reading—but an event that happened concurrently: a meeting in Belsen of hundreds of Jews from the British zone.
The organizers did not ask for permission from the British; it would have been refused in any case. But a Jewish leadership had arisen spontaneously, in the earliest days after liberation. Taking advantage of the Lüneburg trials and the arrival of many foreigners, they organized the “First Congress,” as they called it. By the time the meeting was over several days later, the Jewish internees had elected their own leadership, their own governing councils, their own committee members. At the head of this “government” was one Yossele Rosensaft.
I thought it remarkable that the survivors should outwit their British overseers and establish, so quickly, a self-governing community. It was this dynamism I hoped to convey to the patient. Perhaps she could see that this Bergen-Belsen, the D.P. camp, was no longer Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp.
There was a newspaper photograph of Rosensaft. It shows a compact man in a dark suit whose body, in another life, might have been that of a gymnast. His hairline is receding; his brow wide and noble; his head and face distinctly triangular in shape; his eyes intense. The reports describe him as a charismatic, a “man of the people.” I thought the patient would be proud to know the stock from which she came—rebels, organizers, fighters.
I quickly assembled this information, including copies of news reports and photographs, and mailed it to the patient the day after her session. But the postal clerk could not promise delivery by the following Wednesday morning. It might not arrive before her next session!
I therefore passed a fitful week. Temptation lured me into thinking that it might be best, in the future, to deliver the parcels directly to her door, even to risk her noticing the complete lack of a postal cancellation. There would be no time lag, whispered my demons. You could reach her before she gets back to that Nazi-daughter doctor. You will arm her with hope! they declaimed in my mind.
But I was stronger than they were; the patient was my shield; the demons did not ensorcell me. I put my energies to better use, continuing to assemble information about Belsen, also contacting the agencies that had provided aid to the camp. I wrote to them as a professor doing research for a biography. Did they have any records pertaining to a Belsen internee whose name was given only as Maria G.? I told them all I knew of her—her birth date, the birth date of a child born to her in the camp, the date she surrendered the child for adoption, anything I could recall from the adoptive mother’s story—and begged them to provide any further details their files might reveal.
Still, as busy as I was, the demons kept up their whispering. What will you do, they chided, if Wednesday comes and the patient still has not received your envelope? Will you finally heed us and go to her?
54.
I got another parcel! the patient said gleefully.
(Thank God! I thought.)
She had barely sat down when out came the envelope.
It’s fascinating, she said. What happened there. Amazing!
(I nearly cried aloud with relief.)
The patient withdrew the photographs and passed them to the therapist, all the while relaying (quite accurately) the information I had sent her, going on to extol the achievements of the Belsen internees, their endurance, their determination, their bravery.
The therapist—for once—kept her own counsel. Aside from a few polite invitations for her client to continue—Yes? Really! How interesting!—she said nothing, allowing the patient to talk without interruption for nearly the entire session. The result fulfilled all my hopes: the patient now heartened, able to see beyond the darkness of the Holocaust into the time that followed, the time and place from which she came, about which she could feel pride. And since the information was new to the doctor as well (I presumed), there was nothing she could say to mediate the patient’s newfound happiness. Perhaps it even lightened her own sense of guilt: to know that the remnants of Europe’s Jews were not an entirely defeated people, that her father’s work had not achieved its exterminating goal.
Finally the patient ended her soliloquy, sitting quietly for several minutes, breathing deeply. Until she said:
I had no idea they—we—had such heroism. It’s not something you normally associate with Jews, is it?
The therapist started in her chair, shaken from what seemed her imposed detachment.
Are you referring to me, personally? she asked. Something I do