‘But maybe not.’
‘If you need a better reason than your own life, then go and find Izzy and Liesel for me. Tell them how I died. Say that you were in the camp when I was hanged. Tell them I was ready to go. Kiss them for me and assure them that I met death with my hands in my pockets, that I wasn’t scared.*
* Erik asked me to put down my pen here, but we continued to converse for another minute at my kitchen table, and I include what we said to each other, this time, from my point of view:
‘But what you’ve just said isn’t true,’ I insisted. ‘You wanted to live. You told me so!’ I spoke desperately because I didn’t want him to send me away.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Erik agreed. ‘Despite everything, I wanted a chance to go on. It was silly.’
‘Don’t you dare be ashamed of wanting to stay alive!’ I yelled.
Erik was quiet for a long time after that, but then, breathing deeply – as though summoning all his resolve – he reached slowly across to me and took my hand.
I could feel him – the roughness of his skin and warmth of his life. And it wasn’t painful.
Both of us were shocked. And reduced by gratitude to what was essential – two men acknowledging that nothing now could hold them apart. Not even their bodies.
I stood up and embraced him hard, and he hugged me back.
When we sat down again, Erik looked at me for a long time, and deeply, and I knew he was thinking that I understood him, and even more importantly, that I loved him, which was why, I think, he was able to stop telling me his story. And maybe it was why, too, I was able to leave the ghetto.
by Heniek Corben I took Erik’s advice and fled our island.
His parting words to me were, ‘Say a kaddish for me if you ever make it to the labour camp where I died.’
‘But you don’t believe in God!’ I exclaimed.
‘True, but you do!’ he replied, flashing a mischievous smile. Then he fixed me with a grave look. ‘And one more thing, Heniek. After the Germans lose, they’ll want us to forget all that has happened. One person – just remember one! – and you will have foiled their plans.’
My last memory of Erik: he is standing on the rooftop of Stefa’s building, raising a hand to hail me and smiling. Was he aware that he had those bamboo arms he used to notice on all of us?
It was a blessing that he didn’t realize how far he’d fallen. And that he didn’t know that the stench of decay he often smelled was his own.
I thought he’d soon leave the roof and let me get on my way alone, but every time I turned, he was still waving to me.
Two weeks later, I reached a boyhood friend’s house in Vilnius, but it was too risky to go any further. I’ll call my friend Johann, though that’s not his real name; I wouldn’t want anyone to be able to identify his children or grandchildren, since they might one day suffer reprisals for his having hidden a Jew.
Johann owned a small grocery and lived alone in big old draughty house on the outskirts of town; his children were already grown and his wife was dead. I stayed for nearly two years with him. I never went outside. During the day, I mostly read novels and listened to the news on the radio. In the evenings, the two of us played backgammon, listened to symphonies on his Victrola and discussed how the war was going.
Johann buried Erik Cohen’s manuscript in his back garden, underneath a rosebush. I’d begun calling it The Warsaw Anagrams by then, because Erik had told me that that was his working title.
The Nazis discovered my hiding place on 7 October 1943, while Johann was at his grocery. They took me to a local prison. A week later, they sent me to the Stutthof labour camp.
Eighty-three pounds.
When the Soviets liberated the camp in late May 1945, that’s what I weighed. My arms weren’t bamboo; they were fishing rods!
Dysentery had turned me inside out by then and I was in the infirmary.
By the time I saw my first Soviet soldier, Stutthof was nearly empty, since the Germans had evacuated most of the internees weeks before, marching them towards more secure territory and leaving only the sick behind.
In a way, I came back from the dead, too – as a ghost haunting his own life.
I’ve always believed I survived because of meeting Erik and taking down his story. It’s the only answer I have for why I am here and six million others are not. I’m aware that my explanation doesn’t make logical sense, but we all know by now that logic is not God’s strong point.
As soon as I had the strength, I made my way back to Johann’s house and dug up The Warsaw Anagrams. I learned from neighbours that he’d been executed the evening I’d been captured.
Lately, I’ve begun to cling to my memories of Johann when I begin to believe what the Nazis tried to prove to us all – that anyone can be made to betray those they love.
I moved back to Warsaw and opened a printing house again. Occasionally, I’d show The Warsaw Anagrams to the people I trusted, but Christian friends didn’t want to read about what the Nazis and their Polish helpers had done to their one-time neighbours, and the handful of Jews who’d returned were too fragile to revisit the past.
Erik and I wrote his story and it helps me pass my days easier knowing that we did it together. And I think the very act of reading is important – it means we have a chance to participate in a culture that the Nazis couldn’t kill.
Knowing you have done one good thing – no matter how small – is a comfort that no one can take away.
I like the tingling in my fingertips when I choose the type for the books I print. I like to have ink stains all over my hands. I like to invent words for the new language Erik wanted us to have.
Herzsterben – the death one feels in one’s chest on pushing away a starving beggar.
I try to live without expectations. I try to accept people as they are. I try to celebrate waking up every morning.
Zunfargangmeyvn – a connoisseur of sunsets; someone who has learned to savour what others take for granted.
And I try to live in a world where the most soft-spoken people win all the arguments.
Noc die Zweite.
The name of my dog. He’s a wiry dachshund who sleeps in my bed, his snout next to mine, and his snoring eases me into my dreams.
I try never to go to sleep without him. Too many memories await me if I enter the darkness alone.
Like almost everything else in the Warsaw ghetto, Stefa’s apartment house was blown up by the
