The Fifth Son

by Elie Wiesel

  “My comrade had stopped talking for some time but we were still listening to him. What were we waiting for? I don’t know. We may have been waiting to hear him retract it all, to hear him laugh and say: ‘Good people, I’m not finished with my report, listen to the rest: the dead all rose from their graves and are preparing to come home tomorrow morning; it was all a nightmare.’ But no. The witness testified and fell silent; he too was waiting. The hospital director was the first to respond. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. Thanks, that’s terrific: he doesn’t understand; what about me? What about all of us? Did we understand maybe? Your father commented: ‘But why?’ That’s some question. Why, what? The lies, the playacting? The murder of fifty Jews? Our gullibility? Our illusions? Perhaps even our complicity? Why, why?… The Rabbi said: ‘We shall have to inform the next of kin; they shall have to observe mourning.’ That’s what was on the Rabbi’s mind. Religion, rituals, God. I felt like saying something to him but thought better of it. He was a good man, the Rabbi, I liked him and hurting his feelings would surely not make me feel any better. ‘But,’ said the Rabbi, ‘first we must be absolutely certain.’ Certain? Of what? That they were dead? ‘What do you mean?’ I snapped. ‘Is my comrade’s testimony not enough for you?’ Yes, it was enough, but Jewish Law requires the testimony of two people. He explained: ‘Suppose a widow wishes to remarry, she must be able to prove that …’ Whereupon, despite the respect I owed him and felt for him, I interrupted him and reminded him that this was not the proper time to give us a lesson in Talmud. He was not angry with me, I know. He was biting his lips, he was desolate, but so were we all.

  “Everyone was silent. A strange silence that buzzed through the room like a swarm in the garden. Abruptly your father turned to me: ‘To ease my conscience, I still would like to have a confirmation; what if you accompanied your friend?’ It was not an order; hardly more than a suggestion. How could I say no? ‘All right, I’ll go.’

  “My friend and I knew a secret passage out of the ghetto, we left in silence; we entered the forest in silence; in silence we walked among the trees. Suddenly my friend pulled my sleeve: ‘It’s over there.’ We halted. Again, the urge to vomit; this time I didn’t hold back; bracing myself against a pine tree I vomited. I vomited my food, my insides, my childhood. I didn’t want to live anymore. I didn’t want to breathe the foul air of this earth. ‘Come closer, look,’ said my friend. I did as he told me. I looked. I would have done better not to look.…

  “We started back and yet I felt that I had not left the mass grave: I continued to look, to stare at the bodies. We were back at the ghetto and I was seeing them still. We arrived at the council office and they were there too: tangled together but not disfigured, they seemed to be alive, to be living inside death.…

  “The council was there, ready to listen to me. Two hours had passed since we left: nobody had moved or said a word. Motionless, riveted to silence, they were staring into the void in front of them and perhaps even inside them. Had they seen us return? I headed for my usual place, dropped into my chair but stood immediately. Why? Surely I sensed or knew that a witness must speak standing up. But … what could I say? Where was I to start?

  “A thousand words jostled one another inside me; a thousand cries tore me apart. ‘It’s true,’ I told them in a hoarse, unrecognizable voice, ‘it’s all true.’ I knew that I had to go on, I knew that I had to say something else or perhaps the same thing differently, but once again I felt nausea. I was afraid I would throw up in front of everyone. And so I sat down again. I felt their eyes on me, searching, probing; they all wanted to see and not see what I had seen. If someone asks me a question, I shall get up and run away. No, I underestimated them. They asked no questions and I added nothing. How long did we remain like that: disoriented, disarmed, paralyzed? Until the first glow of dawn? Until the last?

  “Your father looked at the Rabbi questioningly. The Rabbi said: ‘I’m going to the mikva. Then we must prepare for the funeral.’ Your father nodded his approval and said: ‘What happened can happen again; tomorrow another group will have its turn. You may tell me that the special SS unit whose presence was tied to the crime will leave our town or has already left; another will succeed it. From all this I draw a conclusion: our people must be told what has happened. If they refuse to go on working for the Germans we must not try to dissuade them. As far as we are concerned, one thing is clear: the council must resign.’

  “What followed then? Better ask: how did it end? The news of the massacre plunged the ghetto into mourning. There was shock, there was anger. The ghetto was like a caldron under pressure, ready to explode. One cry, one wound, and there would be a revolt. Or suicide. The streets were filled with haggard faces. Everyone was waiting for the inevitable decision. What should we do, what could we do? Strangers spoke to one another, pious women complained about not being able to visit the cemetery outside the ghetto—to alert the dead, to implore them to intercede up above.

  “And at that moment, the barriers that enclosed our forbidden quarter were lifted.

  “Richard Lander arrived surrounded by his lieutenants. His face stern, flushed with indignation, the military man responsible for our fate hastened toward the offices of the Jewish Council. Your father and the rest of us stood waiting. He paused on the threshold: a kind of border, a no-man’s-land separating the two camps. ‘What’s going on?’ said the governor without a word of greeting. ‘I am told that the brigades refuse to work; may I know why, Mr. President of the Jewish Council? Could it be that the war is over? That the Reich has already won? That we no longer need your efforts, your talents? I have the right to expect from you, Mr. President, and from your colleagues, a more rational, more sensible attitude. Your behavior distresses me as much as it surprises me. Speak, I am listening.’ Whereupon your father, like a martyred king in one of those plays from antiquity, handed him a sheet of paper: our collective resignation.

  “Richard Lander appeared to appreciate his adversary’s role. If he was annoyed, he hid it well. His voice turned protective, warm, unctuous: ‘Well now, why this refusal to serve your community, Mr. President? Is it because of the—eh—unfortunate incident that occurred in Workshop #4? To turn it into a drama would be a mistake, Mr. President. I do regret what happened. I regret it all the more because it could have been avoided. Would you like to know the facts …? Four Jewish workers provoked the SS soldiers guarding them. There was a struggle, rifle shots were fired into the air. Convinced that they were under attack, the other members of the work force joined the mutiny. In their panic, our soldiers believed it necessary to shoot. Note that they were reprimanded and transferred. Does this explanation satisfy you? Will you now withdraw your resignation?’

  “Everybody held his breath. I half-hoped your father would answer that he agreed to close the parentheses, and yet I would be lying if I denied having another reaction: the hope that your father would not allow himself to be duped by this wretched would-be actor. If he did, I would be ashamed of him; if he did, I myself would be ashamed in front of all my friends still staring at me out of that ditch, staring at me as if to tell me the story of their end, a story nobody will ever know. But, of course, my thoughts, my wishes were of little importance; the decision was your father’s and it was sublime: he did not answer. I mean: he did not speak; he simply shook his head from left to right, from right to left, his jaw set, his eyes unblinking. He is strong, your father, and I admired him, we all admired him. Even those among us who would die and knew it, admired him.

  “Sure enough, my boy, some of these men paid for it; paid for this gesture, this act of defiance, with their lives. The Angel dominated the stage and distributed the parts. He personified all the eternal powers and, as mercurial as they, made his decisions only at the last minute. But what would his decision be now? Until that moment I thought that, even for him, it was a game and that common sense would prevail. I thought: the ruler of life and death will say a few persuasive words, your father will answer wit
h other words, and everyone will think that the match will continue, from ordeal to ordeal.… At what precise moment did I realize my mistake? Abruptly, the German officer drew himself up, stood at attention and declared dryly: ‘You meant to give us a lesson in dignity—well, you didn’t succeed. You see, Mr. President of the Jewish Council, we are German officers and our concept of honor differs from yours. Also be assured that we shall never agree to take lessons from you Jews, in this or any other matter.’ Then I knew. Suddenly I knew that the end was imminent and inexorable. My stomach knew it, my fingers knew it. A shudder went through me; I was feverish.

  “Pretending contrition, the German officer was now scribbling on sheets he tore from his notebook and then rolled into balls. ‘I have here,’ he said in a neutral voice, ‘your twelve names in the palm of my hand. I shall throw away six, woe to them. They shall die.’ And I found myself foolishly repeating the sentence: ‘No he can’t, he won’t do this, not this, not now, not in this way, he wants to frighten us that’s all, he is joking, it amuses him to see us panic.’ Well, he was not joking. I remember what I felt: a sense of amputation, of absolute loss. To my right, Wolf Zeligson. To his, Tolka Friedman. To his, Rabbi Aharon-Asher. To his, Simha. And then your father; I remember how changed he looked. A nervous twitch distorted his face. He made a visible effort to control it, to look straight ahead, to breathe normally.

  “The Angel, who was observing us with contempt, turned to your father and said with feigned sincerity: ‘You’ve drawn the good lot, Mr. President of the Jewish Council. I’m happy for you. All the more, because, for someone like you, and I know you better than you think, yours is the wrong lot. From now on, your future will smell of the grave.’

  “And that was all. The end. In any case, the end of my association with your father. A new council replaced ours. The Germans were jubilant, their commander triumphant. The ghetto was shrinking. Here and there, the idea of organized armed resistance was beginning to take hold. Emissaries from Bialystok and Warsaw encouraged us: ‘It’s the only way,’ they said. ‘You must fight or die, you must fight until death.’ I went underground. I escaped from the ghetto and returned bearing messages and sums of money sent by comrades near and far. Impeccable documents in hand, I traveled to places like Warsaw, Katowice and Lublin. Once I went to Vilna. My ‘wife’ on that mission was a particularly brave young woman. She was armed, I was not. I no longer saw your father. But he remained a presence in my mind. I could not detach myself from that last scene. But only much later did I remember a striking detail which did not concern him yet concerned us all: that night, the most astonishing and absurd night of my life, time, as if pursued by shame, had fled more swiftly: in less than twelve hours the Rabbi’s black hair had turned completely white.”

  Ariel, my son,

  … Daring? Honor? Dignity? What foolishness! To you I can admit it: I am angry with myself. I should not have defied our Angel, not at that particular moment.

  After all, we, the council members, were not guilty of any wrongdoing as far as the community was concerned. We learned about the massacre only after it happened. We did not even know of the existence of Workshop # 4.

  Then why did we insist on playing heroes? To obtain what favors in heaven or on earth? To impress whom? Now, in retrospect, I tell myself that to disarm the Angel and blunt his rage, I should have thrown myself on the ground, crawled at his feet, and begged him to spare us. We could have resigned later. I could have told the Germans: “Before, we did not know, now we know; therefore, from now on we consider ourselves responsible for every life inside these walls. Next time a Jew is killed we shall denounce your crimes by resigning, by choosing death, next time …”

  Yes, my son, I feel responsible for the deaths of my comrades. Had I overcome my pride, they might have lived another year, another month, another day. For someone about to die even a single day is a long time. You know it well.

  But … then what happened? I thought that I was interpreting our collective conviction that it was better, that it was simpler and more prudent to take a stand right then. Right there. Otherwise we ran the risk of falling into the trap of routine: one says B because one has said A. Then one continues to D, to death; one becomes an accomplice of Death.

  I refused to say B. I stopped before. I was wrong. I could not resist the temptation of courage; that is how I sacrificed my friends. And others I didn’t even know.

  It is a fact that there were ghettos where Jewish leaders behaved differently; should I pity them or envy them?

  I recognize that Jewish history placed too heavy a burden on my shoulders. I was not prepared.

  Was the Angel right when he told me that I would have preferred to die? And give you up? Fortunately I was spared this choice. I was destined to lose either way.

  Your father

  HE IS THREE TIMES my age, Bontchek, but often it is I who support him. The strong and daring man who defied invincible powers speaks to me in a frightened and whining voice. He is convinced, Bontchek, that my father and Simha are ostracizing him, conspiring against him. I try to reassure him as best I can:

  “You’re imagining things, Bontchek. My father likes you, so does Simha. You’re going through a paranoid phase, you suspect the whole world.…”

  He shakes his head. He knows. My father and Simha have rejected him; they hate him. They exclude him from their debates because, in their eyes, he has done something wrong.

  “We were so close,” he cries, “so close. Like brothers. You cannot imagine all the wild, outlandish plans we watched take root and die, all the misfortunes we endured. Together we fought. Together, side by side. We formed a bloc. The German army, at the time the most powerful in the world, could neither break nor separate us. Now that the danger has passed, they turn their backs on me.”

  “You exaggerate, Bontchek. Admit that you’re exaggerating. You say these things because they don’t invite you to their scholarly evenings. I didn’t know you were such a lover of Biblical studies.”

  “Don’t you, too, make fun of me. They insult me, do you want to do the same?”

  “Really, Bontchek …”

  “You think I’m paranoid? Then how do you explain their conspiracy?”

  “It is they who are inexplicable, Bontchek. They are strange, you of all people should know that.”

  “In the old days, in Davarowsk, they were my friends; they no longer are. Now they are … they are my judges.”

  Poor old Bontchek: he would give all his worldly goods—and mine—to rejoin his old comrades: to recapture his youth.

  We meet more and more frequently. Endless walks. Riverside Drive, along the Hudson River. Broadway with its noisy, crowded cafeterias. And near the tip of Manhattan, the Brooklyn Bridge, which we cross on foot. Sometimes we venture into the subway, that dirty foul-smelling labyrinth where everyone seems ill, gloomy or conniving under the cold lights. The trains arrive and depart with shattering noise, without apparent destination. Sleeping workmen, widows in mourning, leering vagabonds, teenagers on the run, abandoned fathers bent under the weight of their solitude, prostitutes in quest of clients, civil servants playing hooky, thieves awaiting their opportunities, hungry beggars, homeless children: what wretchedness, Lord, what wretchedness Thou hidest from Thine eyes.…

  During these outings I am the guide. Even though, for the voyage into the past, I follow him. Strange juxtaposition you will tell me: New York and Davarowsk. And yet there is a connection between these two worlds, believe me; the very same that exists between Bontchek and myself. Our goals are similar and overlap: both of us attempt, through the other, to come closer to my father. Bontchek conjures up the past and, in return, I describe the present to him: my father’s obsession with One-Eyed Paritus; the half-romantic, half-kabbalistic plans of Simha who hopes to restore creation to its primary light by manipulating his faithful shadows; our silent vigils, our visits to our neighbor Rabbi Zvi-Hersh, my sleepless nights, my migraines, my confusion about my role within the family
.

  “You know my father. He is a complicated man. He has lived many lives and now he tries laboriously to build a bridge between them: who is the bridge? I? His writings? His silence?”

  “Why in God’s name can’t he be like everyone else?”

  “He’s not like everyone else.”

  “He could at least make an effort, couldn’t he?”

  “Why?”

  “How should I know. To please me.…”

  Bontchek is depressed. I ask him to return to the ghetto, he refuses. He does not feel like chatting. To change his mood, I tell him of my studies, my lectures, my discoveries, my inexperience.… Lisa dragging me to a party at the house of one of her friends. Everyone is drinking and yelling, then they stop and begin to smoke and listen to records. They hand me a lighted joint, I refuse politely, they insist, Lisa insists. O.K., I inhale: it is sickeningly sweet. My stomach is turning. I run outside, I vomit my guts, I go home, I feel robbed. Lisa’s comment: “It’s your mother’s fault.” “What’s my mother’s fault?” “Your weakness, your nausea …” As far as she is concerned, it is always my mother’s fault. Why not my father’s? Because she is very fond of him.