THE GREEN KING (part 21)
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The Photographer
from Salzburg
Tarras looked
down, then up. He felt lost. Sitting behind his desk, he hadn’t moved since Reb
Klimrod had come in, other than to scribble. He said suddenly: ‘Keep the book.’
‘It will take
me a while.’
‘Keep it as
long as it takes.’
‘Many thanks,’
said Klimrod, looking at the American officer once again. He continued. ‘Before
Belzex, we had been at Janowska since August 11, 1941. And before that, at
Lvov, at the parents of my mother, HannahItzkowitch. We had gone to Lvov on
Saturday, July 5, 1941. My mother wanted to see her parents again and had
obtained passports for the four of us in Vienna. We had left Vienna on July 3,
a Thusdays, because Lvov was no longer occupied by the Russians, but the
Germans. My mother had great faith in passports. She was wrong.’
He started to
leaf through the book, but his gesture was mechanical. He leaned over so that
he could read the other titles.
‘Montaigne. I
know him.’
‘Take it as
well,’ said Tarras, emotion forcing him to speak. Of the twenty books he had
brought with him, as refuge from the horror, if he had to choose one, it would
had been Montaigne.
‘As for me.’
Said Klimrod,’ I survived.’
Trying to
regain his composure, Tarras rered his notes. He recited the list of camps,
this time in chronological: ‘Janowsca, Belzec, Janowsca again, Plaszows,
Grossrosen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen…’ He asked: ‘You really went through all
these places?’.
The boy nodded
indifferently. He closed the glass doors of the cabinet, holding Tarras’s books
against his chest, with both hands.
‘When did you
become part of this group of young boys?’.
TO BE CONTINUED
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I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
I LOVE YOU…
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