by Ezra Glinter
Perhaps this made sense—the trauma was too great and too recent to fictionalize at that moment. The full horrors of the ghettos and concentration camps were still fresh; making up stories about them may have seemed superfluous, even taboo. But in time some writers did address the subject, at least around the margins. Even here, although these pieces are often structured and presented as fiction, it is apparent that they represent the authors’ own experiences. In some cases, there was nothing to tell but the truth.
Sholem Asch
1880–1957
SHOLEM ASCH WAS one of the most influential Yiddish novelists of the twentieth-century, as well as one of Yiddish literature’s most popular writers in translation.
Born the youngest of ten children in Kutno, Poland, Asch received a traditional religious education until he left school at age sixteen. With the help of Moses Mendelssohn’s translation of the Bible, he taught himself German and, after moving to the town of Wloclawek, began writing in Hebrew. In Wloclawek, Asch supported himself as a letter-writer for the town’s illiterate residents, an experienced he later described as his “advanced schooling” and an opportunity “to peer into the hidden corners of life.”
In 1899, Asch moved to Warsaw, where he met I. L. Peretz, who encouraged him to write in Yiddish. Through Peretz he also became acquainted with other young Yiddish writers, including Hersh Dovid Nomberg and Avrom Reyzen, with whom he shared a Warsaw apartment.
In the early years of the twentieth century Asch continued to write in both Hebrew and Yiddish, publishing his first collection of Hebrew stories in 1902 and his first in Yiddish in 1903. The next year he published his novel A Shtetl (A Small Town) in the newspaper Der Fraynd (The Friend), and also began writing for the Yiddish stage. In 1903, Asch married Mathilda Shapiro, the daughter of the Hebrew writer Menachem Mendel Shapiro. The couple had two children: Moses, who went on to found Folkways Records, and Nathan, who also became a writer.
In 1908 Asch visited Palestine, and in 1909 he traveled to America, where he began writing occasional pieces for the Forward. Upon the outbreak of World War I, Asch immigrated to the United States, and became a regular contributor to the newspaper.
“The Jewish Soldier” appeared from November 21 to December 4, 1914, just months after the outbreak of the war. It showed not only Asch’s considerable talent for writing historical fiction as that history was unfolding, but also to capture the cultural, social, and religious divisions among European Jews, and their corresponding attitudes towards the conflict then sweeping through the Jewish towns and cities of Central and Eastern Europe.
Over the following decades Asch continued to serialize his major novels in the Forward, including Motke the Thief, Uncle Moses, and his Three Cities trilogy. His writing usually appeared once a week, on Saturdays. After the war Asch returned to Europe, living in Poland, France, and Weimar Germany, although the Forward continued to be his main journalistic outlet.
Asch also had a significant career as a dramatist, and his work frequently invited controversy. His most famous play, God of Vengeance, portrayed a homosexual love affair between a prostitute and the brothel owner’s daughter and was produced in Berlin by Max Reinhardt in 1907. When the play was produced on Broadway in 1923, the producer and lead actor were arrested and prosecuted on obscenity charges.
With the rise of Nazism in the 1930s, Asch returned to the United States, where he came into conflict with Forward editor Abraham Cahan over his novel The Nazarene, which portrayed Jesus as a religious Jew, and which Cahan interpreted as promoting Jewish conversion to Christianity. When the book appeared in English translation in 1939, the split between the Forward and Asch became irreparable.
Asch published the next two works in his Christological trilogy—The Apostle and Mary—in the Communist newspaper Morgn-frayhayt (Morning-Freedom), although he later resigned from that publication to protest the persecution of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union. For the last years of his life Asch lived in Bat Yam, Israel, and died in London at age seventy-seven, one of the most popular and controversial Yiddish writers in modern history.
The Jewish Soldier
(NOVEMBER 21–DECEMBER 4, 1914)
Translated by Saul Noam Zaritt
IT WAS THE most bountiful year in memory. And the year was at its most glorious—the height of summer. Everything in the fields and meadows and gardens and orchards was ripe and plump, waiting to be harvested and stored in the granary, though the granaries and yards were themselves already overflowing with the produce that had been harvested. The apples weighed branches to the ground. The big-bellied watermelons shimmered in the warm sand and appeared golden orange in the sun; the vine leaves, already overripe, had turned yellow. The grains of the field had already long been gathered and stored in piles in the granaries, waiting for the threshing machine. The plump sheep wandered about the harvested fields and munched on the forgotten and leftover stalks. But the grains would wait in vain for the thresher. The ripe blue and moist plums woke early each morning with wonder to find their fallen friends lazing about on the ground, not understanding why the gardener hadn’t yet gathered them in barrels. The heavy vines bent their thin yellow-singed branches towards the earth, waiting impatiently for someone to pick their fruits. Even the sheep, which the young shepherd had guided to the river every night, sat down now in the water, picking at their curly wool in the water and sand, not knowing why no one came to shear them and free them from the great burden that had grown upon their backs.
But the grains in the yards and the fruit on the trees would wait in vain for their masters.
One pleasant afternoon, the county clerk came to the center of the village’s main street and called the peasants from the fields with a trumpet so that he could read aloud for them a proclamation sent from the city. Twenty-four hours later, the farmers from the fields and the gardeners from the orchards had changed into their military uniforms. Everyone now looked the same. There was no more peasant, no more fisherman, no more blacksmith, no more carpenter—all had become soldiers, covered from head to toe with armaments. All of the roads and all of the rivers led them from the villages and cities to kill or be killed.
For decades the factories had been manufacturing weapons. Tens of thousands of men had made a living from this enterprise; with their wisdom and diligence they had forged large cannons out of metal and bronze and equipped them with enormous grenades filled with dynamite and other destructive materials. Great wise men sat sequestered away in rooms where they deliberated day and night on how to make bigger weapons and bigger bombs, which would be filled with even more terrible things that could bring about more annihilation.
And now strong horses, four harnessed to each armed vehicle, trotted across the moist, black fields of the Polish province of Kuyavia. The previous day, cavalrymen had set off in advance of these troops. The riders had been brought from the distant sun-flecked land that lies in the valley of the Terek River, below the Caucasus Mountains. The brave hunters had left behind the light-filled and joyous meadows along the Don and Terek rivers, where they would ride with ease on their horses in the surrounding steppes. They had been led here and then sent ahead to search out the enemy. Scores of men followed them, all of different nationalities and lands—Russians, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Poles, Jews. All looked the same now, in the same gray, earthen uniforms and each with a rifle in his hand and a knapsack on his back. After them came the heavy cannons trudging through the dark moist earth. The great, strong horses groaned in their harnesses as they dragged the carts upon which the metal bombs and bullets were loaded. And after these streamed countless field-kitchen wagons, polluting the air with their smoke. The herd of beasts that accompanied them kicked up clouds of dust. There were also wagons of the Red Cross that carried the sick, a few more horses and automobiles, and wagons that stored bread, cabbage or hay, and so on and so on, endlessly . . .
General L.’s army, which had chased the enemy into the Polish Kuyavia province, had stopped to rest i
n a large field under a small mountain range. The army was now in reserve and waited its turn to go to the front. In the meantime, the soldiers had grown restless on account of the constant movement, having had to run from one field to another, without shooting a single bullet and without looking the enemy in the eye. Until now the army had been continuously rushing from place to place; there had not been enough time to spend a full night in a single encampment or even to have a warm meal. A few times, when the command had come to get moving, they had even been forced to throw out the food that had been prepared in the kitchens. The explanation in the order they received was that the enemy moved quickly when there was no fighting and that the enemy could not be allowed to settle in and fortify itself. But all of this hurrying, the endless waiting for battle and searching after the enemy, caused the soldiers to be more exhausted and irritated than if they had been under fire by cannons. But just now an order was given to set up the tents for some rest. Scouts had discovered that the enemy had taken up a strong position under the mountains and it would be difficult to drive them out. The army was also too tired to attack, so the order was given to rest here, in the position that had been taken, in order to prepare for an offensive that would take place in a few days.
SOON THE FIELD of cabbage, where the army was stationed, became a fully established encampment, as if the soldiers had permanently installed themselves there. The air carried the smoke of the field kitchens, which were positioned in the middle of the camp. The pungent smell of meat and melting fat wafted from the kitchens and teased the soldiers’ appetites. Scattered about, the soldiers scrubbed their tin bowls, pans and utensils with dirt, idling around the boiling pots. Soldiers tossed their clothes off near the tents, took off their boots and stockings, and the smell of the food mixed with the stench of sweat and grease. These aromas gave the camp a homey atmosphere and there was a feeling that they were going to stay here a while. Looking around, one saw soldiers everywhere, some busy setting up tents, others taking off their boots—and each one ready to eat.
Among those idling around the pot of the fourth company of the forty-eighth infantry regiment was the Jew Asnat, who had been a soldier for over a year. He checked on the overflowing pot and then turned to go to his little corner, where he had settled with his fellow soldiers. But he was interrupted by the following scene:
Two short Russian soldiers, Asmin and Kozlov, had pinned down the arms of the Jewish soldier Levin, and the Cossack Arbuz was shoving a piece of pork into his mouth. The Jew clenched his teeth, his eyes bulged and he kicked at the soldiers. The smell of the unkosher pork had nearly caused him to vomit, and he was afraid he might relax his clamped jaw. The warm saliva that had gathered in his mouth was making him gag so the Jew started spitting everywhere, and the soldiers started laughing and shouting:
“Eat! You need to eat! You put God’s food to shame—it was prepared for men to eat, not animals.”
“Don’t let him loose—he has to eat—he must, he must . . .”
Asnat stood watching for a moment. The image of the poor little Jew, flailing about pathetically in the hands of the soldiers, had moved him in a strange way. Without thinking, he seized the Jewish soldier and wordlessly pulled him from their clutches. The other ones looked at him with wonder: they saw that he was a more experienced soldier than they were, so they deferred to him; they let go of the Jewish soldier. Asnat took Levin with him and sat down in a corner. Asnat calmly ate his food. The Jewish soldier rested for a bit, lying on the ground and catching his breath after having wrestled with the other soldiers. Then he got up and started reciting the afternoon prayer. Asnat looked on, observing how the Jewish soldier swayed devoutly without fear or shame, and how it didn’t bother him that the other soldiers were looking at him in bewilderment, laughing and showering him with insults. Asnat had now become uninterested in his meal. He poured his food out, smoked a cigarette, and lay back on the ground.
When the Jew finished praying, he sat down at a distance from the others and took out a flask of water. He washed his hands and then started eating a piece of stale bread with cheese that he had kept in his coat.
Asnat marveled at the Jewish soldier’s devotion to his religiosity in the middle of war. He came up to Levin and asked him:
“Say, Levin, are you a rabbi? Is that why you’re so religious?”
“A rabbi?” Levin laughed. “You have to be a rabbi in order to be a Jew?”
“But how can you manage when a war is going on?”
“What is there to manage? The Lord of the universe helps those who want to serve Him. Whenever we run into a Jewish supplier, he usually gets me some Jewish food. I get by.”
“And what do you do when we’re on the road?”
“I pray on the road, whenever I can.”
Asnat was silent for a minute.
Levin interjected earnestly:
“If not now, when you’re constantly in danger, then when else would you maintain your Jewishness? In the blink of an eye you can be called to the heavens, God forbid . . .”
Asnat saw that the Jew firmly believed in the World to Come. When it came to pass, he would be ready, and Asnat was envious of him.
“Do you have a wife?”
“A wife and two children,” the Jew sighed.
“So?” Asnat asked.
“So, are we not in God’s hands? If you’re destined to live, the bullets will miss you; they will pass you by and have no power over you. And if not, will it help if you hide? They will find you in your hole when your time comes,” the Jew answered, confidently and calmly.
Asnat marveled at him with envy—this Jew maintains his faith even under enemy fire, among non-Jews, believing that a different power guides him on his way and determines his fate.
“Does this mean that you have no fear of death?”
“No fear?” Levin replied. “Of course I am afraid of the day of judgment. But what can you do? I do what I can. When we set out in the morning, I recite the confessional prayer. I ask the Lord of the Universe that if it is to be today, that at least I should merit a proper Jewish burial; and if I am not fated to have a proper burial, then at least I hope I have the mind to say ‘Hear, O Israel!’ 44 because they say that the enemy’s bullets leave you mindless and soldiers die without sensing it. Is this true?”
“I haven’t heard about it,” Asnat answered.
They were both quiet for a moment and looked at the setting sun. Here and there you could see the smoke of the campfires in front of the tents with the soldiers circled around them. From some of the campfires you could hear a somber song of longing that reminded you of your homeland. From other campfires one could hear healthy laughter and the joy of youth. The whole camp was sunk in a cloud of smoke and dust that rose up from the campfires, and the clouds stood out against the red setting sun.
Asnat spoke up:
“And do you wear tzitzis, 45 the four-cornered garment?”
Levin was embarrassed.
“What kind of question is that? Of course I do.”
“I’ve heard it said that when a Jew dies he is buried in a tallis. 46 Even the worst Jew is buried in a tallis. It’s a kind of Jewish flag. Is this true?”
“Of course it is. And if it is His will, God forbid, and it comes to pass, I will cover my eyes with my tzitzis so that they’ll be able to tell that I am a Jew.” Levin pointed to his tzitzis, which he had taken out from under his uniform.
“Meaning, under the Jewish flag?” Asnat said with a solemn smile and then became pensive.
The evening was cold, and some of the campfires had gone out. It became quiet and night swept over the camp.
They remained together a little while longer in silence. It became dark. Then the trumpet sounded and the soldiers, one by one, retired to their tents to sleep, as they too were tired and sleepy.
AFTER THE SOLDIERS had all gone, Asnat remained sitting alone at the entrance to his tent. Night had already settled upon the camp. It was a bright and cold night. T
he two leafless poplars on the top of the hill looked like fearsome demons in the moonlight, and the tents, spread out across the field, scattered their shadows. A few fires still smoldered, and a few soldiers wrapped themselves in their coats and wandered between the tents, looking like shadows themselves. A few voices could still be heard calling out to one another. Asnat was tired and sleepy, but the soldiers’ voices unnerved him and left him uneasy. He went into his tent. His comrades, one-year veterans like he was, had already fallen asleep wrapped in their coats, and the tent had become warm from the steam that rose from their young and healthy bodies.
Asnat tumbled into his little corner, put something down underneath his body, encased himself in his coat, and burrowed his face into the ground, not feeling the moisture of the dew, which, regardless of the tents, had still settled on the trembling cabbage leaves. He quickly fell asleep.
He remained sleeping for a couple of hours. But the dew had formed on the ground, making the turf dense and moist, as if the earth had been softened like lime. Asnat immediately began to feel the moisture as it seeped into his coat and into his clothes and then reached his body. At first the moisture was pleasant, soft. But soon his body became cold and his feet began to tremble. Yet his thirst for sleep was so strong that he went to war against the moisture and was able to defeat it. Asnat turned over, looking for a corner of the blanket that was still dry, slipped it underneath his body and fell asleep again. But quickly that corner too became wet and Asnat felt as if some worm was underneath him, biting him. He got up, took hold of the lantern hanging in the tent, and shined the light where he had been sleeping. He saw that he had been slogging his feet in mud—a mixture of black earth, trampled grass, and water. This disgusted him and he didn’t want to lie back down. But he longed for sleep, so he gathered together some straw from where the guns were stored. But the spot he had now chosen was so narrow that he had to hold his feet with his hands and lay his head on the guns. He fell asleep like this for ten or fifteen minutes, which felt to him like a long, long time. But he suddenly felt so cold that he tore open his eyes. His sleep vanished entirely, and he opened the slit in the tent to look out and see if it was dawn yet.