We Must Not Think of Ourselves

by Lauren Grodstein

“It is up to us to write our own history,” he said. “Deny the Germans the last word.”

I had never been a diary keeper. I had never thought myself such an interesting subject. I almost tore the page out and started again, but then I thought: What if someone found my discarded notes? And I also thought: It is not my job to decide what’s significant.

I know I’ve been fortunate, even in circumstances I might have once found impossible to see as fortunate. It has been this understanding as much as anything else that keeps me alive, that I feel certain will continue to keep me alive.

but everyone here had become almost liquid with sentimentality, and I, unfortunately, was not immune.

Today, I recited a Blake poem about joy, for it was my policy to teach only happy poems. Or happy-enough.

I also liked teaching poems because I believed poetry was where the English language really soared. It was utilitarian most of the time but somehow able to turn its simple grammar and plundered vocabulary into the finest poetry written: Shakespearean sonnets and Keatsian odes, and Chaucer and Eliot and Pound. I knew and loved them all for different reasons. When I wanted wisdom, I found Dickinson; sorrow, Yeats; company in my grief, Wordsworth.

I’ll confess it struck me as stickily sweet, but the image of Lady Liberty was nice and it allowed the class to consider ideas of welcome and immigration, so different from the nationalist propaganda inculcated into Poles.

“You can say whatever you want,” I said. “All the rules are different now.”

nobody will ever think that’s a Polish name. Jewish blood runs in your veins, whether you like it or not.” “Blood doesn’t have a religion.” “Jewish blood does, brother.”

they can’t kill all of us.” “Can’t they?” “What would be the gain in that? It’s illogical. And the Nazis pride themselves on being logical. Don’t they?” “What’s illogical about killing people you despise?” “It’s a waste of human resources.” “What on earth is a ‘human resource’?” “You know, our capacities. Our brains. Our muscles. They could have us fight for them or work in their factories. Build their bombs. Fight on their front lines.” It occurred to me I sounded a little desperate.

(But, truly, what would be the point of killing all of us? And how on earth could they pull such a thing off? And would the world really . . . let them?)

trying to be so protective of her children. She wants to know where they are all the time. She thinks she can still keep bad things from happening to them.”

I won’t believe that everyone is either good or evil all the time.

I might as well tell you that I object to the idea that every Jew is a good person. That’s simply untrue. Just because we’re the so-called victims here doesn’t mean we all have the individual moral high ground. It’s true that we are in a lousy position through little to no fault of our own, but that fact doesn’t necessarily make us all good people. What I mean is that you can also be a bad person in a bad position. I refuse to see every Jew as some sort of angelic martyr.

The problem was that it was hard for us to realize that we did not matter to anyone outside our own small company. For so long, we had lived under the illusion that our lives were still worth something to the broader community of mankind, and even though that illusion was shattered brick by brick

I thought: These children, raised in fire, will be some of the finest Jews who have ever lived. They will be the strongest and the toughest and the smartest. They will be the most proud and will have the most to be proud of.

“You said that poetry might not always tell us what we want to hear, but if we listen closely enough it would tell us what we needed to hear.”

lucky or because our record-keeping provided us a purpose that made us want to stay alive.

I know that this is a difficult time for all of us, but we need to continue to do the work that will outlast this moment in history.”

It’s easier to think that someone is a coward than a bigot.

But as for us, our job is to stay watchful. Take care of one another. And, most importantly, keep writing everything down.”

The most important thing we could do for ourselves was survive. Not just in words, but in actual bodies. And to that end, the archive was of no use at all. In fact, the archive suddenly seemed to me a sort of capitulation, an acceptance of the truth that we would not be here and so our written words would have to say what we ourselves could not.

These smugglers, these boys, had become the lifeblood of the ghetto economy. We knew that our very lives depended on them: the price they could get for turnips or potatoes, the markets they could find for our used picture frames and books. We didn’t like to talk about it or acknowledge our indebtedness to them, or to the fragility of our system, but we also couldn’t avoid it. Given the meager kilocalories they allowed each of us, if the children hadn’t smuggled in food, we all would have perished. But then there was the cost.

For many years, as my life plodded along full of ordinary joys I was too stupid to notice, I complained about the ordinary things:

In May, the dandelions started pushing up through the cracks in the crumbling sidewalks.

“Please stop looking for logic where there isn’t any.”

And then I realized: I had given it away. I had given everything away. This was the lightness that came with the freedom from hope. I practically floated all the way home.

But now I realize that we are creating a portrait of Polish Jews at the end of our history—not one peculiar moment, but the very last moment.

I love English for this reason, for its mutability, its ability to change and survive. I love it for its forward momentum. I love it for its willingness to compromise and be stronger for it.

Yiddish was the only language in the world, and it was entirely a language of sweetness and home.

And if I die, my Yiddish will die with me. Will anyone miss it or remember it? Will anyone miss or remember me? Nein, nein, nein.

But without her, I lost my radar, my map to the world. I lost my ability to see what was what, to see what might happen next.