All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (16 page)

No one has the right to judge them, especially not those who did not experience Auschwitz or Buchenwald. The sages of our tradition state point-blank: “Do not judge your fellow man until you stand in his place.” In other words, in the same situation, would I have acted as he did? Sometimes doubt grips me. Suppose I had spent not eleven months but eleven years in a concentration camp. Am I sure that I would have kept my hands clean? No, I am not, and no one can be. But having said that, since I did not act badly, why should I feel virtual guilt? Only the guilty must be judged, or at least denounced. Hypothetical guilt has no place here. Those who
could have
compromised themselves but did not are by definition—and by God’s grace—innocent.

If I insist on this point, it is because I sometimes hear or read harsh comments about my people. Auschwitz, it is said, is a universal phenomenon; what the Germans, their collaborators, and their accomplices did, the Jews could have done as well. But so long as the Jews have not done it, I forbid anyone to charge them with theoretical, speculative crimes. So long as an individual has not killed, one has no right to see him as a potential killer. This interdiction has even greater force when an entire people is being accused.

Let me make it clear: Not all the inmates with privileges were evil. The Greek
Stubendienst
in my block, Jacob Fardo, wasn’t mean. Ask
Jackie Hendeli of Salonika—a fellow Auschwitz inmate—and he will tell you. Fardo never struck a prisoner. The fact is that there were good people even among the ghetto police and the kapos. But then, there were those who were attracted by the killers’ power, such as the son of a great Polish Zionist leader, a kapo in Auschwitz who stubbornly tortured, humiliated, and beat his fellow Jewish prisoners, especially if they were religious, and even more if they were Zionists. Was it to “punish” his father and take revenge against those who had believed in him? How to explain my uncle Nahman-Elye? I cannot. All I know is that I utter his name with embarrassment.

And yet, a story. One day two young lawyers from Brooklyn knocked at the door of my office at Boston University to discuss an urgent problem: They had discovered that a respected Hasid had been the vicious person who beat their father in the camp, leaving him half-dead.

“You know him,” they told me. “Sometimes you go to the synagogue he attends, and even chat with him now and then.” I began to picture the congregation, but quickly decided this was a game I would not play; I would pay no heed to these kinds of accusations. Yet a problem remains: What should be done about the kapos? Should they be prosecuted? Before what court? I have never agreed with Karamazov that “we are all guilty of everything, I most of all.” Jewish tradition denies collective guilt, but could there be such a thing as collective innocence? The Jewish kapos, like their peers, were not innocent. But I will not allow myself to judge them.

I prefer to emphasize the kindness and compassion of my brothers in misfortune. These qualities were found even in the kingdom of darkest night, as I can testify—indeed, as I must. The Jewish soul was a target of the enemy. He sought to corrupt it, even as he strove to destroy us physically. But despite his destructive force, despite his corrupting power, the Jewish soul remained beyond his reach.

I remember a Dutchman who shared his bread with a comrade sicker than he was, a comrade he did not know. “I prefer to be hungry than to feel remorse,” he said.

I remember a Lithuanian preacher, a
maggid
, who wandered among us every Friday night, accosting everyone, with the hint of a smile: “Brother Jew—don’t forget, it’s Shabbat.” He wanted to remind us that Shabbat still reigned over time and the world despite the smoke and stench.

I remember a Polish rabbi who tried to console those who had
not fasted on Yom Kippur. “Jewish law does not order a person to fast at the risk of his life,” he said. “To eat today is more pleasing in the eyes of the blessed Creator than to mortify oneself.” But he himself had fasted. Weakened by hunger, he was “selected” soon afterward, and he implored his barracks comrades to say Kaddish for his soul. The entire barracks did so.

I remember a young Hungarian Jew, his shoulders stooped like an old man’s, who confessed to some infraction so as to be beaten in his uncle’s stead. “I am young,” he said, “and stronger than he.” He was young but no less weak. He did not survive the beating.

I remember, I remember. Unconsciously I took it all in. Well, not the hangmen. I could not describe the SS Blockführer who summoned us, nor the Lagerführer who attended hangings. Strangely, the murderers did not interest me; only the victims. That is why I never felt the need to become a Nazi-hunter. Though I respect those who did, like the Klarsfelds in Paris and Neal Sher in Washington, my obsession was quite different. Of course, I was shocked by the freedom and happiness enjoyed by these murderers. I saw it as an affront to the collective memory of the victims and as a legal outrage. But I knew that I was incapable by nature and temperament of spending the years left to me tracking them down. The victims alone were worthy of my devotion.

But let me come back to the two Brooklyn lawyers. They wore the kipa. For them the Law of the Torah stood above all else. How to apply it to the Hasid they were accusing?

They told their story. In the camp their father had dared to confront a Jewish kapo who, while distributing soup, exhibited excessive cruelty. “Have you no shame?” their father protested. “Have you forgotten you are a Jew?” That night, the kapo and his acolytes came to punish the impudent man. They wrapped him in a blanket and beat him savagely. It was a miracle he survived. Decades later, walking in Brooklyn one day, he recognized the kapo by his voice. His two sons had sworn vengeance.

I asked them detailed, painful questions, interrogated them. If it was so dark, how could their father, wrapped in a blanket, identify a voice and face? Suppose his memory deceived him. That was possible, was it not? I tried hard to lead them to doubt. As they replied to my questions, my thoughts leaped to the synagogue, reviewing names and features. A kapo among them—if so, how old would he be, and from what country? I asked the young attorneys, “Do you sincerely
believe that one can judge and punish a man forty years later, at the risk of ruining an innocent life?” They debated the point and were about to reveal the accused man’s name. I stopped them. They then informed me that they intended to report him to the police as well as to the Israeli authorities. How could I dissuade them? I told them of my encounter with a Blockältester in a bus traveling from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv during the Eichmann trial. They knew the story, having read it in
Legends of Our Time
. “Then you know how I acted in virtually similar circumstances. I let him get away.” The lawyers were not convinced: “Your man didn’t kill your father; this kapo almost killed ours.” I answered, “But you aren’t sure, you can’t be sure.” They persisted, and in a sense, I understood them: it was, after all, their father. Still, I persuaded them not to act hastily.

Why did I refuse to hear the kapo’s name? Again, only the victims interest me.

Are we to be victims of one another?

The truth is I could spend the rest of my days recounting the weeks, months, and eternities I lived in Auschwitz, abandoning all other subjects and devoting my life, my survival, to testifying for those who died in the storm of ashes. But the student of mysticism within me always holds me back: “Wait! One must not say too much. The secret of truth lies in silence.” And that is the dilemma: To be silent is impossible, to speak forbidden. I have therefore chosen to speak of other things—of the Talmud and the Bible, of mysticism and Hasidism. I have written novels and plays about Jerusalem and Moscow. But even while imagining stories ancient and modern, peopled with characters of varying fates, the teller of the tales still lives in the shadow of the flames that once illuminated and blinded him. He sees them, and will see them always. He has sworn never to let them die. Even in heaven, in that world of truth, he will stand before the celestial throne and say, “Look! Look at the flames that burn and burn, hear the mute cries of Your children as they turn to dust and ashes.”

January 1945. Every January carries me back to that one. I was sick. My knee was swollen, and the pain turned my gait into a limp. The merciless Silesian winter had buried us in snow; our bodies were half-frozen. It was hard to walk dragging a body dazed with pain, and impossible to report to the kommando given the fever that racked and deadened me. I had nothing left. I knew that whatever strength I retained
would soon desert me. My father guessed, but stayed silent. He knew everything, my father, but could do nothing. Still, in the end I asked him what to do. My poor father opened and closed his mouth. Like me, he must have been thinking of my mother. I used to complain of my troubles to her, but now I had only him. His emaciated face was dark gray. Did his eyes still gleam? He hesitated to make a decision for me. Going to the KB, the infirmary, would be dangerous. Few patients ever got out, except to be transferred to Birkenau. But if I did nothing, I would not last much longer. Finally he decided: “Go to the KB. At least we’ll find out what’s wrong with you.”

That evening before roll call, I went to the KB. My father waited for me outside, trembling with cold and fear, arms dangling, alone and more lonely than ever. Would we ever see each other again? I walked as quickly as I could, not daring to turn back. A Stubendienst stopped me. “What’s the matter with you?” I showed him my knee. With a sneer of disgust he let me pass. I took my place in line, afraid that my father would catch pneumonia or be driven away with clubs. At last my turn came. A doctor glanced at my knee, touched it. I stifled a scream. “You need an operation,” he said. “Immediately.” I managed to make my way back to my father, who hadn’t budged. “They’re going to operate,” I told him. He didn’t react. “They’re going to operate,” I repeated. His gaze was lost in the distance. “Remember when we took you to Satmàr?” he murmured. Appendicitis … the Rebbe of Borsha’s blessing … the train ride in the middle of Shabbat … the nurse’s tenderness—it all seemed so long ago, events in another life. “It’ll be all right,” my father said. I took his right hand and kissed it, my heart breaking. Every time we separated, even to go to the latrine, I felt the same terror: What if this were the last time? I went back to the infirmary, where another human “miracle” awaited me: One of the doctors, a tall, kind-looking man, tried to comfort me. “It won’t hurt, or not much anyway. Don’t worry, my boy, you’ll live.” He talked to me before the operation, and I heard him again when I woke up. I believe he had kept talking the whole time.

Many years later I went to give a speech at the University of Oslo. Afterward, an elegant, distinguished-looking man came up to me. “I believe we were in the same camp,” he said in a voice that I could never forget. Dr. Leo (Sjua) Eitinger, internationally renowned psychiatrist, and I looked at each other in silence for a long moment, then smiled at the same time. He was among the speakers at the official
dinner following the Nobel ceremony. He spoke simply, as a survivor. That was something else we have in common: He, too, has devoted his life to defending the survivors. And as he spoke, I pictured us back in the camp, among the ghosts.

There is much talk among psychiatrists—possibly too much—about so-called survivors’ guilt. It is the height of irony that the hangmen suffer no such guilt. The defendants at the Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt in the sixties laughed during the proceedings. Only the survivors feel somehow accused: “Why did I survive when so many others perished?” But surely survivors bear no guilt for having escaped death. They had nothing to do with their own survival. Only the executioner had the power to decide who would live and who would die. The victims were told to march and they marched. They were told to halt and they halted. They were told to eat and they ate. They were even told to resign themselves to their fate, and they did that too.

Rumors and images. January 18, 1945. The Red Army is a few kilometers from Auschwitz. Warsaw has just been liberated, and Cracow and Lodz are about to be. Berlin decides to evacuate prisoners to Germany’s interior. Feverish activity sweeps over the camp. Storehouses are emptied, blankets and clothing distributed. Each prisoner is given an entire loaf of bread; the favored ones get four.

My father came to see me in the hospital, managing to slip in amid the general disorder. I told him the patients would be allowed to stay in the KB but …“But what?” he asked. “The thing is … I don’t want to be separated from you.” And I added, “But you could stay with me, couldn’t you?” He asked if that was really possible. I told him it was. There was room, and surveillance had been relaxed. Anything was possible in the mounting chaos. It was a tempting idea, but finally we decided against it. We were afraid. We were sure the Germans would leave no witnesses, that they would kill every last one of us. That was the logic of their monstrous undertaking. They would destroy everything to prevent the free world from discovering the nature and extent of their crimes. We therefore decided to leave with the others, especially since most of the doctors were being evacuated too.

Nearly all the patients who stayed survived, liberated by the Russians nine days later. Had we remained in the infirmary, my father would not have died of hunger and shame in Buchenwald ten days later, and my life would have taken a different course. I would have returned
to Sighet. I would have stayed at his side. I would not have gone to France. What books, if any, would I have written?

In 1979, during an official visit to Moscow, I met the Soviet general Vassily Petrenko, whose troops liberated Auschwitz. We spoke about those days. He told me how the units under his command had prepared for the attack, while I told him how we waited for him and his soldiers. “We waited for you the way a religious Jew awaits the Messiah. Why didn’t you come a few hours earlier? A breakthrough by a few patrols would have saved thousands of lives.” He offered technical explanations having to do with strategy, the weather, logistics. I was not convinced. Was it true that Stalin had deliberately decided not to try to free Soviet prisoners of war? So it was said. The fact is that the Soviet army could have made an effort, but did not. Nor did the American army on its front, later. Historians agree: The death camps did not figure among the objectives set by the general staffs of the Allied armies. Their liberation was not given priority. It happened as if by chance.