I’m sure I’ve bored you with this business, but it’s in your own interest and it would be a pity to miss out on it and let them get away with it.
I don’t want to bore anyone with this business either, so I won’t reproduce what Dr. Paul Lindner says about your condition in his certificate, Ärztliches Zeugnis, of May 21, 1959, except for the last sentence: “Since liberation, his working capacity has been permanently reduced by 60 %.” Er ist dauernd, seit der Befreiung, 60 % arbeistsunfähig.
I have no idea how Dr. Lindner arrives at the figure of 60 %, but it’s undeniably not the same as 0 %. Dr. Lindner refers you to Dr. E. Goldkuhl, who’s the senior consultant at the Långbro mental hospital in Stockholm, and who arrives at the same conclusion in a certificate dated June 13, 1959: “In my opinion, Mr. Rosenberg’s working capacity is to be considered reduced by 60 % as a result of chronic psychoneurosis.”
On February 5, 1960, a consultant and specialist in mental health, Dr. Harald Rabe, certifies that since December 11, 1959, you’ve been on sick leave, “being entirely unfit for work as a result of mental depression.” Dr. Rabe also identifies a clear causal link between “the experiences in the years 1939–45 and the nervous illness.”
On March 3, 1960, another certificate from Dr. Lindner, an Ärztlicher Bericht.
On March 9, 1960, another certificate from Dr. E. Goldkuhl.
They all assert the same thing, time after time: You’re ill as a result of the persecution, and as a result of the illness your capacity for work has been reduced by at least 60 %.
On February 10, 1960, your reparations claim is examined by another German-appointed Vertrauensarzt, Dr. Herbert Lebram, who makes yet another decision on your case:
In the processing of this case, there is a complete divergence of opinions between the previous medical examiner and the psychiatric specialists consulted, showing how difficult it is to judge afflictions largely manifesting themselves subjectively [wie schwer eine gerechte Stellung bei derartigen hauptsächlich subjektiv manifestierte Leiden einzunehmen ist]. From the information provided by the claimant, it is not possible to prove anything with certainty, particularly as the claimant — possibly because of mistrust — proved unwilling or unable to establish closer contact with my examining colleague. Since no damage resulting from persecution — lasting deterioration as a result of constitutionally determined psychoneurosis — can be proved with certainty, I judge the claimant’s working capacity to be reduced by 25 % up to 1955, and subsequently by 20 %.
It’s not clear how Dr. Lebram, in February 1960, can judge that your condition improves by five percentage points from 1955 to 1956. From the start of 1956, at any event, he judges you to be precisely as well as is required to absolve Germany from its obligation to compensate you for lasting damage and injury as a result of Auschwitz, etc.
On November 4, 1959, you break free of the factory’s gravitational pull and find yourself traveling in untrodden forest. You’re not going to sell Japanese cameras under the brand name of Taron but imported costume jewelry from somewhere or other, I’m hazy on the exact details. I hear the phrase “costume jewelry” mentioned a few times but take little notice and only much later understand what it means. Costume jewelry is a fancy name for cheap baubles or trinkets. You, who can’t sell a hand-soldered luggage rack of the finest quality, who actually can’t sell anything particularly well when I come to think of it, are to travel around Sweden in your black Volkswagen Beetle selling costume jewelry to local jewelers’ shops, or to whatever sort of shops it is that stock costume jewelry.
It’s not your idea, of course, any more than the Japanese cameras are.
Your increasingly fixed idea is to get away from the factory at pretty much any cost.
The costume jewelry is the Rosenblum brothers’ idea.
You know the Rosenblum brothers from the aliens’ camp in Öreryd.
It strikes me that you go back to Öreryd in order to go forward.
It strikes me that nowhere in the little town with the big truck factory is there anyone with the sense to harness your burning ambitions and give them the extra thrust they need to reach a proper launch speed, one that will make the horizon open and turn surviving into living.
I don’t know much about Mordka and Zalman Rosenblum’s road to Sweden. What I do know is that they’re transferred together with you and Natek from the quarantine camp in Lund to the aliens’ camp in Öreryd and from there to the aliens’ camp in Tappudden-Furudal, and that from there your roads separate. I don’t know when the Rosenblum brothers break free from their factories and start their wholesale business in costume jewelry.
Because that’s how it is, most survivors have a factory to adapt to or break free from, since factory work is what the survivors are largely considered suitable for. The factories undoubtedly also need punch-card operators and machine engineers and people who can construct ingenious luggage racks or whatever, but those aren’t horizons that open up so readily to people like you. The horizon that most readily opens is an enterprise of some kind, a tobacconist’s, a tailor’s, a cake shop and cafe, an import company, a wholesale business, or even a factory of one’s own. You undeniably try to go that road yourself, and setting your aims very high, as I see it, going for a factory of your own, just like Grandfather, and a house of your own as well, just as in Łódź, but for some reason you lose heart and momentum. Some might say that you aim too high, that a factory and a house of your own aren’t for people like you, but I’d say that you’re simply too alone in a too-small town with a too-big truck factory.
Too alone by far to move on by yourself.
The only Rosenblum brother I remember is Zalman. Zalman is the name I find on the Öreryd and Tappudden transport lists, but Zygmunt is the name I remember. Uncle Zygmunt. In the world after Öreryd, it’s spelled Sigmund or Sigismund, just as Rosenblum is spelled with an s instead of a z. Uncle Zygmunt is almost fifteen years older than you, wears thin-rimmed glasses, and looks more like a schoolteacher than a traveling salesman in costume jewelry, and I remember him not only for what happens next but also for the fact that he actually looks at me and talks to me. I don’t think it’s primarily for your talents as a salesman that you’re offered the opportunity to take over Uncle Zygmunt’s sales district in southern and western Sweden. I think it’s because Uncle Zygmunt sees and understands more than most people.
What happens next is that Uncle Zygmunt is killed in a car accident.
This happens during your first week as a traveling salesman in costume jewelry. You get home late Friday night, and I can’t get to sleep until you’re back, and by Saturday morning Uncle Zygmunt is dead. The telephone rings and you answer and I realize something terrible has happened.
Much later, I realize that this is the morning you give up. You’ve left the factory for untrodden forest and you’re all too alone again and darkness is falling. Sheer momentum keeps you traveling for a few more weeks, and I find it hard to get to sleep in the evenings and dream of your little Beetle being crushed beneath a huge semitrailer truck, just like Uncle Zygmunt’s Volvo in the glossy photo in the brown envelope on the chest of drawers in the hall.
On December 15, 1959, you’re unquestionably home again, writing a letter to Natek about what has happened. You wait four weeks before you tell him, and when you finally do your tone is neutral, almost unconcerned, and has an obviously false ring to it. “Everything will sort itself out, health permitting,” you write in Swedish, and continuing in Polish, you say that “all is fine at home.” About me you write that I’m “still a comfort and delight, thank heavens.” About Lilian you write that she’s “coming on wonderfully, thank heavens.” About yourself you say almost nothing. You merely write that you’re back home and will consider your future once the weekend is over.