by Elie Wiesel
Secret mission to Hamburg: I hand over a sum of money to a network entrusted with the escape of an underground leader. Later I will learn it concerned Brandberg, the deputy, Rosa Luxemburg’s friend. Three rendezvous in three different public places: the railway station, the harbor, a stop of the Number 3 streetcar. Secret codes, passwords. A waiter takes charge of me first, then a streetcar conductor. Finally I find myself in a restaurant beside a dowdy housewife. Following instructions I put my Völkischer Beobachter next to me on the seat; the money is folded inside. I let my neighbor take over. She substitutes her paper for mine. We eat without haste, without greeting one another; two strangers. She leaves before me. Furtively, I follow her with my eyes. Will we see each other again one day? The teams keep changing, the question remains the same. I think of Inge. No doubt she’s performing similar missions; how much time will go by before she is jailed? I have an idea: What if I stopped off in Berlin? For one day, one night? My heart beats like a drum. No, the orders are explicit. It’s forbidden to see old friends again, to expose them to useless risks. I never see the Hamburg housewife again. But a few months later at Paul’s I meet a sick, elderly man. Paul introduces us. “That’s him,” he says, pointing to me. And the man shakes my hand, does not let it go. “I owe you my life; believe me, I owe you my life.” And my only thought is, That is what I call happiness—when a man owes you his life.
Oh, yes, I was happy in Paris: as only a Jewish activist—and a poet to boot—could be.
There was also that trip to Palestine. An unforgettable lightning trip. I experienced it intensely—I was about to say, religiously—from beginning to end. And, from beginning to end, my father’s eyes never left me.
One gray, rainy morning, Paul calls me into his office.
“The Holy Land—what would you say to going there?”
Emotion—at the moment inexplicable—leaves me speechless.
“We’re hearing about serious events, riots,” says Paul. “A complicated, tangled situation. Englishmen, Arabs, Jews; intrigues, plots; religion, politics, finance: it’s one big mess. We can’t make head or tail of it, and we’d like to.”
His hand on my shoulder, Paul speaks to me softly: “Will you be up to it—I mean, will you try to remain neutral, objective? You won’t forget that passion blinds judgment, and thus is dangerous?”
My face changes color. Yes, I am moved, I don’t deny it.
Paul’s office takes care of the arrangements: visas, steamship ticket, my “cover” as a special correspondent for a prestigious weekly, Images de la Vie. Unlimited expenses. Best hotels. And I’ll be carrying an important amount of money to turn over to someone who will introduce himself in a certain Jaffa café as “Wolfe’s lost cousin.”
The crossing is awful. Hardly have we weighed anchor in Marseille when the sea breaks loose. I never imagined that so large and heavy a steamship could toss around like a matchbox. The ship seems to rise and fall simultaneously, and simultaneously lunge right and left, and I remain behind, always behind, snatched up by the monstrous jaws of the black waves. Vomiting makes me long to flee, to die, to disappear in the dark waters.
The sun returns and the calm restores my zest for life. I spend hours on the bridge, I feel the pull of the sea; I love the murmur of the waves suggesting an endless song; I love the thick white foam stressing the inadequacy of all fixed forms. Peace and depth—I do not resist. I look, afraid to look too much. I go off to read or chat with an Austrian explorer, a Frenchwoman who is an Egyptologist, an emissary from a kibbutz. Unbelievable how quickly one forgets. Yesterday, I was suffering so much I thought of death. Now, I am so at peace with myself I am thinking of death.
The last night I could not close my eyes. Excited, troubled, my heart beating furiously, the Talmud student from Liyanov remained on the bridge so as not to miss that first contact, that first image. Other passengers too must have yielded to the same curiosity, the same impatience. Here and there I caught a whisper, a sigh. The steamship was gliding toward the shore and holding its breath.
At dawn I saw Carmel rising from the sea into a blazing sky of deep blue shot through with red. The beauty of the landscape hit me with almost physical violence. Wide-eyed, I scrutinized the horizon and heard my father saying: “This is the land of our ancestors, my son. Don’t you think you should say a prayer—for yourself and for all those who can’t pray any more?” I went down to my cabin, and obeying the wish of Gershon Kossover, his son put on the phylacteries from which he had never been separated.
Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem. Taken in hand by the Political Affairs Department of the Jewish Agency, I traveled throughout the country, studying its problems, penetrating its multifaceted drama. I wanted to meet with members of the Socialist communes: Degania, Ein-Harod and Givat-Brenner. I could have spent the rest of my life there. I feared for the activists, so young and handsome, so open and determined, who were preparing for armed resistance against the Arabs and against the English.
I was astonished: “There are so few of you, and you hope to beat them all?”
“Here history counts more than statistics.”
“But you’re mad! To fight, you need men, arms. You don’t go to war with ideas and words. The Bible may be very useful, but it will not protect you against bullets.”
“You’re thinking in political terms. If we thought the way you do we’d abandon the struggle immediately.”
“You’re mad!”
I loved their madness. The British colonial policy, on the other hand, scandalized me. As imperialists they despised both the Jews and the Arabs, amusing themselves by turning one against the other. In matters of duplicity and intrigue they needed no lessons from anyone. If one were to believe them, the Jews and Arabs could not survive without them; without them, there would be a massacre.
In Jerusalem I walked through the narrow, bustling alleys of the Old City, looking for a memory, some sign of another age. I loved the sky hanging low over the cedars, the incandescent clouds above the domes, the motionless shadows hugging the hovels and shops. I loved the camel drivers and their camels at rest, at the gates of the city. I loved the muezzin whose calls to prayer and faith were lost in the distance; it filled me with nostalgia. I loved, above all, the stone pathways leading to the Wall of the Temple. I always took the last few steps at a run. There I found pilgrims, beggars, mystical dreamers seeking illumination. I joined them without knowing why; as for them, they did not ask me why, and I asked nothing of them.
One night a figure emerged from the shadows and joined me. It crouched beside me and greeted me. In the silvery half-light of the moon I recognized Aboulesia, my Sephardic friend. Was he smiling at me or just studying me? And where did he come from anyway? From the sky? We shook hands and, foolishly, I wanted to weep.
“It’s natural,” said David Aboulesia. “Everyone feels like weeping in this place. This is where God Himself weeps over the ruins of His temple and His creation.”
We strolled around the city. The air was balmy; the wind was playing in the mountains, rustling through the trees, descending to the valley to rest. A star flickered. Behind the walls of the houses, men and women were trying to interpret the meaning of their encounter, and perhaps of ours.
“Well, and what about the Messiah?” I asked my companion. “Are you still pursuing him?”
“When he’s not looking for me, I’m running after him.”
But that wasn’t the only reason for his coming to Palestine. He made a point of being there during the riots.
“My place is among my persecuted brethren,” he said. “Among those being pushed toward the abyss. I am going to prevent them from falling, I must. I know how to go about it. I am a secret agent; I am making my report. To whom? You know perfectly well. I tell Him my fears, point out the dangers. My role is to sound the alarm; I did it in Germany, I am doing it here; I do it wherever the Eternal People are in danger of death. For, unfortunately, this is only the beginning.”
I shuddered.
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“The beginning of what?”
“I don’t know. Of redemption perhaps? Great suffering is to precede the luminous explosion of the messianic age, our mystics tell us. It fills me with fear.”
“Fear? Of suffering?”
“Yes. Suffering is meant to frighten. But I am even more afraid of what it means: namely that evil plays a role in the cosmic drama of ultimate redemption. Well then, poet, is it possible that those who bring about suffering, hence injustice, hence evil, are doing the work of salvation?”
While wandering through the silently brooding old city, listening to the insane words of my strange friend, I could not keep from smiling. I thought: This professor-adventurer-mystic expresses himself like a Marxist without knowing it: he is a revolutionary in spite of himself. Paul says that to save the world you must amputate it; to save the arm, you must cut off the little finger. The old metaphor: The worse things are, the better they will become. The more blood flows, the nearer peace. But I cannot stand the sight of blood. If, in order to appear in his immaculate glory, the Messiah has to have himself announced by shrieking nations massacring one another, let him stay home. And yet, both my friends are invoking him, each using methods repugnant to the other. Poor Messiah! All the things done for you in your name—all those things you’re made to do.
We parted at dawn. From the Old City, opening up, came an unexpected sound, as of a tent canvas being brutally ripped apart—then a long silence followed by other sounds: doors slamming, shutters squeaking. A mule driver and his recalcitrant mule. A water carrier. Aromas of baked goods and of vegetables. The man sidling along the wall—is he a watchman returning home, a criminal? A mother’s strident cry: “Ahmad, are you coming?” And a child answering, “Coming, coming.”
I left Jerusalem intending to return, but had to change my plans. Instead, I went to Jaffa, to a noisy, crowded café where “Wolfe’s lost cousin” was supposed to single me out. I tried hard not to look like a tourist, but I probably did anyway.
Surprise: the “cousin” was a girl. A sabra of Oriental background, she was quiet, simply dressed, with a round face, flat nose, brown hair and black eyes.
“Ahuva,” she said, introducing herself. “Call me Ahuva.”
We swallowed strong, bitter coffee and went out to take a turn around the market, an ideal place to shake off any inspector with the absurd idea of tailing me.
“I’ve an envelope for you,” I said.
“Not here.”
As in a cheap novel, she led me to a shady hotel—even shadier than the one in Paris. I rented a room there for several hours. The obsequious porter handed me the key with a knowing leer. Once in the room, we drew the curtains. I double-locked the door.
“Now,” said Ahuva, “show me what you have for me, comrade.” She squinted while talking, as if to make herself look more severe. “Well, comrade?”
I handed her the envelope containing the money. She slipped it inside her blouse. “Count it,” I said.
“I trust you.”
“Count it, I tell you.”
She pulled the envelope out of her blouse, opened it and counted. Mission accomplished. We could say goodbye, but Ahuva advised against it.
“That fellow downstairs,” she said. “What’ll he think of you? And of me? We’d better be careful and remain up here at least an hour, to … to make believe.”
Was that an invitation?
“Let’s talk,” she said.
I started questioning her about the situation, the future, the Party, relations with the Zionists, the Arabs. Less educated than Inge, she expressed herself more primitively but better. She burned with a somber, mysterious flame which I found irresistible. Had she made one gesture, I would have forgotten Sheina and Paris; I would have stayed in Palestine. I was ready to break with Europe, ready to fling myself into a new adventure, a new love. But there was no gesture, no word of encouragement. She undoubtedly had a boyfriend. Or else I was not her type. She answered my questions, asked her own, like a good comrade-in-arms; nothing more.
At the end of an hour, or two, or three, I knew the essentials about her. Her thirst for brotherhood, her ideal of justice had led her to a kibbutz. Then, under the influence of a friend, a greater desire for a vaster brotherhood, a loftier ideal of a more universal justice, she had left. A Party member, she maintained the liaison between certain of its Jewish and Arab sections. What did she think of the tensions agitating the country? She was not entirely pessimistic.
“The English are sowing hatred, but the soil is arid: it doesn’t take. At the opportune moment, Jews and Arabs, led by the Party, will unite in a common front against them.”
“You don’t see any Jewish bloodshed ahead, Ahuva?”
“No bloodshed—neither Jewish nor Arab: for me, Jewish and Arab blood are the same.”
Nobody could have foreseen that ten weeks later, during the bloody riots in Hebron, she herself would be attacked, raped and murdered by a band of Arab marauders who knew nothing of the Communist ideal of human brotherhood.
But that I was to learn years later. In Soviet Russia, I met a Jewish comrade from Palestine and asked for news of Ahuva.
“Ahuva? Don’t know. Maybe she goes under another name. Describe her to me.”
I did, and he cried out, “Of course—you’re talking about Tziona! Didn’t you know that …?”
I didn’t know. There were many things I didn’t know. But one thing I did know, and wrote about to my father: From my trip to the Holy Land, I brought back a spark taken from its flame, a star from its sky, a teardrop from its memory.
I did not say all the prayers I should have, and certainly not every day, but in spite of everything, my father would have been pleased with his messenger.
There was one cloud, however. I forgot it a moment ago; but I must face it. Now I can speak of it without fear. Here, in this enclosure that serves you as temple and altar, Citizen Magistrate, I am no longer afraid. Here, the victim lays claim to his own truth. What I speak of has to do with old, old, forgotten events; ancient history. It has to do, if I many remind you, with your predecessors and mine.
Where were you at the time? What were you doing? Western newspapers everywhere were waging a campaign against the spectacular trials (Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin) unfolding in the Soviet Union. They were shouting about the judicial scandal, the mockery of justice, the gross, indecent lies … as they are doing now in connection with my case.
At Pinsker’s request—amusing, isn’t it?—I put the press in its place. I published article after article proclaiming my faith in Soviet justice. I ridiculed the indignation of the Pariser Haint, I pilloried and denounced its moralizing sermons: “So, you take up the defense of your opponents? Their fate suddenly preoccupies you, you shed bitter tears for men whom, only yesterday, you cursed and consigned to damnation. Shame on you, gentlemen—your hypocrisy is matched only by your blindness!” It was a brawl to end all brawls. I shouted as hard as our enemies. Being a novice at such things, I was convinced of the guilt of the accused—especially since they admitted it themselves. The great heroes of the Revolution would not behave like traitors if they had not been traitors. Torture? Humbug. They had stood up to the Okhrana, resisted the Siberian prisons and defied the Tsar’s torturers; they would have done as much now if they were innocent.
Paul did not share my conviction. I can tell you now, now that he’s no longer alive. Having lived in the Soviet Union, he was better informed about the secret, hidden life there. In his day-to-day relations with us, his collaborators, he masked his worries and his perplexity. But sometimes they came through. I would find him slumped at his desk, staring into space, looking distraught. The helplessness of this giant, usually so full of good humor, became unbearable; I would withdraw, closing the door behind me.
He was not fooled, Paul Hamburger.
One evening I surprised him in his room. I had dropped in just like that, without telephoning, thinking that if he was busy, he’d tell me. He was
alone, a bottle of cognac in front of him on the table.
“I’m down in the dumps,” he says without looking at me. I don’t respond; I don’t know what he wants to hear me say.
“I am in a monstrous depression,” he repeats. “And you?”
“Not yet.”
I sit down.
“I feel like getting drunk,” says Paul. “And you?”
“Not yet.”
With his fingers he caresses the bottle, turning it round and round without opening it.
“It’s funny,” he says wearily. “I feel like getting drunk, but I don’t feel like drinking.”
“With me it’s the opposite. I feel like drinking but not like getting drunk.”
As a rule, he is too generous not to laugh at my jokes, even if they don’t deserve it. This time he just shrugs his shoulders.
“I don’t understand,” he says after a long silence. “You—do you understand?”
“Understand what?” I say, knowing perfectly well what.
He gives me a fixed, stern look, and insists on an answer.
“Yes or no—answer: Do you understand?”
“I think I do. The Soviet Union is not paradise. There are some good people there and some rats. The good people deserve respect—the traitors, punishment.”