Hitler's spoon

Would that the dictionary did triage, could heal words when they return as questions. As a child, she looked at concentration camp photos, learned witness at an early age. To attend is to take in. The bodies on train cars shall be our wound, but it takes time to know this. The sorting comes later, as does the moral injury.


My mother had a feather-weight spoon with a swastika on it that she'd picked up at the ruins of Berchtesgaden. It disappeared with the ceremonial Nazi sword she kept in her closet, and the medal for having children for the Reich. Some of her friends took fine silver; she took objects with symbols attached.


She kept the spoon in the drawer with her other spoons and forks and knives, returned it to its use value. I don't remember what we ate with Hitler's spoon.