After the war, the dishes

There’s a little memoir I read on the internet ages ago. I have tried in vain to find it again. I find myself thinking about it more and more.

The narrator describes how in the 1970s he and his colleagues would go to lunch at a little restaurant near their office, run by a sweet, graying immigrant couple. They had family pictures all over the walls, memories of the Old Country. They loved talking with the customers.

One day, the memoirist goes out to lunch there with the usual crew, plus a guy in his 60s who was visiting their offices. The new guy is surprisingly interested in the family photos. When the owners drop by their table to talk, the new guy asks them some questions about the photos.

Four or five questions in, the sweet old couple are angry. How dare you ask that?

The usual lunch gang are still baffled. What has gone wrong?

The new guy asks, “Will you tell them, or do I have to?”

Two minutes later they are leaving the restaurant, the little old lady screaming at them. “You don’t understand! You were not there! You don’t know what the Jews did to us!”