Case notes, July 10: “Visited by wife. V. happy and grateful for visit.”
Case notes, July 14:
Abt. 4 hrs. restless sleep last night acc. to night nurse. Nervous and in low spirits, asking constantly about the drugs and their effects. Appetite poor. The patient found to be greatly influenced by the weather. In view of his current condition the patient very dubious about leave of absence around July 20 (when his son goes to a summer camp). Complains he has lost interest in everything.
Case notes, July 19: “Still in low spirits and brooding, poor sleep.” Increased doses of Truxal, Catran, Diminal Duplex, Pentymal.
Case notes, July 22 a.m.: “Around 2 hours’ sleep last night on the prescribed drugs. Feels uneasy and restless. Asks for electric shock treatment to get past this difficult period.”
Case notes, July 22 p.m.:
This a.m. patients report that the patient is in the lake. Alarm sounded at once. Dr. Sandelin and Supervisor Uddén are first on the scene and commence artificial respiration as soon as the patient is on shore. The patient, who is lifeless, is transported by car to the pharmacy where attempts to resuscitate continue for 1½ hrs. The death has been reported to the police. Report in accordance with § 34 to the Board of Medicine. Deceased.
That’s how the shadows catch up with you and kill you. That’s how I see it. The shadows don’t kill all the people they stalk, but they kill you in the end. The Swedish mental health service doesn’t see it and writes, “Cause of illness: endogenous,” which means the shadows that kill you come from inside.
But the shadows that kill you don’t come from inside. They come from outside and catch up with you and surround you with darkness.
“Cause of illness: exogenous,” I would have written if I had been a doctor in the Swedish mental health service. Or a Vertrauensarzt in the German reparations bureaucracy.
Cause of death: Auschwitz etc., is what I would have written.
You yourself write on an unstamped borrower’s card from the hospital library. You write in pencil on both sides, the lines crammed closer and closer together toward the end, and when you run out of space you write sideways down the edges, just as in the aerograms.
No, it’s not you writing, it’s the shadows writing.
I can tell from the handwriting. It’s so tiny, so weak, and so unlike the hand in the letters from Furudal, Alingsås, and Södertälje.
These are your words of farewell. You have enough presence of mind to say good-bye and ask for forgiveness, or perhaps understanding, before you take a walk down to the soothing lake beneath the summery lindens and maples in the therapeutically beneficial hospital park. Enough presence of mind, too, I realize, to avoid the supervision of the Swedish mental health service.
You’re very energetic now, and very singleminded, and beyond all salvation.
Dearest Halinka, forgive me for being forced to take this action. I cannot fight and live with such torment that no one can stand. Everything feels hopeless to me now. Do not reproach me for this step. I know I’m doing you a great wrong and it will be a severe blow to the whole family. If I didn’t do it, the misfortune that has struck us would still be a fact, the difference being that I would not have freed myself from the terrible torment. It’s an awful illness and there is no salvation from it. Halinka, you have done everything in your power to help me. I felt you putting your soul into your conversations with me. But it cannot go on like this, I feel the torment in my whole body. I know I’m leaving the children in good hands. Forgive me, Halinka. Dearest Natek. Forgive me. Believe me when I say I could not have acted in any other way, and that I would still not have been able to enjoy things with you. What pleasure could you have taken in a living brother in such a condition. I suffer the agonies of hell and I can’t go on. I can’t live with normal people. I can’t even talk to those who are very ill but have calm in their bodies.
On November 1, 1960, Dr. Segnestam, the chief physician at Sundby hospital, affirms that the shadows that kill you come from outside, not inside. His affidavit is translated into German and intended for the German reparations authorities, and the accuracy of the German translation is certified on November 24, 1960, by Dr. W. Michaeli, head of the URO office in Stockholm. URO stands for United Restitution Organization and is a body set up to help people like you plead their case against the German state. It’s my mother who asks them to plead your case even though it’s too late to plead your case, maybe because it may then be put on record somewhere that the German state was wrong and you were right; that it was not you who were exaggerating the problems you had as a result of persecution by the German state, but the German state that was exaggerating the problems it had as a result of people like you; that it was Auschwitz etc. that damaged you and ultimately killed you; that Dr. Lindenbaum and Dr. Lebram and the German state were wrong about the degree of your incapacity for work as a result of the National Socialist persecution; and that this at least should be put on record.
Dr. Segnestam, chief physician at Sundby hospital, puts the following on record:
In summary, it should be stated that David Rosenberg carried with him his extremely bad experiences from the war years and concentration camps, and that in his years in Sweden, though appearing to adapt, he was simultaneously suffering from recurrent depressive episodes, and that toward the end of 1959 these episodes developed into a permanent depressive state with suicidal thoughts. It appears very likely to me that his experiences in the concentration camps were responsible for the worsening progress of his illness in 1959–60 and made it more difficult to treat him (fear of incarceration), and consequently were among the contributory causes of the disastrous outcome.
I remember that last summer very well.
The air quivering in the afternoon heat above the dirt road up to the cowshed, the car park and the entrance.
The little procession emerging from the green foliage.
How infinitely slowly it advances.
As if dragging out not only its steps but time itself.
Dragging out the time between before and after.
Three people advancing slowly through the last summer.
Mom, Natek, Kerstin.
I understand already, before there’s time to.
A year later, we leave the place where I first put words to the world and take the train north, over the bridge.
For me, a place with all horizons open.
For you, a place with all horizons closed.
For you, a brief stop on the road from Auschwitz.
MUCH LATER: AN AFTERWORD
In the mid-1960s Havsbadet in Södertälje was land-filled. Where once there was a sandy beach and a glittering sea inlet, there is now a concrete floor used as a depot for containers and imported cars.
Beginning in January 1995, trains between Stockholm and the world do not make a brief stop at Södertälje Södra. They don’t even pass through Södertälje Södra, still less cross the bridge over the canal. The railroad now runs even farther from the center of Södertälje, along an even shorter route between Stockholm and the world, and Södertälje Södra is now called Södertälje Hamn (Harbor).
At Södertälje Hamn, the rowanberries still glow in the autumn.
In the summer of 2010, the old railroad bridge over Södertälje canal was pulled down. The new bridge can’t be crossed on foot.
“Much later” in this book is a recurring expression for the hopeless impotence felt by a writer who has made up his mind not to let the events of the future burden his story, still less the individuals in it. In reality, of course, this book could not have been written without knowing what can only be known much later. Or without the people who much later helped me excavate the fragments of memory. First and foremost my mother, Hala Rosenberg, whom I have plagued over the years with all manner of questions, reasonable and unreasonable, and who has without reservation placed at my disposal the letters and documents she has preserved. Thanks also to my sister Lilian Rosenberg-Roth for help with crucial documentation, and to my cousins Assa and Anders Rosenberg, who have dug assiduously into their own memories. I have Lena Einhorn to thank for documentation on the food parcels sent to Ravensbrück, and I’m grateful to Anders Bodegård for the translation of letters and documents from Polish to Swedish. Without Dr. Karl Liedke, one important chapter in this book could never have been written.