Those are my parents.
He was one of the first to see the human skins tanned for lampshades and paperweights, the scars, the tattoos, the piles of clothes and shoes and gold fillings, and worse. Much worse. He saw all these things before they became common knowledge. He saw them before there were words like Shoah or Holocaust, before six million became a meaning-laden number, before the documentaries and museums and archives and memorials and school lessons gave us some sort of awkward carrying device for that terrible darkness.
My grandfather was thirty years old when the trial began. In trial footage, he looks younger but haggard, as if the testimony he was hearing were taking years off his life and causing him to relive the war, this time knowing all that would happen. He moves restlessly as he works, hunching over and then leaning back, fidgeting with pencil and paper, unsure where to put his hands, twisting in his seat. Seeing him for the first time in video clips preserved by the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, I had the creepy sensation of watching myself: I moved in the exact same way when I worked in the interpreting booth—another strange imbrication of my life and my grandparents’.
I knew from experience that the intense focus required by the job would have meant that as long as he kept working, every sentence he said would be replaced by another and another; he didn’t have time to remember or think about any particular one. But inevitably, every day he worked in Nuremberg became a day of knowledge he possessed and my grandmother did not. What happened when he returned to her? He would have arrived carrying all those words, packed away somewhere in his mind. Did he know the damage this was inflicting on him? Regardless, he must have seen that the fault line separating their personalities was becoming unbridgeable.
In the very days and weeks when my grandmother was returning to the world of the living, nuzzling their new baby and nursing sick refugees back to health, my grandfather was sitting in a dim, smoke-filled courtroom, helping invent a vocabulary for a universe more frightening and hellish than anything he ever could have imagined. As one witness, Dr. Franz Blaha, said when he asked to testify in German instead of his native Czech: “A large number of special and technical expressions relating to life in and about the concentration camps are purely German inventions, and no appropriate equivalent for them in any other language can be found.” Imagine being one of the people who had to bring to life concepts and acts so inconceivable that the vocabulary for them did not exist in other languages.
No amount of loyalty and optimism on my grandmother’s part could pull him out of that abyss; no amount of sorrow could match the horror he had felt; no amount of pride in his intelligence and accomplishment could palliate the pain of participating in the world’s attempt to bring some measure of justice to the unpardonable—especially as atrocities such as the Katyn Forest massacre came to light and undermined his confidence in those who claimed to be among the just. They broke apart because of what he knew and my grandmother did not.
They broke apart, but how could they let go of each other? How could they let go after all they had been through?
In November 2006 my grandfather was transferred to the extended stay unit of a new hospital, too quickly for me to come and accompany him for the move. For a while, his nightmares and anxiety worsened. When Julien and I visited him for the first time, we checked in at the nurses’ station before going to his room, and the nurse on duty said, “I need to warn you, he’s looking very unkempt.”
“Why?”
“He won’t let us near him to cut his hair. We’ve tried clippers and scissors, but he completely panics and calls us the ugliest things. I take it he’s a Holocaust survivor.”
I nodded.
“Poor thing. They’re always the hardest with grooming and personal care. They like being handled even less than the other patients. Maybe it’ll be different for you, though,” she suggested. “Would you mind trying?”
She handed me a sheet and a pair of scissors. “Don’t worry about the hair on the floor. We’ll come sweep it up when you’re finished.”
My grandfather’s face lit up when he saw us. “Hello!” he called joyfully. “How on earth did you find me here?”
“I always know where you are,” I assured him. “I talk to your doctors and nurses and make sure everything’s all right—even when I can’t come visit.” I braced myself for an outburst, but my grandfather smiled.
“That’s a comfort.”
“You could use a haircut,” I ventured.
He reached up to touch his hair. “I know,” he acknowledged ruefully. “But I don’t have any money to pay a hairdresser.”
“Well, it’s your lucky day.” I showed him the scissors and sheet and bowed. “Miranda the hairdresser, at your service.” Once again I expected a tirade, but my grandfather sat down and looked up at me expectantly, with the same meek, trusting smile I’d noticed that spring. So Julien sat on the bed and chatted with him while I snipped. Grandpa relaxed visibly under my fingers. The room was spare and quiet and looked out over a tree-filled park. The window was open, and we could hear birds singing. Grandpa stopped talking and bowed his head slightly. He looked peaceful, more peaceful than I’d ever seen him. I wondered if the memory loss might actually be something of a boon to him.
When I’d finished his haircut, we walked to the hospital cafeteria for coffee.
“Do you think about anything in particular?” Julien asked him.
Grandpa shook his head. “Not really—I watch the trees in the park … and the birds …” He pointed to the gardens through the window and trailed off. We waited for something more, but it didn’t come.
“When you think about your life, is there anything in particular that comes back to you?” Julien pressed, gently.
“Not particularly—the war. The war, I guess.”
“Which part of it?” I asked. “Your time in the army?”
“No, not really—that was quite dull.”
“About the Pyrenees?” I suggested.
“Yes.” He picked up a packet of sugar and hesitated, trying to recall whether he’d already put some in his coffee.
“You put in one sugar,” I pointed out.
“What? Oh, thank you.”
“That’s a difficult time to remember,” Julien said. “A sad time.”
My grandfather nodded, squinting out the window into the sun as if he were looking for something hidden over the horizon. “No doubt …,” he drew the words out slowly, picking each one with care, “no doubt the woman with whom I was living … she was very practical … no doubt she contributed greatly to our survival.”
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. “You mean my grandmother?”