Drawing Lots in Auschwitz

My father, Leo Brenner, spoke very little about his time in the camps. But it was always there, silently lurking in the dark corners of my little fallout shelter of a house. He thought that he could protect his children from knowing about his horrors if he kept quiet about it. It didn’t work. In fact, it hugely backfired on him. When I was in medical school and told him that I planned to specialize in psychiatry and formally study the psychological effects of the Holocaust, he was shocked and quite upset. My father thought he failed me because I was so interested in the very subject that he did his best not to think about. He had always wanted me to go into what he thought was an easy and lucrative specialty, dermatology, where I could make a lot of money and stay on the surface, literally and figuratively. However, I felt as though my psychic survival hinged upon understanding as deeply as possible what he had endured, how he had endured it, and how he was able to live a “normal” life afterward. Although it was a mystery to me how it happened, there was no doubt that what he went through had gotten seared into my soul. The memories of his experiences permeated my home like a tasteless, odorless, and invisible gas.