Arduino is in his 90s. Not long ago he still rode his bike. He’s an old man, like many others, like those you see at the supermarket or at the post office. He uses a cane to walk, but his handshake shows how lively he is. His look is deep, one that doesn’t leave you indifferent.
When Arduino was 20 he went to war like many of our grandads. He was in Albania, close to the greek border, and he remembers it was so cold that his ears froze; to warm them up he kept leaning his head on a heater until he burnt one. His nephew asks him “how was it to be at war?”
He says he will never be able to find the right words to describe it: he had to hide underneath his comrades’ dead bodies to protect himself from aerial attacks, and stay there for hours. He was deported, put on a livestock train that rode for 25 days non stop. When he got to Buchenwald he saw a sign above the entrance that read “Jedem das Seine”, “to each what he deserves”.
He tells the story of what happened in those days through the pictures he shows us: they seem so heavy, heavy as stones: as he lays them on the table the expression on his face changes.
And although the pictures are black and white the memories are vivid; he stops and looks around. It’s hard for me to ask him anything, I understand I lack the right words and experience to even get close to such a palpable emotion so I just smile.
He tells me how the Nazi killed all the prisoners in the concentration camp before they surrendered, and that he is one of the few survivors.
A german soldier handed him his rifle begging him to kill him before the Americans arrived. He refused.
I can only caress his hand.
He smiles and says “ I turned 92 years old, but would you believe it? When I hear a plane in the distance, I am still scared”.
