We arrived at Birkenau in the middle of August 1944, a summery morning like any other, yet not like any other at all. I can still see the troupe of unreal men in striped rags, lingering in a nearby field like an ensemble of resigned clowns on a condemned stage, raking grass. In my heart’s innermost chamber, enveloped in tattered years, there still hang the pictures of my mother’s terrified eyes, my father’s bleak gesture of farewell, my sister Ida’s numb paralysis, and the horror of my two little nieces, six and four, standing like adults in the queue with their arms up, awaiting Selection. And I cannot erase from my memory the sight of my sister Pola three days later, stretched out on the wires of the electric fence, her head shaved, her hands in supplication, her mouth kissing death... Birkenau was the entry and selection point for the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, and an extermination camp in its own right. We were welcomed by a man dressed in black. His manner was efficient but casual, as his white-gloved finger nonchalantly showed most of my family the way to the gas.
