Affinity Konar: Mischling

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I had a face still. I didn’t know my name, but I was aware of others. I knew the name of Auschwitz. I heard it shouted out in whatever world lay beyond the boxes that I lived in. There were three boxes, so far as I could tell. One was a building, the second a room, and the third – that was the cage of wire and lock that kept me. It was the white-coated man who put me to the cage bottom with a thud and took away my blanket so I could experience nakedness in such a way that the wires dug into my flesh. He came, he left. He shone lights into my darkness and make notes about my squint, my response. He did more than that, but I chose not to remember this then. I knew his name when this occurred. But I chose to forget that too.

From this time – there is not much I want to recall. What I want to dwell on is different, and it is mine.

This may not be true for the world, but it was true for me, in my cage: There was a brief moment, a slip of rare time, quite unlike any time before it. Because when Auschwitz fell, the lives it took were restored – for the merest of moments – just so our dead could see it founder. 

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Affinity Konar at the PWF 2017:

Saturday, 11 November, 16.00, reading, Senate

Monday, 13 November, 16.30, film and conversation, Municipal Library