The Witnesses

Schreiber and I are having breakfast together. In a coffee shop overlooking the harbor. At another table, closer to the kitchen, a group of other men are talking.

Schreiber has brought his knapsack.

“What did you bring to show me today?” I ask.

“A book. I’ll show you. Let’s order something first.”

I look at the menu as does he and we order. Egg sandwiches. Mine with cheese and spinach. His with sausage. He orders two, one to bring home to Lorraine.

“Before you show me the book,” I say, “I have to ask you, did you see Swalwell’s post on Instagram last night?”

“Yes,” he says, “and that’s just what I want to talk about.”

We pause for a moment when our order is brought to the table. He lifts the book from his bag and reads me the title. “I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933 -1941, by Victor Klemperer.”  He hands it across to me. A hard cover. It must weigh four pounds.

“Have you read it?” I ask, opening it. He has underlined some sentences and written notes in the margins with pencil.

“I’ve started it,” he says. “It’s from a diary he kept. It was only printed a few years ago. There are two more volumes, 1941 to 1945, and one more but I haven’t gotten either of them yet. I read a dozen or so pages every night. I hate to put it down. It’s the most important book I’ve ever read.”

“Tell me.”

“I will but…,”  and removes another item from the bag. A daily calendar. I lay the Klemperer down on the table as he opens the calendar, turning it toward me. His handwritten notes in black ink. Smooth, even, rounded script, in tight lines filling the pages.

“I have begun to write my own diary,” he says. Once I started this one,” tapping his finger on the Klemperer. “And you should too. We must do this now, each day so that in the years to come there will be a record, a personal one, that tells people what is happening here. In our country. To all of us. The threats. The intimidation. The chaotic new rants each day. The silence and complicity of people who know better and should do better. I wake up and I write down what I am thinking and feeling. Not full sentences. What new angry idiocy I have heard he has said yesterday and overnight. Listen to this,” he says, taking his notebook back, opening it to the last written page. “Trump fired the FBI agents. Tariffs on Mexico and China. He’s crazy. It’s all bullying. Vendettas. Today I will get cash,” he reads, looks up at me, and then turns back the calendar. “I get cash now. A little each day. While I can. Chuck Todd and Jim Acosta are leaving MSNBC and CNN. Planes crash over DC. Trump blames DEI.”

He looks again at me. “That was yesterday. All that in one day. And this very morning I go to order the second volume, and I click on payment, and what do I see?… access denied in bold red letters. Do you know how I felt? I will find out why at the bank later, but still…”

I don’t know what to say to him. The look in his eyes.

He puts down the calendar and picks up the Klemperer book.

Opening it, “Listen to this,” he says. “This is from 1933… March 10, Friday evening…” He closes the book on his index finger and looks again at me. “Hitler was elected Chancellor on January 30 of 1933, and now it’s March 10, a month and a half, and he is writing, … ‘I called January 30 terror, but that was a mild prelude, the business of 1918 is being repeated, only under another sign, the swastika. It’s astounding how quickly everything collapses.’”

He looks up for a moment and then back to the page, lower down, “’Day after day, commissioners appointed, buildings taken over, newspapers banned, flags raised by order of the Nazi Party,’ are you hearing this?” he says to me.

“Yes,” I say, looking at him for an instant and then averting my eyes.

“And here, March 17, ‘No one dares saying anything, everyone is afraid. March 20 … every new government decree, announcement, etc. is more shameful than the previous one.’”

“Michael, …” I say.

“One more, one more, and then I’ll stop, … April 20 to 25, “’… trembling and slavish fear all around… ‘they are expert at advertising… ‘everyone knuckles under,’” he runs his finger swiftly along the line and then down to another… ‘all the same conversations, the same despair… catastrophe is imminent.’”

He looks at me. I feel he is wholly there in that past moment in that past place. And then, now, he is here, and he still feels the same. The same pleading look in his eyes. “Do you hear these words?” he says to me. “This was from April 1933, mind you, not 1938 or 1941. This is before the SA men start rounding up people, or the SS and the pogroms and the camps, before the killings started. 1933,” he repeats.

He has not touched a bite. Nor have I. The waiter comes with two coffee pots. One decaf, one regular. “Can I warm them up for you?”

“Yes, thanks,” I tell him. “Regular.”

“Decaf for me,” says Schreiber.

“You want those wrapped up?”

“No thanks.”

The men at the other table have left.

“Schreiber,” I say, “the book can’t be all like that, can it.? He must also write about family, regular everyday things, his work.”

“No, you’re right. He does. He does. His teaching, his writing, his wife, friends, movies, just like we do. You and I.”

“And that’s the point though isn’t it,” I say. “You’re saying he’s seeing everything sane and normal and good is being broken apart, soon likely to be lost and…”

“… And,..” Schreiber cuts in, “still, he might be having egg sandwiches with a friend in coffee shop by the water, despite what the future might bring. Right?”

“Yes,” I say. “And we know what his future did bring. Don’t we.”