From the Kingdom of Memory (17 page)

Is this the reason Klaus Barbie, like Adolph Eichmann before him, does not feel guilty? Except for Höss, the commander of Auschwitz, condemned and hanged in Poland, no killer has repented. Their logic? There had to be executioners to eliminate a million and a half Jewish children; killers were
needed
to annihilate four and a half million Jewish adults.

Auschwitz and Treblinka, Maidanek and Ponar, Belzec and Mauthausen, and so many others, so many other names: the apocalypse was everywhere. Everywhere, mute processions headed toward pits filled with dead bodies. Very few tears, very little crying. From their appearance, resigned, thoughtful, the victims seemed to be leaving the world without regret. It was as though these men and women were choosing not to live in a society disfigured, denatured by hatred and violence.

After the war, the survivor tried to tell about it,
bear witness … but who could find words to speak of the unspeakable?

The contemplative silence of old people who knew, of children who were afraid of knowing … the horror of mothers who had gone mad, the terrifying lucidity of mad people in a delirious world … the grave chant of a rabbi reciting the Kaddish, the murmur of his followers going after him to the very end, to heaven … the good little girl undressing her younger brother … telling him not to be afraid; no, one must not be afraid of death … perhaps she said, One must not be afraid of dead people.…

And in the city, the grand, ancient city of Kiev, that mother and her two children in front of some German soldiers who are laughing … they take one child from her and kill it before her eyes … then, they seize the second and kill it too.… She wants to die; the killers prefer her to remain alive but inhabited by death.… Then, she takes the two little bodies, hugs them against her chest and begins to dance … how can one describe that mother? How can one tell of her dance? In this tragedy, there is something that hurts beyond hurting—and I do not know what it is.

I know we must speak. I do not know how. Since this crime is absolute, all language is imperfect. Which is why there is such a feeling of powerlessness in the survivor. It was easier for him to imagine
himself free in Auschwitz than it would be for a free man to imagine himself a prisoner in Auschwitz. That is the problem: no one who has not experienced the event will ever be able to understand it. And yet, the survivor is conscious of his duty to bear witness. To tell the tale. To protest every time any “revisionist,” morally perverse as he may be, dares to deny the death of those who died. And the truthfulness of the memory transmitted by the survivors.

For the survivors, however, it is getting late. Their number is diminishing. They meet one another more and more often at funerals. Can one die more than once? Yes, one can. The survivor dies every time he rejoins, in his thoughts, the nightly procession he has never really left. How can he detach himself from them without betraying them? For a long time he talked to them, as I talk to my mother and my little sister: I still see them moving away under the fiery sky.… I ask them to forgive me for not following them.…

It is for the dead, but also for the survivors, and even more for their children—and yours—that this trial is important: it will weigh on the future. In the name of justice? In the name of memory. Justice without memory is an incomplete justice, false and unjust. To forget would be an absolute injustice in the same way that Auschwitz was the absolute crime. To forget would be the enemy’s final triumph.

The fact is that the enemy kills twice—the second time in trying to obliterate the traces of his crime. That is why he pushed his outrageous, terrifying plan to the limits of language, and well beyond: to situate it out of reach, out of our range of perception. “Even if you survive, even if you tell, no one will believe you,” an S. S. told a young Jew somewhere in Galicia.

This trial has already contradicted that killer. The witnesses have spoken; their truth has entered the awareness of humanity. Thanks to them, the Jewish children of Izieu will never be forgotten.

As guardians of their invisible graves, graves of ash encrusted in a sky of eternal night and fog, we must remain faithful to them. We must try. To refuse to speak, when speech is awaited, would be to acknowledge the ultimate triumph of despair.

“Do you seek fire?” said a great Hasidic rabbi. “Seek it in the ash.” This is what you have been doing here since the beginning of this trial, this is what we have attempted to do since the Liberation. We have sought, in the ash, a truth to affirm—despite everything—man’s dignity; it exists only in memory.

Thanks to this trial, the survivors have a justification for their survival. Their testimony counts, their memories will be part of the collective memory. Of course, nothing can bring the dead back to life. But because of the meetings that have taken place within these precincts, because of the words spoken, the accused
will not be able to kill the dead again. If he had succeeded it would not have been his fault, but ours.

Though it takes place under the sign of justice, this trial must also honor memory.

When Memory Brings People Together
^*

This lullaby was written in the ghetto by Shmelke Katchegirsky. Grieving Jewish mothers would chant it, trying to put their hungry and suffering children to sleep.

Tombs? These children—these innocent little children—were deprived of everything: their lives and even a burial place.

And so, hush, little children, one million of you, hush, come: we invite you. We invite you into our memory.

Yiddish in the Reichstag? There is significance in using this warm, melancholy, and compassionate language in a place where Jewish suffering and Jewish agony, some fifty years ago, aroused neither mercy nor compassion.

Yiddish was the tongue of many, if not most, of the Jewish victims who perished during the dark period when the Angel of Death seemed to have replaced God in too many hearts in this country. Yiddish too was their target and their victim.

There is significance, too—as there is irony and justice—in my speaking to you this afternoon from this very rostrum where my own death, and the death of my family, and the death of my friends, and the death of my teachers, and the death of my entire people
were decreed by the legally elected leader of Germany. I would betray the dead were I not to remind you that his poisonous words did
not
make him unpopular with his people. Most applauded with fervor; some, very few, remained silent. Fewer still objected. How many Jews found shelter in how many German homes during the Kristallnacht? How many Germans tried to help extinguish the flames engulfing the synagogues? How many tried to save holy scrolls? How many cared?

In those days and nights humanity itself seemed to have been distorted and twisted in this city and nation which are proud of their distant history, but struggling with their recent memories. Everything human and divine was perverted then. The Law itself had become immoral. Here, in this city, in this place, it had become legal and commendable to humiliate Jews simply for being Jews and to hunt down children simply because they were Jewish children. It became legal and praiseworthy to imprison, shame, oppress, and, ultimately, destroy human beings—sons and daughters of an ancient people—because their very existence was considered a crime.

The official decision to implement the Final Solution was made at the highest level of German hierarchy, at a relatively brief but practical and congenial meeting that took place on January 20, 1942, in Wannsee.

The high officials who participated in the meeting
knew that they acted on behalf of their government and in the name of the German people, which supported that government.

The atrocities committed under the law of the Third Reich
must not
and
will not
be forgotten; nor will they be forgiven. I said it when I was here nearly two years ago: I have no right to forgive the killers for having exterminated six million of my kinsmen. Only the dead can forgive; and no one has the right to speak on their behalf.

Still, not all citizens who were alive then were guilty. As a Jew, I have never believed in collective guilt. Only the guilty were guilty. Children of killers are not killers, but children. I have neither the desire nor the authority to judge today’s generation for the unspeakable crimes that were committed by that of Hitler. But we may—and we must—hold it responsible, not for the past, but for the way it remembers the past. And for what it does with the memory of the past.

“Memory” is the key word. To remember is to create links between past and present, between past and future. To remember is to affirm man’s faith in humanity and to convey meaning on our fleeting endeavors. The aim of memory is to restore its dignity to justice.

It is in the name of memory that I address myself to Germany’s youth. “Remember” is the commandment that dominates the life of young Jews today;
let it dominate yours as well. Challenged by memory, you could move forward. Opposed to memory, you are bound to remain eternally opposed to us and to all we stand for.

Memory means to live in more than one world, to be tolerant and understanding with one another, to accept the mystery inherent in questions and the suspicion linked to answers. Naturally, it can also bring forth tensions and conflicts, but they can then be transformed into culture, art, education, spiritual inquiry, the quest for truth, the quest for justice. Without memory, mankind’s image of itself would be impoverished.

Of course, I understand—for you, it is not easy to remember. It may even be more difficult than it is for us as Jews. We try to remember the dead; you must remember those who killed them. Yes—there is pain involved in both attempts. Not the same pain. Open yourselves to yours, as we have opened ourselves to ours.

You find it hard to believe that your elders did those things? So do I. Think of the tormentors as I think of their victims. I remember every minute of their agony. I see them constantly. I am afraid: If I stop seeing them, they will die. I keep on seeing them, and they died nevertheless.

I remember: January 20, 1942, in my childhood town. It must have been a day like any other. Some
Jewish children were playing with snowmen, others studied hard at school. They were already dead here, in Berlin, and they did not know it.

There is something in all this I do not understand—and never will. Why such determination on the part of the killer to kill so many of my people? Why the old men and women? Why the children? Why an entire people? How was all that made possible?

You young men and women in Germany must ask yourselves similar questions—or the same questions.

A people that had produced Goethe and Schiller, Bach and Beethoven, had suddenly chosen to put its national genius in the service of evil and erect a monument named Auschwitz to its dark power.

A community that had contributed to culture and education, as few nations had, called culture and education into question. Now we know many killers had college degrees and were products of the best universities in Europe. Many came from distinguished families. I often wonder about the theological implications of Auschwitz, but here I must also recognize that Auschwitz was not sent down from heaven; Auschwitz was conceived, planned, constructed, managed, and justified by people. What human beings did there to other human beings will affect future generations. After Auschwitz, hope itself is filled with anguish.

But—after Auschwitz, hope is necessary. Where can it be found? In remembrance alone.

After the war, it took many Germans too long to
confront their past. Teachers did not teach, and pupils did not learn, the most tragic and important chapter in German history and world history. To confront it would be too painful, was the explanation. It took the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem for German courts to indict S. S. murderers who, after the war, quietly returned to their homes and resumed their trades—as if nothing had happened.

True, the situation in East Germany remains worse. Unlike the Federal Republic, which did make serious attempts under Konrad Adenauer to compensate survivors and help Israel, East Germany is hostile to Israel and refuses to pay reparations. East Germany, like Austria, behaves without the slightest trace of remorse.

The Federal Republic has chosen a more honest and enlightened course of action. You have succeeded, in a few decades, in creating a transition from brutal totalitarianism to true democracy. Individual freedom is respected. Your commitment to the Western alliance is strong.