by War
Despite a balding broad forehead, Lieutenant Colonel Eichmann looks surprisingly young. The remaining hair is dark, and he has the alert, live-wire air of a middle-level official who is ambitious and on the climb. When we came into the office he sat behind a wide desk, and beside him in a wooden chair sat Burger, the SS boss of Theresienstadt, a cruel rough man one avoids if at all possible. Without getting up, yet not disagreeably, Eichmann motioned Natalie and me to chairs in front of the desk, and with a tilt of his head directed Eppstein to a grimy settee. So far, except for the cold fiasty look of Burger, and the black uniforms on both men, we might havebeen calling on a bank manager for a loan or on a police supervisor to report a theft.
I remember every word of the German conVersation that followed, but I mean to put down only essentials. First Eichmann made businesslike inquiries about our health and accommodations. Natalie did not utter a word; she let me reply that we felt well-treated. When he glanced to her she jerkily nodded. The child, completely at his ease, sat on her lap looking wide-eyed at Eichmann, who then said that conditions in Theresienstadt did not satisfy him at all. He had made a thorough inspection. In the next weeks we would see remarkable improvements ("gewaltige Verschdnerungen").
Burger had instructions to treat us as very special Prominente.
As things improved in Theresienstadt we would be among the first to benefit.
Next he cleared up - as much as it ever will be, I fear - the mystery of how we come to be here. We were brought to his attention, he says, when I was in the hospital in Paris. The O.V.R.A demanded that the Gestapo hand us over as fugitives from Italian justice. As he tells it, Werner Beck wanted first to extract recordings of my broadcasts from me, and then let the Italian secret police take us away. He paints a very black picture of Werner, which may well be distorted.
At any rate, our case fell in his lap for disposition. To hand us over to the Italians might well have meant our deaths, and could have complicated the negotiations for exchanging the Baden-Baden group. Yet to allow us to return to BadenBaden, once we were discovered, would have offended Germany's one European ally; for Italy was then still in the war. Sending us to Theresienstadt, while taking the Italian request "under advisement," seemed the most considerate solution. He had brushed aside Werner Beck's pleas to extort the broadcasts from me.
That was no way to treat a prominent personage, even a Jew. He always tried, Eichmann said, to be as fair and humane as possible in carrying out the strict Jewish policies of the Fuhrer; with which, he was frank to say, he totally agreed. Moreover, he did not believe the broadcasts would have served any purpose. So in short, here we were.
Now, he said, he would let Herr Eppstein talk.
The Attester, sitting hunched on the sofa, proceeded to reel off words in a monotone, occasionally looking at -me an Eichmann, but throwing many worried glances at Burger, who was glaring at him. The Council of Elders had recently voted, he said, to split off the Culture Section from the Education Department. Cultural activities had greatly increased; y were the pride of Theresienstadt; but they were not properly supervised or coordinated. The council wanted to designate me as an Elder to head the new Department of Culture. My lectures on Byzantium, Martin Luther, and Sair Paul were the talk of the town. My status as an America author and scholar commanded respect. No doubt in my university career I had learned administration. Abruptly Eppstein stopped talking, looking straight at me with a mechanical smile, a mere lifting of the upper lip from stained teeth My only Possible motive for accepting the offer would have been pity for the man. Clearly he was doing as he had been ordered. It was Eichmann who for some reason wanted me to head this new "Department of Culture.".
I do not know how I summoned the courage to reply as I did.
Here is almost exactly what I said. "Herr Obersturmbannfuhrer, I am your prisoner here, bound to obey orders. Still, I permit myself to point out that my German is only fair- My health is frail. I have little appreciation for music, which is the backbone of Theresienstadt's cultural activities. My library work, which I enjoy, absorbs all my time. I am not refusing this honor, but I am ill-suited for it. Do I have a choice in this matter?"
"If you did not have a choice, Dr. Jastrow," Eichmann answered briskly, without annoyance, "this conversation would be pointless. I am a rather busy man. Sturmbannfjjhrer Burger could have given you an order. However, I think this job would be a fine one for, you."
I But I was appalled at the prospect of becoming one of the wretched Elders, who for a few miserable privileges-most of which I already enjoy-bear the burden of the ghetto on their consciences, transmit to the Jews all the harsh SS decrees, and see that these are carried out. It meant giving up my obscure but at least endurable existence for the limelight of the council, for daily dealing with the SS, for unending wrangliirig over terrible problemswhich have no decent solution. I Screwed up my nerve for one more try.
... Men, if I may, sir, and only if I may, I should like to decline."
"Of course you may. We'll say no more about it. We do have one other matter to discuss." He turned to Natalie, who was sitting through all this with a face of white stone, gripping the boy.
Louis was behaving like an angel. That he sensed his mother's terror and was doing his best to help seems to me beyond doubt. "But we are keeping you from your work. The mica factory, I believe?"
Natalie nodded. "How do you like it?"
She had to speak. The voice came out hoarse and hollow.
"I am very glad to be working there."
"And your son looks well, so it seems the children of Theresienstadt are properly treated."
"He is very well."
Lieutenant Colonel Eichmann stood up, gesturing to Natalie, and walked with her to the door. There he spoke a few offhand words to an SS man in-the corridor, with whom she passed from sight. Eichmann closed the door and walked to his seat behind the desk. He has a thin mouth, a long thin nose, narrow eyes, and a sharp chin. Not a good-looking man; but now, all at once, he looked very ugly. His mouth was crazily twitched to one side. He burst out in a terrible roar, "WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? WHERE THE DEVIL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?"
Burger jumped up at this, charged at me, and slapped me.
It made my ear ring, and as he raised his hand I winced, so that the blow knocked me off the chair. I fell hard on my knees. My glasses dropped off, so what happened next I saw very blurrily. Burger kicked me, or rather shoved me, with a boot so that I rolled over on my side. Then he kicked me in the stomach.- not with all his might, though it hurt and nauseated me, but in utter contempt, as though kicking a dog.
"I'll tell you what you are," Burger shouted down at me.
FILTHY JEWISH "You're nothing but AN OLD BAG OF SHIT! You hear?
Why, you stinking old pile of shit, did you think you were still in America?" As he walked around me I could barely see the moving black boots. Next he kicked the hard in the backside. "You're in THERESIENSTADT!
Understand? Your tire isn't worth a pig's fart if you don't get that through that old shithead of yours!" With this, he delivered a really ferocious kick with the point of his boot. It struck my spine, Red-hot pain shot all through me. I lay there, stunned, blinded, agonized, shocked. I heard him walking away, saying, "Get up on your knees."
I obeyed, shaking all over.
"Now tell me what you are."
My throat was clamped shut by fear.
"Do you want more? Say what you are!"
God forgive me for not letting him kill me. The thought pierced my fog of shock that if I were to dienow, Natalie and Louis would be in still greater danger.
I choked out, ,I'm an old bag of filthy Jewish shit."
"Louder. I didn't hear you."
I repeated it"Scream it, shit pile! Scream it at the top of your lungs! Or I'll kick you, you stinking Jew pig, until you do scream it!"
"I'M AN OLD BAG OF FILTHY JEWISH SHIT."
"Give him his glasses," Eichmann said in a matter-of-fact tone.
"All right, getup."
As I staggered to my feet, a hand caught my elbow to steady me. I felt the glasses placed on y eyes. Into my vision there sprang the face of Eppstein. On that paid face, in those haunted brown eyes, were scarred two thousand years of Jewish history. "Sit down, Dr. Jastrow," said Eichmann. He was sitting at the desk, smoking a cigarette, looking quite composed and bank-managerial. "Now let's talk sensibly."
Burger sat down beside him, grinning with enjoyment.
My recollection of what happened after that is not clear for I was dazed and in great pain. Eichmann's tone was all business still, but with a new sarcastic edge. What he said was almost as upsetting as the physical abuse. The SS knows that I have been teaching the Talmud; and since education in Jewish subjects is forbidden, I could be sent to the dread prison in the Little Fortress, from which few return alive.
Even more staggering, he disclosed that Natalie takes part in scurrilous underground shows mocking the Fuhrer, for which she could be arrested and forthwith executed. Natalie has never talked to me about this. I only knew that she did puppet shows for children.
Obviously Eichmann told me these things to drive home the lesson of Burger's brutal assault: that no vestige remains of our rights as Americans, or as human beings in Western civilization. We have crossed the line. Any claim to our former Baden-Baden status has been erred by our offenses, and the sword hangs over our heads. With peculiar acid frankness he commented, "Not that we really give a damn how you Jews amuse yourselves!" He told me to teach away, and added that if Natalie ceases her satires it will only go harder with both of us, for I am not to tell her what happened after she left SS headquarters. I must never breathe a word of it to anybody. If I do, he will be sure to find out, and that will be too bad. He said that Eppstein would show me the ropes of my new Elder status; and so, with an offhand wave, he dismissed me. I could hardly rise from the chair. Eppstein had to help me hobble out. Behind us we could hear the two Germans joking and laughing.
As we left SS headquarters together, Eppstein said not a word.
Passing the sentry at the fence, I forced myself to walk more normally.
The pain was less, I found, if I stood straight mind took firm strides.
Eppstein brought me to the barber shop to have my hair and beard trimmed. We went on to the council chamber, where a photographer was setting up for news pictures of the gathered Elders. A reporter, a rather pretty young German woman in a fur coat, was asking questions and scrawling notes. I posed with the Elders. I had my own picture taken. The reporter chatted with me and with the others. I'm sure that these two newspaper people were genuine, and that they left with a highly plausible storywhich they may even have; believed-about the Jewish council which governs the Paradise Ghetto, a serene well-dressed group of distinguished gentlemen, including the eminent Dr. Aaron Jastrow, author of A Jew's Jesus.
That Natalie and I are beyond diplomatic rescue is self-evident in this public use of my name and face. Even if the story is meant for European consumption, word is bound to seep back to the United States.
The slight gloss I lend to Theresienstadt seems to outweigh any trouble the State Department can now give the Germans about us.
Exchanges of official correspondence can go on for years.
Our fate will be decided before anything comes of that footling process.
Some notes on all this, before I proceed to write about the counterweight to all this shock, pain, a 'and degradation: my cousin Berel's return from-the dead.
In all my sixty-five years I have encountered strangely little physical violence. The last instance that I can recall, in fact, was the slap Reb Laizar gave me in the Oswiecim yeshiva.
Rebizar slapped me out of my Jewish identity, as it were, and an SS officer kicked me back into it. What I did when I returned to my room will perhaps make no sense to anybody but me. Since leaving Siena I have carried a well-concealed poach of last resort, containing the diamonds and the photocopied documents of my juvenile conversion to Cathoijcism. As Prominente we have never yet, thank God, been bodysearched. I-got out those worn folded conversion papers dated 1900, and tore them to bits. This morning for the first time in about fifty years I put on phylacteries. I borrowed them from a pious old man next door. I mean to do this in all the days remaining to me on this sick and stricken earth.
Is this a return to the old Jewish God? Never mind. My Talmud teaching has certainly not been that. I drifted into it.
Young people in the library began to ask me questions. A circle of questioners gradually formed, I found I enjoyed the elegant old logical game, and so it became a regular thing.
The phylacteries, the old black-stained leather boxes containing Mosaic passages, gave me no intellectual or spiritual uplift as I tied them on head and arm. In fact, though I was alone, I felt self-consciously showy and silly. But I will persist. Thus I answer Eichmann. As for the old Jewish God, He and I both have accounts to settle, for if I have to explain my apostasy, He has to explain Theresienstadt. Jeremiah, Job, and Lamentations all teach that we Jews tend to rise to catastrophe.
Hence phylacteries. Let it go at that.
It says much about human natureor at least about my own personal foolishness-that for many years I have refused to believe the stories of Nazi atrocities against the Jews, and even the evidence of my eyes; yet now I am certain that the most alarming reports are the true ones.
Why this turnabout? What was so very convincing about the encounter with Eichmann and Burger?
After all, I have already seen much atrocious German conduct here.
I have seen an SS man clubbing an old woman to her knees in the snow because he caught her peddling cigarette butts. I have heard of children being hanged in the Little Fortress for stealing food. Then there was the census.
Three weeks ago, the SS marched the entire ghetto population out into the fields, in blowing freezing weather, counted us over and over for about twelve hours, and left upwards of forty thousand persons standing around in the rainy night.
Rumors swept the huge famished crowd that we were all about to be machine-gunned in the dark. A stampede to the town gates ensued.
Natalie and I ducked the mob and got back without incident, but we heard that the field in the morning was littered with sleet-covered bodies of trampled old people and children.
Yet none of this signalled to me the truth. My meeting with Eichmann did. Why? It is the oldest psychological fact, I suppose, that one cannot really feel another's misery. And worse; let me face for once in my life this raw reality; the misery of others can make one glad and relieved that one has been spared.
Eichmann is not a low police brute. Nor is he a banal bureaucrat, though that is the role he brilliantly puts on when it suits him. Much more than the flamboyant fanatic Hitler, this businesslike Berlin official is the dread figure that has haunted the twentieth century and precipitated two wars. He is a reasonable, intelligent, brisk, even affable fellow. He is one of us, a civilized man of the West. Yet in a twinkling he can order horrible savagery perpetrated on an old feeble man, and look on calmly; and in another twinkling can return to polite European manners, without the slightest sense of any inconsistency, even with a sardonic smirk at the.discomfiture of the victim who cannot conceive of this version of human nature. Like Hitler, he is an Austrian. Like him, in this dread century, he is the German.
I have grasped this difficult truth, Nevertheless, I will go to my death refusing to condemn an entire people. We Jews have had enough of that. I will remember Karl Frisch, the historian, who came to Yale from Heidelberg, a German to the bone, a sweet, liberal, profound man with a superb sense of humor. I will remember the wonderful yeasting of art and thought in Berlin in the twenties. I will remember the Hergesheimers, with whom I stayed for six months in Munich, people of the first quality with-I will swear-no taint of anti-Semitism, at a time when it was becoming a volcanic political rumble. Such Germans exist. They exist in large numbers. They must, to have create
d the beauty of Germany, and the art, and the philosophy, and the science; what was known as Kultur long before it became a name of execration and horror.
I do not understand the Germans. Attila, Alaric, Genghis Khan, Tameriane, in the fury of conquest exterminated all who resisted them.
The Moslem Turks slaughtered the Christian Armenians during the World War, but the Armenians were taking the part of the enemy, czarist Russia, and it happened in Asia Nfinor.
The ermans are part of Christian Europe. The Jews have passionately embraced and enriched the German culture, the arts, the sciences. In the World War the German Jews had a record of insensate loyalty to the Kaiser. No, there has been nothing like this before.