Memoirs

In school, lessons were taught in German and not French and M. Guigot, our fifth grade teacher, was no longer gregarious at one moment and stern the next, but rather sullen all the time. We were made to sing Nazi marching songs and showed bizzare illustrations of Jews. Jews with hats. Jews with waxed moustaches. Jews with lasers shooting from their eyes. Jews with talons on their hands wearing house coats. Jews. Jews. Jews. I began sniffing everyday. First it was heroin, then heroin combined with meth, then meth and heroin combined with sodium hypochlorite (pool cleaner). After a few weeks Redmond and I were high every day together. We were so high, we never even cared about the spot searches and the beatings and the constant harassment at the hands of the Gestapo. Soon, we got into heavier stuff. That's when we started doing 'chemo'. Once a day, we would walk after school through the 'Brown Zone', an area in west Strasbourg completely overrun by the Nazis, and up the hill to the free clinic, where we would use Redmond's mom's pass and some doctored paperwork to get full radiation treatments. 'Chemo' mixed with meth was a total bleached-out high. Raw. Hot. Every sense blown out and destroyed. We couldn't get enough, but soon the end was near. The Nazis were about to call for a city-wide lockdown and that meant no access to smack, meth or chemo. We hadn't had enough and we were willing to take any risk. Our lives meant nothing to them or us.

Chapter 3
When I returned home, my house had been ransacked. Papers strewn everywhere. Mama's rocking chair broken. Plates and glasses smashed in pieces all over. Papa's pipe on the floor in the center of the sitting room, cracked in two, with his tobacco pouch ripped open next to it. Shattered. Everything shattered and quiet and spectral and different. In the center of the house, a smoldering pile of family photos. On the walls, written in spray paint, large and looming, 'Jews are Assholes'. On another wall, 'If You Lived Here, You'd Be A Jew By Now'. On another wall, a rebus. A picture of a glass of juice, then the letter 'R', then an 'G' with a plus sign then a bail of hay.Everything was falling apart.

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				In school, lessons were taught in German and not French and M. Guigot, our fifth grade teacher, was no longer gregarious at one moment and stern the next, but rather sullen all the time. We were made to sing Nazi marching songs and showed bizzare illustrations of Jews. Jews with hats. Jews with waxed moustaches. Jews with lasers shooting from their eyes. Jews with talons on their hands wearing house coats. Jews. Jews. Jews. I began sniffing everyday. First it was heroin, then heroin combined with meth, then meth and heroin combined with sodium hypochlorite (pool cleaner). After a few weeks Redmond and I were high every day together. We were so high, we never even cared about the spot searches and the beatings and the constant harassment at the hands of the Gestapo. Soon, we got into heavier stuff. That's when we started doing 'chemo'. Once a day, we would walk after school through the 'Brown Zone', an area in west Strasbourg completely overrun by the Nazis, and up the hill to the free clinic, where we would use Redmond's mom's pass and some doctored paperwork to get full radiation treatments. 'Chemo' mixed with meth was a total bleached-out high. Raw. Hot. Every sense blown out and destroyed. We couldn't get enough, but soon the end was near. The Nazis were about to call for a city-wide lockdown and that meant no access to smack, meth or chemo. We hadn't had enough and we were willing to take any risk. Our lives meant nothing to them or us. Chapter 3 When I returned home, my house had been ransacked. Papers strewn everywhere. Mama's rocking chair broken. Plates and glasses smashed in pieces all over. Papa's pipe on the floor in the center of the sitting room, cracked in two, with his tobacco pouch ripped open next to it. Shattered. Everything shattered and quiet and spectral and different. In the center of the house, a smoldering pile of family photos. On the walls, written in spray paint, large and looming, 'Jews are Assholes'. On another wall, 'If You Lived Here, You'd Be A Jew By Now'. On another wall, a rebus. A picture of a glass of juice, then the letter 'R', then an 'G' with a plus sign then a bail of hay.Everything was falling apart. Next page