“Eli” is a pet name for Elijah—Eliyahu Hanavi, the prophet.
Recalling the very name awoke memories in me of the time when I too was a child. At the Passover Seder, there stood on the table among the dishes a large, ornate bowl of wine which nobody was allowed to touch. The wine was meant for Eliyahu Hanavi. After a special prayer one of us children was sent to open the door: the Prophet was supposed to come into the room and drink the wine reserved for him. We children watched the door with eyes large with wonder. But, of course, nobody came. But my grandmother always assured me that the Prophet actually drank from the cup and when I looked into the cup and found that it was still full, she said: “He doesn't drink more than a tear!”
Why did she say that? Was a tear all that we could offer the Prophet Elijah? For countless generations since the exodus from Egypt we had been celebrating the Passover in its memory. And from the great event arose the custom of reserving a cup of wine for Eliyahu Hanavi.
We children looked on Eliyahu as our protector, and in our fancy he took every possible form. My grandmother told us that he was rarely recognizable; he might appear in the form of a village peasant, a shopkeeper, a beggar, or even as a child. And in gratitude for the protection that he afforded us he was given the finest cup in the house at the Seder service filled with the best wine—but he drank no more than a single tear from it.
Little Eli in the Ghetto survived miraculously the many raids on the children, who were looked upon as “nonworking, useless mouths.” The adults worked all day outside the Ghetto, and it was during their absence that the SS usually rounded up the children and took them away. A few always escaped the body snatchers, for the children learned how to hide themselves. Their parents built hiding holes under the floors, in the stoves, or in cupboards with false walls, and in time they developed a sort of sixth sense for danger, no matter how small they were.
But gradually the SS discovered the cleverest hiding places and they came out the winner in this game of hide-and-seek with death.
Eli was one of the last children that I saw in the Ghetto. Each time I left the camp for the Ghetto—for a period I had an entry permit for it—I looked for Eli. If I saw him I could be sure that for the moment there was no danger. There was already famine at that time in the Ghetto, and the streets were littered with people dying of hunger. The Jewish policemen constantly warned Eli's parents to keep him away from the gate, but in vain. The German policeman at the Ghetto gate often gave him something to eat.
One day when I entered the Ghetto Eli was not by the gate but I saw him later. He was standing by a window and his tiny hand was sweeping up something from the sill. Then his fingers went to his mouth. As I came closer I realized what he was doing, and my eyes filled with tears: he was collecting the crumbs which somebody had put out for the birds. No doubt he figured that the birds would find some nourishment outside the Ghetto, from friendly people in the city who dare not give a hungry Jewish child a piece of bread.
Outside the Ghetto gate there were often women with sacks of bread or flour trying to barter with the inmates of the Ghetto, food for clothes, silver plate, or carpets. But there were few Jews left who possessed anything they could barter with.
Eli's parents certainly had nothing to offer in exchange for even a loaf of bread.
SS Group Leader Katzmann—the notorious Katzmann—knew that there must still be children in the Ghetto in spite of repeated searches, so his brutish brain conceived a devilish plan: he would start a kindergarten! He told the Jewish Council that he would set up a kindergarten if they could find accommodation for it and a woman to run it. Then the children would be looked after while the grown-ups were out at work. The Jews, eternal and incorrigible optimists, took this as a sign of a more humane attitude. They even told each other that there was now a regulation against shooting. Somebody said that he had heard on the American radio that Roosevelt had threatened the Germans with reprisals if any more Jews were killed. That was why the Germans were going to be more humane in the future.
Others talked of an International Commission which was going to visit the Ghetto. The Germans wanted to show them a kindergarten—as proof of their considerate treatment of the Jews.
An official from the Gestapo named Engels, a grayhaired man, came with a member of the Jewish Council to see for himself that the kindergarten was actually set up in suitable rooms. He said he was sure there were still enough children in the Ghetto who would like to use the kindergarten, and he promised an extra ration of food. And the Gestapo did actually send tins of cocoa and milk.
Thus the parents of the hungry children still left were gradually persuaded to send them to the kindergarten. A committee from the Red Cross was anxiously awaited. But it never came. Instead, one morning three SS trucks arrived and took all the children away to the gas chambers. And that night, when the parents came back from work, there were heart-rending scenes in the deserted kindergarten.
Nevertheless, a few weeks later I saw Eli again. His instinct had made him stay at home on that particular morning.
For me the dark-eyed child of whom the man in the bed had spoken was Eli. His little face would be stamped on my memory forever. He was the last Jewish child that I had seen.
Up to this moment my feelings toward the dying man had tended toward sympathy: now all that was past. The touch of his hand caused me almost physical pain and I drew away.
But I still didn't think of leaving. There was something more to come: of that I was sure. His story must go on…
He murmured something which I did not understand. My thoughts were far away, although I was here only to listen to what he was so anxious to tell me. It seemed to me that he was forgetting my presence, just as for a time I had forgotten his. He was talking to himself in a monotone. Sick people when they are alone often talk to themselves. Was he continuing the story that he wanted to tell me? Or was it something that he would like to tell me but which he dare not express in comprehensible words? Who knows what he still had to say? Unimaginable. One thing I had learned: no deed was so awful that its wickedness could not be surpassed.
“Yes. I see them plain before my eyes…” he muttered.
What was he saying? How could he see them? His head and eyes were swathed in bandages.
“I can see the child and his father and his mother,” he went on.
He groaned and his breath came gasping from his lungs.
“Perhaps they were already dead when they struck the pavement. It was frightful. Screams mixed with volleys of shots. The volleys were probably intended to drown the shrieks. I can never forget—it haunts me. I have had plenty of time to think, but yet perhaps not enough…”
Did I now hear shots? We were so used to shooting that nobody took any notice. But I could hear them quite plainly. There was constant shooting in the camp. I shut my eyes and in my memory I heard and saw all the shocking details.
During his narration, which often consisted of short, broken phrases, I could see and hear everything as clearly as if I had been there. I saw the wretches being driven into the house, I heard their screams, I heard them praying for their children and then I saw them leaping in flames to earth.
“Shortly afterwards we moved on. On the way we were told that the massacre of the Jews was in revenge for the Russian time bombs which had cost us about thirty men. We had killed three hundred Jews in exchange. Nobody asked what the murdered Jews had to do with the Russian time bombs.
“In the evening there was a ration of brandy. Brandy helps one forget…Over the radio came reports from the front, the numbers of torpedoed ships, of prisoners taken, or planes shot down, and the area of the newly conquered territories…It was getting dark…
“Fired by the brandy we sat down and began to sing. I too sang. Today I ask myself how I could have done that. Perhaps I wanted to anesthetize myself. For a time I was successful. The events seemed to recede further and further away. But during the night they came back…
“A comrade
who slept next to me was Peter and he too came from Stuttgart. He was restless in his sleep, tossing to and fro and muttering. I sat up and stared at him. But it was too dark to see his face and I could only hear him saying, ‘No, no,’ and ‘I won't.’ In the morning I could see by the faces of some of my comrades that they too had had a restless night. But nobody would talk about it. They avoided each other. Even our platoon leader noticed it.
“‘You and your sensitive feelings! Men, you cannot go on like this. This is war! One must be hard! They are not our people. The Jew is not a human being! The Jews are the cause of all our misfortunes! And when you shoot one of them it is not the same thing as shooting one of us—it doesn't matter whether it is a man, woman, or child, they are different from us. Without question one must get rid of them. If we had been soft we should still be other people's slaves, but the Führer…’
“Yes, you see,” he began but did not continue.
What had he been going to say? Something perhaps that might be of comfort to himself. Something that might explain why he was telling me his life story? But he did not return to the subject.
“Our rest period did not last long. Toward midday we resumed the advance, we were now part of the storm troops. We mounted the trucks and were transported to the firing line, but here too there was not much to be seen of the enemy. He had evacuated villages and small towns, giving them up without a fight. There were only occasional skirmishes as the enemy retreated. Peter was wounded, Karlheinz killed. Then we had another rest, with time to wash up and to write letters. Talk centered on different subjects, but there was hardly a word said about the happenings in Dnepropetrovsk.
“I went to see Peter. He had been shot in the abdomen but was still conscious. He recognized me and looked at me with tears in his eyes. I sat down by him and he told me he was soon to be taken away to hospital. He said, ‘The people in that house, you know what I mean…’ Then he lost consciousness. Poor Peter. He died with the memory of the most dreadful experience of his life.”
I now heard footsteps in the corridor. I looked toward the door which might open at any moment, and stood up. He stopped me.
“Do stay, the nurse is waiting outside. Nobody will come in. I won't keep you much longer, but I still have something important to say…”
I sat down again unwillingly but made up my mind to depart as soon as the nurse returned.
What could this man still have to tell me? That he was not the only person who had murdered Jews, that he was simply a murderer among murderers?
He resumed his soul-searching: “In the following weeks we advanced toward the Crimea. Rumor had it that there was hard fighting in front of us, the Russians were well entrenched; it wasn't going to be a walkover any more, but close fighting, man to man…”
He paused for breath. The pauses were becoming more frequent. Obviously he was overtaxing his strength. His breathing was irregular; his throat seemed to dry up: his hand groped for the glass of water.
I did not move. He appeared content as long as he was aware of my presence.
He found the glass and gulped down some water.
Then he sighed and whispered: “My God, my God.”
Was he talking about God? But God was absent…on leave, as the woman in the Ghetto had said. Yet we all needed Him; we all longed to see signs of His omnipresence.
For this dying man, however, and for his like there could be no God. The Führer had taken His place. And the fact that their atrocities remained unpunished merely strengthened their belief that God was a fiction, a hateful Jewish invention. They never tired of trying to “prove” it. But now this man, who was dying here in his bed, was asking for God!
He went on: “The fighting in the Crimea lasted for weeks. We had severe losses. Everywhere military cemeteries sprang up. I heard they were well tended and on every grave were growing flowers. I like flowers. There are many in my uncle's garden. I used to lie on the grass for hours and admire the flowers…”
Did he know already that he would get a sunflower when he was buried? The murderer would own something even when he was dead…And I?
“We were approaching Taganrog, which was strongly held by Russians. We lay among the hills, barely a hundred yards from them. Their artillery fire was incessant. We cowered in our trenches and tried to conquer our fear by drinking from brandy flasks passed from hand to hand. We waited for the order to attack. It came at last and we climbed out of the trenches and charged, but suddenly I stopped as though rooted to the ground. Something seized me. My hands, which held my rifle with fixed bayonet, began to tremble.
“In that moment I saw the burning family, the father with the child and behind them the mother—and they came to meet me. ‘No, I cannot shoot at them a second time.’ The thought flashed through my mind…And then a shell exploded by my side. I lost consciousness.
“When I woke in hospital I knew that I had lost my eyesight. My face and the upper part of my body were torn to ribbons. The nurse told me that the surgeon had taken a whole basinful of shell splinters out of my body. It was a miracle that I was still alive—even now I am as good as dead…”
He sighed. His thoughts were once again centered on himself and he was filled with self-pity.
“The pain became more and more unbearable. My whole body is covered with marks from pain-killing injections…I was taken from one field hospital to another, but they never sent me home…That was the real punishment for me. I wanted to go home to my mother. I knew what my father would say in his inflexible severity. But my mother…She would look at me with other eyes.”
I saw that he was torturing himself. He was determined to gloss over nothing.
Once again he groped for my hand, but I had withdrawn it sometime before and was sitting on it, out of his reach. I did not want to be touched by the hand of death. He sought my pity, but had he any right to pity? Did a man of his kind deserve anybody's pity? Did he think he would find pity if he pitied himself…
“Look,” he said, “those Jews died quickly, they did not suffer as I do—though they were not as guilty as I am.”
At this I stood up to go—I, the last Jew in his life. But he held me fast with his white, bloodless hand. Whence could a man drained of blood derive such strength?
“I was taken from one hospital to another, they never sent me home. But I told you that before…I am well aware of my condition and all the time I have been lying here I have never stopped thinking of the horrible deed at Dnepropetrovsk. If only I had not survived that shell—but I can't die yet, although I have often longed to die…Sometimes I hoped that the doctor would give me an injection to put me out of my misery. I have indeed asked him to put me to sleep. But he has no pity for me although I know he has released other dying men from their sufferings by means of injections. Perhaps he is deterred by my youth. On the board at the foot of my bed is not only my name but also my date of birth, perhaps that keeps him back. So I lie here waiting for death. The pains in my body are terrible, but worse still is my conscience. It never ceases to remind me of the burning house and the family that jumped from the window.”
He lapsed into silence, seeking for words. He wants something from me, I thought, for I could not imagine that he had brought me here merely as an audience.
“When I was still a boy I believed with my mind and soul in God and in the commandments of the Church. Then everything was easier. If I still had that faith I am sure death would not be so hard.
“I cannot die…without coming clean. This must be my confession. But what sort of confession is this? A letter without an answer…”
No doubt he was referring to my silence. But what could I say? Here was a dying man—a murderer who did not want to be a murderer but who had been made into a murderer by a murderous ideology. He was confessing his crime to a man who perhaps tomorrow must die at the hands of these same murderers. In his confession there was true repentance, even though he did not admit it in so many words. Nor was it necessary, for the way he spoke
and the fact that he spoke to me was a proof of his repentance.
“Believe me, I would be ready to suffer worse and longer pains if by that means I could bring back the dead, at Dnepropetrovsk. Many young Germans of my age die daily on the battlefields. They have fought against an armed enemy and have fallen in the fight, but I…I am left here with my guilt. In the last hours of my life you are with me. I do not know who you are, I only know that you are a Jew and that is enough.”
I said nothing. The truth was that on his battlefield he had also “fought” against defenseless men, women, children, and the aged. I could imagine them enveloped in flames jumping from the windows to certain death.
He sat up and put his hands together as if to pray.
“I want to die in peace, and so I need…”
I saw that he could not get the words past his lips. But I was in no mood to help him. I kept silent.
“I know that what I have told you is terrible. In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and time again I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him. Only I didn't know whether there were any Jews left…
“I know that what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.”
Now, there was an uncanny silence in the room. I looked through the window. The front of the buildings opposite was flooded with sunshine. The sun was high in the heavens. There was only a small triangular shadow in the courtyard.
What a contrast between the glorious sunshine outside and the shadow of this bestial age here in the death chamber! Here lay a man in bed who wished to die in peace—but he could not, because the memory of his terrible crime gave him no rest. And by him sat a man also doomed to die—but who did not want to die because he yearned to see the end of all the horror that blighted the world.
Two men who had never known each other had been brought together for a few hours by Fate. One asks the other for help. But the other was himself helpless and able to do nothing for him.
The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness Page 5