Many years ago while rummaging through my nieces room, I came across a notebook; warn and yellowed, covered in proteins and greases providing a patina of truth to the thing. The notebook was not filled, it had maybe 20 pages of notes out of 100 possible. On the pages were bloody fingerprints, and on the first page:
“These are the words of Nanya Gessen, Jew of Denmark, witnessing events at Forg-Bilsen Research Prison Camp in Ickoo, Poland …”
I was stunned …
My niece, 14 years old, who’s room I was tossing, had found this remarkable notebook. I asked her about it a few weeks later, and she began to cry.
“Uncle, leave it be.”
“Come on …”
“It’s too much pain …”
My niece continued to explain that on her trip to Europe with the Rabbi’s annual Zionism fundraiser, they had stopped at a bookstore in Berlin. The old Jewess running the store pulled my niece aside, and showed her this notebook, kept behind glass. “It’s like the Anne Frank story, but worse”, is what the old krone said.
My niece red the notebook, it was written in Danish but she was good languages.
