Later today I shall try to get on a train for the journey home, although it is not easy to do so, and I may have to make several attempts. All the trains are constantly crowded with service men and women, some wounded, others who are joining or rejoining their regiments. So although I hope to be home in the next few days, it could be longer.
Yesterday I heard from Sch?nbrunn – a letter sent from the very lip of Auschwitz itself. I cannot begin to imagine how he was able to get a letter out from there, but it should not surprise me that his remarkable network stretches even to the town of Oswiecim. He has never talked much about that network, but from time to time I have had glimpses of it – of people with whom a letter or a message can be left … A small shop in an unobtrusive side street where the shopkeeper can be trusted … Stone bridges spanning narrow rivers where there are cavities within the stones, allowing messages to be left for collection …
At times I almost wonder if Sch?nbrunn is real, for he seems to inhabit the pages of an adventure story or some strange and vivid fantasy. There have been occasions in his company when I have remembered the old legends, and in particular that of the Golem of Prague – the real one, that is, not the two that Leo and the Reiss twins had. You know the old tale, of course – indeed, it is part of our heritage. How that Golem was constructed of clay, and brought to life to defend the Prague ghetto How, later, it was entombed in a hiding place in the Old New Synagogue, and how, when the tomb-like hiding place was broken open at the end of the nineteenth century, no trace of it was found. And how it is prophesied that the golem will be restored to life again if it is ever needed to protect our people.
I have reread those last two sentences, and I wonder, as I have often wondered, how people can say there are no links between the great religions of the world.
I dare say you are smiling as you read all this, and saying, ‘Oy, that Maurice Bensimon, he is such a dream-spinner.’ If ever I were to write my memoirs, the dreams I would spin of these years would be dark ones. So on consideration, I shall never do so. I will only say, instead, that whatever Sch?nbrunn is, or is not, he has the most extraordinary strength of mind and will of any man I have ever met, and his courage is humbling.
It seems too much of a risk to entrust his actual letter to the post, so instead I am copying down the main information here for you. Performing such a mundane task will help to calm my mind and will fill up the hours until I can be on my way to Waterloo Station.
Sch?nbrunn writes:
‘One of the curious things about this place is that when the word Auschwitz is uttered, one simply thinks of the camp itself – the grim grey barracks inside the barbed-wire, as if it is a desolate and solitary entity set amidst a wilderness. But although wilderness there is, the old town of Oswiecim is quite nearby, and people still live in it. I will not say they live in normality, but they pursue their lives as well as they can.
‘The Germans have drained the swamps that once lay everywhere, but traces of the dank, misty bogland still linger, and it is as if a dark miasma hangs over the old town – as if the misery and the fear has seeped outwards from the camp itself.
‘Since the occupation, the population has dwindled to a sad fragment. A great many people have been driven from their homes, and numerous small villages have been wiped from the map entirely. It saddens and angers me to think of those lost villages – their histories vanished, their stories and their people wiped from the landscape for ever.
‘In happier circumstances I would have wanted to delve into Oswiecim’s history, but I shall not do so. I want no memories of this place to lodge in my mind.
‘Part of me is praying Sophie and Susannah Reiss will not be here – that this will prove to be a false lead. But there is another part that hopes they are here, because that will mean I can take action to rescue them. But if Mengele does have them I cannot bear to contemplate what may be happening to them.
‘I beg you, do not let the Reiss family know any of this.’