Scream and pound your fists into a pillow. Go to a beach or mountaintop alone and yell into the wind. Grab a giant stick, smash and beat the ground. We sing alone in the car. Why not scream alone? Roll up all the windows, take a giant breath, and when you exhale, give it voice, let it crescendo into the world’s longest and loudest scream. When a patient comes to see me, looking rigid or masked, I say, “I feel like screaming today. Shall we scream?” And we do it together. If you’re afraid to scream alone, find a friend or therapist to scream with you. It’s such a release! And it’s so profound, even exhilarating, to hear your own unadulterated voice, charged with feeling, expressing its most difficult truth. To hear yourself unmasked. To stand up, claim your space, say, “I was victimized, but I’m not a victim. I am me.”
Anger is a secondary emotion, a defense, armor we put up around the primary feeling underneath. We burn through anger so we can get to what’s underneath: fear or grief.
Only then can we begin the hardest work of all.
Forgiving ourselves.
One Friday afternoon in August, shortly after I’d started drafting chapters for this book, I came home to find a man at my front door. He was dressed in khakis and a polo shirt, an official-looking ID badge clipped to his chest.
“I’m here from the water company,” he said. “I have to check your water for contamination.”
I let him inside, brought him to the kitchen. He turned the water on, checked the faucets in the bathrooms, and then told me, “I need to call in my supervisor, we could have a problem with metals.” He used his cell phone to bring in a colleague for support.
A man wearing the same outfit and badge arrived, they tried all the faucets again, and then told me I’d need to remove anything on my body that was metal. Watches, belts, jewelry. I took off my necklace and bracelet. The rings were more difficult. Because of my arthritis, my rings have been modified with little pins so I can unclasp them, otherwise I’d never be able to slide them over my swollen joints. But arthritis also makes it difficult to pull the pins. I asked the men to help me.
They tested the faucets again and performed some kind of treatment on the water. Go to the bathroom sink, they told me, and run the water until it turns blue. I walked down the hall, turned the water on, watched it flow, waited and waited. Then I knew. I hurried back to the kitchen, but they were already gone—along with my necklace and bracelet and rings.
The police said I’d been the latest target of a well-known elder abuse scheme. I felt so foolish and gullible to have been taken in by the ruse. I cringed every time I thought of how stupid and trusting I’d been. I let them in, I let them walk through my house, I handed them my jewelry. I might as well have written them a check!
The police—and my children—see it differently. Thank goodness you obeyed, they say. They took things, but they didn’t hurt me. If I’d tried to resist, they could have tied me up, or worse. Doing everything they asked without a fuss might have saved my life.
This perspective is helpful. But it doesn’t take the feelings away.
The loss of things I’ve valued and held dear—especially the bracelet, the one Béla gave me to celebrate Marianne’s birth, that I’d smuggled out of Czechoslovakia by hiding it in her diaper. It’s just an object, yet it stands for something more, for life, motherhood, freedom—all things worth celebrating and fighting for. My arm feels naked without it.
Then there was fear. For days I had an obsessive feeling that they were going to come back and kill me so I wouldn’t talk.
Then there was the desire to chew out the criminals, to punish them, diminish them. “Is this how your mother raised you to be?” I imagined yelling. “Aren’t you ashamed?”
And then there was my shame. I opened the door. I answered their questions. I followed their commands, held out my hand so they could unclasp my ring. I hated the version of me that I saw. Vulnerable. Frail. Gullible.
But the only one putting those labels on me was me.
What I’m saying is that life keeps giving me opportunities to choose freedom—to love myself as I am: human, imperfect, and whole. So I forgave myself, releasing them so I can release me.
I have life to live and work to do and love to share. I don’t have time to hold on to the fear or anger or shame anymore, to give anything else to two people who already stole something from me. I won’t give them another inch. I won’t hand my power away.
During my recent visit to Europe, Audrey and I went to Amsterdam, where I spoke at the Anne Frank House, and then was honored in the most spectacular way. Igone de Jongh, the prima ballerina of the Dutch National Ballet, choreographed and performed a piece inspired by my first night in Auschwitz when I danced for Mengele.
The performance was on May 4, 2019, the seventy-fourth anniversary of my liberation at Gunskirchen, and a day of national remembrance in the Netherlands. The whole country observes two minutes of silence in honor of those who died in the camps and those who survived. When Audrey and I arrived at the theater, we were welcomed like celebrities, applauded, given flowers. People wept and embraced us. The king and queen were late to the performance, and we were offered their seats.
The performance itself was one of the most exquisite and cherished experiences of my life. I was completely overwhelmed by the strength, grace, and passion of Igone de Jongh, by the depiction of beauty and transcendence—in hell. Even more overwhelming was the portrayal of Mengele. He was
