Airport Immigration. Similar to IRS, only tougher. The old couple approaching me stood no chance. “Your reason for visiting America?” “Gooder life.” “Better.” “Gooder. Badder was there.” He beamed my way gold-plated incisors, his wife joining. “Family?” “Family?” he echoed. “Hotel?” “Hotel?” “Passports, sir!” He held the passports between thumb and forefinger, three fingers missing … More Chance Encounter
On Friday, as soon as they finished listening to Andropov’s first speech as a General Secretary, his wife asked, “Everything’s alright, honey?” “As alright as it can be, love. Go to bed.” On the balcony, he tried to understand why he felt restless all of a sudden. The speech? Checked the time: almost midnight. A … More Midnight Visit
I went with my wife on her extended business trip to Munich. Munich gave the Little Corporal a sympathetic ear and the die was cast. A short ride on a modern clean commuter took me to the stop for the Village of Dachau. Dachau was the proving ground organized with clockwork precision for industrialized efficiency … More The Showers
All of the wild wild ways my great-grandmother used to have in Poland, before Auschwitz dealings, are still inside of her. My great-babki mainly wants cheeses grilled in bread — she feels she is escaping concentration-camp hunger pains with every bite. She flattens the sandwiches in the back of our kitchen, with an antique iron, … More These Sandwiches
They pushed the camp’s grating gates open and after a few paces stopped, horrified. They were used to war horrors, not to this horror. We just stood there, hundreds of living skeletons, waiting. For what? I started advancing, my emaciated, naked body not betraying even my gender. I stopped in front of one of the … More Not This Horror
“Be still, child.” It’s not a request, it’s a prayer. Her voice is a whisper-rush of exhale to the baby in her arms, held tight against her chest, knees pinched to fit into that cramped space between the walls. “Don’t let him hear,” she says again, praying out loud. The footsteps from the room beyond … More Be Still, Child
When they knocked on the door, forced us in the cattle wagons, I couldn’t imagine that I would fall in love there, amidst the greatest of human miseries, an electrified barbed wire between us and black smoke rising behind me. We knew exactly what we were doing the day we ran towards each other, clasped … More Love Story
“Don’t ask your cousin Yvonne any questions about le camp de concentration!” admonished Sylvie’s mother, as if forgetting that the child had been mute for months. Yvonne was waving from the top of the granite stairs of her house in Bourg-Lastic. She was not the human skin stretched into lamp shades that Sylvie had had … More Yvonne’s Parakeets
I found the ring I wore, when we were together, buried in a drawer beneath punctured passports, ID cards for places that would no longer recognize me, and rusty batteries. We’d set ourselves against the great war in which your people slaughtered mine, as an alternative world. In the mall, you showed me two jewelry-store … More Ring
The first time he suggested it, she wept bitterly. The second time, he offered the sharpened knife, and said, “What does it matter if I live another day?” The candles were gone, so they sat by the dim light of the fire, holding hands against the storm. Their cabin had been snowbound for sixty days, … More The Ear
The Centifictionist 
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