Being pushed to the limit to some extent serves some good, the whole point is that when pushed to the limit you tend to make sound decisions not in all cases but when your life depends on something and you don’t have enough choices to gamble with you tend to think about consequence before making the choice. Imagine someone who is about to detonate a bomb and is down to two wires, every second counts and at the eleventh hour you have to snap one wire it may not require reason anymore to make a choice but whatever you do you know your life depends on it. Time travels so fast, in a moment we are thinking of something and just as we are at it the first initial thoughts are drawn in to history, with each stroke of the clock the present is supped in to history and we have no control over what has passed but have the potential to shape or even redirect some aspects of the future based on the choices and decision’s that we make.

So what if you could change your past? Would you change your color, family, status and the list goes on and on. I have had many people moan over their past as if they did not have a choice to make sober choices then. But think about it, what if we could really change our past, I know it sounds like the fairy movies just like the time machine movie, where someone leaps way back in to the past to change something or correct a wrong or even make good use of a wasted opportunity. Given the choice would you be willing to dig in to your past and straighten some of those crooked choices you made? I don’t think so, I am sure that if that opportunity existed the world would be way back than it is right now.While i don’t believe in predestination i know some of the choices that we made in the past are responsible for our present life, the wasted opportunities, the extravagant and lavish spending the careless words and many more. You have probably had this question before, as a driver what do you do when the lights are just about to turn red, do you stop or do you proceed?

I am sure you have read about the man who became a millionaire just by selling tomatoes, this man goes to look for a job as a bookkeeper, but misses the chance because he has no email address, with his last money in the wallet he buys tomatoes then goes on to sell them and gets profit and this continues and before you know it he is owning franchises and becomes a millionaire. Years later in his quest to find a suitable insurance for his property he is asked to give his email address by the insurance company but still he has no email. So when asked how he has amassed such wealth without Internet and email he responds that if he had an email address he would still be a bookkeeper. Your story may have turned out differently from his but are you sure you want to change the past? Please let me live my present and work hard at shaping tomorrow for if I still have today why should I grieve over yesterday?

Yesterday my mother called me on Skype to let me know, that while my grandma was sitting herself down in her apartment to write me a letter, she stumbled on the chair, bumped her head against the wall and cut-open her forehead. When her son (my uncle) came over to her place, he said, and I quote: “It looked like a bloodbath”. “But don’t worry”, said mum hurriedly, “she’s back home and she’s fine. You better give her a call”.

So I did. She said it was odd: “I fell in my apartment before and I always remembered every second of it, even when I was in the air, like a… like a scene from a 3D movie. But this time I don’t know how it happened”.

After I asked her a few questions to make sure she was alright (what year is it? who’s your favorite grandson?) she went on to tell me the following story, to demonstrate that at least her short-term memory was still intact: “A nice young fellow called me on the phone just before I fell; he said he was conducting a survey about politics and asked if I was willing to answer a few questions. Said it wouldn’t last more than 3 minutes. Well, what do you think? of course it lasted 5 minutes, but I didn’t mind. At the end he was supposed to ask for my age but instead he said: ‘Ma’am, excuse me for saying, but you sound like a 60 year old woman, and yet your accent gives away that you’re far older than that’ “.
Granny wasn’t insulted because the young man guessed her age, of course. She was bothered by the fact that after 71 years in Israel, she still had a “Jecke (German Jew) accent”.

However, this is not the part of her story which drew my attention. I thought that if both I, at 30, and my nana, soon turning 30 for the third time in her life, are aware of this old-new 3D technology, which recently penetrated our life, so to say, then it’s probably worth a discussion. Plus, I realized that I wasn’t spending enough time speaking with my grandma if she had to result to strangers conducting a telephonic survey about politics.

I hereby present you with the conclusion of that late night discussion. It’s not a film critic about the last (and only) three films I watched in 3D: Avatar, Alice and Monsters vs. Aliens (the latter I watched on my laptop, wearing those ridiculous shades, which made that jelly-blob monster literally dance on my lap).

3D is exactly like the German verb beeinträchtigen; at first you’re speechless, really; then you start playing with it – Beeinträchtigung? Beeinträchtigkeit? – then you start to conjugate it – ich beeinträchtige, du beeinträchtigest, er/sie beeinträchtiget – and suddenly, before you notice, you start saying things like: Ich hätte nie beeinträchtigen sollen.

Filmmakers are now at the playing with it period, a little pass speechless. It may still sound strange, but eventually they’ll get it right. Isn’t it a natural process, like with Talkies or color films? not because we should embrace technology, but simply because all it’s trying to do is mimic the way we perceive our reality and after all, we see things in 3D in our day-to-day life – with the help of our 2 eyes.

Now I agree: films are not a reflection of our reality, but merely a representation of it. And yet, it seems that in order to represent reality or to reflect it, or even on it, they try to make it as believable as possible, even when the plot is completely absurd; even when the protagonist steps through a Looking-Glass into the “opposite world” – we define it as opposite to the things we define as “straight” in our “normal” world. In the same way we define color (as oppose to b&w); silent (talkie); and 2D (3D).

The next step – 3D without the glasses – is already around the corner. Alarming, even if you are a fan of this technology. Imagine: in Kill Bill II the wedding scenes were shot in black&white, relying on our common knowledge that b&w films are a thing of the past and therefore, these scenes must have taken place prior to the color scenes, which are taking place “now”. Will Kill Bill IX (in 3D) shoot the flashback scenes simply in 2D?

3D home cameras are also already being produced, so your average film student (or average dad) could shoot any film in 3D – starring Na’vis or not. Will other directors, less majestic than “the king of the world”, also start using these cameras? will we be sucked into the colorful sensual world of Pedro Almodóvar? join a witty philosophical discussion about life with Woody Allen? will any producer be crazy enough to lay one of those cameras in Lars von Trier’s hands? and what about porn?

These are all questions for the future. In the meantime we are stuck, as mentioned, in the playing with it period: gimmick to say the least; cool to say the most. This brings me back to the thing which bothered my grandma when speaking with the young fellow; he said: “you sound like a 60 year old woman, and yet your accent gives away that you’re far older than that”, meaning: although technology – the modern-day wireless phone – transmits your voice in a way which makes it sound younger and fresher than you really are – I recognize your real voice and thus I know your real age. Or in other words: 3D makes things look better than they are, but we are still one step ahead of it. It seems that even my nana already figured it out. I’m just glad she’s alright.

Sehr verehrte Leserinnen und Leser,
Liebe Constipendiaten,

Nun darf ich Sie und Euch alle wieder aus Freiburg begrüßen, wo ich eigentlich erst gestern Mittag angekommen bin.
Sie werden sich vielleicht fragen, ob ich doch in dem römischen Dieburg, zusammen mit Nida der wichtigste Ort der Civitas Taunensis, gewesen bin und dazu darf ich erzählen, dass ich mich in letzter Minute um entschlossen habe, und die Heimatstadt von dem leidenden Werther, nämlich Wetzlar an der Lahn besichtigt habe.

Der erste Eindruck, den ich von Wetzlar bekommen habe, war eher trist. Und zwar, weil der Bahnhof an der anderen Seite der Lahn liegt, an der Mündung einer Nachkriegszeitfußgängerzone, die fast nur mit geschlossenen Geschäften umhüllt ist. Ähnlich wie etwa in Meißen an der Elbe, beginnt die schöne Altstadt erst am anderen Ufer des Flusses.

Inmitten der mit Schnee bedecken Dächern, erhob sich der Turm des Domes hoch empor. Und wie man die Gassen bis zum Marktplatz hinaufsteigt verlor sich das Auge in den unzähligen sehr prachtvollen Fassaden der Fachwerkhäuser. Sonnen, Meerjungfrauen, Weinranken, Heilige, Kronen, Zepter und Sprüche begrüßten den neugierigen Reisenden. Schon auf dem Markt, wo auch ein Wochenmarkt stattfand, bekam ich eine Ortskarte und begab ich mich zunächst zum Dom. Diese Kirche wird, als schönes Exempel der Ökumene, zur Hälfte von der evangelischen und zur Hälfte von der katholischen benutzt. Als Jurist ist es besonders erfreulich zu sehen, dass die Cameralherren in ihren Grabsteinen, inmitten ihrer Wappen und Lebensdaten mit goldenen Lettern ihr Lebenswerk und –Pracht verewigten: Cameralherr am Gericht; Assessor des Richters, Doktor der Rechte. Denn in dem kleinen Provinzstädtchen lag bekanntlicherweise das Reichskammergericht über 200 Jahre lang.

Von da aus ging ich zum Lottehaus, also dort wo die Person, die die Figur der Lotte in dem berüchtigten Roman inspiriert hat, tatsächlich gelebt hat. Es handelt sich vielmehr um einen Museumskomplex in was früher ein Anwesen des Deutschen Ordens gewesen ist. So besichtigte ich zuerst das Stadtmuseum, und danach das benachbarte Haus, das Haus von Charlotte.

Wie ich rein kam wurde ich von der Museumswächterin durch die Räume geführt. Ich lernte die Geschichte der Bilder kennen, sah die Erstausgaben des Romans (der sog. Urwerther, die Raubausgabe mit den Stichen von Chodowiecki, die ersten Ausgaben in französischer, italienischer, spanischer und englischer Sprache, usw.), und bewunderte das Klavierkord von Lotte. Am Ende der Führung wurde ich nach meinem Herkunftsland gefragt, und so stellte sich heraus, dass ich der erste Mexikaner gewesen bin, der das Lottehaus je besichtigt hat. Folglich sollte ich mich natürlich in einem Gästebuch eintragen.

Danach ging ich essen und nach dem Essen in das Reichskammersgerichtsmuseum. Wirklich ein schönes, niedliches Museum. Im Großen und Ganzen war es wie eine Vorlesung der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte. Man durfte Illustrationen zur Goldenen Bulle, Prachtsausgaben des Sachsenspiegels, der Carolina, usw. sehen. Es gab viele Karten mit den Jurisdiktionsdistrikte, Bilder der berühmtesten Assessoren, viele Repräsentativwerke des Kameralliteratur, usw. Auch natürlich, und das kam mir besonders gut entgegen als Jurapraktikant, war einen Saal über die Praktikanten am Reichkammergericht vorhanden. Schön war es auch, dass als ich in dem Shop (meines Wissens sagt man nicht „Museumsladen“ sondern „Museumsshop“, obwohl es sich nach einem Anglizismus der Deutschen Bahn anhört) eine Kleinigkeit kaufte, ich dazu noch ein Faksimile einer Jurisdiktionskarte aus dem 18. Jhd. als Geschenk bekommen habe.

Bemerkenswert ist es auch, dass in allen diesen Museen in Wetzlar man immer zuerst klingeln muss, um überhaupt herein zu kommen. Man wird sogar gefragt, was man da möchte, und erst wenn der Reisende erklärt er möchte das Museum besichtigen, wird er rein gelassen. Nach dem Reichskammergericht ging ich zur Wohnung eines seiner bekanntesten Arbeiter, nämlich zur Wohnung des Karl Wilhelms Jerusalem, ein Bekannter des Autors von „West-Östlicher Divan“, der mit seinem Suizid die berühmte leidenschaftliche Figur mit gelben Hosen der deutschen Literatur inspiriert hat.
Dort wurde ich ebenfalls persönlich empfangen und durfte dann ein Modell der gelben Hosen und des blauen Gehrocks sehen und dann, am Ende der Führung sogar seine Pistole in die Hand nehmen. Denn wie der Führer zu Ende kam, öffnete er eine Schublade des Schreibtisches, nahm die Reisepistole heraus und überreichte mir die Waffe.
Von da aus verabschiedete ich mich von Wetzlar und kehrte nach Frankfurt zurück.

Ihnen und Euch allen wünsche ich noch eine schöne Woche.

Funny human beings, as though we knew what we’re doing.

Did you really think that you control yourself, that you’ll never do it again, that you know where your place is?

You’ll never do it again, of course, who would dare say you would? We are funny human things. Like we believe to have control upon the things we say, the things we do, the things we fear. Of course you said it, and you meant it, that you would never ever dare do it again, think about it again, fall again, think again, go again, straight up.

So cautious that you were.

Funny little things. That walk upon the earth crawling and rolling and forgetting. Forgetting, that it wasn’t me who promised never again. Like never, ever.

Never again? Hands up, you move in circles, star on your forehead, now you know.

You know, that you are a funny thing. You know, that you will always forget. You know, that you will not fulfill forgotten promises.

You will learn to forgive yourself.

P.S. And I, by the way, will never ever again lecture everyone as to what the philosophy of life is (if I, funny thing, don’t forget what I just said!)

It was sunny day in San José downtown. 29.4 Celsius degrees. I live in the capital of Costa Rica, a small city surrounded by green mountains and volcanoes. The news report said that there is a manifestation of illegal taxi drivers, known as “porteadores”, and a chaotic traffic-flow as a result. I was planning to go to the German Embassy today, but I have decided to postpone it for tomorrow (even with that protest could be interesting to photograph).

My list has a lot of bureaucratic “things-to-do” in queue. I have only 21 days left (einundzwanzig Tage) to go and I am quite sure I have enough time to complete it. However, my head has a lot of questions: Some of them regarding my future life there, in Leipzig and Berlin, mixing with other doubts about my present (or previous) life here. My “things-to-do” list does not only include papers and procedures. There are personal appointments, parties, family dinners and coffee chats. It is not easy to move from one continent to another. I am a little bit exhausted.

Maybe that is why my most-desired plan is to go to the beach. Costa Rica has two wonderful oceans and I would like to spend some days just lying in the sand, drinking a beer and enjoying the view while I get suntanned. This little country is lucky: Both coasts, the Pacific and the Caribbean, are just two or three hours away. I feel I have to say goodbye to my beloved sea, at least for a while. I think I need to absorb all the available solar energy to help me to survive the first European winter of my life…

Today, the Universidad de Costa Rica has celebrated its first week of lessons of this year. I used to work as a professor and radio producer there. The festival included cultural and artistic activities around the campus. Indeed, some of my friends organized a concert with some rock, punk, ska and garage bands. The music was great. The students were enjoying the beats and dancing while I was there taking some photographs. I will miss my campus.

Photography, for me, is the best way to know about something or someone. I often remember this quote from André Kertész: “The camera is my tool. Through it I give a reason to everything around me”. I hope my camera would help me to answer my questions and to silence my fears. What will I photograph in Europe? What kind of manifestations and social struggles am I going to find? What kind of faces, buildings, landscapes? It is a mystery, sometimes I feel a little scared, but I truly love that feeling of delving into a new place.

Tell me what kind of coffee you like and I’ll tell you what kind of person you are. Tell me what kind of writer you are, and I’ll tell you what kind of person you would like to be.
Who told you dreams do not define you?

I once told you about the process of making coffee. Like you put water and then coffee and then you heat it and wait until coffee’s done.
I never told you about the process of writing. Like you put thoughts into words and then you reread it and wait until the feeling comes.
Who told you writing is about meaning?

It was a nice evening in a nice restaurant with nice people and everyone was smoking and drinking coffee, like we were all one and we all loved each other and we were all wide awake.
It was a cold night, full of loneliness and possibilities and you were going forward and letting out words as they came to mind. The few words that you wrote had so much meaning. While you were all asleep.
Who told you you cannot write your history when you are dreaming?

If dreams define us and dreams are feelings and dreams are histories, then it is the histories and the feelings about those histories what really define us.
So unreal that they are.

With milk and sugar for me please, a bit cold even.

The last few days have been really strenuous with the work but also very great as I bond more with my german colleagues and get to know them better. It has been a time of helping out each other and coming closer.

I got hold of a complete set of used furniture for a fair price from one of the Professors in the linguistics department who was shifting to another city and giving away his furniture. For moving them into my new house, I needed help. My colleagues at the lab suggested me to hire a wagon from the University which was quite a cheap and sensible option – about 5 euros per hour and a small security deposit fee of 10 euros.

lars, me, daniel and philip

Then we (myself, Philip, Daniel and Lars) got on the job one Friday evening after finishing work at the lab. Philip offered to drive and the wagon was really huge and just about enough to fit in all the stuff. The moving was a really a back breaking job. I thanked them a lot and felt very grateful to have got such helpful colleagues.

The next week Philip had 2 things to worry about – an impending quarterly report on his work and a literature seminar. He asked me if I could help and I was glad to help him back in some way and we exchanged our seminars and so I had to do mine in short notice but I managed, since I had to present my Masters thesis project and I was quite confident about it. This took some pressure off Philip and he was quite thankful.

Over the next 3 years I would be needing help in many instances from different people and also helping others and working together, since there is nothing that could be achieved by someone all by himself and without depending on help from different people and more so for a PhD..

The end of the week was celebrated with a small party at Maurice’s WG where we made burgers and also had a deep discussion of vegetarianism, religious beliefs etc. since I don’t eat meat and they had got particularly for me, a vegetable-based burger filling. That was quite thoughtful of them!

I still had a few more things to buy and bedding material was one of them. At IKEA (where household goods are normally bought) I learnt many new words while trying to shop for bedding.

Last Friday, I made a sudden plan to go to the Schüco Arena here in Bielefeld with my colleague Thomas to watch a match between Bielefeld and Duisburg. I was looking forward to a personal first time experience of the german passion for football in the Stehplätze among the cheering crowds, where most of the action takes place, as informed by Thomas, who has no interest to sit quietly in the Sitzplätze seats.. It was a great experience to cheer among the fan crowds of the home team, and although sadly we lost the match 1:2, it was a wonderful experience overall

Both the teams were equally good and were trying to reclaim their positions in the first Bundesliga, as informed by Thomas.

thomas with his daughters and friend

I am looking forward to more fun as I get absorbed into this Arbeitsgruppe and work together as one with the people here.

.

Suicide is a taboo. As much forbidden to write about it as it is to act on it. An uninvited guest in any blog. Researching the Spielberg Holocaust Archives, home to some 52,000 survivors’ testimonies, doesn’t only put you face to face with their miraculous tales of survival of the Nazi beast, but also their survival of themselves – for this archive is perhaps the largest accumulation of suicide-survivors ever assembled. The percentage of suicide survivors within Holocaust survivors may have never been questioned, perhaps because the answer would be too alarming. It’s a sad topic, no doubt, but there’s something beautiful in listening to it told from the lips of those people – for they are still alive:

Decisions regarding suicide

This all happened a long time ago. Today you can analyze it and try and come up with an explanation, but I’m trying to be authentic, that is, I’m trying to put myself back in my old shoes – or non-shoes for that matter – and what I can clearly say, is that the humiliation and our way of existence – if you could call it that – was so unbearable, that I simply didn’t want to go on with it. It wasn’t a moment of fear or a moment of bravery, but simply a moment of I’ve had enough. No matter what – I’m going for the electrified fence. So I jumped out of all that formation and went for the wire, which was rather close to me, but I was noticed, captured, put back in line. I managed to get as close as one centimeter from the fence; if the photo-finish camera existed then, the referee would have definitely ruled to my favor – let her fry – but it didn’t, and inside this centimeter lay six more years of hell and sixty of life.

As soon as we reentered the block I got a hell of a beating. Twenty five whippings. Five and twenty. In German you count the ones before the tens. When speaking about whipping, that’s definitely the right way to count; first you feel the ones – one, two, three, four, five – and then the remaining twenty are like a single blow. However, that didn’t seem to be enough, so they had me standing on my knees opposite the oven, holding bricks in my raised arms and if I was to lower them, I would get beat up again, naturally. The only thing I realized then, is that not only did I lose my will to live, I was also not allowed to die. Life in the camp was put on hold, like the menstruation which suddenly stopped in all of us, after the first cup of coffee.

Suddenly a theatrical figure stormed into the block, like a Roman conqueror; wrapped in a white sheet, hair of fire and a torch, jumped on the oven and said:
Von hier ist kein Weg
Von hier ist nur ein Weg
Himmel-Kommando!
And then she disappeared like a bad dream. I’m sure I wasn’t dreaming, I have no fantasy-problems. Later on someone told me she was the Kappo; a young woman, horribly vicious, with a tragedy of her own. Needless to say, my hands remained aloft long after that episode.

The very next day a polish girl who had cancer asked me to get her some poison. All of the sudden I had an assignment. It was always difficult to determine who was superior to whom, who had the right to keep on living and who didn’t. But when it came to dying it was rather easy: you’re suffering more than I, you should commit suicide before me, so I will help you.
She had the poison already in her mouth, when her folks came out of nowhere, believe it or not, and said: Mira’le, by Jews you don’t do that… Parents remain parents, even if they are mere scraps of humans. So she spat it out. There’s always more time to commit suicide.

My parents, however, weren’t around anymore and in the far corner of the room I spotted the poison she spat out. I said to myself: why bother living? Suicide seemed like a nice way out; becoming a nun seemed appealing; becoming a selfish person seemed interesting – I mean, after all, so many of those survived and went on to lead a nice life. Maybe that’s the way to go, live for pleasure. I just didn’t know anymore. But if I didn’t take the poison, I wanted to live, probably.

I thought back of the time when I had parents, when suicide was a decision to be made within the family-unit: the task was given to my mother, a nurse. She had to inject it into our veins, otherwise it wouldn’t be effective. So she prepared a little metal tray with enough syringes to go around and beside every syringe she put a little cotton ball soaked with alcohol, to disinfect the skin before the injection. I pointed out that this was not necessary for the last injection and everybody laughed, but she was kind of offended and simply said: what do I know? I’ve been doing it like that all my life.

Now I see that this entire liberation was pointless. A delayed understanding which sneaked in only recently, three months after it was all over. Every person I meet on the street asks me: you’re still alive? as if the fact that I’m standing there right in front of him still needs to be reinforced by the pronunciation of the words: yes, I am still alive, I’m standing right here in front of you. At least you survived, is the common reply. So what – I came out alone.

Three months after it was all over was also when I got to see my first dinosaur-film; the dinosaurs were still quite clumsy – certainly not the accomplished creatures Steven Spielberg created – with men inside of them, working their limbs, and a mechanic head, smiling. Unlike Spielberg’s film, the villain of the story was not the most vicious lizard among them, but a man, who, for some reason, wanted to make sure that the extinction of the last remaining dinosaurs – male, female and their descendant, discovered in the Amazon jungle – was final. He shot the two adults without as much as a blink and then he turned to the little lizard, looked her peacefully in the eye – she was no longer smiling – and said: now you are truly one of your kind.

Pictures are biased representations of reality, the substitutes of lost memories. A cheap attempt, a briefly cheap one, to reproduce what we try not to forget, or what we have already forgotten. An attempt to make things better, happier, sunnier, prettier. A faint unsuccessful attempt to make ourselves believe that those pictures are reality and that reality is ours and that we are someone else happier and funnier and smiling who has never seen the rain. Let the others raise an eyebrow with jealousy and envy us for our happiness. So perfect that we are.

How I wished I were you, with that bright smile on your face, you, so pretty and happy and perfect and shiny.

Pictures, then, pictures are the construction of a new reality, rather than the representation of an old one. The capturing of a single instant from a single perspective by a single eye at a particular location. And the grimace, not even real. One’s always smiling for pictures, no good sample of reality. I’ve always hated pictures myself, like you lose the present moment in an attempt to try and have a written memory, a fake one, for the future. Like you miss up on the present for the future, for a future constructed upon the past, a fake one. No good future can be constructed upon a fake past. So far away that it will be.

How you wished you were me, with all those sunny places and people, hat on the head, hand in hand, so happy that I was.

Pictures, after all, pictures are a substitute for relevance. The image of all those things for which we need an image, a written one. For otherwise one would not remember them. Pictures, then, pictures are a substitute for relevance. Either something is relevant or you’d better take a picture, not that it faints with time and you lose yourself on the way. The concretion of abstract thoughts in a faint fake attempt to tell yourself that the things you have seen and the people you have met and the places you have been to are relevant. If they were, mind you, if they were your memory would keep them. No need for paper.Words and thoughts and times and spaces written on paper.

How she wished she were I, with a real past and no troubled future and no need to lie to herself. Handkerchief in the hand, green cheek, pictures in the bin.

Door shut, paper red. It will be sunny out there.

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..