by Elie Wiesel
“Well, today I feel that way. Let’s go to the synagogue. After all, that’s also part of our duties: keeping an eye on the minorities.”
Arkhipova Street was deserted. Lit by several suspended candelabras, the synagogue was far from full: several dozen old men, the frail and aged cantor and the rabbi with his white beard, were swaying to the rhythm of the prayers. Pavel and his cousin find seats. Soon all the seats were taken. Pavel asks a young man, “What’s happening?”
“The Israeli diplomats are here. There they are, up there, in the balcony.”
Leon and Pavel hear a commotion outside and go to look. They can’t believe their eyes: the crowd was as large as on May 7 on Red Square. They elbow their way through. It is as if every Jew in the city has decided to take part in an event whose full meaning they do not grasp. But they sense its importance.
Leon and Pavel are stunned. They’ve never witnessed anything like this scene; they had no idea there were so many Jews in Moscow, or that they were so bold in flaunting their Jewishness.
“If God is looking down on us,” says Pavel, “He’s surely proud of his people.”
“Unfortunately, he’s not the only one looking,” Leon replies.
From that day on, Leon is no longer the same man. He seems worried most of the time and closets himself in his office to brood.
One day, Pavel says to him, “Your mood worries me. What is it that so preoccupies you? Is it me? Am I doing my job badly?”
Leon reassures him. It has nothing to do with Pavel. He invites him to dinner, not at home, but in a restaurant; not the one for the privileged officials, but a brasserie that he goes to occasionally.
On the way, he says in a low voice, “You were right about Lazar Kaganovich. He is Jewish. Well, he was with Stalin in his dacha in Kuntsevo when Beria delivered his report on the ‘gigantic demonstration’—his expression—the Moscow Jews organized in front of the synagogue. Stalin reacted angrily, accusing the Jews of every conceivable crime—insufficient loyalty to the regime, connections with hostile intelligence services, espionage for Israel, hence America, hence the enemies of the Soviet Union. He ordered Beria to take measures. Kaganovich is too high up in the party hierarchy; he won’t be touched. But I’m vulnerable. And who knows what trouble they could make for us Jews. Beria is capable of anything.”
“What can we do? Couldn’t Kaganovich explain to comrade Stalin …”
“That Jews aren’t spies? That half a million Jews wore the Red Army uniform? That a great number were killed in action? That many were decorated as heroes of the Soviet Union? Stalin knows all this, but he tends to see conspiracies everywhere. Don’t forget, Trotsky and Kamenev and Zinovyev—many other influential party officials were Jewish.”
“Are you worried?”
“Yes. I’ve never seen Kaganovich so preoccupied.”
Little by little, measures are taken against some Jews. There are sudden disappearances and suspects arrested. Solomon Mikhoels is murdered in Minsk. Then comes the liquidation of the Jewish Antifascist Committee made up of distinguished Jewish personalities from the literary, social and political worlds. More arrests, indictments, deportations and death sentences follow. Jewish clubs, organizations and publications are ordered shut. Jewish printing houses are destroyed. The press begins to carry anti-Semitic propaganda. Jews are beginning to panic, though, of course, they don’t dare show it.
Leon and Pavel are aware of the situation but don’t know how to deal with it. In whom can they confide their pain and anxiety? It seems wiser to wait and see.
One fall afternoon, Leon tells Pavel he is arranging for him to leave Moscow.
“The situation is getting worse. I can’t do anything for myself; they’ll arrest me if I request an assignment abroad. But I can get you out, on a diplomatic visa.”
Pavel is speechless. But he sees Leon is leaving him no choice. The Soviet bureaucracy is disorganized enough for him to have a chance of succeeding. But what will become of Leon? He will certainly pay a price for granting freedom to his subordinate. Does Pavel have the right to expose him to this danger?
Pavel spends several sleepless nights. He has to make a decision. Time was short. Leon tells him several times that the situation is deteriorating. Stalin requires all high-ranking government figures, Jewish or not, to sign a virulent anti-Jewish letter. Most of the Jews obeyed. Not Kaganovich, though he knew his own life was at stake.
“The ax is aiming higher and higher,” says Leon to Pavel. “They now have Kaganovich in their sights. Whatever you decide to do, do it fast.”
• • •
Ahmed, his face bathed in sweat, frothing with rage, shouts at Shaltiel.
“They’re all sons of bitches! Cursed infidels! They refuse to negotiate! For four days and four nights, we’ve done everything to taunt them and frighten them, to show them that we’re capable of anything to defeat them. But those Yid bastards and their American pals, all enemies of Islam, refuse to listen to us. They refuse to negotiate. They’re prepared to let this idiot here die. What will our brothers think of us? That we’re incompetent! Or cowards!”
“Calm down,” Luigi says to him. “The die isn’t cast yet. There’s no sense in getting all worked up. Let’s think this thing through. We still have our hostage. What if we offer to let him go?”
“You’re joking,” said Ahmed, trying to control his rage. “The terrorist has only one choice. He must be strong. He must strike, to set an example for the future.”
“Yes, but so far in this case it’s led nowhere.”
“With these damned infidels, only hatred, brutal force and a gruesome death will make them bend.”
Shaltiel knows he’s the victim of a political negotiation gone bad. His breathing quickens. His heart is racing. It’s the end, he thinks. Ahmed is determined to liquidate him. He can’t take the risk of giving Shaltiel his freedom; he would provide a description that would immediately enable the police experts to sketch his portrait, which would instantly be distributed throughout the world. No, his time is running out.
If it is true that the soul and consciousness, before taking leave, relive everything that contributed to a life, he would like his memories to be whole, true, authentic. The important thing for him is not to forget anything. The spiderweb up there on the right side of the sooty ceiling, the mosquito crawling on his left arm—these details require clarity.
A Talmudic saying comes to his mind. On the first day of the funeral, the dead person hears an angel who comes to his tomb, knocks and asks his name. Woe to the one who forgets it.
Don’t forget, don’t forget, Shaltiel mumbles to himself. Shaltiel, son of Haskel and Miriam, don’t forget.
A Talmudic Sage said that when the soul is led before the celestial court, the first thing it is supposed to prove is that it has always been honest in its dealings with its fellow men. What about me? Shaltiel wonders feverishly. What will I say about my work and obsessions? Did I earn my living honestly? Did I make words lie to make them acceptable? How is one to detect the truth in lies?
He is overcome by a strange need for tenderness. Dorothea the governess smiles at him. The count looks at him with kindness. His father hands him the ancient manuscript that was the pride and treasure of his life, saying, “I entrust it to you so that you’ll give it to Rabbi Hayim Vital.” Blanca opens her arms to him. Paritus asks him a question in a whisper; it’s the second question the soul is supposed to answer: Did you hope for Redemption?
Redemption: Is Shaltiel still waiting for it? Is it for the Jewish people whose destiny and faith are defined by a timeless expectation, waiting for the one who puts off coming to save them, Shaltiel and the entire world?
He sees Blanca again as a young woman, in love and loved, radiant and happy. How did they come so close to breaking up? Why did they never have a child? And now, how will she react to his death?
He sees his parents again. They will be shattered, irreparably. He is their joy, their pride. The only future the
y have left. Sprawled out on his tomb—if he’s found, which isn’t at all certain—they’ll grieve in silence. His father will recite the Kaddish. The Talmud again: “Woe to the generation in which the parents bury their children.” His friends will weep over him. Who will tell the children stories? Though a stranger to the horrors his father witnessed, he feels tied to those, parents and grandparents, who lived through it. Should the tortured say everything or say nothing? The ultimate suffering is that he will leave no heir.
Shaltiel stiffens. He hears his torturers discuss his execution. It’s as if they were deciding on a meal or choosing a restaurant. All of a sudden, the discussion gets heated. The whispers become impatient and aggressive. Luigi opposes the execution. Ahmed loses his temper. Luigi remains calm.
Ahmed: “His life puts us in danger.”
Luigi: “His death even more so.”
Ahmed: “I’m happy to be a martyr.”
Ahmed goes to make a last phone call to Beirut, to their superiors. When he returns, everything will be settled.
For Shaltiel the tension is unbearable. A long Jewish lineage dating back for centuries will come to an end with me, he thinks. Forever.
Thursday afternoon. It’s been more than eighty hours since the beginning of this affair, and Saul Rothman, the police commissioner’s deputy, reports they are closing in on the abductors of Shaltiel Feigenberg.
The White House is kept informed. The exhausted family anxiously waits. The police headquarters are besieged by the media. The Israeli consulate is in constant direct phone contact with the government in Jerusalem, and, in Israel too, the public is following the events closely.
The turning point came when the Mossad announced they had succeeded in identifying the abductors as belonging to a small ultra-extremist group of fanatics with headquarters in Beirut. All the Palestinian terrorist movements operating outside the Middle East receive their orders from their leaders stationed in Syria or Lebanon. Armed with this information, the FBI and the CIA mobilized informers and wiretapped appropriate telephone lines. They discovered the abductors were somewhere in Brooklyn.
Saul’s men undertook a search, district by district, street by street. Saul says, “There has been terrorist infiltration into the Muslim communities. Sympathizers may have knowledge of the affair.”
A colleague suggests the Symbionese Liberation Army may well be involved, but the police commissioner, John Ryan, says he doesn’t want to widen the investigative circle too much. He trusts the information they have received; it’s reliable.
“The important thing,” he says, “is preventing them from murdering the hostage at the last minute.”
Of course, no one can be sure of anything. The lessons from the past, though far from unanimous, are nevertheless pessimistic. More than once, police interventions have ended with the death of the abductors—and the death of their hostages. One must be patient and seize the opportunity.
A Mossad liaison asks Ryan, “What do we know about what is happening in the Muslim community? How is it reacting?”
“It’s okay,” says Ryan. “Lots of people condemn hostage taking on principle.”
The discussion is interrupted by the appearance of an excited policeman.
“We know where they are. It’s an old furniture warehouse, a three-story building with sealed windows. The two owners are students. We’re checking on them now. Sounds like they might be fronts.”
Outside, it is beginning to get dark.
“You’re a storyteller. Why don’t you say anything about your experience as a hostage?” The first hours, the last ones, the confrontations with the torturers—what was it like?
Everyone around the table is quizzing Shaltiel.
“Tell us, what was it like from the inside? What did your thoughts revolve around, and around whom? What about the kidnappers? Why don’t you tell us anything about them, their personalities, their behavior? Which of the two men worried you more? Which one was most brutal, least human? Which one would have made you break down? And after how much time?”
Blanca with her happy smile and his relieved parents; the police personnel involved—they are all entitled to consideration in my life and my memory, each in his own way, and now they are all trying to make me talk. Rachel, who had come from Israel to help in the investigation, asks: “Why do you refuse to confide in us?”
Should I answer that, yes, it was thanks to them, to their being there, that I was able to hold out. And thanks to my memories too. In spite of the fear and torture?
Will the person who has never been tortured ever know the solitude of the hostage, his humiliations, his incomprehension, his doubts?
How, why and to whom should I say this?
Saul explains: “In the end, we were lucky. They had no real plan. They didn’t know how to improvise. They didn’t show great intelligence. We were able to surprise them. Of course, killing is easy, so easy. Anyone can dispatch a life. And those two bastards were prepared to kill Shaltiel—that’s obvious. But the operation itself was amateurish. They had never taken proper precautions.”
He turned to Shaltiel. “You’d probably like to know more about the final act. Night had already fallen. Our preparations took less than half an hour. Our sharpshooters, negotiators and assault units encircled the warehouse.
Hagai, the Israeli liaison, said: “The operation was well prepared and well carried out. The police handled the abductors, while we focused on you. The surprise was total. We picked up Ahmed in the street; he was returning from a nearby telephone booth and was about to open the door to the warehouse. He didn’t have time to shoot. Or even to shout. It was all over in a flash.”
This whole operation, Shaltiel thought, which was to be the crowning achievement of Ahmed’s grandiose dreams, was merely a race to death. Now he had joined the “martyrs” in the Muslim paradise. There is one less murderer in the world but does it make it any better? Does it change anything? And will his children become avengers like their father? Will the chain of violence be passed on from one generation to the next? Will it never come to an end?
“The Italian is in jail, by the way,” says Ryan. “Do you have anything you want to tell us, Mr. Feigenberg?”
Shaltiel thinks to himself, What will ensue? His mind is unsettled. Yesterday, he was about to die, and now … A distant tale, not even remotely connected, comes to mind: An odd vagabond becomes crazed with love. He loves the passersby, the houses, the trees, the clouds; he is brimming with love. Until the evening when he meets a young woman who asks him to walk her home for she is afraid of walking alone. When they reach her house, she plants a kiss on his cheek and says, “You’ll remember, won’t you?” That’s the end of the story.
He was overawed by the last minutes of the drama, so different from the others. As the end approached, any second everything could be won or lost. The atmosphere was oppressive, the light pale—until the police burst in.
The final connection: How can it be defined? Luigi and Shaltiel had confronted each other. One incarnated strength and shame, the other nostalgia and memory. The photo of Shaltiel’s father had left a mark on Luigi; he could see his pain and feel his anger. Did he grasp the dreadful message being conveyed, the cruel irony of fate? A killer was about to do to Shaltiel what his father had done to Haskel. Luigi and Shaltiel would remain isolated and in opposition, each in his camp, each in his more or less freely chosen condition, Shaltiel’s of suffering and Luigi’s of decline.
Can man change the way he sees others like a snake changes its skin? Could it really be true, therefore, that every human being alternates between feeling the attraction of good and curiosity about evil? A trace of Cain, and in parallel, another, sometimes conflicting, trace of Abel? What’s the point of reflecting on this now? Doesn’t death erase all questions about life?
Ahmed would soon reappear, thought Shaltiel. He, for one, has not changed; the fanatic is immunized against all change. The killer wants blood. To serve death. He will arrive armed with h
atred, as before, as always. Determined. It’s in his nature. Linked to his bent conception of the mission vested in him by Islam. If the result of this operation turns out to be pitiful, may Death triumph at least.
Shaltiel did not know he still had to get ready for the denouement. It is believed that fear, like surprise, wanes. But not fear of the final suffering. Between two fits of terror, the condemned man still wonders whether he’ll really die. If yes, why? Milena Jesenská was convinced that her friend Franz K. died from too much lucidity. And Shaltiel? From too much of what? Do all those who are about to die ask themselves these sorts of questions?
For the first and probably last time in his life, he suddenly had a vision of the hereafter. Huge crowds awaited him; he was moved by their calm composure. They had come to welcome him. Old people and adolescents, beautiful women and plain elderly ones, bearded men and clean-shaven men, some faces smiling, others melancholic—they all had agreed to be present for his arrival. Then a thought went through his agitated mind: As opposed to my father and Arele, and so many others, I will not abandon them, I will not return alone.
Luigi springs close to Shaltiel and quickly starts to free his wrists and ankles. Shaltiel doesn’t react; he doesn’t understand what is going on. Why does he suddenly let me loose? Shaltiel asks himself. What for? Where is he going to take me?
When Shaltiel stands up, he teeters. He’s not used to it anymore. His legs are numb. Luigi holds him up. Gently, cautiously, he helps him take a few steps. They walk toward a hidden door, all the way in the back of the hideaway. Luigi opens it, checks outside and says in a low voice: “Careful on the stairs. Above, go to the right. You’ll see an avenue. At this time of day, it’s busy. You’ll be safe.”
“But why … how come? What about Ahmed?” Shaltiel asks foolishly. “What’s he going to do? And you? You’ll be punished …”
“Don’t worry about me.