DISINFECTION Dear Elie, In my last letter to you I wrote: "I am writing this to you, Elie, because in the emotional concentration camps we smell the ovens that are so well analogized in Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Belson, Buna and every other Camp constructed by destroyers of souls. I could write for eons about the analogies and symbolism of their cruelties, atrocities, tortures. Abuse that depicts so clearly the emotional destruction of the human will, the mental breakdown of the psyche, and disintegration of all human dignity - all that seperates man from other levels of behavior and intelligence." This morning as different aspects of the camps come to my mind, I found myself revisiting a Past not only engraven on the fragile Memory parchment of Holocaust survivors but back to the Psychological concentration camp set in my childhood. An Auschwitz, place of breakdown of the mental psyche, rather than emotional Buchenwald, emotional breakdown of the human will. Although the SS are the same,and the prisoners are no different. The symbolism of the camps becomes the foreground of my focus and the tortures of my little girl mind twists a spiral one with the smoke of chimney stacks in which my emotional ties and sense of Self were all but burned beyond a salvaging. You would remember far too clearly, Elie, the sign, " To Disinfection'. The children thrown beyond the Door. That Door closed fast, immoveable, implacably unmoved by screams and crying however long and undiminished in the terror and despair. Door opened long enough to load the bodies on the wagon and replace with living others, undressed, waiting for their turn. One batch after another. "Disinfection", instead of Cremation. Death of a different kind. My little girl does not understand why she needs to be Disinfected. What does that mean anyway? My mother talked of disinfecting a house from fleas and it was covered completely by a tent affair and left for several days. I did not know what was going on inside. Nothing to see from without, and when the tent was gone the house looked just the same but they said inside, there were no more fleas. Is this what did to the children in Auschwitz? Is this what they did to me ? Just as the cleansing chambers did not change their outward appearance neither was my little girl in anyway refashioned outwardly. Not so my mother would notice. Not so her aristocratic friends would have bothered to question. Not that my teachers, schoolmates observed me any differently. But under the tent, inside the chamber, behind the Door - what happened to me there ? No one saw, just as noone ever saw beyond the closed door in the camps. Only those in the same "batch" would understand. What was so infectious that needed to be "cleansed" away? What were the insects, the fleas, the bugs, the lice or other unwanted creatures that were so despised, so threatening to the "Cleansers" that I had no say or choice in going through the process, no understanding of what they wanted of me, in me, through me, from me? What made THEM so clean and me UNclean? By whose rule or standard were these criteria set? Living day to day in the uncertainty of right and wrong, always thinking furiously of how to please Authority, was I covered with the lice of individual thoughts? Tiny evidence that I might have a different view of life, a personal preference, an original idea? Could the bugs of hard-shelled obstinacy possibly have been SEEN ? Were fleas of all the small evasions uncompliant with the ordered plans seen jumping swiftly out of sight but being noticed in unguarded moments? Was this why the decree went out - this child must go to "Disinfection", "Fumigation", a thorough cleansing of these contaminating obstacles to preset social " norms" ? The child must be seen and not heard. What happened to me in the process ? How long was I in the chamber, behind the door, under the tent? I do not know. I know that when I reemerged later in life around fifteen years of age, I was cleansed of thinking Chinese heritage had merit, so I had none. Purified from thought I might have worth, so I had none. Washed from the presumption I might have some rights, so I had none. I would die rather than project myself in any situtation that would draw attention to a person's presence, ergo, me. In my teens I would not accept a date offered by a fellow nurse unless the date was well aware I was Chinese, and even then I usually declined to go, but did. Fear. I was thoroughly disinfected from the lack of fear, the power to say, "NO", a sense of daring to be who I was, of having worth, a mind of my own, of being loveable, acceptable, enjoyable. Whatever they used for disinfecting agent it was most effective. Was it not the scouring quality of constant criticism, abrasiveness of sharp reminders I was never good enough, of failures in performance, the wire-brush scrubbing of my nagging mother, the peeling of Abuse's scraper down to tender bone. All these cleansing instruments dipped in the Disinfectant of man's malice, hatred, violence, arrogance, power, and love for cruelty. Mind games to control my servitude and make me sure I knew my place. Today, I find pride in many treasures found in Chinese Culture - but this is general knowledge of Chinese Dynasties - it is not ME and what I like about me, feel about my way of being. Checking inside is much more useful to me in feeling good about myself than looking out. HURRAH! Today, I have become dirty again, infectious again, in need of cleansing - I have given back my body and my mind to be flea infested, lice covered, bug-burrowed once again and it feels GOOD. Taken back my individual thought, my preferences, my ability to gainsay another if I choose to disagree. I REVEL in my filth. But I do not forget the wild child screams, forced from an invisible resistance, rebellion, a desperate defiance to anihalation. Today, I will wash if I feel the need to. I will remain in my infected condition if that suits my whim. But I will not forget the deadness of the mind washed clean of ME - the agonies of only childlike ways to cope with the uncopable, noone to ask for answers till early adulthood. In Primo Levi's book, Survival, he wrote : .....two groups of strange individuals emerged into the light of the lamps. They walked in squads, in rows of three, with an odd, embarrassed step, head dangling in front, arms rigid. On their heads, they wore comic berets and were all dressed in long striped overcoats, which even by night and from a distance looked filthy and in rags. They walked in a large circle around us, never drawing near, and in silence began to busy themselves with our luggage and to climb in and out of the empty wagons. We looked at each other without a word. It was all incomprehensible and mad, but one thing we had understood. This was the metamorphosis that awaited us. Tomorrow we would be like them. (Levi, Survival, p. 20)>> This is the depiction of unconscious revelation. This the realization that my child absorbed, not understanding, having no inkling of what made others who they were or what they had become, but knowing somewhere deep,deep down inside that only Death's skeletal form awaited me if I gave in. Poring over graphic pictures of the concentration camps, the death mask faces, skin- taut covered bones filling graves to overflowing, sunken earth mouths gaping hugely, greedy still for more. I never questioned then, my fascination with the Holocaust, war stories, pictures, prisoners. Why I was drawn to read and read, books that shared the details of the Camps until I knew their names as well as if they were our neighbors'. Now, perhaps, as I revisit childhood days, it has occurred to me how clearly what I read and saw was also symbolizing my own plight. Analogies galore of what I was experiencing emotionally, and psychicly in the Auschwitz, Buchanwald camps in which I was a prisoner of war. I was drawn by silent understanding, mute attunement to the look in every eye. In today's war lingo it is called "the thousand yard stare". You know it very well, Elie, you saw it every day. The look that holds what cannot be held, that sees what it refuses to see, taking in what it has not taken in, telling stories that will never be told. Eyes mirroring the mind, disinfected, washed of its humanity, its dignity, its power to think it still can have a thought. And yet, and yet, those like you, Elie, even when so young a boy, looked out beyond the stare. In my child mind I saw the eyes and did not recognize the stare but knew I knew the look. Such a long word, "metamorphosis" - far beyond me both to understand or pronounce, but somewhere far far in the recess of my mind and thinking lay the sure knowledge of my sure demise if I could not somehow find a method for survival. The mental breakdown of the psyche, and disintegration of all human dignity - all that seperates man from other levels of behavior and intelligence.' Survivng seperates the struggling abused from the non-struggling abused. One can give up and give in. Or live. The choice is ours. You expressed it so poignantly in "Night", Elie. Those who said they could fight no longer, go on no longer. And didn't. I was profoundly moved by your recounting of Juliek's last concert. You wrote, " The sound of a violing playing in this dark shed where the dead were heaped upon the living. What madman could be playing the violin, here, at the brink of his own grave?... He played a fragment from Beethoven's concerto. I had never heard sounds so pure. In such a silence.... it was as though Juliek's soul was the bow. He was playing his life... he played as he would never play again. How could I forget that concert given to an audience of dying and dead men?... when I awoke in the daylight I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over dead." This made me cry, Elie. The scene, the violin, the music,the presence of the dying and the dead, but most of all, the victory of Juliek. Rather than a madman, he created sanity in madness, beauty in the worst distortion of it, clinging on till his last breath to what gave life its meaning for him, expressing with the last of fading strength what all the SS in the world could never take away or break or steal - something that was his alone. His music. His body gave in. His mind and his spirit did not. This is the antithesis of camp indoctrination. The conjured evil to strip the body, mind and soul naked without care or thought or feeling for the prisoner - if he died, he died. If he lived, he lived, to be tested yet another day and with endurance test the will to live. You are here today, Elie. I am here today. I think I would be dead had I faced the things you did, but one cannot say that can one ? It is the actual experience that tests what we have built inside. You had to be naked to go into the Disinfection. I had to go naked too, stripped of what I would have liked to clothe myself with, my personal dreams, my personal thoughts, choices, goals, ambitions. I went under the showers, coming out clean in "their" eyes. Juliek had his violin that kept him sane. I had my dog, my music and my writing to put on after the showers and give some warmth. Today I am clothed again and have my personal dreams, my goals, my thoughts and choices - all of which are flea and bug and lice infested. How GOOD that feels. NOT to be copied in any form  | LEGACY OF THE UNBELOVED | CRUMBS FOR THE STARVING | DISINFECTION | BEAUTY | WHY and WHAT | Would You Still Be My friend ? | THE BOTTLE | ROSES and THISTLES | | THE HEALING PROCESS | DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER | POETRY | Biographical Entries | |
||
