“What do you mean by ‘atone for’?”
He now had me where he wanted me: I had no reply. I dropped the argument and tried another gambit.
“This dying man looked on me as a representative, as a symbol of the other Jews whom he could no longer reach or talk to. And moreover he showed his repentance entirely of his own accord. Obviously he was not born a murderer nor did he want to be a murderer. It was the Nazis who made him kill defenseless people.”
“So you mean you ought to have forgiven him after all?”
At this juncture Arthur came back. He had heard only Josek's last sentence and in his quiet voice he said: “A superman has asked a subhuman to do something which is superhuman. If you had forgiven him, you would never have forgiven yourself all your life.”
“Arthur,” I said, “I have failed to carry out the last wish of a dying man. I gave him no answer to his final question!”
“But surely you must know there are requests that one cannot and dare not grant. He ought to have sent for a priest of his own church. They would soon have come to an agreement.”
Arthur's words were delicately, almost imperceptibly ironical.
“Why,” I asked, “is there no general law of guilt and expiation? Has every religion its own ethics, its own answers?”
“Probably, yes.”
There was nothing more to say. What in those circumstances, in those terrible times, could be said, had been said. The subject dropped.
To distract our thoughts, Arthur told us about the news that he had heard but his words met with only half my attention.
In thought I was still in the death chamber of the German hospital.
Perhaps Arthur was wrong. Perhaps his idea of the superman asking a subhuman for something superhuman was not more than a phrase which sounded very enlightened, but was no real answer. The SS man's attitude toward me was not that of an arrogant superman. Probably I hadn't successfully conveyed all my feelings: a subhuman condemned to death at the bedside of an SS man condemned to death…Perhaps I hadn't communicated the atmosphere and the despair at his crime so clearly expressed in his words.
And suddenly I was assailed by a doubt as to the reality of all this. Had I actually been in the Dean's room that day?
It all seemed to me doubtful and unreal as our whole existence in those days…it could not have been all true; it was a dream induced by hunger and despair…it was too illogical—like the whole of our lives.
The prisoner in the camp was driven, and he had to learn to let himself be driven without a will of his own. In our world, nothing any longer obeyed the laws of normal everyday life, here everything had its own logic. What laws were still valid in captivity? The only law that was left as a reliable basis for judgment was the law of death. That law alone was logical, certain and irrefutable. All other laws paled into insignificance, the result was a general passivity. We constantly reminded ourselves that this was the one law that was inevitable, that one could do nothing to change it. The effect on us was a mental paralysis, and the inconsolable attitude in which we were enveloped was the clear expression of the hopelessness of our lot.
During the night I saw Eli. His face seemed paler than ever and his eyes expressed the dumb, eternally unanswered question: Why?
His father brought him to me in his arms. As he approached he covered his eyes with his hands. Behind the two figures raged a sea of flames from which they were fleeing. I wanted to take Eli, but all that existed was a bloody mess…
“What are you shouting about? You will bring the guards in.”
Arthur shook me by the shoulders. I could see his face by the weak light bulb high above on the ceiling.
I was not yet fully awake. Before my eyes danced something resembling a bandaged head with yellow stains. Was that too a dream? I saw everything as if through frosted glass.
“I will bring you a glass of water; perhaps you are feverish,” said Arthur as he shook me again. And then I looked him full in the face.
“Arthur,” I stammered, “Arthur, I don't want to go on that working party to the hospital tomorrow.”
“First of all,” he replied “it is already today, and secondly you could perhaps get attached to another party. I will go to the hospital in your place.”
Arthur was trying to calm me. He talked as if I were a child.
“Are you suddenly frightened to look death in the eye, just because you have seen an SS man dying? How many Jews have you seen killed; did that make you shout out in the night? Death is our constant companion, have you forgotten that? It doesn't even spare the SS.”
“You had just gone to sleep when the guards came in and fetched one of us away—the man sleeping right at the back in the corner. They took him only as far as the door of the hut, and then he collapsed. He was dead. Wake up properly and come with me. Look at him and then you will understand that you are making too much fuss about your SS man.”
Why did Arthur stress “your SS man”? Did he mean to hurt me?
He noticed the way I flinched. “Fine feelings nowadays are a luxury we can't afford. Neither you nor I.”
“Arthur,” I repeated, “I don't want to go back to the hospital.”
“If they send you there, you'll have to go: there's nothing you can do. Many will be only too pleased not to stay in the camp all day.” Arthur still seemed unable to understand me.
“I haven't told you about the people in the streets. I don't want to see any of them any more. And they mustn't see me either. I don't want their sympathy.”
Arthur gave up. He turned round in his bunk and went to sleep. I tried to keep awake. I feared the dream would return. But then I suddenly saw the men in the street. And I realized that the break with the world around us was now complete. They did not like us Jews—and that was no new thing. Our fathers had crept out of the confines of the ghetto into the open world. They had worked hard and done all they could to be recognized by their fellow creatures. But it was all in vain. If the Jews shut themselves away from the rest of the world they were foreign bodies. If they left their own world and conformed, then they were undesirable immigrants to be hated and rejected. Even in my youth I realized that I had been born a second-class citizen.
A wise man once said that the Jews were the salt of the earth. But the Poles thought that their land had been ruined by over-salting. Compared with Jews in other countries, therefore, we were perhaps better prepared for what the Nazis had in store for us. And perhaps we were thereby made more resistant.
From birth onward we had lived with the Poles, grown up with them, gone to school with them, but nevertheless to them we were always foreigners. A bridge of mutual understanding between a Jew and a non-Jew was a rarity. And nothing had changed in that respect, even though the Poles were now themselves subjugated. Even in our common misery there were still barriers between us.
I no longer wanted even to look at Poles; in spite of everything, I preferred to stay in camp.
Next morning we assembled again for roll call. I was hoping that Arthur would accompany me if I had to go back to the hospital, and if the nurse came to fetch me again I would ask her to take Arthur in my place.
The commandant arrived. He was not always present at the roll call; yesterday, for instance, he had not been there. He brought with him a large black Doberman on a lead. By him stood the officer (who was calling the roll) and other SS men.
First of all the prisoners were counted. Luckily the figure was correct.
Then the commandant ordered: “Working parties fall in: as yesterday.”
There was considerable confusion. The prisoners were supposed to fall in according to huts, not working parties. The rearrangement into working parties was not quick enough for the commandant. He began to bellow.
The dog became restless and strained on its lead. Any moment the commandant would let it loose. But again we were lucky. An officer came over from the commandant's office with a message. Whatever it was he marched off with the dog, which sav
ed us the usual gruesome scenes, and the aftermath of wounded and perhaps a few dead.
The band at the inner gate played a lively march as we moved off. SS men watched our ranks intently. From time to time they made a man fall out because he was conspicuous in some way or other. Perhaps he was not in step. Or perhaps he looked weaker than the others. He was then sent to the “pipe.”
We were escorted by the same askaris as on the previous day. An SS man from the guard room placed himself at the head of our column. On the way I wondered where I could hide if the nurse came to look for me.
The cemetery with the sunflowers came into view again on our left. Soon the dying SS man in the hospital would join his comrades there. I tried to picture the spot reserved for him.
Yesterday my comrades had stared at the sunflowers as if spellbound, but today they seemed to disregard them. Only a few glanced at them. But my gaze traversed row after row, and I nearly stumbled over the heels of the man in front of me.
In Grodeska Street children were playing unconcernedly. They at least did not need to hide when a man in uniform appeared. How lucky they were.
My neighbor drew my attention to a passerby.
“Do you see that fellow with the Tyrolean hat? The one with the feather.”
“Certainly a German,” said I.
“Sort of. He is now a racial German, but three years ago he was a fanatical Pole. I know him well. I lived near him. When the Jewish shops were looted, he was there, and when they beat up the Jews in the University he was there too. Moreover he is sure to have volunteered when the Russians were looking for collaborators. He is the type who is always on the side of the people in power. Probably he has raked up a German ancestor from somewhere or other. But I am prepared to bet that he could not speak a word of German until a short time ago. The Nazis need people like him. They would be helpless without them.”
In fact one constantly heard of ethnic Germans striving to make themselves 150 percent German. On working parties one had to be careful to avoid them. They were always anxious to prove they were earning their special ration cards. Many of them tried to cover their imperfect knowledge of German by being particularly beastly to Poles and Jews. The existence of Poles and Jews to be victimized was very welcome to them.
When we entered the courtyard of the Technical High School, the askaris at once lay down on the grass and rolled their fat cigarettes. Two lorries were already waiting for us prisoners. The refuse containers were again full to overflowing. There were shovels against a wall and each of us took one.
I tried to get a job on the trucks where the nurse would be unlikely to find me. But an orderly had already chosen four other men for the job.
Then I saw the nurse walking from one prisoner to another, glancing at each of them. Was it going to be a repetition of yesterday? Had the dying Nazi forgotten something? Suddenly she was standing in front of me.
“Please,” she said, “come with me.”
“I have to go on working here,” I protested.
She turned to the orderly who was in charge of us and said a few words to him. Then she pointed to me and came back.
“Put down your shovel,” she said curtly, “and come with me.”
I followed her with fear in my heart. I could not bear to listen to another confession. It was beyond my powers. Most of all I feared that the dying man would renew his plea for forgiveness. Perhaps this time I would be weak enough to give in and so finish with the painful business.
But to my surprise the nurse took a different route from yesterday's. I had no idea where she was taking me. Perhaps to the mortuary? She searched among a bunch of keys and unlocked a door. We entered a room which looked as if it were used for storage. On wooden stands which stretched nearly to the ceiling, bundles and boxes were piled.
“Wait here,” she ordered, “I will be back in a moment.”
I stood still.
After a few moments she came back. In her hand she had a bundle tied up in a green ground sheet. Sewn to it was a piece of linen with an address.
Somebody passed along in the corridor. She looked around nervously and drew me into the storeroom. Then she gazed at me searchingly and said: “The man with whom you spoke yesterday died in the night. I had to promise to give you all his possessions. Except for his confirmation watch, which I am to send to his mother.”
“I don't want anything, Sister. Send the lot to his mother.”
Without a word she thrust the bundle at me but I refused to touch it.
“Please send it all to his mother, the address is on it.”
The nurse looked at me uncertainly. I turned away and left her there. She did not try to hold me back. Apparently she had no inkling of what the SS man had told me on the previous day.
I went back to work in the courtyard. A hearse drove past. Were they taking away the SS man already?
“Hi you over there, you're asleep,” shouted the orderly.
An askari heard him and came over flourishing a whip. In his eyes there was a sadistic gleam. But the orderly sent him away.
This time our midday meal was not provided by the hospital. The ordinary prisoners’ food was brought to us from the camp—an evil-smelling, gray brew misnamed soup. We swallowed it ravenously. Soldiers stood around watching us as if we were animals being fed.
For the rest of the day I worked in a trance. When I was back again on the parade ground in the evening I could hardly remember the return march. I had not even glanced at the sunflowers.
Later I told my friends about the death of the SS man, but they were not interested. The whole incident was closed in their minds after the tale I had told them the day before. But they all agreed with me that I had done well to refuse the dead man's possessions. Josek said: “In the story you told us yesterday there were points that seemed to need further thought. I should have liked to discuss them with Reb Schlomo, but he alas is no more. He could easily have proved to you that you acted rightly…But even so I am afraid that you will continue to worry about this business. But don't cudgel your brains over it. You had no right to forgive him, you could not forgive him, and it was quite right not to accept his things.”
After a while he added: “The Talmud tells us…”
Arthur lost something of his otherwise unshakable self-possession. He said to Josek, “Don't make him any madder; he is already dreaming about it and shouting out in his sleep. Next time it may bring us misfortune. It only needs one of the guards to hear him shouting and he will put a bullet through him. It's happened before.
“And you,” said Arthur, turning to me, “do stop talking about it. All this moaning and groaning leads to nothing. If we survive this camp—and I don't think we will—and if the world comes to its senses again, inhabited by people who look on each other as human beings, then there will be plenty of time to discuss the question of forgiveness. There will be votes for and against, there will be people who will never forgive you for not forgiving him…But anyhow nobody who has not had our experience will be able to understand fully. When we here argue about the problem, we are indulging in a luxury which we in our position simply cannot afford.”
Arthur was right, I could see that. That night I slept soundly without dreaming of Eli.
At the morning roll call the inspector from the Eastern Railway was waiting for us. We could return to our former work.
•••
Over two years passed. Years filled with suffering and constant specter of death. Once I myself was about to be shot but I was saved by a miracle. And so I know the thoughts which a man has in the moments before death.
Arthur was no longer alive. He died in my arms during an epidemic of typhus. I held him fast as he lay in the death struggle and I wiped the foam from his lips with a cloth. In his last hours fever made him unconscious, mercifully for him.
Then one day Adam sprained his ankle at work. As he was marching out with his working party, the guard noticed he was limping. He was sent off at once to the “pipe
,” and there he waited two days before he and others were shot.
Josek too is dead. But I only heard about this much later. Our group had been posted to the Eastern Railway and quartered there, and one day some extra labor was sent over from the camp. Among them was Josek. I could look after him a bit now. We had some contact with the outside world and we got more food. I begged our “head Jew” to arrange for Josek to stay with us, but it was almost impossible to arrange that for an individual. We tried to persuade one of the overseers to ask for more permanent labor on the railway. But that too failed.
Then one day the extra labor from the camp came without Josek. He was ill and had been put on a working party within the camp. He had a high temperature, and from time to time when his strength failed him he had to rest. His comrades warned him when the SS man was approaching, but Josek was too weak even to stand up. He was finished off with a bullet—as punishment for being “work-shy.”
Of all the men whom I knew in those years, hardly one was still alive. My time had apparently not yet come or death did not want me.
When the Germans withdrew before the advancing Red Army, the camp was evacuated and a column of prisoners and SS guards moved westward to other camps. I went through the terrors of Plaszow; I got to know Gross-Rosen and Buchenwald, and finally after countless detours via auxiliary camps I landed at Mauthausen.
I was allocated straightaway to Block 6, the death block. Although the gas chamber was working at full pressure, it could not keep up with the enormous number of candidates. Day and night above the crematoria there hung a great cloud of smoke, evidence that the death industry was in full swing.
It was unnecessary to hasten the “natural” process of death. Why provide so many corpses in so many batches? Undernourishment, exhaustion, and diseases which were often harmless in themselves but which nevertheless carried off the weak prisoners, could provide a slower and steadier, but just as certain stream of corpses for the crematoria.
We prisoners in Block 6 no longer had to work. And we hardly saw any SS men, only the dead bodies, which were carried away at regular intervals by those comrades who still had a little strength left. And we saw the newcomers who took their places.
The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness Page 7