THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

suffering was over and that he was leaving the world in a dignified manner. Hischildren and grandchildren came and said goodbye and thank you. Then everyone leftand I was alone with him for the night shift, he and I and the silence. He shoutedoccasionally, scattering broken words like verbal dew. It was a night of senselesssounds. Once he shouted, “Police, Policier,” and shook with excitement. He wasdying all night, but in morning he returned to life. Like the child of the Turkish womanin Hebron, the relentless survivor outsmarted grim death. Several more days passedwith more medicines and then he came back to us for another half year of life. It wasa productive six months, with the addition of two greatgrandchildren and good newsfor all of us. When he woke up, I told him of his nightmares.“What did you see, Dad?”“Is your computer here?”“Yes.”“Then get it out. I want you to write something.”This was his dream—word fragments that did not complete a story,something imagined, fantastic and not fully comprehensive. “I dreamed that I was inParis and I was taken to a fancy restaurant . . . I did not want to eat because Iworried about the prices. They took me out and laid me on a big mattress, and facingme were Israelis who were abroad on behalf of the health maintenance fund. I wasafraid they were cheating the fund and I made myself a mental note to tell Ada [mysister].”My interpretation of his dream was that he was in Paris, just like after the Shoah,when he worked three years for the Mossad, the Yishuv organization that smuggledillegal immigrants to Israel. Facing him were Israelis; not with him, not beside him—facing him. There, abroad, he meets Israelis. But they are probably sick, since theywere sent there by the health fund. He thinks the worst of them, that they cheat. Hedeals with them with his brain, making a mental note. This is my father, purebrainpower. In his overseas arena, he is against the rest of the Israeli world. He isfrom there, wise and alone; we are from here with our shortcomings, sick andcheating.“I was sitting alone, and a hard-shell suitcase like a Samsonite was near me, and Iwanted someone to help me stand up and ask where we were, but none of the