Auschwitz and the Rectification of History

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“The memory dogs! The fangs! The spit!”

I “Take it easy, Goldeh,” I said. She was lying on the cold floor of the I dumpster, losing more than blood. I cradled her head in my hand, I her grey hair matted like a discarded mop head, spooled round my fingers. We could hear them coming through the square. The dogs, the real ones, were clawing at the sides of the dumpster, leaping and yelping. Jerry was dead, but Weiskopf and her other thugs were close.

Echoing outside—breathless voices: “There. The dumpster. Take your time. They’re not going anywhere.” Past fractured crates, rotting cabbages, and moldering, stinking meat, and along the hard, rust-flaked walls I looked for a way out.

“You’re too clever, Al,” Goldeh whispered. “Don’t be clever. Don’t be an actor. Just die well.”

I remember with perfect clarity Goldeh’s reaction on hearing that the Dalai Lama was visiting Auschwitz. I, a vegetarian and a paid-up member of the White Plains Zen Center, was up to my elbows in chicken fat, eggs, and chopped liver fresh from Goldeh’s grinder. She was telling me what to do, step by step, even though I’d done it the day before; I couldn’t seem to retain the recipe—passive aggression against the carnivores, I guess. The radio was blasting through the kitchen at Wolf’s Delicatessen, when the newscaster mentioned the holy man’s trip, as a tag before the commercial, and Goldeh said:

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