Journal 1935–1944

by Mihail Sebastian

From today, Jews are forbidden to fly the Romanian tricolor or the German flag. Police lorries went around confiscating flags in various parts of town. It seems that at Huşi, the few remaining Jews are forced to wear a distinctive yellow sign.

  A constant sense of oppression and anguish. I don’t see anyone, don’t communicate with anyone. Only my reading helps to keep my unease in check. If my eyes were better, I’d read more.

  Monday, 30 June

  The pompous German communiqué reports 4,000 aircraft and 2,500 tanks destroyed, with 40,000 prisoners taken. More than the news as such, the style in which it is drafted gives you the sense of a major Soviet military disaster. On the map the catastrophe is not so evident. But in town everyone is talking of a definitive German victory.

  In Iaşi, five hundred Judeo-ffeemasons executed.7 The government communiqué, printed in special editions of the papers, states that they had been aiding and abetting Soviet parachutists.

  Tuesday, 1 July

  One more month over, one more beginning. This time we are in the midst of catastrophes. Fewer questions than on the first of June, but more terrors.

  Powerless to speak or write. A kind of dull, muffled terror. You hardly dare look beyond the passing hour, beyond the day that has not yet passed. An alert from 8:30 until 10 this evening. The first since Sunday morning, but longer and apparently more serious. The roar of anti-aircraft fire, machine-gun bursts, and some strange isolated bangs, as if from a revolver.

  Yesterday a streetcar driver saw me with a newspaper in my hand.

  “Have they entered Moscow?”

  “Not yet. But they will for sure—today or tomorrow.”

  “Well, let them. Then we can make mincemeat of the yids!”

  A conversation between a man and a “nice” lady, overheard in the street:

  “Well, what do you think they’ve found out? It was a Jewish girl, fourteen years old. She threw the bombs with her own hands.”

  The fall of the democratic regime in Athens, after the terrible defeat in Syracuse (which Thucydides describes in all its pain and suffering), is so similar to the fall of the French Republic after the collapse of the Somme front. Alcibiades is a kind of Laval, but probably more daring and adventurous, more willing to expose himself to blows, less abject. You feel a tightening of the chest, a strange sense of humiliation as you read all about the fall of Athens.

  Wednesday, 2 July

  The official communiqué in all the papers today: “In recent days there have been several cases when hostile alien elements opposed to our interests have opened fire on German and Romanian soldiers. Any attempt to repeat these vile attacks will be ruthlessly crushed. For each German or Romanian warrior, fifty Judeo-Communists will be executed.”

  Saturday, 5 July

  Days of extreme disquiet. You feel weighed down, pursued, as in a nightmare. Then, feeling so weary, you stop thinking and seem to fall back into a leaden apathy, to be aroused by another piece of news, another whisper. Maybe, alone in Calea Victoriei, I’d have felt the unease even more sharply. But here at home, where some kind of daily routine goes on (mealtimes, bedtimes, discussions, belote, incidents with the maid or the landlord, and so on), things become greyer and more indifferent. And yet, on top of all this gluelike apathy, there is a constant sense of danger.

  In Buzău, Ploieşti, and Rîmnic, all male Jews between ten and sixty years of age have been interned in camps put together somewhere or other: in schools, at the synagogue, or wherever. I don’t know what is happening in other towns, and I keep wondering what will happen to us here in Bucharest.

  I have stopped following the course of the war. Anyway, I do not have the means. To read the papers is like an exercise in textual decoding for which you do not have the code. And yet it is so interesting! For the first time it occurs to me that truth is definitely something that can never be camouflaged. Beneath all the fakes and lies and all the mental aberrations, however deeply hidden or wildly deformed, the truth still breaks through, still glitters, still breathes.

  I can’t see on the map where the fronts lie. Everything remains so confused. Who can tell what has been captured, what not captured? Beneath a daily avalanche of thundering but imprecise dispatches, the contours of the front continue to be unclear. In broad outline the situation does not seem to have essentially changed in the last week: the Germans have advanced in the center, around Minsk, but the flanks are still holding in the north and south. Nonetheless, the press and the dispatches speak of a final great catastrophe for the Russians. Here are the headlines on just one page of one of today’s papers (Universul): “German and Romanian Forces Pursue Enemy to Dniester and Dnieper”; “Atrocities Committed by Retreating Bolsheviks”; “Nothing Can Stop German Advance in Russia”; “20,000 Soviet Soldiers Desert Encircled Army at Minsk”; “Huge Quantities of Bolshevik Weapons and Ammunition Destroyed by German Armies on Baltic Coast”; “Numerous Bolshevik Airfields Occupied by Germans in Baltic Lands”; “Soviet Attempt to Stop German Advance Fails”; “Bolshevik Transport Column Destroyed by German Air Force”; “Hungarian Troops Continuing to Advance.”

  Sunday, 6 July

  At Lereanu’s and at Dr. Silberstein’s (in two completely different parts of town), policemen have called to register them on special lists of all Jewish males between the ages of eighteen and sixty. The father of a friend of Benu’s—a man called Leibovici, who seems to be of no special importance at all—was picked up yesterday morning and taken away in a car. No one knows exactly who took him, or where. At Cotroceni (where I myself worked last year in the labor detachment), young Jews are continuing our work in a state of veritable reclusion. They cannot go home or receive visits; no one is allowed to take them food. I wait dazed for evening to fall, for daylight to come, for the hours and another day to pass—one more day, then another one. . . . I am not even frightened. I seem to have accepted in advance whatever may come. Were it not for the thought that Mama may suffer, anything would seem bearable.

  Luckily I can still read. It’s a sign that my nerves are holding out. I read in turn the many things on my desk, switching as if randomly from one to the other: Thibaudet (La campagne avec Thucydide), Aristophanes, Whitman’s verse, and an English popular novel by Mary Borden. In reserve I have Balzac and Sainte-Beuve, which I have been reading all this year.

  Monday, 7 July

  The special evening editions have a communiqué on the occupation of Cernăuţi.

  Tuesday, 8 July

  Folklore. Gypsy children sell Romanul măcelarului roşu [The Story of the Red Butcher] in the street, shouting at the top of their voice:

  Pleacă trenu din Chitila

  Cu Stalin în Palestina.

  Pleacă trenu din Galaţi

  Cu jidanii spînzurati.8

  Rosetti, back for a few days from his holiday in Cîmpulung, thinks that the Russian defeat is a disaster and that resistance may collapse from one day to the next. Camil, on the other hand, whom I hadn’t seen for at least a week, reckons that the whole situation has been turned around by a new and unforeseen factor: the Soviet soldier and his immense fighting capacity. “For the Soviet army,” he says, “it is a question not of a national war but of a civil war.” The whole conversation with Camil was interesting—with the inevitable “Camilisms.” If he were in Hitler’s place, he would know how to weaken Soviet resistance. (He would drop five thousand parachute troops on Moscow and make a rout.) If he were in Antonescu’s place, he would know how to capture the Russian fortifications. (He would keep attacking them at short intervals with little squads of twenty to thirty men, thus bringing the enemy to the point of nervous exhaustion.) I think that with Camil (as with Nae Ionescu, only much more easily) I have developed a real technique for getting him to speak and listening to him. It is to listen admiringly, with occasional exclamations of surprise and false objections or doubts that he can easily dismiss.

  I get the feeling that the anti-Semitic tension has fallen a little, by a fraction of a degree. I don’t
quite know where this feeling comes from— maybe from the fact that no new anti-Semitic measures have been officially published for two or three days.

  Wednesday, 9 July

  Today’s papers carry a decree of the Buzău mayor’s office: Jews cannot move around between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m., do not have a right to enter cafés, are forbidden to visit one another, even if they are friends or relatives, and cannot call a doctor except through the local sergeant. So much for my wrong impression yesterday that the anti-Semitic tension is declining. Whenever I go into town, I come back feeling even more depressed than before. There are terrible cases (yesterday, the death of a nineteen-year-old boy), abominable news reports. You have no way of checking—but everything seems to be true, and anyway everything is possible.

  I have finished La campagne avec Thucydide. Begun War and Peace. I long for a little music: Bach or Mozart would bring a moment of peace and cheer me up.

  Saturday, 12 July

  It has been impossible to record anything here the last four days. I do not have the words, or the feeling or attitude, to relate the simple facts that people report about Jews killed in Iaşi or transported from there to Cáláraíji. A dark, somber, insane nightmare.

  All that is left is for us to meet death as we would a death at war. Whether you fall or stay on your feet is a matter of pure chance. Are those who die at the front less defenseless than we are? We all fumble around in the dark, in a huge sad crowd of millions and millions of people—and death does not discriminate, does not wait for anyone. No one knows who will remain.

  I saw Camil again this morning. It’s strange that, out of the blue, he started to tell me once more—with unexpected violence—about last winter’s incident with Poldy Stern. Why? Does he have a bad conscience about it? Is he haunted by a vile deed that he cannot cover up well enough? I suspect there is another explanation. He imagines that I could land, as Poldy has landed, in some kind of serious trouble—and he is warning me not to rely on him. “How shameless to turn to a friend, just because he is less exposed than you are.” Maybe he wants to warn me against one day being so “shameless.” But Camil is the last person to whom I would turn in a difficult moment.

  It would appear that the Russian front is more or less where it was, and that operations have entered a phase of waiting, regroupment, preparation. For several days the communiqués have again been subdued; all they have reported has been in connection with the “encirclement” of Bialystok and Minsk. This time it seems that at least this operation is over. Today’s German communiqué has the character of a balance sheet: 323,898 prisoners, 3,332 tanks, 1,809 artillery pieces, 6,233 aircraft. The absolute precision of the counting is certainly impressive. But somehow these big figures lack expressive power. When you reach those levels, you lose your feel for proportions and values.

  On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, three evenings in a row, there were alerts of twenty to thirty minutes at more or less the same time (around eight o’clock), without any gunfire or bomb explosions, even in the distance.

  I have been reading War and Peace with interest, more for the possible historical analogies than for the work in itself.

  Monday, 14 July

  Is the German “pause” over? Yesterday’s German communiqué reported the occupation of Vitebsk (to the northwest of Smolensk) and advances toward Kiev. The press dispatches claim that the occupation of Kiev and Leningrad is imminent.

  The Jews of Ploiesti have been forced to leave town. There have been air raids there in the last few days, and some fires at the refineries.

  This evening, after a two-day pause, there was an air-raid alert, with intensive anti-aircraft fire.

  Wednesday, 16 July

  A complicated dream during the night. I remember only one bit of it. I was with Nae Ionescu in Brăila. We were both going to a kind of literary soiree, where he was supposed to give a lecture and I to speak about him. I think he asked me to lay on the praise.

  On Monday night there was a long alert from one to three, with many incendiary bombs (nearly all of them dropped on our area). Small fires, quickly put out. Yesterday, at about 10 p.m., a brief alarm that led to nothing.

  Impossible to know what is happening at the front. I have pinned a map of Europe on the wall, but I can’t work out where the front line is. Since Sunday the German communiqués have again been subdued while the press dispatches have noisily announced the imminent fall of Kiev, Leningrad, and Moscow.

  Thursday, 17 July

  Yesterday I read in proof (from Rosetti) the page about me in Călinescu’s Istoria literaturii. It is probably the harshest thing ever written against me, beginning with “no artistic talent” and ending with “no aptitude as a writer.” I was annoyed, but no more than that. It is vexing to have a page like that in a literary history, whose character as a work of record gives it a certain irrevocability. A thousand-page book of this kind gets written once every thirty or forty years, so I shall have to wait four decades for the record to be set straight. Nevertheless, after the initial irritation it no longer seemed so important. At most annoying. In present times I can’t take seriously these literary vexations or even dramas. Il s'agit de vivre.9 Death is possible any day, any hour. What happened in Iasi (and I still can’t make up my mind to write everything I have meanwhile heard about it) can be repeated here at any time.

  So, then?

  My “career” as a writer has never obsessed me; now it doesn’t even interest me. Will I still be a writer after the war? Will I be able to write? Will I ever recover from all the disgust I have accumulated in these terrible, bestial years?

  Apparently Chişinău has fallen at last. I am told that a German communiqué reported it this evening. There is not yet anything in the papers. This morning’s communiqué mentioned the defeat of Russian counterattacks at a number of points. (But to be “defeated” they must have taken place.) The press dispatches continue speaking of the imminent fall of Leningrad.

  Friday, 18 July

  An official Romanian communiqué reports that Hotin, Orhei, Soroca, and Chişinău have all been occupied. The city is again decked with flags. Tomorrow there will be great celebrations. The German communiqué reports that operations are continuing to proceed in a satisfactory manner. DNB dispatches add that Smolensk has been captured. The situation on the map is still unclear, because DNB also announced today the capture of a town, Polotsk, which is west not only of Smolensk but even of Vitebsk.

  Alice Th. told me that, according to an officer friend of hers back from the front, the army has orders to shoot all Jews they find in Bukovina and Bessarabia. Ricci Hillard, who was also there, confirmed it. Ordinea of the evening before last printed a photograph that I regret not having cut out and kept. A long wretched line of women in tatters, with small children equally ragged. Not one male face. The text said these were Judeo-Communists, rounded up by the army in retaliation for their criminal deeds.

  Saturday, 19 July

  I found the following today in one of Lawrence’s letters. It gives me pleasure to copy it down: “I feel I must leave this side, this phase of life, for ever. The living part is overwhelmed by the dead part, and there is no altering it. So that life which is still fertile must take its departure, like seeds from a dead plant. I want to transplant my life. I think there is hope of a future, in America. I want if possible to grow towards the future. There is no future here, only decomposition.”

  The headlines in today’s Universul-. “German Units Continuing Their Rapid Advance to Moscow”; “Soviet Armies in a Grave Situation”; “Smolensk-Moscow Railway Destroyed.”

  Sunday, 20 July

  I have been reading in War and Peace the episode of the fall of Smolensk in August 1812—and just as I read, the same battle takes place in front of the same Smolensk, 129 years later. Tolstoy is even more absorbing, instructive, and topical than I expected. Napoleon’s conversation with Bolokhov, Tsar Alexander’s emissary, is amazingly similar to Coulondre’s1 last interview with Hitler in A
ugust 1939. And the atmosphere in Moscow at the start of the war (whispers, rumors, clarifications, consternation) is the atmosphere in which we have been living for the past two years. Then too, funnily enough, there were people who saw Napoleon in the Book of the Apocalypse and calculated that the letters of his name added up to the number 666.

  Apart from the advance in the Smolensk region (where things do not seem to be rushing ahead, since the German communiqué says only that they are “planmàssig,”2 the rest of the front is unchanged. Fighting at Pskov, fighting at Polotsk, fighting at Novgorod-Volinsk: which means that the situation of Kiev and Leningrad has at least not worsened for the Russians since last Sunday, when they were regarded as all but fallen.

  We are now entering the fifth week of war and nothing decisive has happened. The game is open, still to be played.

  Lovinescu told Eugen Ionescu the other day that no one can be an Anglophile any longer. The Russians must be defeated, and the Germans must remain victorious. Otherwise we’ll be ruled by “Jews and cobblers”(?).

  In the street today, Georgică Fotescu called out to me that “by the first of September the Germans will polish off that big Russian pie, then propose a peace the British won’t be able to refuse.”

  Sfintu Ilie. What a terrible day I spent a year ago in the zone, at Valea lui Soare.

  Monday, 21 July

  A conversation with Titu Devechi. (He called out from his car when I was waiting for a streetcar on the boulevard, and we took a walk together for half an hour.) In his view, the situation is quite simple: Russia will fall by the first of September—perhaps even sooner. Leningrad will fall in a week at the latest, Moscow in a fortnight. In any event, the Germans will have completed the Russian campaign by the first of September, and will then propose peace to the Anglo-Americans. It’s possible that the Anglo-Americans will reject it—which would be a terrible mistake on their part. Anyway, Europe can live without them, especially after the Russian windfall. Ukraine will supply grain to the whole continent. The destruction in Russia is insignificant. Large quantities were found in Bukovina: full granaries, untouched factories. I listened to it all without raising any objection. I didn’t even want to give the impression that I had any doubts. Just once I asked: