Read And the Sea Is Never Full Online
Authors: Elie Wiesel
And the Sea Is Never Full (22 page)
In the town of Iasi, Romania, during a commemoration of the 1941 massacre of the Jews, a hysterical woman interrupts my speech: “Lies, lies! No Jew was ever killed here! Nor anywhere else!” Her cohorts applaud. She is asked to leave. The many officials present are embarrassed. The governor apologizes, as does the mayor, the prime minister, the president. Later I am told that the woman was the daughter of the Fascist general Antonescu’s former chief of police.
It sometimes happens that before taking the floor I must listen to three, four, five speakers. They don’t all recognize the virtue of brevity. They remind me of a story told to me by Meyer Weisgal, Chaim Weizmann’s close associate: During a charity dinner a speaker launched into a riverlike discourse, giving no hint of exhaustion. Eventually, Weisgal tugged at his arm and whispered without undue discretion: “But, sir, that’s enough; please stop!” The speaker’s pitiful reply: “I’d like to…. I just don’t know how.”
In the course of my public lectures I sometimes am interrupted by listeners impatient to express their disagreement. At the Centre Rachi, in Paris, during a presentation on Rabbi Akiba’s troubling adventure in the
Pardes
, the orchard of forbidden knowledge, a woman yelled incoherently. She came up to me at the end and explained the reason for her anger. It seems I should have condemned Rabbi Akiba. And why would I condemn the founder of the Talmud? “Because he cheated on his wife with the governor’s spouse.”
Another kind of incident occurred in Washington, where the Kennedy Foundation organized an international “Science and Conscience” conference. The inaugural session was followed by several roundtable discussions. Participating in mine were the Nobel laureate biochemist Jacques Monod, Mother Teresa, and a few academics. I spoke of Jewish attitudes toward living beings: To save a human life one has the right—even the duty—to violate the laws of Shabbat. The moderator, an assimilated Jew who was evidently uncomfortable at hearing a Jew speak of his Jewishness in front of such an elite public, pulled the microphone away from me in the middle of my speech. I was too shocked to react, but a priest seated in the rear rose to protest.
In Moscow, things didn’t go so well either. As I began to speak—this was in January 1990—during a conference entitled “Global Survival,” I stressed the role of memory in education. Again, I was expressing my views as a Jew. I asked Mikhail Gorbachev for a firmer stance against racism and anti-Semitism. Quoting Soviet radio, which described the “pogroms” in Armenia, I chose to demonstrate that all hatreds are linked. I asked that Stalin’s crimes be recognized as crimes against humanity. And that investigators, policemen, torturers, judges, and executioners be denied leniency. I asked the president of the Soviet Union to open the archives of the infamous Stalin-era trials. We have the right, I insisted, to know details of the imprisonment and execution of Yiddish writers such as Peretz Markish and Der Nister. A Jordanian delegate expressed his displeasure. He was furious with me and said so openly. Yet I had not even mentioned the Middle East; I had not pled for Israel. He took exception because, apparently, my discourse was … too Jewish. He then evoked Yitzhak Shamir, whom he called a hawk. I was Jewish, he was Jewish, therefore we were all hawks. And all guilty. Guilty of dwelling on our past. After all, the Jordanian delegate proudly concluded, he, too, had been in Auschwitz. He omitted to say that he had been there … as a tourist.
In Madrid during a Young Presidents Organization conference, I am constantly reminded of the 1492 expulsion of the Jews and therefore deal with the theme of exile. In the beginning was exile. The child is exiled from his mother’s womb. Then he is exiled from his home to attend school, and from his family to get married. I note that in our time we experienced the ultimate exile: The victim ceased being a person and became an object. To general surprise, a German businessman rises, red with indignation: He has had enough of feeling guilty, he says. He has had enough of hearing about the past. It is time to … That is when I put him in his place by asking a series of questions, each one beginning with the words: “How dare you….”
This confrontation becomes the topic of subsequent conversations. The German delegation requests a meeting with me. I ask whether the delegate had spoken on their behalf. After consulting briefly they express their disapproval of their fellow delegate, who promptly asks to be heard again. I refuse to listen unless he first apologizes. He finally does.
In all my lectures on Jewish themes, I emphasize Judaism’s ethics, which, by definition, decry racism. A Jew must not be racist; Jews are committed to fighting any system that sees in the other an inferior being. That is why anyone—regardless of his or her color, ethnicity, or social standing—can become a Jew; all he or she has to do is accept the Law. On the other hand, every person is entitled to dignity and respect; no need to espouse Judaism for that.
Invited to address a prestigious South African university, I set a condition: Black students must be allowed to attend. The university agrees. People commend my “courageous attitude.” But it was not a matter of courage—it was simply a matter of not giving in to a system I abhor. As a rule I like to speak to mixed audiences: young and less young, Jews and Christians, believers and nonbelievers.
During a conference of Catholic intellectuals a speaker declares that the Holocaust presents as serious a problem for Jews as it does for Christians. I feel the need to correct him. And I remember the shock I provoked when I said: “Just a moment, my friends. The situation is not the same: The victims may be my problem; the killers are yours.”
Speaking in Stockholm’s cathedral, I say: “You must understand that the Jew that I am cannot look upon the cross as you do. For you, it represents mercy and love. For us, it evokes terror and persecution.”
On the occasion of a visit to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, the school’s commander, General Palmer, organizes a parade in
my honor: “The parade is yours,” he says saluting. I am astounded: This whole parade is mine? What am I to do with it? Four thousand cadets, their sparkling uniforms and banners flapping in the wind, salute me as if I were a head of state. The Jewish child in me thinks he is dreaming. Never in my life have I been a soldier. And suddenly these future officers—perhaps generals—looking grave and solemn, do me the honors reserved for a president.
That evening my topic is “The Meaning of Freedom”:
Man is free, for God wants him to be free. All things are foreseen by God, we are told by our Masters, and yet we are free, free to choose every moment of our life. We are free to choose between life and death, between the next instant and death, between good and evil, laughter and tears, free to choose compassion over cruelty, memory over oblivion, beauty over ugliness, morality over immorality, and we are free to choose between freedom and absence of freedom.
… Though chosen by God to be the first believer, Abraham was free to reject that mission. He could have said no, but he didn’t. Does it seem like a paradox? I am free not to be afraid of paradoxes.
The idea, I believe, is simply not to confuse divine freedom and human freedom. The two are connected but not identical. God is free, and man must be free…. Now what is freedom? Freedom to the slave is not the same as freedom to the owner of the slave…. Freedom is not a given; it is something one must constantly fight for. Freedom is not even given by God. Freedom belongs to the human domain. It is up to us to shape and nourish it.
Other moments come to mind, special moments. On a visit to the Ghetto Fighters Kibbutz in the north of Israel, I finally meet “Antek,” Yitzhak Zuckerman, the former deputy commander of the Warsaw Ghetto. We have known each other for twenty years—from afar. Every time we made plans to meet, one of us had to cancel. This time, no matter what, the meeting will take place.
We withdraw to the privacy of his office. There is instant camaraderie, no need for preambles. We understand each other. We exchange views, memories, impressions. Survivors from abroad, who
are in the country to participate in a conference in Jerusalem, are visiting the kibbutz. I am asked to say a few words to them. I insist that Antek accompany me. But he is sick; he can hardly stand up. They carry him outside and seat him on a bench. I dedicate my speech to him: “Antek, my friend, I am your guest here…. From you and your comrades we have learned humanism and the meaning of a Jewish fighter’s responsibility…. You have taught us a new language…. You have taught us the strength of the individual.”
I compare our experiences. What were the Jews of Sighet doing in 1943 while he and his comrades were fighting against the Germans? My days were spent at the yeshiva. We studied, we ate, and we celebrated our holidays, while in the Warsaw Ghetto young fighters entered the heroic legend of Israel. And now?
I continue:
What are we doing with our books, with your words? We try to educate our children and all the children of the world. We tell them that man is capable of tumbling into inhumanity; of falling as he loses sight of the divine image of which he bears the imprint. That in those days, the Jew clung to his Jewishness and, thus, to his humanity…. Antek, my dear Antek, when I go home, I shall close my eyes and see you with nostalgia, respect, and infinite tenderness.
As I leave, we embrace. He is weeping and inside me someone is weeping as well. He dies the next day.
Standing before the Wall, thousands of survivors are praying. Prime Minister Menachem Begin has just delivered a rousing speech. He has spoken of the Jewish people’s need to be strong, to be armed. As far as he is concerned, that is the lesson to be drawn from the Tragedy. But then he said that it was God who wanted Hiroshima … going so far as to imply that the atomic bomb was a divine gift, for it allowed the Allies to win the war. As I follow him to the microphone I cannot help but express my disagreement: God and Hiroshima don’t go together in my way of thinking. And his comments about strength pose a problem for me: Could this be
the
lesson the Tragedy has bequeathed to us, to choose strength and celebrate it? I think it important to add: “Here in this city of eternity, where every dream is eternal, we must ask ourselves
a painful question: Have we, the survivors, done our duty? Have we acted as honest witnesses should?” And I conclude:
What do we carry away with us from this invincible city, this indestructible city of peace and humanity? We carry with us a spark of its light, a fragment of its song. True, some part of us has remained back there, in Auschwitz and Belsen, Majdanek and Treblinka. But, from today on, something of us will remain linked to this site in Jerusalem, forever…. Just as Auschwitz signifies the end of human hope, Jerusalem symbolizes eternal beginnings.
Another speech remains in my memory. Not that it was particularly remarkable, but it was delivered before several hundred “hidden children” whom compassionate Christian families had sheltered in occupied Europe:
Of all the crimes conceived in fanaticism and hatred, the war against the Jewish children will remain the worst, the most vicious, and the most implacable in recorded history.
… We now know that Hitler’s Germany made the Jewish child its principal target. In condemning our people’s children to death, it sought to deprive us, as a people, of a future. For the children who did survive Hitler’s Germany, laughter and joy were largely eliminated from their lives.
The children who were “hidden” especially have never ceased asking themselves the question: Where is our childhood? So powerful was the enemy’s criminal intent that it succeeded in changing their childhood, in replacing it with another one, a false one, a childhood that did not belong to them, a childhood that was not meant for them. In fact, because of the enemy, the “hidden” children have had to live someone else’s childhood. But in most cases the enemy did not succeed in changing their memory.
Will I ever—as a novelist, as a teacher, as a person, as a Jew, as a father, who loves both to tell stories and to listen to them—will I ever acquire the necessary imagination to describe what goes on in the heart of a father who, moved by a sudden impulse of insane hope, hands his infant child
to an unknown passerby, praying that this final fatherly gesture might save the infant’s life? Or will I be able to describe a mother who, on the threshold of muted madness, throws her baby outside the cattle car, hoping that a merciful peasant will catch it? And keep it? Will I ever be able to read in her pain the meaning of her gesture?
I think of the hidden children who survived, and I wonder how they felt at the moment their father or their mother left them. What took place in their still fragile but already wounded subconscious? A rejection? A betrayal, perhaps? How long did it take before they grasped the full meaning of what their parents had to do on their behalf? How long has it taken to overcome the anger some of them might have felt toward their parents as they held them responsible for their separation? When exactly did they understand the fathomless strength their parents needed to give up their children to a stranger in order to spare them their own fatal destiny? On the brink of death, their parents pulled themselves away from their children so as to shield them from death.
Compared with these parents, Abraham seems less heroic. Summoned to sacrifice his son Isaac on the altar, he obeyed a divine commandment. But these parents had to give up a child, sometimes an only child, to an unknown person who, at best, would make of that child a living Christian rather than a dead Jew. Where could they find the faith they needed to offer them some measure of consolation? I have tried to imagine the life and death of a hidden Jewish child in one of my tales.
Taken in and shielded by an old Christian housekeeper, the little boy, named Gregor, must pretend to be mute or retarded so as not to arouse suspicion in the village where he has found shelter with a Christian woman. At the school, he attends a Passion play that is being produced for Easter. The boy is given the part of Judas. As such he is ridiculed, humiliated, and tormented to the point that, unable to bear it any longer, he breaks his silence and begins to talk.
Who among the hidden survivors has not known such trials whose outcome meant life or death? One careless
word, one wrong gesture, and it was the end. One frightened look, one sigh poorly suppressed, one prayer poorly remembered, one cloud of sadness on the face, and one could be discovered, and torn away again, and separated again, this time for good. So I wonder, how did they manage? How did they manage not to be sad? How did those who were very young—one or two years old—know that to be sad meant to appear Jewish and to be Jewish meant to die? How did they manage to grow up so fast? How did they manage so quickly to learn terrible and rare ways of keeping alive? How did they manage to hide and/or forget so many things in order to hide the Jewish child in themselves? How did they manage to vanquish fear and loneliness resulting from their parents being absent from their lives? How did they manage to overcome suspicion and not see an enemy in every passerby? How did they manage to remember not to respond to their Jewish names when called? How did they manage all of a sudden to behave as if they were someone else? How did they manage to fall asleep without weeping, without being caressed by a mother and reassured by a father?
A young woman I know told me that she spent eighteen months in silence and solitude in a shelter. She was forbidden to make noise. Once a day the landlord would bring her food. She had to watch herself constantly, not to move, not to snore, not to sigh, not to cry in her sleep. For eighteen months, she lived in total darkness. Not once did she glimpse the stars. How did she manage to stifle her pain and her anguish?
Another young woman I know hid in an attic. A chicken was her only companion. In the beginning, she told me, all was well. Then their relationship deteriorated. The chicken grew arrogant. The chicken felt it could do anything to the Jewish woman. With impunity. She would not shout or hit back. It’s incredible, said the young woman; the chicken had become an anti-Semite.
But what about those who were too young to understand what was happening to them? What about those who were still infants? At what point did the truth reveal itself to them? When did they comprehend that they belonged to
other parents, to other places, to another people? And what did they then feel toward the women who had agreed to take care of them and their needs? And their true mothers, those who seemed not to want them, what did they feel toward them? Whom did they love more? Their absent parents who were dead, or their rescuer parents who were not? Later when they thought of their dead parents, how did they think about them? With joy? With remorse?
… In allowing a million and more Jewish children to die, humankind inflicted suffering and punishment on itself. We may find solace in the emerging role of the survivors, the rescuers, and especially the hidden children. I look at them and feel rewarded. They have done something with their orphaned memories, something of which they can and should be proud. They have kept their childhood intact, and they have built on it a temple for future children and parents to worship in, live in, for the sake of one another.