaulted by an SS man, you write. In Vechelde bei Braunschweig you were forced to work very hard and were very hungry and weak, you write. When you were unable to get up one morning, you were called a malingerer, beaten repeatedly about the head, and dragged to work by force, you write. As for Auschwitz, you write only that you were delivered there and sent on from there. And of Wöbbelin (Vebelin again, but nobody corrects you, the camp’s on its way to being erased from the annals), nothing more than that you were sick when you were liberated.

Near the end, nevertheless, an attempt to demonstrate lasting damage inflicted by the German persecution: “Since my arrival in Sweden I’ve been receiving medical treatment. I still suffer from headaches, insomnia, and such bad nerves that I often find it difficult to go to work. My capacity for work is reduced because I am often weak and tired,
weil ich oft schwach und müde bin
.”