[Fiction] Excerpt from What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, winner of the 2012 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award: A father tells his son the truth about a man who beat him during wartime:
Not long into the fighting, an Israeli platoon came to rest at a captured Egyptian camp to the east of Bir Gafgafa, in the Sinai Desert. There Private Shimmy Gezer (formerly Shimon Bibberblat, of Warsaw, Poland) sat down to eat at a makeshift outdoor mess. Four armed commandos sat down with him. He grunted. They grunted. Shimmy dug into his lunch.
A squad mate of Shimmy came over to join them. Professor Tendler (who was then only Private Tendler, not yet a pro- fessor, and not yet even in possession of a high school degree) placed the tin cup that he was carrying on the edge of the table, taking care not to spill his tea. Then he took up his gun and shot each of the commandos in the head.
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.” — Nathan Englander (Excerpt on NPR)
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