I met a man...

This is going to freak you out! It freaked me out and I was there watching it happen. You could see it coming so it wasn't like it totally caught me by surprise, like it is you. It's just the extreme unusualness that gets to you, because if you fit it into the context of WWII, it's not really that big a thing.

Okay, I believe I've mentioned that I was a Mormon Missionary. It was a long tme ago, in the 60s. Technically, I could be a grandfather to the little Missionaries out there today. I did my Mission in Mexico, in one of four territorial divisions the Church had set up. My territory included Mexico City. Mexico City is old and there are some very, very rich people there.

One day, in a very old section called Coyoacán my companion and I met a man. He didn't tell us his name. He invited us into his cozy home. It reeked of reclusive erudition. It was dark and there were books everywhere. I don't remember much of what was said. Remember, I was just 19, callow to a very alarming degree, and although I was a voracious reader, back then my preferred genre was science fiction. So when this gentleman started telling us about how foolish we were to talk for god and salvation, it was easy to feel smug and superior, what with my Companion and I possessing 'The Truth.' I do remember him telling us, calmly, almost dispassionately, that he had seen things that would convince the most stalwart of believers that god could not possibly exist. He looked fairly old. I never forgot that man, mostly because of the setting. I'd never that kind of stuffy, educated reclusiveness. And then there was his certainty.

Anyway, I men him today. He is 74, having been born in 1933. He now lives in San Bernardino. I would never have remembered him; I never 'developed' a picture of his face to go with the rest of the recollection of that brief event. I was painting addresses on curbs and as is often the case I had people coming out to talk to me. There's this thing about me: I don't speak "street Spanish." I was a Missionary who learned Spanish while a Missionary and then I took my minor in Spanish. I'm sure most Spanish-speakers realize there's something 'stuffy' about my Spanish be he was one of the very, very few who questioned it. So I explained. He asked where I'd served my Mission. I answered. He asked if I'd ever been in Coyoacán. I said I had. He asked what year. I answered. He asked me if remembered meeting him in his stuffy, reclusive study. I gave him a long look and said I did. We talked a lot more...

But to cut to the chase, the gentleman, Gustavo Merced de la Torre, is now living with his remaining relative, a nephew. And his claim to fame, or notoriety, is that he was the only Mexican to spend time in a Nazi Concentration Camp. Or as he corrected me, un Campo de Exterminación Nazi. Not a subtle difference.

He's never made a serious inquiry, but he spent all of WWII in Germany and never heard of any other of his fellow countrymen being there. So that's why he says he is the only Mexican survivor of the death camps.

See, I told you it was weird.