The Holocaust’s legacies

Philip Gourevitch’s article on Binjamin Wilkomirski and his memoir Fragments (“The Memory Thief,” June 14th) reveals much about the Holocaust industry. In 1996, Suhrkamp, also Wilkomirski’s publisher, published a German translation of my account of a wartime childhood in Poland. It is entitled “Dobryd” — an anagram of the name of the real town where the action takes place. I chose to write it as fiction, because, like Aharon Appelfeld, I did not trust the factual accuracy of my recollections. At the time of publication, it was suggested to me that the book would sell much better if it was reclassified as nonfiction, but I did not accept the suggestion. Though the book has received excellent critical notices, it has never enjoyed the attention given to Fragments.

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It’s lucky they weren’t electrocuted

Auschwitz: truth too painful to believe

  • Try telling concentration camp survivors that Hitler didn’t exist.

[…]

For a memorable 3½ years, I was a Polish political prisoner in Auschwitz. Beginning in October 1941, we prisoners were put to work building New Camp No 2 (Birkenau) to accommodate more than 200,000 new prisoners. As a construction electrician, I worked installing electrical power in four gas chambers and the adjacent crematoria. Later, during gassing, wires and cables were often ripped off by victims gasping for air and writhing in the agony of asphyxiation. We had to repair such damage when the still convulsive bodies were being lifted up for cremation.

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