Remembering Auschwitz

Seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Darren Richman joins his grandfather, a survivor, as he visits the camp

It starts with a number and that number is 84303. My grandfather, Zigi Shipper, often uses the word “lucky” in relation to his life; an interesting attitude towards enduring the hell on earth that was Auschwitz. However, one way in which he is fortunate is that he does not have the number tattooed on his person, unlike so many who were interned in the concentration camp; for reasons he still doesn’t quite understand. I once asked him how he can remember the number, a lifetime after these things occurred. He said: “The question should not be how can I remember but how can I forget?” He explained that, more often than not, he will think 84303 is his PIN, and begin to type it into the card machine when paying for his shopping at a supermarket. He usually ends up having to call my grandmother for a reminder. The horrors he witnessed remain his first thought when he wakes, his last before falling asleep. Zigi was born in 1930 in Lodz, Poland. He was 13 when he arrived in Auschwitz, in 1944. After years in the ghetto, he was so hungry that when he arrived and saw smoke rising from the chimneys, he instantly assumed fresh bread was being baked. It is a memory that will never leave him. Nevertheless, at the end of last year, my grandfather, now 85, went back to Auschwitz. I went with him, along with several other members of my family. After the horrors he witnessed there, it would be understandable if he never wanted to set foot in the place again. But instead, this man, who spends his days talking about his experiences in schools for the sole purpose of educating and inspiring young people, wanted to go, and encouraged us to join him. I had been to the camps before, as a teenager, a day that I spent quoting TV shows with a friend in a bid to shield ourselves from it all. This trip was very different, and its intensity never let up. My overwhelming sensation, for most of the day, was a desire to hold someone. Inside Auschwitz-Birkenau it rained constantly, which seemed completely appropriate; somehow you can’t imagine the sun ever shining in that place, even if logic suggests otherwise. Anything one might associate with everyday life seemed incongruous; even the existence of restaurants in Krakow seemed wrong. The silence was uncanny. It was as if the birds knew better than to sing in such a place. My grandfather, just about the most optimistic and goodhumoured man on Earth, was uncharacteristically quiet and withdrawn. None of us had ever seen him like this, but he wasn’t the only one struggling to cope. Most of us broke down at some point or other, the death and destruction overwhelming. There was so much it was impossible to fathom, from the mounds of human hair to the Survivor: clockwise from left, Zigi Shipper after the war; children at Auschwitz; with Darren; Zigi returning to Auschwitz enormous pile of shoes. Among the latter, I spotted a can of shoe polish, and silently despaired for the optimistic soul who had thought such a thing might be useful where he was going. For days afterwards, simply the sight of everyday objects, such as hairbrushes and glasses, which had been preserved behind glass at Auschwitz, was enough to provoke extreme emotions. In Birkenau, we concluded our trip by reciting the mourner’s Kaddish while sheltering from the unrelenting rain under an arch. Mourners say Kaddish to show that despite the loss they still praise God. Regardless of one’s religious beliefs, the scene was devastating. My uncle, an atheist, was in tears. We all were. The following week, when we reconvened for Shabbat dinner and made the traditional Hebrew toast, l’chaim, it really meant something to us. To life. A few weeks after the trip, we were reunited in synagogue for Zigi’s bar mitzvah – the day when Jewish boys achieve manhood – usually at age 13. Zigi was in Auschwitz aged 13, but at 84, his time had finally come. Some would see him having this momentous occasion, after all these years, as the perfect riposte to the Nazis. Zigi didn’t; he said our family was already the perfect riposte. The first time he returned to Auschwitz, with his two daughters, he held them in his arms at the exact spot where the dreaded selection process took place, when men chose who would live and who would die. Zigi looked to the sky that day and said: “Hitler did not succeed.” Perhaps it is the vitality of the man, but Zigi does not seem old to me. I find it peculiar that the Holocaust is considered textbook history by some when it is a living memory for a man I see so often. My grandfather likes to boast that “we’re not like other families” and that might be stretching the truth a little, but he is certainly not like other men. To hear him speak for upwards of an hour, without a trace of bitterness, about the things he experienced is to be in the presence of greatness. My own visit to Auschwitz proved an amazing experience, but there are still many things I struggle to make sense of. Should Auschwitz continue to exist as a memorial? How is it that I heard people chanting about the concentration camps in north London just a few months ago, and when I approached the police, they refused to help? How could students at my university sing, “One man went to gas, went to gas a Yiddo”, when Tottenham Hotspur were on television? I don’t know what to make of the fact that my grandfather receives compensation from the German government for what he went through, and I cannot work out why I, a third-generation survivor, should have nightmares about the camps fairly frequently. But one thing I know is that my grandfather is no longer a number. And I also know that if I ever have a son, his name will be Zigi.