And yet, at the same time, it has been granted to me in the course of my sorrowful journey in France to meet wonderful human beings–human beings the like of whom I have never encountered before.
Human beings to whom I was a stranger, or very nearly one; who had not the slightest obligation towards me and who, in the midst of the most virulent anti-Semitic witch hunt, declared themselves for the foreign outcast, when, back home, I had been shamefully abandoned, betrayed and denied by so many ‘friends’ of long years’ standing. Human beings who exposed themselves fearlessly to the most dreadful dangers, because they had taken it upon themselves as a conscientious duty to save fugitives from the German murderers. These were Christians in the finest sense of that word, who were concerned to right some of the wrongs that were being perpetrated all about them by ‘Aryans’ against Jews. Human beings who did not just offer their support, but blessed me with their brotherly affection and devotion.
Human beings who could be admired, in the France of the Resistance, as worthy children of that people who, more than 150 years ago, rose up for freedom and human rights.
French men and French women.
To return… where?
If only it might be granted to me not to have to part from these human beings, who reached out their hand to me in my hour of need; to find some corner warmed by the fire of their affection, a place where I could stay right to the end–the true end, this time, beyond which we do not have to start again, once more, from zero.
A little love and the little piece of daily bread: those are the true necessities of life. Nourishment for the soul and sustenance for the body–modest as it seems, that is all that one needs for existence. Everything else is deceit and illusion–sound and fury. If I did not know that before, it is a lesson that life has taught me since 10th March 1938.
These years have brought me more than just experiences. I am grateful to them for a realisation–a final realisation that is deeper than everything that one can get from religions, philosophical systems and political ideologies. Religions, philosophical systems and ideologies all bring their own wisdom with them. But the only knowledge which can actually help–the knowledge of love–has disappeared amid all our fantastic intellectual advances. That is why humanity was able to reach such a murderous state.
Well, I have found love. More love than I could measure. More than, in good times, I could even have dreamed of. More than I have deserved.
Will I be able to find the little bit of daily bread, too?
36
Carlos
AS EARLY AS 1943, in Labarde, I had heard the name ‘Carlos’,* spoken in tones of respect. Carlos and Soleil were the two best-known chefs of the maquis in the Dordogne. But while Soleil was the archetype of the impetuous daredevil, Carlos, for all his courage and resourcefulness, was also a thoughtful individual, who would conscientiously weigh up all his strategic and tactical options. Also, Soleil liked to be in the forefront of events, and he had an absolute talent for self-publicity. Carlos preferred to remain behind the scenes.
In September 1944 I met him at Gabriel Rispal’s house in Belvès.
Carlos is very slim, almost weedy. He looks the complete intellectual–his blue-grey eyes peep out through a pair of glasses that seem to have become part of his face. He has the natural, gentlemanly courtesy of a man of the world. Even in his immaculately turned-out captain’s uniform Carlos looks rather like some scholar who has reached the post of professor very early in life, around the age of thirty. Only occasionally does one notice, suddenly, that hard set of the chin, the dark, fierce look in the eyes, which betray his experience of worlds beyond the study or the laboratory.
Carlos speaks in a very calm, measured way; his is the modesty of a man who only seeks the validation of his own judgement. He never raises his voice, even when speaking of things which would amply justify an emotional reaction. And he steers the conversation away from his own personal life with an unshakable discretion.
Yet behind everything that he says, as well as behind everything that he implies without saying it; behind the level-headed matter-of-fact manner, you sense the power of a pent-up fanaticism–a fanaticism that could only be shifted by death itself. Fanatical conviction and fanatical hatred. There is no obstacle, no disappointment, no setback which could ever dent the conviction; and there is no let-up, no slackening of the hatred. The only force that could be stronger than them is death.
But even death would not stop them. Carlos has a phrase, which he utters very simply and without any sense of drama: ‘If I fall…’ The conclusion is clear: ‘My death would only affect me, not the cause that I serve. Wherever I had to stop, another would continue the work in my place. All other considerations are irrelevant.’
‘… No, I am not a Spaniard, I am a Catalan. I was unable to complete my studies in engineering in Barcelona, and did not qualify. Even at sixteen I belonged to the secret “movement”; you could say that I grew up as a clandestine. In those days we were working for the Catalan cause in particular, as well as fighting Fascism in general. Study only took place in our spare time.
‘… We have nothing to do with the Spanish anarchists, who have created a lot of negative publicity for us. The political programme of those desperadoes is simply destruction; we are interested in construction. For us revolution is merely a means to an end; they, on the other hand, are only interested in the means, and they will consider any means, even collaboration with the enemy.
‘… In ’39 we had to abandon the struggle against Franco. Temporarily. On 14th February my group–which consists entirely of university students–managed to get across the French border. Finally we reached the camp of Argelès.
‘“Camp” is a euphemism here, for it consisted of a little bit of land surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. Only the earth beneath you, and no roof at all over your head. No blankets, either… As for the food… let’s not talk about that. The camp commandant was a captain in the gardes mobiles. Hitler would have liked him–an SS man by nature, although he was French.
‘When war broke out we were formed into a “compagnie de travailleurs”–a labourer company. Twelve hours a day hard grind. For 50 centimes pay.
‘… the food? Fortunately we were sent to Agde, where the Czech army under General Ingr was on training. That saved many of us from starvation; for the Czechs were wonderful comrades. We were forbidden, under threat of the severest punishments, to have contact with them–even to exchange a word with them. But the Czechs were outraged at this treatment of us by our superiors, and they found ways of communicating with us, and in particular of concealing bread and provisions for us in amongst the refuse in the rubbish bins which we had to empty each day. Great men, the Czechs–every last one of them, from general to private.
‘Many of us had an agreement from the French régime according to which we were to emigrate to the United States or to Mexico. These people had the visa, the permission to travel–everything. And there were many ships departing for those destinations. But whenever a liner sailed, the relevant people were always informed one day after the departure.
‘… After the Drôle de Guerre, when Pétain concluded the armistice with Hitler, many of us were handed over to Spain. It is easy enough to imagine what happened to them; it would have been much more humane simply to shoot them immediately. The others were sent to the départements of Ariège and Corrèze, and there employed as lumberjacks. We received four francs for one stère of wood. We would have starved if we had not used Sundays to do all kinds of jobs for local farmers, who gave us a bit of food in return. In Agde our salvation had been the Czechs; in the Corrèze it was the people of Ussel. It was in Ussel, too, that I got married. My wife is there now, with our eight-month-old son; she lives with her mother. My father-in-law was arrested as a communist by the Vichy police and taken to a concentration camp, after which he was deported by the Germans. Since then we have heard nothing from him.
‘… In the middle of 1943 I set up a maq
uis in the Dordogne. To begin with we had basically no weapons; and we were not much better off for clothes, either. At my first engagement with the Germans there were eighteen of us and fifty of them. All we had was one rifle. They even had a tank.
‘… In my company there are not just French but Spanish, Portuguese, Czechs, Austrians, Poles and Belgians. Many of them are Jews.
‘… There is, of course, a certain xenophobia towards us in some quarters. We have very often heard the statement “We don’t need these foreigners!” But, if we had not joined the maquis, these same people would have accused us, as foreigners, of being parasites and not taking part in the struggle to liberate France–of not doing our duty to the country that has given us protection. The loudest voices raised against the “foreigners” belong to those persons who came over to the Resistance at the very last minute, when the Germans had already more or less lost; or those who managed to find their way to us only once there was no longer any danger for them. Back at Égletons, where I had ten dead–eight Spaniards and two Poles–many of these chauvinistes were still doing good trade with the Germans.
‘… The miliciens,13 the French Gestapo, and all connected with them, were in no way preferable to the Germans. It was betrayal by a milicien that led to fifteen of my men being tortured and executed. But I got my hands on him. Oh, yes.
‘… As I have said, there are many going about in the Resistance now, who only a short time ago were hedging their bets, and who were risking only other people’s necks. We see some people parading themselves amongst us, who would have paraded with the Germans just as happily if they had been the victors. People who are now using the Resistance not just as a cover for their previous shady dealings as collaborators, but also as springboard for their career. While on the other hand you have the little people–ordinary working-class people, who are not asking for anything, are not demanding any reward, and are now returning humbly to normal life–and these are the people who risked their lives a hundred times in the service of the Resistance. Look–in this notebook I have noted down a few people that would seriously deserve to be household names throughout the country. Here, for example, is a humble publican, Madame Magnanon; or there is Monsieur Salon in Siorac, or Brigadier Chataigneau of the gendarmerie in Monpazier…
‘… My men no longer need me; and so I have dissolved my maquis here. But my work is not over. I shall go to the Spanish border, now. We need to be very attentive there: Franco takes great pleasure in welcoming the fleeing Germans with open arms.
‘… I do not believe that we shall remain long at the border. Franco’s time–the time of the Spanish Fascists–will be up soon, too. I shall leave my wife and child here in France. If I fall, my son will one day know why I have fallen.’
That, then, is Charles-Henry Ordeig, known as Carlos. The Germans had placed a bounty of a million francs on his head.
37
In memory of my comrades from the concentration camp at Beaune-la-Rolande
MY COMRADES IN HUT 8–and all of you, 1,800 lost souls, whose ordeal began in the Jewish concentration camp of Beaune-la-Rolande, to be concluded in unimaginable horror somewhere in Germany or in Poland–oh, my unhappy brothers, I must come to you once more, I must return to you in spirit.
It is not that I wish to say farewell to you. No. Since the moment that I left you on the other side of the barbed wire, not a day has gone by on which I have not thought of you; and up to the moment of my last breath not a day will come when I will ever forget you.
I know that there are no words for what I should like to say to you. There can only be silence; a reverent silence in your honour and sorrow in your memory. Nevertheless I, as a survivor, would feel it was a sin against you at this time–a terrible abandonment–not at least to try and stir the memory of you in others. In others who would be able to forget–but must never be allowed to forget–what was done to you.
I am writing these lines in a beautiful, remote village of the Périgord on a mild, enchanting day in late autumn. Autumn of the year 1944–the first autumn since the Liberation. My window is wide open, outside all is peace and tranquility, as soothing as the caress of a gentle, old mother. It is possible for me to sit in a room with friends, who bestow care and affection on me. And nothing, now, is to prevent me from going out, from breathing the fresh air, in freedom.
You, meanwhile, my comrades… I do not even know where–to which final hell–they took you, when they came one day at dawn, more than two years ago now, to remove you from Beaune-la-Rolande to some unknown ‘Extermination Camp’. Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Belsen, Dora? Different names which all conceal the same, nameless horror. I do not even know if a single one of you is still alive; nor what outrages they perpetrated upon you even after your deaths. All I do know is that you must have had to endure a thousand torments, in your body and in your soul, before at last–at last–death came to take pity on you. And all this, not because there was a war–not because you were fighting to defend your fatherland, your freedom, your lives and indeed the honour of your death. No. The reason that you had to drain the cup of sorrow and humiliation to the bottom was quite simply that you were Jews. Jews who by virtue of that fact stood entirely outside the law; who were delivered, unarmed, defenceless, to the sadistic pleasure, the mocking laughter, of your slaughterers. There was no trace of humanity there, that might have reached you in your final abandonment. They left you with nothing–not even a hidden scrap of paper, an old letter, a picture, nothing that might have given you a little support in your long, endless agony. Before revelling in the tortures to which they subjected you, they stripped you bare, in soul every bit as much as in body.
I left you behind; I was reunited with my wife and Sláva; and by a miracle we were able to experience the hour of the Liberation. We, too, had our sufferings, along the way. But what were they, compared with your sufferings?
I feel that I ought to ask your pardon; that I ought to bow humbly before you and say, very softly: ‘Forgive me–forgive me for not having had to share your destiny.’
Where are you, my comrades from Hut 8?
Where are you, Ernst Friedezky? You who were my ‘hut chief’, but in truth also my brother–constantly concerned to show me some token of friendship–even if it were just a word, a smile, a look, a clasp of the hand, a cigarette. You were constantly trying to spread comfort and confidence about you–even though all the while your own pain was so terrible, that you often had to exert the most superhuman effort in order not to collapse under the weight of your own sorrow. And yet that silent–silenced–suffering of yours only redoubled your desire to help, your goodness.
I read your last farewell letter to your wife–written when they were already beckoning you towards the gas chambers and the ovens. Your handwriting, always so clear, so firm, wavered just a little–like a voice which is threatening to crack. This letter, though, in its strength, in its power, is not only a devastating testament of greatness and of love; but also a monument to you, a worthier one than any writer or sculptor could have made. Why on earth did I not transcribe this letter when your wife gave it to me to read…? And yet how could I have known that she would herself be deported only a month later. She was the equal of you, on that last night when we took our leave of her in the prison. ‘At least I will share the same fate as my husband.’ Those were the only words that she wasted on her own behalf. Where is she now?
Where are you, Alois Stern–you who once, when I seemed about to collapse from hunger, put your last, precious bit of sugar in my mouth? Where are you, Helfand, with your bright smile and your indomitable zest for life? Where are you, little Herschel, whose ears began to burn when you showed anyone your child’s picture–and where is he, the little boy? Where are you, Bilder, Schleuderer, Wachsberger, Gruenbaum–you and all my other comrades? Where are your families–all those whom you wept for, and who wept for you, in the sleepless nights? Where are the millions of the murdered–the millions of men, women and children whose only crim
e was that they were born Jews?14
My comrades from Beaune-la-Rolande and all you others who shared the same fate–there is only one answer to the despairing question, ‘Where are you?’ There is only one prayer for the dead, one prayer for you eternal rest, only one legacy that you have left to us, if your martyrdom is not to be turned into the most despicable cynicism, the most terrible blasphemy.
And that is that we take care that your remembrance is not reduced to idle words, to well-sounding phrases that are forgotten as soon as they are spoken.
It is not just that we must not forget. We must convert everything that we owe to your memory into active hatred: unstinting, holy hatred for everything that the notion of Hitler and of Hitler’s Germany carry with them; hatred for that quintessence of evil. It is a hatred that must be passed down like a religion from generation to generation. Because the end of Hitler and of the Third Reich will not also mean the end of that mentality that gave rise to the likes of Hitler, of Himmler, of Goering, of Goebbels–and of countless others whose accursed names may or may not be known to us. This mentality will continue to live on, like a sleeping demon, within many millions of German people and even like-minded members of other nations. It is not enough simply to dodge out of the way of that demon; not enough to eliminate–temporarily eliminate–the product of that mentality. It is necessary to stamp out the mentality itself. To stamp it out as thoroughly as the Germans would have stamped out the last of the Jews, if they had had enough time.
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