The Birthday Buyer by Adolfo García Ortega

well, smashed to smithereens, my face peppered with little cuts from the windshield glass, my clothes soaked in blood, my hands bandaged . . . The room is very similar to an autopsy room; the rest of the patients in this hospital, injured to a greater or lesser extent, have been operated on, are in pain, are confronting, to a greater or lesser extent, the fact that they have made it out of their trial with death well, that they have survived. Are re-making their lives.
    Like those who survived Auschwitz. I dare say that and make the comparison. I have no right to, no right at all. I know that only too well, that it’s insulting to compare my survival with theirs. But it is true that something, a unique reality, unites us: the fact that at some point in the chain of “life,” neither they nor I raised the card that says “death,” that’s it. We are united by the death we left behind. Though, evidently, not all deaths are equal. Their horror was incalculable, arbitrary, devastating. Their horror is history’s failure. Their horror cannot and must not be justified. Many live on afterward feeling guilty, wondering why they have survived, what makes them deserve life more than the others who died. A feeling of guilt that has led many to commit suicide. Others have re-made their lives, as best as they could, have created homes, had children, have tried to protect themselves from the pain of remembering. Others meet up periodically with their companions from the camps and keep alive the memory of the men, women and children who were murdered.
    But I started this journey simply because I want Hurbinek to live a life he did not live, one that was snatched away. I want to give him that present, buy him years, birthday parties, if only that wasn’t a delusion. I don’t know what ghosts or lights or shadows inhabit the memories of survivors of Auschwitz. As far as I am concerned, I am only interested in the memory of Hurbinek they retain, the survival of Hurbinek in the future that opened up for some fortunate individuals when they crossed through the camp’s barbed wire fences and returned to their past that had been destroyed. In how often and at what precise moments was Hurbinek remembered by those who knew, however briefly, of his equally brief existence. But I know that what I am attempting is impossible, and life has brought me to a halt here, in this Frankfurt hospital, so the frontier between my fictions and reality, in terms of Hurbinek, will continue to be blurred, porous and minimal.

8

    We know that Berek Goldstein was fated to die in Auschwitz sooner or later and that was why he was recruited to work in a
Sonderkommando
. All those who worked in a
Sonderkommando
were sent to the gas chambers within a few months. Their execution was deferred, their suffering wasn’t. They were forced to undress the people the SS selected every day to be exterminated with Zyklon B. They then entered the chambers and put the bluish bodies onto the trucks that transported them to the crematoria. First they had to cut off the girls and womens’ hair and pull out the gold teeth, acts they sometimes carried out before executing them, depending on the volume of mass-produced dead to be processed. Many recognized their parents, wives and children among the victims. They put the bodies in the ovens and later emptied out their ashes. They had to crush any bones that had resisted.
    Berek Goldstein had to undress his five-year-old son and leave him there amidst those screaming in the gas chamber, then take him to the oven and extract his ashes with a spade. He had to do so silently. He had to do so without crying or going crazy. He did consider the idea of throwing himself into the fire with his son’s corpse in his arms. But was unable to do so because he was so befuddled by the whiplashes hitting him and the swift nature of the task. “
Schnell, Shnell, Schnell! Juda verrecke
!” 1 the German bawled until he was hoarse. But he did see