Tobias (Toshek) Schiff was a teenag­er when nazis deport­ed him and his fam­i­ly from Bel­gium; he was twen­ty years old when he left the camps. He became a dia­mond bro­ker and lat­er owned a pho­tog­ra­phy store, then ded­i­cat­ed his remain­ing years to speak­ing about his expe­ri­ences to school­child­ren. His mem­oir in verse, Return to the Place I Nev­er Left, was first pub­lished in 1997 — two years before his death —and has now been trans­lat­ed from the Flem­ish by Dani James. 

Note: This review does not cap­i­tal­ize the N in ​“nazi” because the trans­la­tor didn’t either, ​“because of my con­vic­tion that the term, the regime, and the rhetoric they rep­re­sent should not be cap­i­tal­ized,” James explains in the intro­duc­tion. She also leaves the orders nazis barked at Schiff, his fam­i­ly, and oth­er Jews in the orig­i­nal Ger­man This device cre­ates a chill­ing effect that allows read­ers to put them­selves in Schiff’s place and help them remem­ber this his­to­ry to ensure that such events nev­er hap­pen again. 

It’s a good goal, though it must have been emo­tion­al­ly dif­fi­cult for the author to tell a sto­ry with pro­found his­tor­i­cal impli­ca­tions that doesn’t fade into back­ground noise — as in, ​”This hap­pened to them, but it won’t hap­pen to us.” Schiff is fre­quent­ly able to find a mid­dle ground between edu­ca­tion and enter­tain­ment by con­nect­ing with read­ers through how he tells his sto­ry. In a YouTube video, James notes that the Flem­ish edi­tion con­tains lit­tle punc­tu­a­tion, some­thing she main­tained in her trans­la­tion, mak­ing the book read like a stream of con­scious­ness nar­ra­tive that mim­ics oral sto­ry­telling and cre­ates an inte­ri­or mono­logue that’s more alive than if the poem were punc­tu­at­ed con­ven­tion­al­ly. Although some­times the writ­ing is stilt­ed, a book about the Holo­caust is enti­tled to be rough around the edges. 

That doesn’t mean it lacks vivid descrip­tions. Here’s Schiff, for exam­ple, writ­ing about what his hunger feels like:

“that abu­sive feel­ing / that ugly repul­sive crit­ter / it sits in the stom­ach angry / slith­ers up / to the throat / to the mouth.” 

This shows a writer who is able to toe the line between writ­ing art­ful­ly enough to hold read­ers’ atten­tion while also teach­ing them about his experiences.

Return to the Place I Nev­er Left, as the title sug­gests, is about what we don’t — or can’t — leave behind. And in Schiff’s mind, it’s his expe­ri­ences in the con­cen­tra­tion camps that, under­stand­ably, won’t escape him. Yet the title may offer a dual mean­ing: Hope­ful­ly we as read­ers will car­ry a lit­tle bit of Schiff with us wher­ev­er we go, not for­get­ting what hap­pened to him and to so many oth­ers — espe­cial­ly in the present cul­tur­al moment.