they were shoes— the piles were higher than the buildings, and
there was a huge, high arch. I have never liked seeing pictures
o f the A rc de Triom phe in Paris, because they always make me
feel sad and scared, because at Birkenau there was a high arch
that looked like a sculpture against that desolate sky. Y o u
think in your mind the yellow star is one thing— you make it
decorous and ornamental, you give it esthetic balance and
refinement, a fineness, a delicacy, maybe in your mind you
model it on silver Stars o f David you have seen— but it was
really a big, ugly thing and you couldn’t make it look nice. I
think I was only waist-high. Y ou don’t know much if yo u ’re a
kid. I remember the women around me, masses o f wom en, I
held someone’s hand but I don’t think it was someone I even
knew, I can’t see any faces really because they are all taller and
they were covered, heavy coats, kerchiefs on their heads,
layers o f clothes fouled by dirt, but if yo u ’re a child yo u ’re like
a little cub, a puppy, and you think yo u ’re safe if yo u ’re
huddled with women. T h ey’re warm . They keep you warm .
Y o u want to be near them and you believe in them without
thinking. I wasn’t there too long. We walked somewhere, we
waited, we walked, it was over. I’ve seen birch trees here in the
United States in the mountains but I have always transposed
them in my mind to a different landscape: that low, flat,
swam py ground past the huts. Birch trees make me feel sad
and lonely and afraid. There’s astrologers who say that if you
were born when Pluto and Saturn were traveling together in
Leo, from 1946 to about the middle o f 1949, you died in one o f
the concentration camps and you came right back because you
had to, you had an urgency stronger than death could ever be,
you had to come back and set it right. Justice pushed you into a
new wom b and outrage, a blind fury, pushed you out o f it
onto this earth, this place, this zoo o f sickies and sadists. Y ou
are an avenging angel; you have a debt to settle; you have a
headstart on suffering. I consider Birkenau my birthplace. I
consider that I am a living remnant. I consider that in 1946 I
emerged, I burst out, I was looking for trouble and ready for
pain, I wanted to kill Nazis, I was born to kill Nazis, I wasn’t
some innocent born to play true love and real romance, the
parlor games that pass for life. I got these fucked-up compassionate parents who believed in law and kindness and blah
blah. I got these fucked-up peaceful Jew s. I got these fucked-
up civilized parents. I was born a girl. I have so many planets in
Libra that I try to be fair to flies and I turn dog shit into an
esthetic experience. Even my mother knew it was wrong. She
named me Andrea for “ manhood” or “ courage. ” It’s a b o y’s
name; the root,
the universal sense, too. Man. She and God joined hands to
tease me almost to death. He put brains, great hearts, great
