All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (12 page)

The truth is that some Jews in Sighet could have escaped the ghetto. It was a mild spring, and they had only to flee to the mountains until the ordeal was over. Maria—our old housekeeper, wonderful Maria who had worked for us since I was born—begged us to follow her to her home. She offered us her cabin in a remote hamlet. There would be room for all six of us, and Grandma Nissel as well. Seven in one cabin? Yes, she swore it, as Christ was her witness. She would take care of us, she would handle everything. We said no, politely but firmly. We did so because we still didn’t know what was in store for us.

It was April 1944, just a few weeks before the Allied landing in Normandy, but the Jews of Sighet had not been informed of the ramifications of the Final Solution. The free world, including Jewish leaders in America and Palestine, had known since 1942, but we knew nothing. Why didn’t they warn us? Though this in no way attenuates the guilt of the killers and their accomplices, it is impossible not to feel indignation at the passivity of our brothers and sisters in America and Palestine. How many of our people would have escaped the enemy if Roosevelt, Churchill, Ben-Gurion, Weizmann, and the leading lights of world Jewry had issued radio appeals: “Hungarian Jews, don’t let yourselves be locked into ghettos, don’t get into the cattle cars! Flee, hide in the caves, take refuge in the woods!” Had we been told that the road from the ghettos led to the railroad stations, and that the trains’ destination was Auschwitz, had we been told what Auschwitz meant, many Sighet Jews would have chosen to go underground—and thereby would have survived.

This question has haunted me ever since the war: Why did the Jews of the free world act as they did? Hadn’t our people survived persecution and exile throughout the centuries because of its spirit of solidarity? Driven from their land after the defeat of Judea, the Jews found a haven among their brothers in Rome and Cyprus. Expelled from Spain, they were welcomed by their fellow Jews in Turkey and the Netherlands. When one community suffered, the others supported it, throughout the Diaspora. Why was it different this time?

In my first essay on the Eichmann trial, published in
Commentary
, I suggested that, before condemning the criminals and their accomplices, we confess our own shortcomings. Free Jews did not do all they could to save the Jews of Europe. The Palmach in Palestine could have
sent emissaries to Poland and Hungary to train Jews for combat, or at least to inform them. It did not.

This article drew the wrath of Golda Meir, then Israeli minister of foreign affairs. “You forget,” she replied, “that the world was at war, that Palestine was under a British mandate. How could our boys have reached occupied Europe?” Usually I didn’t dare argue with her. I respected her and was careful not to irritate her. But this time I decided to answer: “Every boy or girl who risked his or her life going from ghetto to ghetto or community to community to maintain contact among persecuted Jews ran a greater risk than your emissaries. Yet they accepted this risk, while your men were ordered to remain in Palestine.”

“You’re forgetting the paratroopers,” Golda said. “They were ready to go, as soon as the British army gave its green light.”

“Exactly,” I replied. “The paratroopers. Their courage and heroism are laudable. But by the time they arrived in Budapest, there were almost no Jews left to save in the provinces.”

This is an observation that applies equally well to Raoul Wallenberg, to whom we will be eternally grateful. He risked life and liberty, abandoning the security of his home in Sweden for the Hungarian capital, where he saved thousands of Jews. But for the Jews of the provinces, it was too late.

For us it was too late, in every sense. Sacrificed, abandoned, and betrayed, delivered to the invader and left to face him alone, we were ignored by everyone but the enemy. He alone paid attention to us. And when he drove us to the ghetto, we went.

I see images of exodus and uprooting, reminiscent of a past buried in memory; ravaged, dazed, disoriented faces. Everything changed overnight. A few words uttered by a man in a uniform, and the order of Creation collapsed. Everything was dismantled: ties were severed, words were emptied of their meaning. Homes became unrecognizable; my house was no longer my own. Everything a family had managed to accumulate in a lifetime had to be left behind. Utensils, clothing, pots and pans, books, and furniture: it was all too heavy, too burdensome, to be carried to the small room or cellar to which the family would be assigned in the ghetto. There were wrenching scenes: an old Hasid, Reb Feivish, pushing a child’s carriage before him. He is alone, weeping. A young boy offers help. Reb Feivish tries to thank him, but his voice is choked by sobs. The chief rabbi and his family
had to move. So did the Borsher Rebbe, and Reb Shloime Heller, the rabbinical judge, and the leaders of the community. It was exile within exile, incessant comings and goings, as though the city had become a whirling carousel. My head was spinning too. I wanted to be everywhere at once, to see it all, absorb it all, give everyone a hand. For we were among the lucky ones: since our house was within the designated quarter, we didn’t have to move, but only had to rearrange the rooms, keeping the largest one and giving the others to relatives. The Reichs moved in with us, and I gave their daughters Hebrew lessons. I searched in vain for my Kabalist master. I was told he was in the smaller ghetto, across town. I wanted to believe he was in hiding somewhere. Perhaps he had used his formulas and amulets to make himself invisible. Could he hear me? Why do you do nothing to disarm the enemy? Conversant as you are with celestial mysteries, why don’t you call upon their Creator? Is it not your duty to repel evil? The inhabitants of the ghetto, after all, are doing theirs.

There was generosity and mutual aid; no theft, quarrels, or recriminations, no petty jealousy. Here was Jewish solidarity in action.

My former classmates and I sporadically continued our study of the sacred texts, most often meeting in Ezra Malek’s garden. We would sit on the grass under a tree and ponder complex problems relating to fasting or holidays. Perhaps analyzing the positions of Rav and his adversary Shmuel would help us forget the ever more pressing danger.

The Germans demanded that the ghetto supply a daily battalion of Jewish workers. Lists were drawn up, and few avoided this draft—not out of fear, but out of compassion: If I don’t go, someone else will have to, and that wouldn’t be moral; it wouldn’t be Jewish.

Later I would read much outrageous critical commentary about the Judenrat and the Jewish police in the ghettos. Were they guilty of trying to survive at any price, even while striving to save as many lives as possible? Were they collaborators or martyrs? In general, I would speak in their defense. There were many people like Adam Czerniakow in Warsaw, who killed himself the day the Germans demanded a daily quota of ten thousand Jews for Treblinka. But what about Chaim Rumkowski, “king” of the Lodz ghetto? Is he, too, defensible? No, he lived too comfortably, too “luxuriously,” for me to speak on his behalf. Yet I consider him a victim too, a victim of oppression, of the murderous, dehumanizing order the hangmen imposed on the entire Jewish people. Were the Jewish kapos victims too? Yes, they were—
with a few exceptions. In those days all Jews were victims, even if all the victims were not Jews.

Some commentators have compared the “elders of the Judenrat” to Pétain, ascribing the same good intentions (the effort to interpose themselves between the conquerors and the conquered) and the same errors (one cannot mingle with the enemy without being drawn into his logic) to both. But I don’t like analogies. No Jewish “elder” commanded the powers or resources of a Pétain or a Laval. The Judenräte headed not states but prisons. And let us not forget that the “elders,” too, were condemned to death because they were Jews. They enjoyed special privileges and they were able to eat their fill, but did they hold the power of life or death over their fellow Jews? Here we must say no, not really. The killers and their accomplices kept this right for themselves. True, the various Jewish officials could bestow favors, appoint assistants, and issue work permits, ration cards, or housing permits to relatives or friends, who were thereby granted a moment of respite until the next “action.” But no more than that. In the end all the ghettos were liquidated, along with their chiefs.

In our ghetto these ethical questions did not arise. Its leaders had no dilemmas of conscience to confront. We stayed too brief a time for a new social structure to be established or for conflicts to erupt. There was barely more than a month: that was not enough for our rules and customs to wither. True, the Germans appointed an assimilated engineer to the post of Judenälteste, or Jewish elder, but it was still the president of the community who had the ear and the respect of its members. We listened to the chief rabbi, not the police. I don’t know of a single case in which anyone is alleged to have been beaten or humiliated by the Jewish police or the Judenrat. Despite the overcrowding and strict rationing, there were no incidents of hatred or rancor. There was little or no corruption.

With hindsight I realize that it was in the ghetto that I truly began to love the Jews of my town. Throughout the ordeal they maintained their dignity as human beings and as Jews. Imprisoned, reduced to subhuman status, they showed themselves still capable of spiritual greatness. Against the enemy they stood as one, affirming their faith in their faith. Yes, I know very well that a community cannot be judged on its behavior over just a few weeks. But this is a question not of judgment but of love.

And I do love them, the Jews of my town, the Jews of the ghetto. That’s why I glorify them in my writings—and I make no secret of it.
Unlike some of my colleagues, I refuse to dwell on ugliness and abjection. My characters are not sexually obsessed or pathologically greedy. Of course, they were not all messianic dreamers and aspiring poets. What of it? The enemy has heaped enough abuse on these Jews without my adding to it. He cast them into the mud and then denounced them as dirty. He starved them and then mocked their weakness. He distorted their features and then ridiculed their appearance. He tortured them, sickened them with sorrow and solitude, then called them madmen.

But to me the Jews of Sighet are neither ugly nor repulsive. Stripped of their property, crushed and mutilated, they still embody the nobility of Israel and the eternity of God, while their enemy—who is your enemy as well—embodies all that is most vile in man. I shall act not as their detractor, but as their
melitz yosher
, their intercessor. But no, I speak too soon. Who am I, what special merit entitles me to intercede on their behalf? They have no further need of that. On the contrary, may they be intercessors for me and mine on high, and may I be worthy of them.

It was a black Saturday in May. I have told the story and will tell it again, will tell it forever, hoping to find in it some hidden truth, some vague hope of salvation.

Events unfolded faster and faster. By imposing his own pace, the enemy became time’s master, and time itself became our enemy. Two high-ranking Gestapo officers arrived (we were later told that one of them was Eichmann himself, which is why I think I recognized him during his trial in Jerusalem). The Council of Elders was summoned for an emergency meeting. We waited anxiously for my father, who had gone out in search of news. Neighbors gathered, and a rumor spread like fire—transports, something about transports.

The first convoy was to leave the following morning, but our street would not be part of it. We spent the night helping friends and neighbors get ready. “Do you need clothes? Cookies, eggs, flour?” There were scenes of wrenching resignation, but of tenderness as well. I knocked on neighbors’ doors, murmured words of farewell, clasped hands, said goodbye to Yerahmiel, asked the blessing of the Slotvener Rebbe, respectfully kissed the hand of the Borsher Rebbe, went away and came back. Ovens burned everywhere. Everyone prepared for the long journey, comforted one another: We won’t be separated long, we’ll see each other again soon … after the war. At dawn the men said
their prayers before slipping their talit and tefillin into their rucksacks. It was a beautiful, unusually hot, sunny day. The streets teemed with distraught men and women. They were thirsty, but the gendarmes prevented them from going back into what had been their last shelter, even for an instant. My sisters and I moved among them with pots and bottles filled with water. Little Tsipouka had never seemed so small, nor so grown up. She gave sick people many times her age a drink of water. At last the convoy set out—in a hush, a kind of religious contemplation. The chief rabbi, his beard cut off, walked wearily, his bag slung over his shoulder. I averted my eyes; to see him like that was unbearable. And my teachers, my classmates—each of them took along a part of me. I felt ill, I had never felt so ill. I wanted to shout, to scream like a madman. I wished I were mad, like my two friends, God’s madmen, who had lost their minds on a battlefield strewn with dreams and mystic dreamers. Where was the Messiah now, my friends? Then suddenly there they were, too weak to walk, being carried on stretchers. I said goodbye to them, called out for them to hold on.

Soon it would be our turn, but for now we simply followed the convoy to the ghettos exit. We were ashamed to be staying behind. Numb, filled with anguish, we went home and gathered in the kitchen, as if in mourning. The convoy had not yet left town. We were told that the people would spend the night at the synagogue, far from us, already so far. An eerie calm fell over the abandoned homes. Those who remained in the main ghetto went from house to house simply to shake hands, to start conversations which reassured them they were still alive.

We spent that night in the yard, listening to Soviet artillery, whose firings lit the mountaintops. They were only a dozen miles or so away. With a little luck the Red Army would arrive before the cattle cars. One attack, one small shift of the front, and we would be saved. That would be too beautiful, too miraculous. But this was not a time of miracles. God held them back. For whom? For when?