From the Kingdom of Memory (12 page)

At Sighet I visited the Jewish cemetery where lies the grave of the grandfather whose name I bear. It was strange: I felt more at home among the graves than among the living beyond the gate. An extraordinary
serenity dwelt in the graveyard, and I spoke quietly to my grandfather and told him what I have done with his name.

Then, with a childhood friend, a fellow pilgrim, we ambled through the streets and alleys in silence, not daring to glance at one another. I recognized each window, each tree. Names and faces sprang before me as if from nowhere, as if preparing to reoccupy their former homes. I stopped before my old house, and with a beating heart, nearly beside myself, I waited for a youth to come out to call me closer, to demand to know what I was doing there in his life. A nameless anguish came over me: What if all that I had lived had only been a dream?

I
N THE SPACE
of six weeks a vibrant and creative community had been condemned first to isolation, then to misery, and finally to deportation and death.

The last transport left the station on a Sunday morning. It was hot, we were thirsty. It was less than three weeks before the Allies’ invasion of Normandy. Why did we allow ourselves to be taken? We could have fled, hidden ourselves in the mountains or in the villages. The ghetto was not very well guarded: A mass escape would have had every chance of success. But we did not know.

Hear me well, those of you who want to spend your vacation somewhere in Transylvania: You will not meet my friends there. They were massacred because
no one thought it was necessary to warn them, to tell them not to go quietly into those windowless train cars. If this tragedy of Transylvanian Judaism hurts, if it hurts so terribly, it is not only because its victims are so near to me but also because it could have been prevented: Had the Allies moved faster and their leaders protested louder, many lives would have been saved.

So, you understand, the beauty of the countryside, the serenity and comfort and the hospitality that awaits the visitor, none of that is for me. But go, if it tempts you. And why wouldn’t Transylvania tempt you? Despite the barely concealed police state, despite the poverty, you may be happy there. The gardens are splendid, the hotels are new, the reception that awaits you is warm.

Only, while you explore the cities and the villages, while you enjoy their special picturesqueness, try to evoke within yourself the memories of the men and women, and the children—especially the children—who forty years ago were driven away from this place and who today travel endlessly through mankind’s wounded memory, signaling us invisibly, and yet so needfully, for the sake of our own survival.

Kaddish in Cambodia

O
N THE EIGHTEENTH DAY
(in the Hebrew calendar) of Shevat I found myself in the dusty, noisy village of Aranyaprathet, on the border between Cambodia and Thailand, searching desperately for nine more Jews.

I had Yahrzeit for my father, and I needed a
minyan
so that I could say Kaddish. I would have found a
minyan
easily enough in Bangkok. There are about fifty Jewish families in the community there, plus twenty Israeli Embassy families, so there would have been no problem about finding ten men for
minchah
. But in Aranyaprathet?

I had gone there to take part in a March for the Survival of Cambodia organized by the International Rescue Committee and Doctors Without Frontiers. There were philosophers, novelists, parliamentarians, and journalists—myriad journalists. But how was I to
find out who might be able to help me with
my
problem?

I would have liked to telephone one of my rabbi friends in New York or Jerusalem and ask his advice on the Halakhic aspects of the matter. What did one do in such a case? Should one observe the Yahrzeit the following day, or the following week? But I was afraid of being rebuked and of being asked why I had gone to Thailand precisely on that day, when I should have been in synagogue.

I would have justified myself by saying that I had simply been unable to refuse. How could I refuse when so many men and women were dying of hunger and disease?

I had seen on television what the Cambodian refugees looked like when they arrived in Thailand-walking skeletons with somber eyes, crazy with fear. I had seen a mother carrying her dead child, and I had seen creatures dragging themselves along the ground, resigned to never again being able to stand upright.

How could a Jew like myself, with experiences and memories like mine, stay at home and not go to the aid of an entire people? Some will say to me, Yes, but when you needed help, nobody came forward. True, but it is
because
nobody came forward to help me that I felt it my duty to help these victims.

As a Jew I felt the need to tell these despairing men and women that we understood them; that we
shared their pain; that we understood their distress because we remembered a time when we as Jews confronted total indifference.…

Of course, there is no comparison. The event which left its mark on my generation defies analogy. Those who talk about “Auschwitz in Asia” and the “Cambodian Holocaust” do not know what they are talking about. Auschwitz can and should serve as a frame of reference, but that is all.

So there I was in Thailand, in Aranyaprathet, with a group of men and women of good will seeking to feed, heal, save Cambodians—while I strove to get a
minyan
together because, of all the days of the year, the eighteenth day of Shevat is the one that is most full of meaning and dark memories for me.

Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum was a member of the American delegation. Now I needed only eight more. Leo Cherne, the president of the International Rescue Committee, was there as well. Only seven more to find.

Then I spotted the well-known Soviet dissident, Alexander Ginsburg, and rushed over to him. Would he agree to help me make up a
minyan?
He looked at me uncomprehendingly. He must have thought I was mad. A
minyan?
What is a
minyan?
I explained: a religious service. Now he surely did not understand. A religious service? Here, by the mined bridge separating Thailand and Cambodia? Right in the middle of a demonstration of international solidarity? I began
all over again to explain the significance of a
minyan
. But in vain. Alexander Ginsburg is not a Jew; he is a convert to the Russian Orthodox Church. I still had seven to find.

Suddenly, I caught sight of the young French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, who was making a statement for television. Only six more to find. Farther on, I found the French novelist Guy Suares. Then a doctor from Toulouse joined us, followed by Henry Kamm, of
The New York Times
. Another doctor came over. At last there were ten of us. There, in the midst of all the commotion, a few yards from the Cambodian frontier, we recited the customary prayers, and I intoned Kaddish, my voice trembling.

Then, suddenly, from somewhere behind me, came the voice of a man still young, repeating the words after me, blessing and glorifying the Master of the Universe. He had tears in his eyes, that young Jew. “For whom are you saying Kaddish?” I asked him. “For your father?” “No.” “For your mother?” “No.”

He grew reflective and looked toward the frontier. “It is for them,” he said.

Making the Ghosts Speak

H
AVE
I
CHANGED
? Of course. Everyone changes. To live means to traverse a certain time, a certain space: with a little luck, some traces of life are left. Those at the beginning are not the same as those at the end. Of course, my tradition teaches me that the road always leads somewhere, and although the destination remains the same, at different stages of the journey we change and renew ourselves. Drawn to childhood, the old man will seek it in a thousand different ways.

I
AM SEEKING
my childhood; I will always be seeking it. I need it. It is necessary for me as a point of reference, as a refuge. It represents for me a world that no longer exists; a sunny and mysterious place where beggars were princes in disguise, and fools were wise men freed from their constraints.

At that time, in that universe, everything seemed simple. People were born and died, hoped and despaired,
understood certain things—not everything. I resigned myself to the idea that the quest is itself a victory; even if it hardly succeeds, it represents a triumph. It was enough for me to know that someone knew the answer; what I myself sought was the question.

It was in this way that I viewed man and his place in creation: it was up to him to question what surrounded him and thus to go beyond himself. It is not by chance, I told myself, that the first question in the Bible is that which God puts to Adam: “Where are you?”

“What?” cried a great Hasidic Master, Rabbi Shneour-Zalmen of Ladi. “God didn’t know where Adam was? No, that’s not the way to understand the question. God knew, Adam didn’t.”

That, I thought, is what one must always seek to know: one’s role in society, one’s place in history. It is one’s duty to ask every day, “Where am I in relation to God and to others?”

And, strangely enough, the child knew what the adult did not. Yes, in my small town somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains, I knew where I was. I knew why I existed. I existed to glorify God and to sanctify his word. I existed to link my destiny to that of my people, and the destiny of my people to that of humanity. I existed to do good and to combat evil, to accomplish the will of heaven; in short, to fit each
of my acts, each of my dreams, each of my prayers into God’s design.

I knew that God was at the same time near and far, magnanimous and severe, rigorous and merciful. I knew that I belonged to his chosen people—people chosen to serve him by suffering as well as by hope. I knew that I was in exile and that the exile was total, universal, even cosmic. I knew as well that the exile would not last, that it would end in redemption. I knew so many things, about so many subjects. I knew especially when to rejoice and when to lament: I consulted the calendar; everything was there.

Now I no longer know anything.

As in a dusty mirror, I look at my childhood and I wonder if it is mine. I don’t recognize myself in the child who studies there with fervor, who says his prayers. It’s because he is surrounded by other children; he walks like them, with them, head bowed and lips firm. He advances into the night as if attracted by its shadows. I watch them as they enter an abyss of flames, I see them transformed into ashes, I hear their cries turn into silence, and I no longer know anything, I no longer understand anything: they have taken away my certainties, and no one will give them back to me.

I
T’S NOT ONLY
a matter of questions concerning religious faith. It’s a matter of those, and all others. It’s
a matter of redefining, or at least rethinking, my relations with others and with myself: have they changed? I think that I can answer Yes without the slightest hesitation. My attitude toward Christians, for example: before the war, it was mistrustful, if not hostile; after, it became more open and hospitable.

Before the war, I avoided everyone who came from the other side—that is, from Christianity. Priests frightened me. I avoided them; so as not to pass near them, I would cross the street. I dreaded all contact with them. I feared being kidnapped by them and baptized by force. I had heard so many rumors, so many stories of this type; I had the impression that I was always in danger.

At school I sat with Christian boys of my age, but we didn’t speak to one another. At recess we played separated by an invisible wall. I never visited a Christian schoolmate at his home. We had nothing in common. Later, as an adolescent, I stayed away from them. I knew them to be capable of anything: of beating me, humiliating me by pulling my
payess
or seizing my
yarmulke
, without which I felt naked. My dream back then? To live in a Jewish world, completely Jewish, a world where Christians would have scarcely any access. A protected world, ordered according to the laws of Sinai. It’s strange, but awakening in the ghetto comforted me: after all, we were living among our own. I didn’t yet know that it was
only a step, the first, toward a small railroad station somewhere in Poland called Auschwitz.