F o u r S c r a p s o f B r e a d (Quatre petits bouts de pain) MAGDA HOLLANDER-LAFON Translated by Anthony T. Fuller University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana
t r a n s l a t o r s p r e f a c e Magda Hollander-Lafon was born in Hungary on June 15, 1927 near the border with Slovakia. Her family was Jewish but not practicing. Nevertheless as a result of the racial laws introduced in Hungary between 1938 and 1941, her father was taken away for forced labor, and eventually Magda herself was denied schooling. Together with her mother and sister, she was among the 437,403 Jews deported from Hungary between May and July 1944. After a three-day journey in a crowded cattle wagon she arrived at Auschwitz- Birkenau, where she was immediately separated from her family. Because she claimed to be eighteen when in fact she was only sixteen, she was considered fit for work and thus avoided being sent straight to her death. Her mother and sister were not so lucky. It was in Auschwitz-Birkenau that a dying woman gave Magda four scraps of bread, telling her: Take it. You are young, you must live to be a witness to what is happening here. You must tell others so that this never happens again in the world. This act of generosity would provide both the inspiration and the title for this, her best-known book. Hollander-Lafon remained silent about her wartime experience until 1977, when she published Les chemins du temps (The Paths of Time). In this early work she vii
directly addressed the horrors she had witnessed as a deportee as well as her recovery and attempt to resume a normal life after the Liberation. But a now-notorious interview with Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, commissioner for Jewish affairs in the collaborationist Vichy regime, published in a popular French magazine in 1978, reignited her irrepressible sense of duty toward the memory of Jews killed in the Holocaust. This led her to write a prolongation of her earlier text, subtitled Des ténèbres à la joie (From Darkness to Joy). Both works were combined and published as Quatre petits bouts de pain (Four Scraps of Bread) in 2012 to significant acclaim, including winning the Panorama- La Procure prize for books on spirituality. Hollander-Lafon s story is not a simple memoir or narrative, nor does it follow a straightforward chronology of events. Instead through a series of very short chapters, many no more than one or two pages, she invites us to participate in a reflection on what she has gone through. Often the subject is very specific, naming a person or a place, and the chapter is full of naked, brutal description. Other times the subject is more ethereal, the elements vague or anonymous, and external details give way to an inward focus. Meditation, poetry, a kaleidoscope of fragments all of these have been used to describe the path along which Hollander-Lafon leads us in Four Scraps of Bread. The journey through extreme suffering and loss to rebirth and radiant personal growth is of course a recognizable spiritual archetype. However, although at times she uses an explicitly religious language, more often Hollander-Lafon remains grounded in the de- viii
scription of her own lived experience and whatever meaning she believes it has. For example, she attributes her survival at Auschwitz-Birkenau to a combination of intuition recognizing, for example, when the physi - cal condition of those around her indicated that they were most likely the next to be killed, and immediately moving away to join a different row of prisoners and the fact that, due to the sheer volume of Hungarian Jews arriving in a short period of time, quite a number slipped through the net without being tattooed or registered. She does not lean on a post hoc spiritualization of her experience, a reassuring faith that throughout it the Almighty was sparing her for some special mission. Indeed she never denies the immense role that chance and opportunity appeared to play in her life at that time. If it was a blessing for her to survive, it is also a responsibility: to tend to the memory of those who did not survive, but also to seek meaning from what she herself has gone through. Several words, expressions, and themes recur in Hollander-Lafon s writing. For example, although she describes only a few faces in detail, she frequently speaks of the look on people s faces the real, ineffable, living expression of human emotion, as opposed to the depiction of a person s features. Hollander-Lafon believes that the look on a person s face has immense power and can be the precious bridge from death to life; hence her desperation to find a smile on the face of a stranger after the war ended. Another important set of images is related to working with nature, such as the idea of digging into or tilling the metaphoric soil of her identity and her memories. This notion of tending to ix
the soil of her innermost being suggests a patient but active engagement with the specific circumstances of her personal history. The uniqueness, the reality, and the responsibility of each person is a core principle in Hollander-Lafon s writing and in her life. By sharing her path to wholeness with us, she invites us to start our journey from where we are. x
L o o k s My memory opens up, painfully, at the sound of persistent calls. I am emerging from the long tunnel where I have lain low. Thousands of faces disappeared Without knowing why. They call out to me They are full of distress Humiliation Blazing with hunger Snuffed out by thirst. The tense look of a friend whose flesh bore the marks of a dog s bite With each step she was losing her life. The overwhelmed look of another woman beaten to death. Hundreds of fading looks, exhausted from long hours of roll calls. On thousands of lost faces, the dejection of a life terminated too soon. Trucks come and go down their long lanes of despair Filled with lives, packed tight, their eyes looking into the distance. Holding out their emaciated hands, clinging onto life with wasted screams. The smokestack crackles. 3
The sky is low, gray and yellow. We breathe in their ashes as the wind blows them away. Thirty years later I tremble as I push through the thick wall of my memory. So that all those looks begging for hope Do not vanish Into the dust. 4
D e p a r t u r e I remember a journey of three days cooped up in a cattle wagon. For Mom, my sister, and me, it was the last journey we made together. Just like birds hiding their heads beneath their wings when threatened, I sensed danger with my eyes shut. With a massive jolt and the piercing screech of a whistle, the wagon doors opened onto thick fog and an icy yellow light. All of a sudden I was plunged into a sea of dogs and men barking. Hurry up! Los, schnell! How old are you? To the right! Your mother? To the left! Your sister? To the left! I blindly made my way to the right and within minutes death had visited the left. Very quickly a different me was born, one that great black beasts with fangs would hustle toward a fragile fate. The air smelled of burnt flesh. The paths were littered with sharp stones. Feet dragged ahead and behind me. The convoy came to a halt. I looked up and saw a group of huts. Without realizing it I was already sitting on straw. We stared at each other in silence, not really sure if it was a man or a woman in front of us. Looking into the dilated pupils of the women around me I realized how shocked I was to be sitting opposite a 5
stranger. What are you doing here? Can this be real? Unbelievable! This was already everyday life in Auschwitz. 1 6