In the afternoon we greet Hélène and Gabriel Rispal, who have rushed up to see us in the little room that we have lived in for nearly two years now. Gabriel is still in his white painter’s overalls; he has not yet had time to change. In Belvès, as soon as the great news was heard, a procession formed spontaneously, with Rispal at its head, a Tricolour in one hand and a red flag in the other. They went first to the ‘Monument aux Morts’, then to the graveyard, to the freshly dug graves of those fallen in the Resistance; and finally to the main square. There Gabriel was lifted onto a table and had to sing them the ‘Marseillaise’ and ‘Paname’. After that, though, he and his wife had left everyone standing to come to us–to share this so deeply longed-for hour with us. And now they are urging us to follow them to Belvès, to spend the evening with them in their house–because now there is nothing to stop us, is there? Now we are no longer clandestines. The iron bolt has been pulled back, we are free. We are assured that we can come and go as we please.
What? Go to Belvès–us? Leave our hiding place, show ourselves on the street? Openly admit that we are still alive? But… what if we bump into a policeman?
In a sudden flash of lightning I live through it all again–the miracle. The three miracles, that snatched us from the grasp of death. I see barbed wire–row upon row of it. My hut: Hut Number 8. I breathe the aroma of dirt again, and the sweet scent of old straw on the plank-beds. I feel the hunger again–how it bites your insides. Concentration camp. Concentration camp for Jews. There were 1,800 of us at Beaune-la-Rolande. Where are they now, my unhappy comrades? What gruesome death awaited them in one of the Extermination Camps in Germany or Poland? The first miracle is that I am not among their number.
And then: the day after tomorrow–25th August 1944–will be the second anniversary of the day when, in the grey of dawn, seven gendarmes entered our house in Voiron. The bus to Grenoble. Caserne Bizanet, that sinister antechamber of death. The people–the children playing–waiting to be handed over to the Germans, to death. How we were saved at the very last moment. We: my wife and I, and Sláva, who had taken it upon herself to keep faith with Jews. We were allowed out–‘provisionally’. And then Rosa. Poor Rosa–for her there was no miracle, no ‘provisionally’: an officer was in a bad mood. We had to abandon her to her fate. What has become of her?
Then an interlude. Our ‘escape to Switzerland’. The railway station at Aix-les-Bains; disaster lying in wait all around us. That gendarme–our potential ruin–looming towards us. Another episode that could so easily have had irrevocable consequences.
And finally the third miracle: Hélène Rispal. The same Hélène who is now trying to persuade us not to hide any longer. Hélène, who had the brainwave–in the middle of a sleepless night–to hide us here in Labarde. The telegram from her son. The journey here; the arrival.
The whole thing–the whole of the past–rises suddenly before me; and passes again, like a vision. But a vision that is clearer, more vivid, more real than the present. It is the present, rather, whose outlines appear murky, difficult to make out–the present that seems to disappear like a dream.
A triple darkness had to descend on us, so that we could finally disappear under the protective darkness of the clandestine world. And it is only a short time ago that we had to hide ourselves still deeper: in our cavity behind the morgue. Yesterday it would still have been a possibility that the Germans might take us. And now we are assured that it is all over–we are free. We are earnestly encouraged to show ourselves openly. It is too much: too much at once. I look at my friends in amazement.
Try to understand me. Have patience with me. I have not yet absorbed the new reality. I feel like someone who has suffered from hunger too long to be able to take a proper meal, even one composed of the most tempting dishes. I must be aware of my own limits–of what I can take in. And so I beg a little patience–a little time, yet, before we appear once more as human beings among others.
It was three days later, then, on a Sunday, that we made our ‘entry’ into Belvès. There had been a frenzy of preparation for it. Gabriel Rispal picked us up in a car. The Rispals’ charming home had been festively decorated with flowers in our honour, and a beautifully laid table adorned the dining room. Our old friend Pierre Vorms had come from Périgueux (where he had been working at the rank of major on the general staff of the FFI–the Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur*) to celebrate our ‘resurrection’. Emil Kofler had made the journey from Monpazier, although he was beset with a terrible anxiety: his son, who had done outstanding work for the Resistance, had been picked up in the street in Paris and deported to Germany at the end of July.
Vorms had also brought with him two officers, an American and a Yugoslav, who had fought alongside the French in a maquis right up to the liberation of the Dordogne. We sat down to eat. The food was exceptional. Only a friendship like that of Hélène Rispal could have performed such a culinary feat in the France of late August 1944.
Now, must I be completely honest?
To find myself here in this company–this was more than just a return to life, a return to light after the years of persecution, of running from one place to another in a deep, dark mineshaft. Alongside our sense of security there was also the feeling that here, with our friends, we had found something like a new home.
Nevertheless, I did not exactly manage to bask in the warm glow of this happiness. I had not regained a sufficient sense of equilibrium; I was too distraught, too wound up, still, by the lack of peace, the perpetual motion. And then, too, there was the effort not to let any of this show, to put on a front of merry good humour; to listen to the conversation of the two foreign officers, who had such interesting stories to tell. In the same moment that I had ceased to be a hunted animal, constantly on the run; that I had, at least to an extent, been received back into the society of free men and women, I nevertheless again felt as though I were excluded from this society–an outsider, a perpetual outsider. And in spite of the care and the affection, the warmth and tenderness that surrounded me, in spite of the heavy, intoxicating wines, I sensed that my whole being was still shot through–like a dull, constant pain–with the dreadful destruction, still being inflicted by the German rabble even on those of us who had been saved, who had survived.
For those Jews who have been able to escape the slaughter, a new tragedy now begins–the tragedy of the soul. Those of us who were rescued have escaped with our lives–our purely physical lives. But how can we rescue that other life, the higher one, the life of feelings and thoughts–the life that actually makes existence worthwhile?
Outside, the street stands invitingly bathed in sun, happiness, oblivion, the carefree cries of children. A street free of the sound of German boots. It is there for me too, now. But at the same time this street fills me with something like a feeling of agoraphobia: I have an overwhelming dread of everyone who might recognise me, might speak to me out there. Fear of the questions that they might ask me; fear of the answers that I would have to give.
Yes, we are back in Belvès.
Actually, we have been away for a long time: more than two years.
We were in the Isère, and then back here again–at a place in the country.
My wife and Miss Kolářová are quite well, thank you.
Madame Rose? No, she is not with us… Goodbye!
Is that all? Yes, that is all.
What do they know of everything that lies between these questions and these answers–of everything that rises between them like a ghost? And how could I possibly ask them the courtesy of not asking–of just walking past in silence? We were away, and now we are here again: let that be enough for you. Your life carried on as before in that period. We–we others–have come back from the dead.
Come back… to what?
If I had been compelled on that very first day after our liberation to be among people and to answer their questions, I probably would have run away immediately–back to Labarde, back to our ‘subnormals’, our simpl
etons, who remain unaffected by the madness, the foulness, of the ‘normal’ world; back to our nuns, whose universe extends no further than the humble performance of their duty and the peace afforded by their faith. For the frail creatures here, and for the women of the convent, the present is the same as the past, and the future will be the same as the present. For them the chain has not been rent asunder.
To return. To return where?
Until now we were prevented by a force majeure from even thinking about tomorrow–from making plans beyond the next hour. This force majeure no longer exists. The outcome of the War is now a certainty: the monstrosity of Hitler’s world will be terminated. All that is uncertain is how long that will take. The hope which at many times seemed little more than a dying ember has become a flame that lights up the sky. We Jews, however–those of us who by a miracle have survived–now stand in the shadow of two enormous, menacing questions. Two anxieties.
The first is: what has happened to all our relatives and friends, and indeed to all those countless individuals about whose fate we at least believe we are uncertain, so long as circumstances prevent us from making any enquiries, or receiving any news. ‘Prevent’? I should rather say, so long as circumstances still allow us to clutch at a vague hope, a ‘perhaps’. Which is like clutching at a straw. Which of the missing might still be alive… perhaps…? And what inexorable answers–what irreversible certainties–lie before us. How many mass graves contain the mouldering bones that once bore the name, the life, of a loved one. And alas, even that final resting place–that of a mass grave–cannot be regarded as a certainty. For so many Jews were thrown into those crematoria while still alive, only to then have their ashes used by the Brown Cannibals as manure in their accursed fields. How many bones were so efficiently ground up in mills that were invented especially for that purpose? There is no outrage, no desecration that would have been too much for the Germans–men and women.
The only certainty that we possess is a bald figure. Of the fifteen million Jews scattered all over the world, in Europe six million have been ‘exterminated’. So far. It is not over yet.
The second question is: what is to become of us surviving refugees? Are we to return? Where to?
Home? It is true that each of us has a country, which, after payment of the allotted price–spiritual and other–we finally managed to leave. But we no longer have a home. Worse than that: in our ‘fatherland’ we would be more foreign than we are in a foreign country, more deracinated than we are in our exile. Every face–familiar or unfamiliar–every house, every stone would serve only to bring back to us the bitter memory of the shame, the insults, the betrayal, the humiliation that we were subjected to immediately after the Anschluss took place. With every breath we took we would breathe in the memories like poison gas. Every step would simply throw into greater relief the gaping, unbridgeable abyss between that past and the present. There would be no word, no assurance, no look, no smile, no tear that we could ever trust any more. Behind every mask memory would show its face–the hideous grimace of a monster.
Besides, of those in Vienna who shared our fate, after 10th March 1938–our relatives, our friends–no one is still there. No one. They are dead; deported–disappeared without trace; or else somewhere far, far away: America, Australia, New Zealand; China… It is a graveyard, my homeland: a graveyard even for the survivors. We could not even be certain that we would find the graves of those who had the good fortune to die before the invasion. For even these have, we learn, been desecrated and destroyed.
But, wherever it may be, it will mean, for very many of us, starting from the beginning again. ‘Recommencer à zéro.’ Starting at zero again; starting with nothing. In both the material and the spiritual sense. Starting, in fact, at a lot less than zero. Many of us survivors, who are already near the end of our lives–are we to begin the struggle again, in spite of age, in spite of exhaustion; in spite of our shattered nerves, of all the incurable wounds that we bear?
Will we find help, or at least justice?
We are receiving such fine promises, at the moment, from all quarters. A golden age will dawn just as soon as the Monster of the Swastika has finally been slain. Punishment of all crimes; reparation for all wrongs; freedom; equality; justice. Every individual will be assured both a life and a death that accord with human dignity. We shall see, of course, which of these wonderful proclamations of human happiness are actually translated into fact, once propaganda has itself become redundant, and once the politicians of all parties no longer need to use the sufferings of others as material for their political games…
And will those people of goodwill who did not themselves experience Hitler’s Germany at first hand–will even these people have enough imagination and energy to keep alive their abhorrence for the guilty and their willingness to help the victims after the War as well? The human heart so easily reverts to oblivion, to routine; human memory is so short, especially as regards other people’s troubles. Then, of course, we have the demands of what is known as ‘Realpolitik’–that is to say, of the politics that wants to cover up everything, to sweep it under the carpet. And to leave the dead alone.
No. After the incredible quantity of suffering with which the end of the Third Reich was purchased–after this war–the dead must not be left as dead, must not be left under the great shroud of forgetting. The dead must arise again, inexorably, in the remembrance, in the conscience of the world, bloody witnesses for all time of an age in which the outrages of a Hitler and of his Germany–outrages of a kind that had never before existed or been imagined–were allowed to happen. The voice of the dead should be louder than all the victory celebrations; stronger than any kind of politics. The voice of the dead demands expiation–in as far as there can ever be expiation, given what was done under the sign of the Swastika. Expiation, so that they can have retribution–yes, retribution, because it would be the most blatant hypocrisy, the most abject betrayal, to try to magic away the concept of retribution. Even if applied with the most extreme severity, this would not merely constitute justice, it would actually still represent the most extreme leniency. But the voice of the dead demands expiation as a preventive measure, too, so as to protect future generations from reaping the harvest of the hellish seed sowed by Hitler and his brood. The disappearance of the Third Reich on the surface will accomplish nothing. It must be rendered genuinely harmless.
The most evil and cowardly atrocities were–even before the War–‘only’ perpetrated against Jews. ‘Only’–that qualification which functions as an excuse, or even as a term of approval. And there are many, I know, who add this ‘only’, if not aloud, then at least silently. Hitler’s proud boast, in one of his speeches, that he would at all events leave behind him an anti-Semitic Europe, was not a vain one.
But do not forget, all you others–even those whom Hitler will have left behind him as anti-Semites–that it concerns you, too. Vestra res agitur. Whether in the Occupied or the Unoccupied lands, you should realise that if Germany had been victorious, all of you would have sunk inevitably to the category implied by that ‘only’. You would have all become ‘only’ slaves–you, your children, and your children’s children–slaves, whom the Master Race would have felt free to use as they desired, arrogantly and without restraint. Here in France, for example, you would have been ‘only’–according to the Führer’s own words–despised ‘negroids’. I admit that this position is still far from being comparable with ours. Still, you may certainly believe that your ‘only’–that is, the status of serfs belonging to the comrades within the Master Race–would have been fully sufficient to make you wretched for generations, even if the thousand-year Third Reich had not lasted for quite a thousand years. So: do not forget; take retribution; be watchful. Otherwise your children may easily have to endure a Fourth Reich. Hitler is not an incomprehensible accident of history. He was merely a synthesis–an infernal crystallisation–of his own Germany, which freely chose him.
To return–wher
e?
Each of us has a land where he or she was born, but we no longer have a home. We are in exile everywhere–to such an extent, in fact, that we are no longer in exile anywhere. We will be at home anywhere that we are able to find a little love and a bit of bread.
The experiences that constitute our life since emigration–they are coursing round our bodies like a poison that can never, now, be removed. Our other past, meanwhile–before 1938–might, conceivably, become a memory that does not automatically involve sorrow. It is rather like the grave of a dead person: you occasionally still visit it, but the sorrow has at last become no more than a fleeting aroma–the aroma of a far-off, insubstantial melancholy.
The young are in a better position. They have found a new home, where in their youth they may still put down deep roots. They will be able to forget that they even had something to forget. They may be able to say–even today–that the effect of Hitler was simply to force them into their true homeland.
We old people, on the other hand, have only uncertainty ahead. People tell us that we must stand firm again on our own two feet; they assure us that we will be able to move forward in confidence. But for that to be true we would have to have firm ground beneath our feet. Now we see only sand, sand that gives way with every step we take.
From the first day when, as an immigrant starting from the beginning again with nothing, I had to knock on the doors of strangers, I experienced a great deal of disappointment, disillusionment, depression, ingratitude and unfairness. Later, during the Occupation, I suffered terrible things at the hands of French people. What the Germans were, I knew already: I knew it from what I had seen in Austria. I now got to know their French accomplices and pupils. They were, in many cases, in no way inferior to their teachers.
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