exists. What would it be? D o you count each time separate;
and the blank days, they do count or they don’t?
E IG H T
In March 1973
(Age 26)
I was born in 1946 in Camden, N ew Jersey, down the street
from Walt Whitman’s house, Mickle Street, but m y true point
o f origin, where I came into existence as a sentient being, is
Birkenau, sometimes called Auschwitz II or The W omen’s
Cam p, where we died, m y family and I, I don’t know what
year. I have a sense memory o f the place, I’ve always had it
although o f course when I was young I didn’t know what it
was, where it was, w hy it was in m y mind, the place, the
geography, the real place, the w ay it was, it’s partial in my
mind but solid, the things I see in my mind were there, they’re
pushed back in my mind, hard to get at, behind a wall o f time
and death. Everything that matters about me begins there. I
remember it, not like a dream and it’s not something I made up
out o f books— when I looked at the books I saw what I already
had seen in m y mind, I saw what I already knew was there. It’s
the old neighborhood, familiar, a far-back memory, back
before speech or rationality or self-justification, it’s w ay back
in m y mind but it’s whole, it’s deep down where no one can
touch it or change it, it can’t be altered by information or
events or by wishful thinking on m y part. It’s m y hidden heart
that keeps beating, m y real heart, the invisible one that no
physician can find and death can’t either. N ot everyone was
burned. At first, they didn’t have crematoria. They pushed all
the bodies into huge mass graves and put earth on top o f them
but the bodies exploded from the gases that come when bodies
decompose; the earth actually heaved and pulled apart, it
swelled and rose up and burst open, and the soil turned red. I
read that in a book and I knew right aw ay that it was true, I
recognized it as if I had seen it, I thought, yes, that seems more
familiar to me than the crematoria, it was as i f m y soul had
stayed above and watched and I saw the earth buckle and the
red come up through the soil. I always knew what Birkenau
was like from the parts o f it I have in m y mind. I knew it was
gray and isolated and I knew there were low , gray huts, and I
knew the ground was gray and flat, and it was winter, and I
knew there were pine trees and birch trees, I see them in the
distance, upright, indifferent, a monstrous provocation,
G o d ’s beauty, He spits in your face, and there were huge piles
o f things, so big you thought they were hills o f earth but they
were shoes, you can see from currently published photos that
they were shoes— the piles were higher than the buildings, and
there was a huge, high arch. I have never liked seeing pictures
o f the A rc de Triom phe in Paris, because they always make me
feel sad and scared, because at Birkenau there was a high arch
that looked like a sculpture against that desolate sky. Y o u
think in your mind the yellow star is one thing— you make it
decorous and ornamental, you give it esthetic balance and
refinement, a fineness, a delicacy, maybe in your mind you
model it on silver Stars o f David you have seen— but it was
really a big, ugly thing and you couldn’t make it look nice. I
think I was only waist-high. Y ou don’t know much if yo u ’re a
kid. I remember the women around me, masses o f wom en, I
held someone’s hand but I don’t think it was someone I even
knew, I can’t see any faces really because they are all taller and
they were covered, heavy coats, kerchiefs on their heads,
layers o f clothes fouled by dirt, but if yo u ’re a child yo u ’re like
a little cub, a puppy, and you think yo u ’re safe if yo u ’re
huddled with women. T h ey’re warm . They keep you warm .
Y o u want to be near them and you believe in them without
thinking. I wasn’t there too long. We walked somewhere, we
waited, we walked, it was over. I’ve seen birch trees here in the
United States in the mountains but I have always transposed
them in my mind to a different landscape: that low, flat,
swam py ground past the huts. Birch trees make me feel sad
and lonely and afraid. There’s astrologers who say that if you
were born when Pluto and Saturn were traveling together in
Leo, from 1946 to about the middle o f 1949, you died in one o f
the concentration camps and you came right back because you
had to, you had an urgency stronger than death could ever be,
you had to come back and set it right. Justice pushed you into a
new wom b and outrage, a blind fury, pushed you out o f it
onto this earth, this place, this zoo o f sickies and sadists. Y ou
are an avenging angel; you have a debt to settle; you have a
headstart on suffering. I consider Birkenau my birthplace. I
consider that I am a living remnant. I consider that in 1946 I
emerged, I burst out, I was looking for trouble and ready for
pain, I wanted to kill Nazis, I was born to kill Nazis, I wasn’t
some innocent born to play true love and real romance, the
parlor games that pass for life. I got these fucked-up compassionate parents who believed in law and kindness and blah
blah. I got these fucked-up peaceful Jew s. I got these fucked-
up civilized parents. I was born a girl. I have so many planets in
Libra that I try to be fair to flies and I turn dog shit into an
esthetic experience. Even my mother knew it was wrong. She
named me Andrea for “ manhood” or “ courage. ” It’s a b o y’s
name; the root, andros, means “ man” in Greek. It’s “ man” in
the universal sense, too. Man. She and God joined hands to
tease me almost to death. He put brains, great hearts, great
spirits, into w om en’s bodies, to fuck us up. It’s some kind o f
sick joke. Let’s see them aspire in vain. Let’s see them fucked
into triviality and insignificance. Let’s see them try to lose at
checkers and tic-tac-toe to boys, year in, year out, to boys so
stupid He barely remembered to give them an I. Q. at all, He
forgot their hearts, He forgot their souls, they have no warrior
spirit or sense o f honor, they are bullies and fools; let’s make
each one o f the boys imperial louts, let’s see these girls banged
and bruised and bullied; let’s see them forced to act stupid so
long and so much that they learn to be stupid even when they
sleep and dream. And mother, handmaiden to the Lord, says
wear this, do that, don’t do that, don’t say that, sit, close your