In A Scrap of Time, story after story has this question of who tells the story and to whom. But story after story, concludes in what I call a snapshot. A photographic like image. So, to show you that even late at night I was coherent. I turn to. The first story A Scrap of Time. And you'll remember that in the Scrap of Time, right from the beginning. I want to talk about a certain time, not measured in months and years. For so long I have wanted to talk about this time and not in the way I will talk about it now. Not just about this one Scrap of Time. I wanted to but I couldn't. I didn't know how. I was afraid to the second time, had buried the other time under a layer of years, that the second time had crushed the first and destroyed it within me. But no. Today, digging around in the ruins of memory, I found it fresh and untouched by forgetfulness. So right away, the question of who tells the story and how. And the facts that this narrator, she has not been able to tell the story. But then she finds something that triggers the possibility. And then she looks for, whom shall I tell it to? This time was measured not in months, but not in a word. And suddenly I turns into we. Right? So the story is being told about, and to a we. We no longer set in the beautiful month of May, but after the first action or the second right before the third. So, this is a brilliant bit of writing, but also a very moving one because we know what's happening. And right away we have this paradox, A Scrap of Time. We have then, I'll give you fancy words, I know you like fancy words, you can then tell your parents you're learning something important. We're doing maybe synesthesia. We're referring to one sense and then that sense, you know, the senses of includes another one. And so [INAUDIBLE] Right? And it's also tangible, it's textile. And it's also about time. So it's about A Scrap of Time. And right away, she's asking us about this, we had different measures of time always different. Always with that mark of difference that moved some of us to pride and others to humility. We knew because of our difference we're condemned once again. Wow. In that sentence the world difference now has a different meaning. We've gone from the perhaps general or the communal to another sense. We who were different. We who because of our difference, we're condemned. As we have been before in our history, we were condemned once again during this time. Measured not in months, nor by the rising and setting of the sun but by a word. Action, or I would have translated it and put it in with a K, [FOREIGN] right? A word signifying movement, a word you could use about a novel or a play. So, right away, this question about language and who was telling it starts, and words are then, visualized, almost, and right away, people are told they're going to be conscripted and they're going to have conscription of labor. And as mature people tend to read between the lines, our imaginations replace the word labor with labor camp. One of which people said was being built nearby. Apparently, those who gave the order were perfectly aware of the poverty of our imaginations. And these people who gave the orders predicted our responses they said, and then the story unfolds. And it also unfolds because the narrator does not do what is expected, but her cousin, is it? And that our cousin David had been taken. They took him, and he left a message for his mother. And the message he left for his mother is, I myself is to blame. Forgive me. So, this is also a story where the cousin David, who has done well. He follows the order. Where as the narrator does not with her sister. Right? She goes off and then skips stones into the water, and everybody had just had breakfast. It was an ordinary day, and these stories are astonishing in terms of the way in which words and situations suddenly turn. And a day when you just had breakfast. An ordinary experience suddenly becomes the day when you are rounded up and killed. I said that these stories conclude, with a photograph. So here is David and, David become something a person that we keep thinking about, what does it mean to do what is expected, and the message that he sent, and we learned that that message was brought by a peasant. So in this very short story, we have a whole community that's being rounded up. A person who didn't do what was expected. She and her sister, but did, I didn't go and do the expected. I went and sat by the river and threw stones, and my cousin, David finally put a message in a stone and a peasant brought it to my family. So we have the community and the bystander, and the person who knows about this. And later on, we'll tell. So the story builds brilliantly as a story goes, and devastatingly in terms of the human experience. And it ends, and it's all about speaking, it ends with that. So here is the end. The message, the peasant who would not dare to speak at the time came back after the war and told us everything. It happened just as rumor had it, in a dense overgrown forest eight kilometers outside of town, one hour after the trucks left the marketplace. The execution itself did not take long. More time was spent on the preparatory digging of the grave. Now David appears at the first shots, our chubby, round faced cousin David. Who was always clumsy at gymnastics and sports, climbed a tree and wrapped his arms around the trunk like a child hugging his mother and that was the way he died. It's remarkable. It's chilling. It's a snapshot. And we have now a snapshot. But, this is not the only one. That's the first story. The last story in the book. See, I think it's very important to look at the text. The last story in the book. Is called traces. And you will remember the town is rounded up. And, suddenly. Everybody is waiting and nothing is happening and we have a truck that brings the children who were hidden in the attic of the Judenrat, because children, which was strictly forbidden under pain of death, because children no longer had the right to live. This is so clear, so direct, so simply stated. And you need to be able to tell this. Which is very difficult. And in order to tell it, you need someone to listen. And in traces. It's two pages, right? Yes, of course, she recognize it. Why shouldn't she? That was their last ghetto. The photograph, a copy of a clumsy amateur snapshot is blurred, right? And there's a photograph, and the photograph is making her think. And yet, she then goes back to the ruins of memory as she called it in the beginning of the story and she says, so finding the children who were hidden in the attic of the Jurendat, which was strictly forbidden under pain of death, because children no longer had the right to live. So we are again life on the other planet, but life on the other planet as normal as in faithlessness. There were eight of them, the oldest might have been seven or so, although no one knows for sure because when they brought them over, they didn't look at all like children. Only like, they were sitting on straw, one beside another. They looked like little gray mice. The SS man who brought them jumped down from the cart and said kindly, now dear children now each of you go and run to your parents. But none of the children moved. They sat there motionless and looked straight ahead, then the SS man took the first child. Show me your mother and father, but the child was silent. So he took the other children one by one and shouted at them, point out their parents. But they were all silent. Then the narrator says, so I wanted some trace of them to be left behind, so we're back in the telling of the story as part of the story. In a calm voice she asks for a short break. With an indulgent smile, she rejects the glass of water they hand her. After the break, she will tell how they were all shy. This is, again, another photograph suddenly. And of course, this story begins with a photograph, and so here we are once more in the problem of the family album. In the problem of photographs, that implying narrative, a photograph asks for a caption. That's what I've seen when people show me photographs from Facebook. It asks for a caption, but I don't, it isn't captioned, right? It implies a narrative, but there's, but who can provide the narrative? How? Well, maybe the narrator of these stories. And this narrator. Is someone who was part of the experience, but somehow remained sufficiently separated from it not to be killed.
