BORN IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP (October 7, 2011)

I dreamt that I was talking to a large group of foreign tourists who were visiting Croatia for the first time. We were walking around Zagreb, and I was showing them the most important spots in the center. At some point I told them that I was born in a concentration camp. Several older women among the tourists almost swooned with horror at my words. When I added that it was an Ustasha concentration camp, the reaction was even stronger. I remember going on and on about my few memories of the camp. I did not remember much, I explained, for I was only two when the war ended. When I woke up, I realized that I was lying to the tourists, but it took me a while to disentangle the truth from the falsehood. I was born almost a year after the war ended. And I was only two when my parents left Zagreb. For a year and a half they were in an Ustasha concentration camp, but they came out two years before I was born. At any rate, it took me a while to set the record straight before I fell asleep once again. But the memory of the horrified women stayed with me through the morning. They almost fainted right in front of me.