I Blame Auschwitz - Mikołaj Grynberg | #language & literature

'The war ended seventy years ago, but not in our homes, not yet unfortunately' – said one of the many people Mikołaj Grynberg spoke to. Maybe it’s more appropriate to say: one of his brothers and sisters.

That is what Grynberg calls people, he met over the years and spoke to about something, that he also knows from his own experience. Mainly, being a child of Holocaust survivors, a member of ‘the second generation’. A person, that was not supposed to exist, because his parents were meant to cease to exist.

I blame Auschwitz / Oskarżam Auschwitz is a record of twenty something conversations with the now grown-up children of Holocaust survivors. Short, long, recollected or quoted word for word, carried out in Polish or in English - in homes, cafes or train stations. Grynberg – a photographer, psychologist, and also author of the conversations with Holocaust survivors (Survivors of the 20^th century / Ocaleni z XX wieku) – meets his brothers and sisters in Warsaw, Tel Aviv and New York. The eldest of which, were born right after the war, the youngest in the 1970s. 'I believe, that these stories deserve a place in a wider arena than just support groups' – he writes in the prologue.

Although Grynberg’s interlocutors didn’t experience the Holocaust first hand – maybe even that is why – they have their own stories to tell about those events: intimate, family stories that go all the way to the core of their relationships with their parents. These are stories about the impact the Holocaust has had on day-to-day life, even several decades after the war and the immense strength that is needed to survive living in its shadow. Honest, strikingly detailed and painful. 'We didn’t speak to Holocaust survivors, we listened to their stories: with humility and respect' – Anka Grupińska writes in the foreword. The second generation is a different story though: Grynberg speaks to them freely, as he would with fellow peers. He discusses the matter and isn’t afraid to ask difficult questions – because he exposes himself to them as well.

These conversations are often shocking. Like the one, that opens the novel I blame Auschwitz (which also inspired the title of the book). Jossi from Tel Aviv, who made a career in Israel and who is very proud of that fact says, that the one’s, who survived ‘are Hitler’s greatest success. If they had died, then that would have been it. But Hitler let them go. Let them have children and ruin the world further.’ There are surprising stories – of the strange and intertwined paths of the trauma passed on from generation to generation.

One of the women Grynberg interviewed said, that in Auschwitz she finally feels like she arrived home. That she is dreaming of laying on the ground and feeling the warmth of everyone, who was left there. Grynberg’s book unveils the sphere of human experience, that we know very little about, because after all the first hand survivors of those traumatic events are in the spotlight, not their children or grandchildren (although both Bożena Keff and Ewa Kuryluk wrote about this in a moving way).

Here are people, who’s birth marked the beginning of the world, who were raised with no past, ancestors or family memories. Who – as one of our main characters – had long lived with the conviction, that being a grandfather was a public function, because in her neighbourhood in Israel, there was only one and he was ‘shared’. They are people, who may have heard the following at the dinner table: ‘Eat it and be grateful you’re not in Auschwitz. You would appreciate what food means if you were there.' Raised by ‘odd’ parents – such as Gitli’s father, who was silent and only ‘read, wrote and smoked cigarettes’. Who were convinced, that you’re not allowed to be sick, because otherwise you won’t pass the selection process. Almost without exception, obsessively devoted to their parents, very protective, brave and deeply lonely. Often living a double life, invisible in some way – like Towa, a seemingly joyful, ‘energetic woman’, who was in fact distrustful even toward her own husband. ‘My mathematics teacher says: who believes in my happiness, will not see my pain’. Caught in the trap of ‘bravery’. 'Tell your parents, that your sex life is unfulfilling and that’s why you’re depressed. Tell your parents, that your children are naughty and those are your problems.’ When in fact – like Jossi, who wonders what things one should take for their child in Treblinka, when he packs his family for vacation – they are slacklining over an abyss.

I blame Auschwitz is a sort of collective portrait, in which similar concepts crop up. One of them is certainly a distrust towards psychologists, therapists and loneliness in the face of ‘post-suffering’. Often so, it seems as if the interviews conducted by Grynberg are a form of therapy itself (not always though, other times they are more like a door slam). The book is not a record of Grynberg’s ‘questioning’. The uniqueness of Grynberg’s book is the fact that it rather resembles a search for kindred spirits, a ritual, in which one of the main characters is also the author, searching for something much greater than just another story. ‘Why are you sitting here with me for so long and listening to what I am saying?’ – Daniel from Downtown Manhattan asks him. ‘I just gained a new brother and that’s something, isn’t it?’ – asks Grynberg. ‘I feel a need to listen to these stories’ – he says in another place. ‘You’re addicted to them’ – says the interviewer.

At times, reading these conversations feels like eavesdropping a meeting, between two people, between whom something very important is happening. Grynberg – emotional, viewing the main characters, as his fellow brothers and sisters, speaking from the depth of his own experience, balancing between the role of the author and one of the characters - is probably the only one, who could have succeeded at this endeavour. That is writing a book, that is equally gloomy, as it is whimsical, provocative, moving, revealing deep wounds, but also love.

In I blame Auschwitz’s prologue he writes, that he would once like to hear that the stories that are told in it, are our – meaning all people’s – heritage. The book also entails another, often repeated suggestion: that only ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ can truly understand each other. Grynberg’s book – as any, that manages to reach the truth about people – sheds some light on other contexts, experiences and areas of reality as well. He not only found a way to ‘write about what is going on in our heads for others to see’ but also created a universal story about children and their parents, about a cross-generational transmission of suffering, about facing loss and endless desolation.

The Photographer from Auschwitz

The Man Who Volunteered For Auschwitz

Aleksandra Lipczak, July 2015, Translated by: Zuzanna Wisniewska