‘How often do you think about your time in the camps?’

I have lectured about my time in the different camps almost daily since the 1980s, and each time I talk about it, it feels like reliving it. Despite being very difficult, it has led to something good — it became a way for me to process my trauma.

Most survivors find it difficult to talk about what happened to them, and so it lingers as a constant ache. Because I work with it daily, talk about it, and write books about it, it is no longer there when I let go of my work. It is not present in my consciousness, though it is there under the surface, and not much is needed for it to rise up.

If I walk down the street and hear a dog barking behind me, I am back in the camp instantaneously. In the group of girls in rows of five on their way to work, guarded by SS soldiers with dogs. If someone stops, or falls out of line, we know that they will set the dogs on her. I can feel the fear, and the icy wind that blew through my thin dress, and the pain in my raw feet caused by my rough-hewn clogs. Other times, I see a chimney and feel the pain I felt when I understood what function the chimneys in Auschwitz served.

When I am with my sister, we rarely talk about the Holocaust. But what calls up the past is the same for her, and we only have to look at each other to know that we are having one thought.