I tell myself: if a single crime goes unpunished on this earth, if silence prevails over anger, then men do not deserve to live. In a better world, I would have given myself up, put on my black suit, stood before a judge and confessed: ‘My father tortured and killed thousands of people who never did him any harm and he got away scot-free. By the time I knew what he had done, he was dead, so I have come here in his place. Judge me, save me, please.’ But in this world, I wouldn’t even be thought of as laughable, I would be charged with contempt, I would be thrown out of court, lectured. My God, they might even wink at me! All I can do is deal with this thing alone. But I don’t know, everything is shocking, secret, squalid, everything in this world that has survived the end of the world is governed by prevarication and procrastination; once again we have come to believe that a lie is a necessary social protection for a people, a useful gift for an unruly child, a comfort for the anxious. I tell myself all sorts of things, I am drowning in a nightmare of horror, I have no raft to cling to. I am alone. More alone than anyone in the world. This world that to me seems so remote, deceptively preoccupied, obsessed with itself, its vague desires, its inconsequential joys, its follies, feeding on them as a cannibal feeds on himself, obsessed with its own time, its own tragedies, its dreams, its powerlessness. I struggle, I’m not someone who wallows in self-pity and I despise all obsessions. I remind myself that all this is simply history, that history belongs to the past, that the past is dead, we have forgotten, we no longer know, we have put things in perspective, that we live in an age that has its own problems, problems that are so great, so terrible, we cannot see our way out, while tomorrow, our only choice in life bears down on us with all its cruelties and sorrows. To me, it is an entire world that has collapsed on my head, it is the entire history of evil that stares me in the face, probes at my heart, my guts, steals into my memory, asks to be remembered, tells me endlessly how things were, who we were. The image haunts me, the fog suffocates me, my head aches, my ears are ringing . . . I hear a commotion . . . I see the dreary camp . . . watch the procession of shadows . . . men, women, children, all skin and bone, numberless, naked, marching obediently towards a vast inferno beneath the watchful eye of the SS officer . . . help! . . . I peer further into this horror . . . I scream for help, I look around for my father . . . Where are you, Papa? What are you doing? I need to find him, to wake him, I need to wake up . . . to save my father . . . my father who is lost . . . who has ruined us. My house has crumbled, grief has made me powerless; and I do not know why, my father never told me . . . There he is, Papa, immaculate in his black uniform, wearing the famous red armband . . . He smiles at me, tender but stern, the affectionate smile of a father . . . I don’t know how it happened, but he is here with me, just as he was in our house in Aïn Deb. We are living in a beautiful house just outside . . . the camp . . . the Konzentratzionlager . . . Nearby is a beautiful forest, glorious flowers, shimmering colours, and behind the hill . . . that place, all black, all grey, the place where I am not allowed to go . . . I play with the other boys, the officers’ children and with children they bring over from that place to keep us company, to play games, to be our playthings, our whipping boys when we’re angry, to serve our whims . . . but we hate these children, they’re scrawny and sickly, flea-ridden and scrofulous, they have no hair, no teeth, they don’t know how to play, they’re silent and stupid and we don’t understand them. All they can think about is eating, keeping warm, sleeping . . . We shout at them, we hit them but still they don’t react, they just curl up like hedgehogs . . . Around us, inhuman wretches with sunken eyes shamble through the pretty village, pretending to till the ground, rake the gravel, paint the fences. They are our prisoners, these creatures who have maimed our country, incensed our Führer, they wear filthy striped pyjamas, they are ugly, foul-smelling, deceitful, fawning, ungrateful, they steal whatever they can – cigarette butts, scraps of papers, stale crumbs of bread – the sight of a rusty nail can make their eyes pop out, the sight of a bone can have them slavering like dogs, they poke through our garbage, stare at us enviously . . . Sometimes they stop pretending to work, they look up, look out into the distance, past the camp, past the hill . . . to the tall column of oily fetid smoke that rises into the sky . . . Oh, that scream! . . . the sky is dark with wheeling carrion crows, filling the air with their baleful cawing . . . Get out of here! . . . You too, you fucking kikes . . . The prisoners stare up at the sky. They seem constantly surprised by the sudden whirr that sometimes wakes us in the night, at dawn, in the cold, a grinding noise that grows louder, a series of dull metallic sounds, chains clanking, the slamming of heavy metal doors, the quiet fitful hiss of the pumps, the sudden drop in voltage that makes the lights flicker . . . screams, perhaps . . . a ghostly clamour that grows louder and louder, then gradually dies away leaving a haunting silence . . . My God, how strange this silence sounds, how painful . . . people who . . . more shaven heads appear by the foot of the hill . . . another column of smoke advances stolidly . . . emerges from the darkness, trudges through the dull grey day to disappear into the night . . . It is far away . . . the wind is blowing in the other direction . . . the prisoners stop, lost in contemplation, so our Kapos rush over and knock them to the ground, lice hopping from their clothes as the Kapos lash out with clubs and guttural roars ‘Arbeit! . . . Arbeit! . . . Schnell! . . . Schnell!’ We roll on the ground laughing. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! . . . It’s strange that flayed and wasted as they are, the prisoners feel nothing, say nothing, do nothing, some laugh, baring their horrid teeth, staring up at the sky, they look as though they might sing . . . They are fascinated. Then, when they are ready, they scramble to their feet, pick up their tools and pretend to till the ground, rake the gravel, paint the fences, check that everything is spick and span. Infuriating automata, they look as though all their lives they have done nothing but make these same gestures, as though they were born to this. Sometimes, there are two or three still sprawled on the ground but their comrades do not see them, pretend not to see them. The Kapos bark orders and they are carried off on stretchers past the camp, over there, past the hill . . . Officers laugh or yell angrily, their whips whistle, slapping against their boots . . . the Kapos laugh, they bow and scrape . . . the Kapos are favoured prisoners, they have some flesh on their bones at the expense of their suffering brothers . . . they speak a language I don’t understand, or barely. ‘Gut, gut, Juden kaput, fini, Konetz, danke, Dkuji, merci beaucoup, dobrý de.’ Papa calls me inside for something to eat . . . I . . . I . . . the wind has shifted, the air is suddenly rank and muggy . . . We go inside and close the windows.