All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (17 page)

To this day I am in mourning for my father, perhaps because I didn’t mourn the day I became an orphan. The ordeals that preceded his death remain with me, in all their violence. I described them in
Night:
the death march to Gleiwitz, sleeping in the snow, the train journey standing up in open wagons exposed to the elements, the demented cries of the living dead before our arrival in Buchenwald. Here again, I could spend my life retelling that story. How can I silence the cries that rage within me? I remember being trampled and then pulled to my feet. We were all hallucinating. Walking dead, we no longer dreaded death. We were stronger than death. I don’t know why, but I saw myself on the evening of Kol Nidre, surrounded by the faithful draped in their ritual shawls, the living and the dead intermingled, ready to rise to heaven to plead the cause of humanity vanquished by Satan. I remember shouting with the others, howling the words of the Shma Israel and the Kaddish and other incantations that spilled out onto the snow. Borne by the wind, they would cover the earth, the universe, from end to end. Hand in hand, our heads buried in heavy, wet blankets, my father and I swung to and fro, like in the old days in the Beit Hamidrash.

The hot shower on our arrival in Buchenwald did us good. But then we were driven outdoors naked. We were in the “small camp,”
huge barracks, packed to overflowing. “Let’s stay together,” my father said as we were shoved forward, echoing my poor mother’s words. Like wreckage barely human, we clung to each other so as not to go under. We were both feverish, but my fathers fever was different from mine. He was already sick. Dense, irresistible human waves divided us. We shouted, found each other again. They were giving out hot coffee at the gate. Should we go and get some? No, better not. Better not risk being separated in the roiling, hysterical crowd. We decided to wait for soup. It would come, it would come, but we needed it soon. I had my father sit down on a nearby pallet as I ran to the gate where they were giving out food. When I came back, my father was gone. In a panic, I asked around, but no one had seen him. I put the rations down and went looking for him, and suddenly there he was. He had gone to the latrine. He was sick, my father was sick, and I was desperate.

Many years later Jorge Semprun and I were exchanging memories of Buchenwald. He had been in the main camp. Working in the Schreibstube, the office, he did not endure the hunger and cold. He knew the small camp at a distance. The fate of the Jews was unlike that of the non-Jews. We were in the same place, and yet.

My father was getting worse. He was dying. It was the darkest day of my life, a day heavy with meaning. I was weak and sick myself. Though I ached to help him, I did not know how. I would have done anything, would have gladly given him my blood, my life. I was ready to die in his place. Except that my time had not yet come.

I pleaded with the doctors, the Stubendienst, the Creator Himself: Do something for my father. They were all merciless. Several times we were driven outside to clean the barracks. My father couldn’t move. I wanted to stay with him, but was driven out with clubs. I pretended to be sick or dying. My father was calling for me, and I didn’t want to let him down. He was talking to me, but his words were incoherent. Was he trying to leave me his last will? At one point he whispered something about the jewelry we had buried, about the money we had given to Christian friends for safekeeping. I refused to listen. I didn’t care about all the world’s riches. My father was dying and I was in pain. He shuddered and called my name. I tried to get up, tried to crawl to him, but the torturers were there, forbidding all movement. I wanted to cry out, Hold on, Father, hold on. In a minute, a second, I’ll be at your side, I’ll listen to you, talk to you, I won’t let you die alone. My father was dying and I was bursting with pain. I
didn’t want to leave him, but I did. I was forced to. They were beating me, I was losing consciousness. He moaned, and I waited for the torturers to go away. He was weeping softly, like a child, and I felt my chest coming apart. He groaned, and my body crumbled. Powerless, crushed by remorse, I knew that however long I lived, I would never be able to free myself of that guilt: My father was twisting with pain, dying, and I was near him, but helpless. My father called to me and I could not rush to hold his hand. Suddenly I saw Grandma Nissel. I begged her to accompany me to the House of Study. We opened the ark, prayed to the Holy Torah to intercede for my dying father. She held out her hand, but I touched only emptiness. I bit my knuckles until they hurt, I wanted to howl, but the pain was so bad I could only murmur, the pain was so bad I wanted to die.

I was sixteen years old when my father died. My father was dead and the pain was gone. I no longer felt anything. Someone had died inside me, and that someone was me.

I couldn’t cry. My heart was broken, but I had no more tears. I had taken leave of myself: the dead do not weep. Hardly anyone wept in the camp, as though fearing that if you started, you could never stop. Freedom, for us, would mean being able to weep again.

I lurched across the camp, reeling, staggering, my mind numb. I saw myself among the dead, seeking my father as if to tell him, Look, I’m with you, I’m here at your side.

The truth is I had no need to tell him. He knew everything, as I knew everything about him. Just before he died he had a terrifying moment of lucidity. He opened his eyes wide. His ravaged gray face was stamped with dread. He gave a little cry and must have died soon afterward. A minute later or an hour, I’m not sure. I didn’t see him die. I saw him dying, and then he was gone. When and where did they take him? I didn’t want to find out. I was afraid.

With my father dead, I felt curiously free; free to go under, to let myself drift into death.

Whenever I think of him, I relive his agony and a knot forms in my chest. I feel myself becoming an orphan. Yes, you can be orphaned more than once, no matter how old you are. And every time is the first time.

I picture him and tell myself I will never see him grow old. I am already older than he was when he died.

And the heartrending question keeps coming back. What if we had stayed in the infirmary? He might have survived. Who knows, I
might have found a way to make him happy, at peace and proud of his son.

On December 10, 1986, at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, as I was about to deliver my acceptance speech in the presence of the Norwegian king and parliament, the diplomatic corps and the world press, I felt unable to utter a word, for Egil Aarvik, president of the Nobel Committee, had mentioned my father in his address: “You were with your father when he passed away; it was the darkest hour of your life. And this is the most glorious. It is therefore fitting that your own son be with you as you receive the highest distinction humanity can bestow upon one of its own.” I was shaken by the linking of my father and my son. I saw them standing together. My lips moved, but no sound came out. Tears filled my eyes, the tears I couldn’t shed so long ago.

With my father gone, I sank into a lethargy that lasted until liberation, on April 11, 1945. I had no desire to live. I didn’t know what was going on in the camp or even in my barracks. I knew nothing anymore, didn’t want to know. For all practical purposes, I had become one of the “Mussulmen” drifting beyond life, into death as into water, no longer hungry, thirsty, or sleepy, fearing neither death nor beatings. They were dead but didn’t know it. These few weeks, devoid of sense and content, are treated in just a few pages in
Night
. I did not line up for bread and soup. I waited for nothing and no one. I drifted through time and sank into a dreamless sleep. When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. I no longer counted hours or days. They were all the same to me. Now, with hindsight, I remember certain young inmates from Kovno and Vilna with whom I mechanically played chess (with chessmen made of cardboard). I remember that during Passover I attended services in our barracks morning and evening. But it was another person who lived these events.

Was it on the night of April 5 (the seventh day of Passover) that the SS guards ordered all Jews to assemble in the Appelplatz, the parade ground? On the way we were intercepted by the camp police, the Lagerschütz. They were supposed to herd us to the Appelplatz, but instead they warned us to return to the barracks and hide. Prevent evacuation! That was the directive of the Resistance. But I was so detached from reality that I didn’t even know there was an underground movement in the camp.

Years later, during an official dinner in Jerusalem, the Norwegian
ambassador to Israel told me, “I’m happy to see you again—I say again because we may have seen each other in Buchenwald.” Like most of the Norwegian students imprisoned in the camp, he had belonged to the Lagerschütz. “I’ve been looking for you ever since April 5, 1945,” I replied, “to thank you for saving my life.”

Several times during the days before liberation, my block was ordered to the Appelplatz for evacuation. In my enfeebled state, I could never have endured even a single day of forced march. Whether it was fate or providence, on each occasion either air raids forced us back into the “small camp,” or the daily quota of evacuees had been filled, and my group was sent back to barracks. The Stubenälteste, a certain Gustav, a Polish Jew, ruled over Barracks 66. Of course, he favored the Polish adolescents. There were those who later held it against him.

On April 10 we were back on the Appelplatz, ready to be evacuated. But once again we were told to go back: “Tomorrow will definitely be your turn. The last convoy leaves tomorrow.” That day I stayed behind. Someone else took my place. Since then I have often wondered who left because I stayed behind. I will never know him, but I know I owe him my life.

Buchenwald was liberated on April 11, 1945. Actually, the camp liberated itself. Armed members of the Resistance rose up a few hours before the magical appearance of the first American units. Gustav ran from barracks to barracks in our “small camp,” his pockets stuffed with grenades. Elated prisoners put the SS to flight. Soviet prisoners of war commandeered American jeeps and drove off to punish the inhabitants of Weimar, city of Goethe. Some of us organized a minyan and said Kaddish. That Kaddish, at once a glorification of God’s name and a protest against His creation, still echoes in my ears. It was a thanksgiving for having spared us, but it was also an outcry: “Why did You not spare so many others?”

Strangely, we did not “feel” the victory. There were no joyous embraces, no shouts or songs to mark our happiness, for that word was meaningless to us. We were not happy. We wondered whether we ever would be.

Later I would hear speeches and read articles hailing the Allies’ triumph over Hitler’s Germany. For us, Jews, there was a slight nuance: Yes, Hitler lost the war, but we didn’t win it. We mourned too many dead to speak of victory.

I wandered the camp dazed and confused, joining one group only to drift to another. Glancing at the sky, staring at the ground, I was looking for something, though I didn’t know what. Maybe someone to whom I could say, “Hey, look at me, I’m alive!” Another word that didn’t mean much. Would I ever again know what it meant to be alive?

I will never forget the American soldiers and the horror that could be read in their faces. I will especially remember one black sergeant, a muscled giant, who wept tears of impotent rage and shame, shame for the human species, when he saw us. He spewed curses that on his lips became holy words. We tried to lift him onto our shoulders to show our gratitude, but we didn’t have the strength. We were too weak even to applaud him.

A soldier threw us some cans of food. I caught one and opened it. It was lard, but I didn’t know that. Unbearably hungry—I had not eaten since April 5—I stared at the can and was about to taste its contents, but just as my tongue touched it I lost consciousness.

I spent several days in the hospital (the former SS hospital) in a semiconscious state. When I was discharged, I felt drained. It took all my mental resources to figure out where I was. I knew my father was dead. My mother was probably dead, since Mengele would have considered her too old to work. Likewise my grandmother. My little sister was too little. I hoped Bea and Hilda might still be alive, but how could I find out? Lists were being circulated. Racked with anxiety, I devoured them. I found nothing but was told not to lose heart: other lists were being drawn up. They came, and I leapt upon them. Still there was nothing. Here and there my eye fell upon a Wiesel, but no Bea or Hilda. Feig, Deutsch, Hollander, Slomowics—some names of cousins were there, thank God. But where were Bea and Hilda? Each list carved a deeper void within me. I was free, but I was more distraught than ever.

We held meeting after meeting. What were we to do now? Where should we go? We could not stay where we were indefinitely.

The American military authorities urged us to make a decision. There were about four hundred of us children and adolescents—the youngest a boy of six or eight, the future chief rabbi of Israel, Israel Meir Lau. The future scientist Izso Rosenman was a little older. Some men from Sighet, who had arrived from neighboring camps, urged us to go home. “We’ll be greeted like princes,” one of them said. “We’ll be able to do whatever we want,” someone else added. “We will represent
an enormous political force,” a dedicated Communist declared. “Let’s use it to build a new society.” Still another said: “Let’s go home, if only to seek vengeance.” Only a few were convinced. We were afraid to go back to our empty houses.

“Okay,” the American officers said. “We can understand why you don’t want to go home. But where
do
you want to go?”

“Palestine,” some answered.

I concurred. It was the only country whose name resonated within me.

“Do you have any family there?”

“Yes,” said one of the group. “We do.”

“Who?”

“Joshua,” he replied. “And Amos. Isaiah. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi.”

“Not Moses?” the officer asked with a smile.

“No. Moses never made it to the Holy Land.”

The officer shook his head sadly. “Neither will you, I’m afraid. You’re in the same political and legal situation as Moses: the English really don’t want you there.”