I’m an optimist. This is what I said:
My good friend Leon had the biggest numbers on his arm that I’d ever seen, at least an inch high. I said, “Leon, why are your numbers so BIG?”, as gently as I could. He looked at me with those piercing eyes and broken teeth of his and said, “Because I was only 10 when they took me to Auschwitz.” It was a pain so deep and off limits, that I couldn’t really touch it.
Sometimes he would bring me his clothes to wash, and we would sit in my living room drinking Coronas until the laundry was done. He didn’t want to remember, he told me, but said the beer made him comfortable enough to tell me some stories. I listened to every word, I even took some notes so I’d remember these events from one who stood in that camp in Oświęcim, Poland.
What would I say to Leon if I were with him? I would say that YOU will survive so you can tell others about the destruction of the Jews in Europe. Because YOU are a witness and people will believe you. YOU will show them your numbers and tell them your story!! I would tell him that it’s not just the lucky who survive, nor is it the resourceful ones that make it to the end, but that he would indeed walk out of those gates a free person. No matter what happens in that G-d-forsaken camp, and how many murders you witness with your eyes, YOU must come out alive to bear witness for your little brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents and rabbis and your home of Galicia and all of those Jewish souls that were martyred.
After Leon would leave my house with his bags of clean clothes, I would cry myself to sleep on some of those nights, thinking about a little boy in Auschwitz who had just paid me a visit.