The Dachau Shoe
My cousin Gene (he's really only a second cousin) has a shoe he picked up at Dachau. It's a pretty worn-out shoe. It wasn't top quality in the first place, he explained. The sole is cracked clear across and has pulled loose from the upper on both sides, and the upper is split at the ball of the foot. There's no lace and there's no heel.
He explained he didn't steal it because it must have belonged to a Jew who was dead. He explained that he wanted some little thing. He explained that the Russians looted everything. They just took anything. He explained that it wasn't top quality to begin with. He explained that the guards or the kapos would have taken it if it had been any good. He explained that he was lucky to have got anything. He explained that it wasn't wrong because the Germans were defeated. He explained that everybody was picking up something. A lot of guys wanted flags or daggers or medals or things like that, but that kind of thing didn't appeal to him so much. He kept it on the mantelpiece for a while but he explained that it wasn't a trophy.
He explained that it's no use being vindictive. He explained that he wasn't. Nobody's perfect. Actually we share a German grandfather. But he explained that this was the reason why we had to fight that war. What happened at Dachau was a crime that could not be allowed to pass. But he explained that we could not really do anything to stop it while the war was going on because we had to win the war first. He explained that we couldn't always do just what we would have liked to do. He explained that the Russians killed a lot of Jews too. After a
couple of years he put the shoe away in a drawer. He explained that the dust collected in it.
Now he has it down in the cellar in a box. He explains that the central heating makes it crack worse. He'll show it to you, though, any time you ask. He explains how it looks. He explains how it's hard to take it in, even for him. He explains how it was raining, and there weren't many things left when he got there. He explains how there wasn't anything of value and you didn't want to get caught taking anything of that kind, even if there had been. He explains how everything inside smelled. He explains how it was just lying out in the mud, probably right where it had come off. He explains that he ought to keep it. A thing like that.
You really ought to go and see it. He'll show it to you. All you have to do is ask. It's not that it's really a very interesting shoe when you come right down to it but you learn a lot from his explanations.
by W.S. Merwin
The Dachau Shoe by W.S Merwin is a great, light-hearted, yet haunting short story. The second cousin, who speaks about his cousin Gene, is presumably a young child, shown through the choppy sentences and the repetition of "he explained." The repetitious phrase "he explained" also opens up a lot of questions, such as Did Gene think it was morally right to take the shoe? Is he trying to justify himself? If so, what about his actions makes him feel ashamed? Some of these questions may be more accurately answered if we knew which side of the war Gene fought on-- we can infer he is not Russian, since he claims "the Russians killed a lot of Jews too." Perhaps Gene is German, since him and his cousin "share a German grandfather"-- yet it's also possible he was American. If he were German, he may feel the need to justify himself because he didn't want to fight in the war and kill those people, but there wasn't "anything to stop [the war]" except to fight in it. And if that's the case, he perhaps took the show as a reminder of the "crime that could not be allowed to pass"-- a reminder of a crime that stole thousands of innocent lives. With people like Gene feeling this guilt, and all of Germany in shreds after the war, the shoe perhaps stands as a symbol for Germany: a nation that is "cracked clear across and has pulled loose from the upper on both sides," just like the shoe. It could also symbolize people after the war, using a play on words where the "sole is cracked" to show that people's souls were cracked and worn down from the war. However people may choose to view the shoe and it's symbolic meaning, this shoe that "wasn't top quality in the first place" sure gained a lot of meaning through Gene's explanations.
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