Recent reading I

Christmas usually brings a book or two to the family. This year my sister gave me Göran Rosenberg's book "Ett kort uppehåll på vägen från Auschwitz" (in rough translation "A short stop on the way from Auschwitz"). I have quite mixed feelings for this book. Partly, it is a childhood history about the author growing up in Södertälje, where we moved this summer, in the late 40s and 50s. I didn't know that much about Södertälje's recent history (as a geographer I count the last century, at least, as recent) and thus I was thrilled by reading this personal account of the development of parts of the town.

At the same time, the main theme of the book is the record of the author's father's way from Auschwitz, or rather from the Jewish ghetto in Lodz through horrible transports via Auschwitz and a number of different concentration and death camps, to the small Swedish town Södertälje, south of Stockholm. While reading, I was totally at a loss for words, while atrocious fact was added to atrocious fact - summing up to something that was beyond making any kind of sense. The only way to grasp it seems to be either through adding numbers and facts, as the author does in parts of the book, or to feel it. But seventy years later it still hurts too much to even think of what people were made going through, sending their children to death (when the ghetto in Lodz was first being reduced in numbers, and then emptied and the remaining prisoners sent on to Auschwitz) or travelling towards their own deaths. So few people survived, and the book is as much about how these survivors fought to lead a normal life afterwards - and how many of them that eventually gave in to the weight from their experiences.

I was deeply moved by this book telling the story about Rosenberg's father - but I couldn't help wondering about where his mother was in the story. Oh yes, she was there, but not in a very distinct way, although she brought similar experiences having travelled along a similar but still different way from the ghetto in Lodz, via Auschwitz and other camps, to Södertälje. However, the son writes his book not only about his father, but also addressing his father as "you" throughout the book. The book ends when his father ends his life. And there's where I'm left with my questions: what happened to his mother, how did she manage to go on - and did she?

What also remains with me afterwards is what this book tells us about how we handle traumatised people when they come to Sweden, to continue a life that has been marked by violence and deaths. Are we still content just letting (some) people into the country, or how do we assist people that have arrived with this kind of horrible experiences, from Congo or the former Yugoslavia, from Iraq or from Syria, or any place from which people arrive with deep wounds, not only physically? I am ashamed to admit, that I actually do not know.

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