“I am a child Holocaust survivor,” my brother practically whispered from his Buki ben Yogli heights.

“I am a child Holocaust survivor,” his Hasidim screamed on cue.

He pointed to the dark interior, to three protruding ledges of planks behind him lining the wall in the barrack. “That’s where I slept, on the bottom level of that triple-decker, squeezed in the middle, between ten grown men, the diarrhea from the prisoners above us dripping down through the slats all night long, like leaking toilets, covering us with shit.” His words were repeated, amplified. Who needed microphones?

Within hours a well-fed bureaucrat was produced, affiliated with the august Holocaust museum in Washington, DC, who delivered a passionate speech about the dangers of abusing Holocaust memory—providing fodder to deniers, anti-Semites, and so on. Moreover, he said, they had certified records to prove that my brother was born well after the war, in Brooklyn, New York.

“I am a child Holocaust survivor, asshole,” my brother reiterated calmly and evenly, and the chorus echoed this again, syllable by syllable emphatically at the top of its lungs. “My twin sister, Meena, is also a child Holocaust survivor. She was used as a child prostitute, a sex slave. It screwed her up for life, which is why she now lives in India. You can check out our fucking Holocaust creds with my sister, motherfucker”—and every word he had uttered so softly, so wisely and deeply for those with the gift of understanding, was repeated by his boys at top decibel at the rest stop of each designated clause, including my telephone number, which was the last thing he gave them, digits like a tattoo branded on a forearm, and after that, silence.

When the call came, I provided confirmation. Yes, he is my brother. Yes, we are survivors, my brother and I. After Auschwitz, we are all guilty of surviving.

After Auschwitz, your existence is illusion, as you were marked for death and only by chance were you spared. After Auschwitz, including the arrival of my brother and his merry band to India, wherever they stopped on their journey, chimerical places, mirages, too many to recall here, it is all Maya. Their penultimate station was Uman, in Ukraine, in a final attempt to carry out the tikkun of pursuit of the righteous, the resting place of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, the most seductive, most healing guru of them all.