Fabulae

Together in a Small Room (1975)

39 Together in a Small Room (1975) All afternoon the “gestapo” called us upstairs to their demon bedrooms and asked us why they should let us live. They were our youth group leaders, a couple in their twenties. I couldn’t imagine being twenty, it was like a room so far upstairs I couldn’t see it. They meant to teach us about the camps, they crowded us together in a small room, but I was full of desire to live which meant knowing something to say to the boy beside me on the sofa. I loved him like we were family to each other. I couldn’t even get to that place. Pretty soon I was sent off to be killed with the others on the back porch— Just what we need, a Jewish doctor, our leaders said of the most useful thing I could think of, to be: something I could imagine because I knew the steps, saw the way. ...