P9

P9

"And all this time, daughter,  were there no gentlemen  in your life? Have you never considered being married?"

"How shall  I proceed  father?  The  thought of  physical  love inevitably takes  me back to  the camps.  You may draw  your own conclusions, but  that, I think is  a mental scar far  more long lasting than any of the physical ones I bear."

"I am so sorry, Judith!"

"It is I who must apologize to you, father. At  no time did you do or say anything to earn silence from your own daughter."

"Once,' he tentatively  said, thinking  of Judith's  mention of physical scars,  "just once, I  saw the terrible damage  on your back. Will you say anything about what happened to you?"

Judith lowered her head for  a rather long time,  gathering the painful memories into a narrative  for the first time  since it happened. This is it,  she thought,  and I  dread  it so,  but Michael insists that I do this and I owe him so much.

"One time," she  began,  "near  the very  end,  before we  were liberated by the American army, the survivors — and this was a death camp so  there were not very many of  us — the survivors were  mustered together  for a  roll call,  or what  the Germans called an  appell. We all  wore very  thin clothing, and  it was very cold, as mornings often are in late March. The commander of the camp gave an order to flog the entire first row of prisoners simply  because  the  exhausted  and  freezing  women  had  poor posture! And I was in the first row.

"Listening to the screams of the prisoners being whipped before my turn was  almost worse than the actual  punishment. Almost. I vowed that  I would  not scream  when it happened  to me,  and I begged God  for the strength to  make that vow hold  true. I was stripped naked and held by two  female guards over a table while a  third laid  on  the lash.  The agony  of  this punishment  is indescribable. I will not even  attempt to describe it. But from the first stroke I completely forgot my vow, and I did scream.

Both Benjamin and  Laura gaped  at her  with horror. "Please," Benjamin begged, recovering just a  bit. "I must know. Please. What happened to your mother?"

But Judith shook  her head  firmly. "You're not ready  to hear that, father. It would kill you.  I'm not even ready to remember it yet, and I was there."