by Elie Wiesel
Promoted to chief reader of the foreign section of the State Publishing House, I wrote reports for the mighty Ideological Commission. Manuscripts, projects, proofs, lecture notes, professional opinions—I swam in paperwork. My superiors congratulated me on my literary taste and my political instinct, and they accepted my recommendations: in a word, I was doing what they wanted.
Outside my immediate circle I was less highly regarded. People flattered me, lied to me, complimented me, but did not like me; they were jealous. Arke Gelis was carrying on an underhanded campaign against me, delving into my religious childhood. For my part I opposed the publication of his frankly worthless novel on the civil war. He managed to get people more influential than I to intercede in his behalf and the Commission disregarded my opinion; his novel was published with great fanfare.
On the other hand, I was able to intercede in favor of old Avrohom Zalmen. He had been arrested for having recited, while drunk, a sort of litany dedicated to the memory of King Saul, the greatest and most charitable of all kings because he had had the courage not to have his enemies put to death. Denounced by Arke Gelis for his appropriately insulting remarks about our immortal Joseph Vissarionovich, Zalmen was in great danger. I rushed over to see Major Koriazin in person and told him, “Avrohom Zalmen may be a mediocre Communist but he’s a great poet.” It seems that the matter was brought to the attention of our beloved Chief, who, it was said, ever since his days as a seminarian, felt a special sympathy for the unfortunate King Saul. If the rumor is to be believed, it was he himself who gave the order to release my crazy old Biblical poet. Gelis’s defeat heightened my joy. “You see?” Raissa said to me. “The Party card brings more than material benefits.”
Mostly it entailed diverse activities and obligations: ideological sessions, political meetings, lectures and signing of petitions; listening, applauding, voting. It was easy—there was the line, and I conformed to it without difficulty: the Party was right always. For me, for so many others, it had become a sort of religious order. I had only to recall my youth and substitute the Party for the Law or for God. In that way I could accept everything without reservation or hesitation. Hidden, omniscient and transcendent, the Party held the truth and the keys to the future: it knew where the most tortuous paths ended, it knew all the components of happiness. I studied its texts just as long ago I used to probe a passage of the Tractate on the Sanhedrin, that is, with the absolute conviction of finding there every question and every answer. I would even say that my religious education helped me orient myself in my new faith: more than the pure Marxists, I excelled in exegesis as well as in obedience.
Though a Communist himself, Mendelevich thought my neophyte fervor too contrived. “Don’t forget,” he once said, “that you’re a poet first, a Jewish poet.” He did not add that the Communist connection was secondary, but that was what he thought. As for me, I was too busy to think about it.
Der Nister had some reservations about me, I think: he considered me something of an opportunist. I was hurt and sought a way of explaining my attitude to him, but the opportunity never arose. I regret that. I respected the man and revered his work; his opinion of me was important to me. As a matter of fact, I often think about it: if we had had a private talk, what would I have said to him? Perhaps something like this:
“Having lost my family in cattle cars, having broken with the religion of my fathers and understood what Nazism was capable of, having escaped a thousand enemies and seen what I saw in the frozen eyes of corpses, I found in the Communist Revolution an ideal that suited me. I was doing useful work, and I was doing it as a Jew. I was fulfilling myself as a man and as a Jew. If, as in the beginning of the thirties in Germany, the Party had told me that in order to be a Communist I had to stop being a Jew I would have been conflicted: but in 1947, in Soviet Russia, that was not the case. The Party had created an Anti-Fascist Committee, organized Jewish writers and artists’ clubs, sent Jewish poets to America. Mikhoels was among the most honored artists of the USSR, Feffer had received the highest decorations, Markish was adulated by the intelligentsia, and my own writings appeared in the prestigious reviews of the Writers’ Union. Clearly one could be a Jew and a Communist at the same time. In foreign affairs, too, the signals were favorable. Moscow defended the claims of the Palestinian Jews and spoke in their behalf at the United Nations. Gromyko’s speeches were more Zionist than those of the Zionists. It was even said that we were sending arms to the underground Jewish army. Why then should I live on the periphery, uninvolved and ineffective?”
That is what I should have tried to say to the writer I admired. But we never met alone. I had the impression he was avoiding me. This saddened me, but I was too busy to do anything about it. In charge of a division, and victim of my own fame, I was working like a horse. I was writing, and commissioning others to write. I was preparing my second volume: an epic, the story of a Jewish revolutionary turned partisan during the occupation. I slept little and poorly. I was at my work table at dawn.
Raissa teased me: “What are you trying to prove? That you’re a better Communist than I?” She did not understand; she failed to see I was blossoming. My book went off to the printer’s. The publication date was to be the spring of 1949. Galperin, as enthusiastic as ever, was already talking about an official party to be attended by the lions of Jewish letters. Mikhoels was going to put his theater at our disposal; Ziskind would surely agree. I protested: “That’s a little premature, isn’t it? The book hasn’t been printed yet; it’s the dead of winter; let’s wait.…”
Once again, I had a premonition: something was going to go wrong. And—that is what happened. Mikhoels died in a mysterious automobile accident in Minsk. Strange: when I heard the news, in my office, a passage from the Talmud came back to me: The death of one Just signifies that mankind is ripe for great punishment. I ran to the Jewish theater; crowds of friends, acquaintances and strangers were already gathering there, some of them sobbing openly.
There could be no doubt: certain things were about to take place. After the funeral service—solemn, impressive, unforgettable—the mechanism, once released, accelerated its rhythm. Events quickly came to a head. First, the Anti-Fascist Committee was dissolved, the Jewish theater shut down, certain by-lines in the press disappeared. Then came the campaign against Zionists and cosmopolitans. My friends avoided public places. Invitations stopped coming. I spent my free time at home with Raissa. When I tried to analyze the situation with her, she was evasive. “What do you think of all this?” I asked. “Be quiet. You have your work, I have mine. Forget everything else.” She had resumed her captain’s voice.
One day, on my way to the printer’s, I saw Galperin in the street; his slow, stooped walk saddened me. When I arrived in front of the printer’s, the workers, in a panic, signaled to me not to go inside. “But what is happening?” Old Melekh Geller, who was not really very old, pointed to the composing room. I opened the door: a dozen or so agents and militiamen, silent and surly, were methodically opening drawers, seizing manuscripts and books, using hammers to smash pages of set type, including those of my own book. Their new-style pogrom completed, they went off without a word, carrying full sets of printing plates.
At first I felt merely stunned and helpless, then I felt ill. A needling pain in my chest reminded me of my heart condition. I swallowed my pills without water. The pain subsided, but I felt so weak I thought I would faint. I sat down, facing the workers, who were expecting an explanation from me. Since all these projects had passed the ideological censorship of the authorities, how did the militiamen dare sabotage them? When my pain had eased, I ran to my office and telephoned the person responsible for cultural affairs of the Party: he was not there, neither was his assistant, his secretary was busy; a friend, an editor at Izvestia, was away; Major Koriazin could not be reached, his aide knew nothing.
It was enough to make you lose your mind. I could not accept that the Party could condemn an entire culture, annihilate an entire literature.
And what about the books translated from Russian? The third volume of Lenin’s complete works? And the essay in praise of Joseph Vissarionovich by young Grabodkin? Why was it necessary to make them disappear? Nobody knew. Fighting evil men, subversive ideas, deviationist publications—well, such is the nature of political strife. But a language? Why attack a language? Why would anyone wish to exterminate Yiddish? Mystery of mysteries.
Of course, I tried to rationalize: perhaps the Party was not informed. If it was, its logic escaped me, which did not mean that it was not just or necessary. The Party must be accepted; calling it into question means to detach oneself from it, thus to judge it, thus to reject it. Faith, one must always have faith; doubt is forbidden. As I repeated these arguments to myself I thought: I have just witnessed my second pogrom.
I came home earlier than usual. So did Raissa. My heart was heavy, and so was hers. We had finally come to an understanding. I told her about my day.
“It’s worse than you think,” she said, after a moment’s silence.
“Explain.”
“I can’t. Just take it from me, it’s serious. Remember, I entered the Party long before you. And I’ve performed more important functions than you. My sources are trustworthy.…”
She looked despondent, downcast; I had never before seen her in such a state.
“What do you suggest?” I asked.
“Let’s leave,” she said resolutely.
“Are you serious? You want me to leave my work, you to leave yours, like that, on an impulse?”
“Listen,” she said. “No discussion. Let me handle it. Things are going to happen. It’s best to be as removed as possible. In the thirties it was the people who lived far from Moscow and the other big cities that managed best.”
Beyond the nausea, the fear and the pain, there was my love for Raissa: oh, yes, I loved her. Her calm strength, her decisive spirit, her courage brought me as near to her as we had been before, at the beginning of our relationship. Was it the danger? We were one.
“Listen,” she said. “You’re sick, go see your doctor. Ask for sick leave. Your wife will go with you.”
“But where shall we go?”
She thought, opening her eyes wide, as she often did: “We’ll go to Krasnograd: it’s in the mountains, far away; it’s a small place, just what we need.”
I no longer remember why, but I took her in my arms; I no longer remember why, but she responded to my embrace.
The events of the day had exhausted me; I could not grasp them clearly. The militia raid, the telephone calls into the void, Raissa’s warnings: what did it all mean? Had we fought the war—and what a war!—to end up with this? Anguish? Flight?
We got into bed without eating, as though taking refuge there. And Raissa surprised me once more. Instead of waiting for me to make the first move, she snuggled close to me, and was affectionate, tender, full of initiative. Did she foresee our separation? She held me close, and I experienced a pleasure so intense it hurt.
The return to Krasnograd was uneventful. With a medical certificate in my pocket, I obtained the needed authorizations; our bureaucracy, luckily, is less efficient than is believed. The question of lodgings was easily settled. After the mass arrests there was no shortage of empty apartments.
To relate my renewed contacts with my native town would be to evoke my childhood; I have already done that. Yet I felt like a stranger there. The streets, the buildings and the parks, had they changed? I did not recognize them. My father’s house, for instance, was no longer mine, had never been mine. I preferred not to see it again. Gone, my father’s house. Gone, the city of my childhood. Barassy is far away; Krasnograd has nothing to do with my exiled childhood.
Officially an invalid, I could not seek a position, but Raissa could. Her salary allowed us to subsist for several months—several months only, because Raissa was about to become a mother.
Frankly, I tried to persuade her to have an abortion. “Bring a child into the world—now? How do you know where I’ll be tomorrow? And what if both of us are arrested? And even if we are spared, do you really think the world deserves one more Jew?”
She was stubborn. She was bent on having her child, my arguments had no effect on her. I realized that I scarcely knew her: I knew about her only those things relating to our life together. My repeated questions about her youth in Vitebsk, her parents, her past loves wearied her; her silences made me suffer.
The waiting and anxiety continued: when would they come knocking at our door? Just as during the Spanish war and later at our own front, I was waiting for my own personal bullet. But there it had been different: I had known I was in danger, but innocent. And here? Here I knew I was in danger and just as innocent—but there no one had accused me, no one had set a trap for me, while here … here, knowing I had been decreed guilty, I behaved as though I were guilty. I paced up and down my room, my hands behind my back, like a condemned man.
At night, I lay awake listening for noises from the street and the stairs; I held my breath. Should I wake Raissa? The footsteps moved away … I breathed. Until the next suspicious noise.
Raissa stopped working a month before giving birth. The landlady watched her going up and down the stairs and murmured, “Poor thing, poor thing!” Later, when she saw us with the baby, she murmured: “Poor things, poor things!”
In the room I contemplated my child—a boy bearing my father’s name, Gershon—and my heart melted. I was responsible for his future, a future I imagined full of clouds and sadness. Would I be there to teach him to walk, as my father had done for me? Who would teach him his first words, his first songs, the names of the birds and flowers? Who would shield him from the evil eye? I caressed his little bald head, kissed his moist forehead, and whispered, “May God be with you, son; may God remain with you, Father.”
I unearthed—I will not say where or how—a mohel, who circumcised my son. Reciting the prayer of the covenant, I had tears in my eyes. My son, in my arms, looked at me in silence; and I, in silence, wished him to know joy. When the mohel pronounced the name of my father, I burst into tears.
I had not consulted Raissa; I feared an explosion of anger. And here again, she surprised me. The coldness vanished from her blue eyes. “He will suffer,” she said, gently shaking her head, “he’ll suffer, it’s inevitable, but he’ll know why.”
Meanwhile the noose was tightening. Disturbing news came from Moscow: Markish and Bergelson, Der Nister and Kvitko had been arrested. An embolism had laid Mendelevich low. I took the train and went to pay him a last tribute; not one of our mutual friends was there. Old Avrohom Zalmen had been put in a mental hospital; in a restaurant, he had suddenly begun shouting that he was King David’s cousin: “Saul—kill me, kill me.…”
My turn would come, I sensed it. Prison, madness, death. Separation. I looked at my son, who seemed to be smiling at me. I looked at my son and smiled at him.
I could not understand why I was still at liberty. I knew I was under surveillance, but why was I being allowed to go on living my life as father and husband—and as voluntary exile—instead of being made to share the fate of my colleagues?
By dint of waiting for the calamity I was ready to provoke it. What if I reported to the police? I would show them my poems and tell them, “Here is the evidence of my guilt, arrest me.”
I no longer knew what to do. The fear of prison seemed worse to me than prison itself. Alone with Grisha—we had given him this nickname the day after his birth—I told him stories in Yiddish, I sang him the lullabies my mother used to sing to me. Raissa returned to work and I took care of the child. When she opened the door in the evening and saw me, she sighed: I was still there. We had thought of all the contingencies: if I was arrested during the day, the landlady was to take care of Grisha until Raissa’s return.
She seemed less anxious than I. She forced herself to behave normally, calmly; but I sensed her depression. She knew more than I about the dangers in wait for us. She never smiled except when pl
aying with Grisha. She would glance at me and her gaze was too painful to bear. Trapped, I hid in the eyes of my son as I had once taken refuge in those of my father.
To pass the time, while keeping vigil over Grisha’s slumber, I reread and recopied notes, poems, aphorisms. I arranged my books and clothes. I found my phylacteries one day at the bottom of a drawer, and touching them I trembled. If they could only speak, I thought. The next second, without knowing what I was doing or why, I took them out of their bag, kissed them and put them on my left arm and forehead, as I used to do in the House of Study in Liyanov. All the rituals had come back to me.
It was absurd, but I felt better. Before taking them off, I leaned over the cradle. My son was sleeping and yet I was sure he saw me through his closed eyelids.
At dinner I described the scene to Raissa and made fun of myself. “You see, I’m lapsing back into religion, I’m getting old.” “You know,” she said, fixing her big eyes on me, “people who have faith are the strongest, they are best able to resist pressure.” I looked at her amazed: had I heard her correctly? She was encouraging me to become observant once again.… “Do you know the story of Rebbe Shneur-Zalmen of Ladi?” “You’re joking, rebbes are your domain.” “In prison he was visited by the prosecutor, some say by the Tsar himself, and he inspired them with such respect, such reverential awe, that they decided to set him free. And the Hasidic tradition says specifically that when he received his august visitors he was wearing his phylacteries.” “Very good,” Raissa replied, forcing herself to look amused, “if that helps you, it’s all right with me.”
The next day I put on the phylacteries again. This time I waited until Grisha woke up. He pulled at the straps, and that filled me with great joy.
That evening we went to bed as usual after having rocked our son to sleep. I had sung him some ancient melodies to lull him to sleep: he kept insisting on more. I spent an agitated night. In a dream I was running, breathless, to save a small blond girl who was drowning and at the same time was about to fall off a tall tower. I awoke with palpitations; it was before dawn, before the small discreet knocks on the door.