A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz (39 page)
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Authors: Goran Rosenberg
On May 21, you’re moved from the closed ward for disturbed patients to the open ward for calm patients. “Happy and grateful.”
On May 23, another session with Dr. Segnestam. “Patient’s behavior nicely calm and controlled. Happy and grateful that he has become so much better.”
May 27: “Allowed leave of absence to go home to Södertälje.”
May 30: “Has returned from leave of absence with no incidents reported.”
There I have it, in black and white, that you’re at the concert! You’re sitting on one of the tightly packed rows of chairs in the tall hall with yellow brick walls, no doubt with Mom and Lilian, too. The municipal music school in Södertälje holds its annual pupils’ concert on May 28, 1960, and the hall is full of relatives, and you have been granted leave of absence from the Swedish mental health service to hear me play Vivaldi’s Double Violin Concerto in A Minor.
Only, I have no idea why that memory fragment refuses to reveal itself.
I dig and dig, but I can’t see you.
I can see only your back, not your face.
After your leave of absence, more sessions with doctors, all recorded in exhaustive detail. The Swedish mental health service is investing time and effort in you. You’re also making an effort with the mental health service, maybe because someone seems to be listening at last. Listening is, after all, what the doctors of the mental health service are there to do. So you make an
effort to tell them how worried you are about the new swastikas daubed all over the world, which make you feel insecure even though you know you have nothing to fear in Sweden. You also make an effort to tell them about the freezing sensation in your knees that “seems to come down from the spine,” and that it’s the same sensation as the one you had just before you were admitted to Ulvsunda, and this makes you wonder, and that some things have dropped out of your memory, and that on the way to Ulvsunda you were considering throwing yourself in front of an underground train before you decided to throw yourself in the lake, and that you spent your first days in the closed ward for the disturbed at Sundby hospital looking for a live electric cable and a radiator to grab hold of, and that now you don’t understand how you could have done so, and that the sleeping tablets sometimes make you itch and it’s hard to get to sleep at night.
But above all you tell them about the horizon that will not open up. About the intensified working pace at the big truck factory, and the time and motion studies, and the fatigue and the unhappiness. About the little town that’s turning its back on you. About the onward journey that’s still unfinished. About the necessity of moving on, if only over the bridge.
Case notes, May 31, 1960: “The patient says everything went well during his leave of absence and he was happy to be allowed home.”
Aerogram from Strängnäs, May 31, 1960:
Dearest Natek! As soon as you get this letter you must drink a toast of whatever you feel like and
stop thinking of me as a sick person once and for all
. The dreadful black nightmares are behind us now. I look wonderful now (tanned and fattened up) and the most important
thing of all—I feel like I did in the old days, and simply can’t get enough of enjoying life. My last treatment was 1½ weeks ago and I am now in the convalescence ward, where I spend my time resting, walking in the lovely grounds, reading, and doing various sports. Most of all I enjoy reading, because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to read again. The chief physician—a wonderful person—is very pleased with me. When I was first here at the hospital he told me I would feel like a human being again in a few weeks, and that made me want it and I managed to believe it. When I spoke to him recently I told him how guilty I feel in front of him and the other doctors and nurses, because their advice to me had gone in one ear and out the other.… Now I find it hard to understand any of it. I told myself—you have everything a person could wish for, a wife to soothe your pain, children who love you and are so well behaved, who all worship you, and everyone worships you so much. A son who brings you nothing but joy, longing to talk to his father, a dear brother. No, you needn’t worry about a thing. Shrug it all off!!! … I won’t write any more about this nightmarish time, perhaps when we meet I’ll tell you.… I only feel very sorry for having given you such cause for concern. On May 28 Göran performed in the music school concert—for this the chief physician allowed me 3 days’ leave of absence. You can imagine what it was like when I got home. We had never had such a festival day. To say we were celebrating would be putting it mildly. Göran almost suffocated me and Lilian kissed and
hugged
me, which in her case does not happen every day. In that respect she’s a lot like Assa—hugs and kisses on the lips are very hard to get. Hala was astonished at my appearance—my tanned, healthy look. And the mood was just like old times. Göran was glad I could come to the performance. He’d practiced for this performance like never before and told me
it wouldn’t be anything like as nice without Dad.… I’ll stay here at the hospital a few more days, and I’m sure they’ll let me go home for good next week.
Thanks so much for the birthday present, I’m very pleased with the tie and already wearing it.
Warmest regards and lots of kisses.
David
Case notes, June 3: “A little nervous but mentally balanced, feels ‘fine.’ Still occasionally has the sensation of cold air blowing around him, but this, too, is considerably reduced. In good spirits, very much wants to live, enjoying life. Thinking clearly. Feels calm. Discharged provisionally.”
Case notes, June 10: “The patient returned to the hospital of his own volition. Says he has started feeling uneasy and anxious again over the past few days. Calm and controlled on readmission but later becomes increasingly anxious.”
Case notes, June 11: “Wanted to take a walk this afternoon. Although the conversation revealed no suicidal tendencies, the patient is until further notice to leave the ward only when accompanied by a member of staff.”
Somewhere here, the Swedish mental health service stops having an effect on you. Doses of all kinds of medicines are stepped up, but to no avail.
The entries in the case notes are increasingly disconnected and sketchy.
Case notes, July 10: “Visited by wife. V. happy and grateful for visit.”
Case notes, July 14:
Abt. 4 hrs. restless sleep last night acc. to night nurse. Nervous and in low spirits, asking constantly about the drugs and their effects. Appetite poor. The patient found to be greatly influenced by the weather. In view of his current condition the patient very dubious about leave of absence around July 20 (when his son goes to a summer camp). Complains he has lost interest in everything.
Case notes, July 19: “Still in low spirits and brooding, poor sleep.” Increased doses of Truxal, Catran, Diminal Duplex, Pentymal.
Case notes, July 22 a.m.: “Around 2 hours’ sleep last night on the prescribed drugs. Feels uneasy and restless. Asks for electric shock treatment to get past this difficult period.”
Case notes, July 22 p.m.:
This a.m. patients report that the patient is in the lake. Alarm sounded at once. Dr. Sandelin and Supervisor Uddén are first on the scene and commence artificial respiration as soon as the patient is on shore. The patient, who is lifeless, is transported by car to the pharmacy where attempts to resuscitate continue for 1½ hrs. The death has been reported to the police. Report in accordance with §34 to the Board of Medicine. Deceased.
That’s how the shadows catch up with you and kill you. That’s how I see it. The shadows don’t kill all the people they stalk, but they kill you in the end. The Swedish mental health service
doesn’t see it and writes, “Cause of illness: endogenous,” which means the shadows that kill you come from inside.
But the shadows that kill you don’t come from inside. They come from outside and catch up with you and surround you with darkness.
“Cause of illness: exogenous,” I would have written if I had been a doctor in the Swedish mental health service. Or a
Vertrauensarzt
in the German reparations bureaucracy.
Cause of death: Auschwitz etc., is what I would have written.
You yourself write on an unstamped borrower’s card from the hospital library. You write in pencil on both sides, the lines crammed closer and closer together toward the end, and when you run out of space you write sideways down the edges, just as in the aerograms.
No, it’s not you writing, it’s the shadows writing.
I can tell from the handwriting. It’s so tiny, so weak, and so unlike the hand in the letters from Furudal, Alingsås, and Södertälje.
These are your words of farewell. You have enough presence of mind to say good-bye and ask for forgiveness, or perhaps understanding, before you take a walk down to the soothing lake beneath the summery lindens and maples in the therapeutically beneficial hospital park. Enough presence of mind, too, I realize, to avoid the supervision of the Swedish mental health service.
You’re very energetic now, and very singleminded, and beyond all salvation.
Dearest Halinka, forgive me for being forced to take this action. I cannot fight and live with such torment that no one can stand. Everything feels hopeless to me now. Do not reproach me for this step. I know I’m doing you a great wrong and it will be a severe blow
to the whole family. If I didn’t do it, the misfortune that has struck us would still be a fact, the difference being that I would not have freed myself from the terrible torment. It’s an awful illness and there is no salvation from it. Halinka, you have done everything in your power to help me. I felt you putting your soul into your conversations with me. But it cannot go on like this, I feel the torment in my whole body. I know I’m leaving the children in good hands. Forgive me, Halinka. Dearest Natek. Forgive me. Believe me when I say I could not have acted in any other way, and that I would still not have been able to enjoy things with you. What pleasure could you have taken in a living brother in such a condition. I suffer the agonies of hell and I can’t go on. I can’t live with normal people. I can’t even talk to those who are very ill but have calm in their bodies.
On November 1, 1960, Dr. Segnestam, the chief physician at Sundby hospital, affirms that the shadows that kill you come from outside, not inside. His affidavit is translated into German and intended for the German reparations authorities, and the accuracy of the German translation is certified on November 24, 1960, by Dr. W. Michaeli, head of the URO office in Stockholm. URO stands for United Restitution Organization and is a body set up to help people like you plead their case against the German state. It’s my mother who asks them to plead your case even though it’s too late to plead your case, maybe because it may then be put on record somewhere that the German state was wrong and you were right; that it was not you who were exaggerating the problems you had as a result of persecution by the German state, but the German state that was exaggerating the problems it had as a result of people like you; that it was Auschwitz etc. that damaged you and ultimately killed you; that Dr.
Lindenbaum and Dr. Lebram and the German state were wrong about the degree of your incapacity for work as a result of the National Socialist persecution; and that this at least should be put on record.
Dr. Segnestam, chief physician at Sundby hospital, puts the following on record:
In summary, it should be stated that David Rosenberg carried with him his extremely bad experiences from the war years and concentration camps, and that in his years in Sweden, though appearing to adapt, he was simultaneously suffering from recurrent depressive episodes, and that toward the end of 1959 these episodes developed into a permanent depressive state with suicidal thoughts. It appears very likely to me that his experiences in the concentration camps were responsible for the worsening progress of his illness in 1959–60 and made it more difficult to treat him (fear of incarceration), and consequently were among the contributory causes of the disastrous outcome.
I remember that last summer very well.
The air quivering in the afternoon heat above the dirt road up to the cowshed, the car park and the entrance.
The little procession emerging from the green foliage.
How infinitely slowly it advances.
As if dragging out not only its steps but time itself.
Dragging out the time between before and after.
Three people advancing slowly through the last summer.
Mom, Natek, Kerstin.
I understand already, before there’s time to.
A year later, we leave the place where I first put words to the world and take the train north, over the bridge.
For me, a place with all horizons open.
For you, a place with all horizons closed.
For you, a brief stop on the road from Auschwitz.
In the mid-1960s Havsbadet in Södertälje was land-filled. Where once there was a sandy beach and a glittering sea inlet, there is now a concrete floor used as a depot for containers and imported cars.