The importance of cigarettes

52,000 video testimonies – where do I start researching? They say that it would take one man approximately 12 years to view them all, and I’ve already “wasted” about 30 of mine… The following story is an example for a research-method I use; I enter “cigarettes” in the Stichwort-katalog and a title comes up “The importance of cigarettes”, followed by a couple hundred nice grandpas and grandmas, Holocaust survivors, recalling the role that cigarettes played in their day to day life, in their survival – the two things being one of the same. Instead of listening to the testimonies from start to end, I allow myself to listen only to the “cigarette-memory” – like a person reading an online article and clicking on a link before reaching the end of the article – I research it horizontally and not vertically – and little by little a story unfolds:

The importance of cigarettes

You’d think that after everything I’d gone through I wouldn’t even be able to spell the word, cigarette, but you’re wrong: I tore off the filter and started sucking on it; it tasted of a thousand cigarettes and with one breath my teeth turn yellow and the lips wrinkle like a tight fist. That day I became addicted. No, it wasn’t addiction – I simply got bored of plain air. I would breath constantly through a yellowing filter, If I could.

You’ll see: the Mark will give way to the Euro, the Yen will be cast to the bottom of darkened wells and a day will come when even the Israeli Shekel will lose its religion – but the cigarettes will never convert. The unfortunate man will be inclined to cast any given coin to the famous fountain in Rome, but not even one cigarette – he will smoke it for consolation.

He used to take one out to smoke and leave the rest of the pack on the table, but more often than not, he’d forget it when he got up to leave. If it contained four, six – sometimes only two – cigarettes, that was my possession for the day, cause in those days people were willing to exchange their daily bread ration for a cigarette.

If you had thrown them away, he told me, I would have killed you on the spot. But you had the nerve to keep them, so I’m giving you your life back. But remember: next time I catch you with a cigarette – it’s your life. I wouldn’t give it back to you.
I didn’t tear off the filter, I didn’t suck on it, I controlled myself. You reckon it’s hard to fight the hunger and thirst? try fighting off the need for a smoke. I became a businessman; unlike a physician or a judge, a businessman doesn’t need a hammer or a statoscope; a good businessman only needs the right opportunity and then anyone sitting to his left or to his right, even those sitting right in front of him – could become his victim. Even if the devil himself would sit in front of him, he’d be able to cut him a deal.

And so, one day I found myself in the following situation: your soup for a cigarette, said the man sitting in front of me, as if it was a done deal, no bargaining required. Two cigarettes, I said and kept on eating the soup. No, one, he said and put it to my nose, but I kept on eating. Give me two or I keep on eating – and suddenly every spoonful became a Schluck of the cigarette. He grabbed me by the hand – no, stop eating – and gave me two cigarettes. If anyone ever bothered to pile up all the cigarette butts we smoked back then, it would amount to a monstrous heap which would stink up the heavens. But there were no butts, of course, and if there ever were – we’d smoke them too. Later on they caught him with a cigarette and he was sent to one year of forced labor. One year for six and a half minutes with the cigarette. Was worth every second.

Köscher, du bist ein Jude? he asked, as if he didn’t know. He emphasized the ‘ö’ as if to differentiate it from the jewish Koscher.
Leider, I replied.
Warum hast du es mich nicht gesagt dann, dass du ein Jude bist?
Wenn ich es dir sagte, machtest du mich schon lang kaputt. Also, mach mich kaputt jetzt.
I was being so rude to him, that he simply said: Nein, ich will dich nicht kaputt machen. Komm her.
Here comes the cap-victim, murmured the others, cause they were sniping into our caps: hit – they would remove your body and tomorrow morning another guy would fill up your cap; miss – they would keep on sniping into our caps, cause we were all made to wear them. Just an example of how a cap can be deadlier than a cigarette.

I could care less if I would live another moment or two. Sit down, he said and turned the bank over to its dry side and I was thinking: if he’s ordering me to sit he’s not gonna kill me just yet. Maybe later. He lit up a cigarette and I remember wondering: what’s the matter, a murderer like him lighting up a cigarette? He gave it to me but I didn’t smoke it, instead I asked – had quite the nerve – whether I could share it with some of the others – one Schluck. The cigarette is being passed through twenty bony hands and with every Schluck they take it’s disappearing on me. I walk back to him with my arms spread, I don’t have as much as a butt left to spare, and then he takes out the rest and gives them all to me. I knew then: I’m not gonna die today.

Cigarettes, you see, were the fourth Reich; it was their way of making sure we would keep on dying even after they’d already be gone. Every cigarette I smoked reminded me of him, but I couldn’t give them up, they had become a major food group – my blood demanded it. Sixty years later, as I was visiting Dachau with my father, he suddenly had to have a cigarette. I gathered some dried leaves, rolled them into a piece of newspaper and gave it to him. What a difference it made.

If instead of suitcases filled with clothes you’d be carrying suitcases filled with newspapers, you could have been a millionaire, because we had no paper for smoking. So the few books which were available were gradually torn, page by page, for smoking. When they burned the books in that square they didn’t merely kill the finest jewish minds, they also extinguished endless loafs of bread which could have saved endless starving jews. If you think there’s a different between smoking a cigarette which was rolled on a poem by Goethe to one which was rolled on a poem by Heine, you’re dead wrong. It didn’t matter if it was a genuine cigarette, as long as it looked like one; a newspaper with some dried leaves and here’s to your health..