They are migraines but they are much more than that. It’s a nagging pain that never stops and rises to the surface from time to time.
This evil is that of the guilt of having survived the Shoah and its six million deaths. Erno Spielmann, a Jew from Hungary, is deported to the Birkenau camp where he must watch over the twins selected for the medical experiments of the sinister Doctor Mengele.
He struggles to find them a little food, in addition to trying to make the children’s daily lives easier, as best he can. When the camp gates open, he leads a group of little survivors to freedom, overcoming a thousand difficulties amid the chaos of war. Every day, you have to find shelter and a little food.
Installed in Israel, Erno has a family and a job but he still carries this guilt. This question torments him and causes these migraines.
It takes all the patience and love of his wife for him to finally agree to tell the horror and the terrible images of all these children who “clung to me like animals fleeing a flood cling to their mother ».
He perhaps then realizes that if destiny gave him life, it is to bear witness and speak about those who did not return. Especially since the trial for the History of Adolf Eichmann, one of the worst Nazi war criminals, then opened in Israel.
Inspired by a true story, Tamás Gyurkovics visits the chapters of this profoundly human destiny, of life and survival.
Migraine, a story of guilt, Viviane Hamy, 403 p. €23.50.
