by Elie Wiesel
My apprenticeship years were sometimes arduous but always stimulating.
I never could have imagined that I’d be able to write a straightforward sentence in the hellish noise of a newsroom, where every journalist thinks he’s the only person the reader is waiting for.
Important columnists, breathless reporters who can’t waste a minute before writing up the latest news, editorial writers tirelessly pleading with the boss not to cut sentences out of their articles. Shouts to the proofreaders: Check those names! Check those figures! Such was the tantrum-prone little world open to the universe at large that fascinated and infuriated me as a beginner.
The first year, I trembled before handing in my reviews to Bernard Colliers, an oafish, surly, taciturn man; irascible. Never self-confident, rarely satisfied, I feared authority and disapproval. When there was no urgency—in other words, when my piece was to appear in the Saturday or Sunday edition—I wrote at home. Alika helped me. She was my first reader; her reaction was vital to me. However, my editor—or the tyrant, as we called him—usually demanded that my article come out in the next day’s early edition. So I would start writing it inside the theater, during intermission, and complete it back in the office.
With time, I became accustomed to the rhythm of newspaper life, both regular and chaotic. A hastily and sloppily written item of political news, a misquote, a paragraph verging on plagiarism, triggered furors—fortunately, nipped in the bud by Paul. Was this the sign and secret of his power? As for me, though I rarely get angry, my temper tantrums don’t die down easily. Is it because I never aspired to the tiniest particle of power, except the power every man should exert over himself?
As a general rule, I kept aloof from the jealousies and internal quarrels that plague any business, and even more so in an editorial office whose end product is both essential and ephemeral: its truth lasts only as long as it takes the ink to dry.
Having become close to the boss, I went to great lengths never to overshadow anyone.
True, occasionally some more influential colleague tried to convince me that a play or production, or, more specifically, a friend or girlfriend’s performance, was marvelous and deserved to be warmly recommended. I listened patiently and answered that of course I would take his or her opinion into account, but that professional deontology—the word was fashionable at the time—didn’t really give me the right or the power to indulge him. All private matters, I said, were beyond my aegis.
Usually, the colleague didn’t resent me all that much. If he insisted, I would turn to Paul and discreetly seek his advice. I could rely on his support.
What was most important to me about my profession? The fact that it made my relatives proud. My uncle Méir, my aunt Drora, my grandfather, my parents. Itzhak, too, I hoped. Did my brother envy me? It would have been understandable to me. We’d always had a complicated relationship. I’m never sure my happiness contributes to his. I think that Orli, my sister-in-law, is partly to blame. She tries to be liked by everyone, but I don’t get caught up in her game. Is that what irritates her husband?
As for my father, he remains an enigma to me. Is he thinking about those who are absent? Sometimes I look at him and I feel like crying.
When I was studying theater and contemplating devoting my life to it, like Alika and by her side, my father read me the following text (ancient? By a precursor of the medieval thinker One-Eyed Paritus?). To my ears, even today, it still sounds like a premonitory echo of Paul Valéry’s beautiful words engraved on the frontispiece of the Palais de Chaillot: “For God, man is Creation’s triumph and challenge; he is both worried about him and proud of him. From the cradle to the tomb, life is a path that man alone can brighten or render arid. Life is a laboratory of ideas, dreams, experiences, and it depends entirely on man himself whether he will draw the lessons that will let him rise to the heavens or those that will hurl him into the throes of hell. Hence, life is everything but a theater where the possibility of choosing remains forever limited.”
Was my father seeking to discourage me? Make me aware of the trials awaiting me?
It matters little. I have a boundless love for my father. There is a reason: his own father was what we now call a “survivor.” He had been wealthy, and in the last year of the war he still had sufficient means to convince three former clients living in different villages to hide his wife and sons. Grandfather alone, victim of a denunciation, was arrested and deported. Miraculously, he survived and, as soon as he could, he emigrated to New York with his family. My mother, who was in America, had a sunny childhood.
And my own childhood? My earliest memories go back to when I was four years old. Before that, nothing. I’m like so many other Jewish children and adolescents in Brooklyn or Manhattan: Jewish school, high school. Sabbath meals. Holidays. Hanukkah gifts. Summer sun, winter snow. Childhood friends.
The Tragedy? A taboo, forbidden memories. Directly or indirectly, it had affected all our families. Even on my mother’s side: so many uncles, aunts, cousins, other relatives had disappeared. We understood obscurely that they were all part of our collective memory. When a man has an arm or a leg amputated, his “phantom limb” still hurts him. This can be applied to the Jewish people; as the great Yiddish poet Chaim Grade said: each of us feels pain for the limbs that are no longer. But what did I know of the concrete experience of that time? Of the denunciations? Of life in the ghetto? Of hunger and crowding? Of the “actions” prior to the deportations? Of the hunting down of children? Of the constant fear of being suddenly separated from one’s loved ones? Of the sealed trains bound for the unknown? Of unspeakable suffering? On those rare occasions when my father alluded to it, you had the impression he was recounting events described in his medieval manuscripts, or even more ancient than those. After all, we still commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the victims of the Crusades on specific dates in the calendar. But is the Tragedy, which we so inadequately call the Holocaust, similar to these dramatic episodes? Would a single day, just one day of the year, be sufficient to honor its memory?
One Saturday afternoon, my father and I found my grandfather at home, sitting at the table, his head in his hands. It was a short time after my grandmother’s death. He was lonely, in deep mourning, and I used to stop by to see him as often as possible. As soon as he saw me, he raised his head and tried to smile at me.
“The human soul, what a labyrinth. I thought I could find my way in it. No. I’ve lost my bearings. Listen to this: ‘An “entertaining” execution was organized in the old city [of Berdichev in Ukraine]: the Germans ordered the old men [Jews] to put on their tallith [prayer shawl] and their tefillin [phylacteries] and deliver a religious service in the old synagogue, praying God to forgive the errors committed against the Germans. They double-locked the synagogue doors and set the building on fire. Another instance of this kind of German “entertainment” is the story of the death of old Aron Mazor, whose profession was ritual butcher. The German officer who looted Mazor’s apartment ordered the soldiers to remove everything he had put aside. The officer stayed behind with two soldiers to “entertain” himself: he had found a big butcher’s knife and realized what Mazor’s profession was. “I want to watch you work,” he said and told the soldiers to go fetch the neighbor’s three little children.’”
And my grandfather added, “Poor Vassili Grossman, he is great and moving.” His narrative stops at this point. He doesn’t tell us what happened. Did Mazor obey the order to kill the children? Did he sacrifice himself rather than hurt them? But I’ll tell you: Mazor isn’t guilty. The Germans are. And I curse them. I will curse them to my dying day. I’ll curse them as I weep and as I hold back my tears. I’ll curse them by day and curse them by night. I’ll curse them in the name of the dead and in the name of the living. I’ll curse them for Mazor and for Vassili Grossman.
He put his fists on his eyelids. So I wouldn’t see his tears.
Then, after a long silence, he added, “I hope this kind of na
rrative breaks the Messiah’s heart and makes the heavens weep.”
As for my father, I rarely saw him weep. Usually when my brother and I lingered at the table after a meal, or in his study, he liked to listen to us with an impassive air. He’s a good listener. He says that’s the way he is: he expresses himself by listening. The first thing he always taught his students was the art of keeping their ears open. He would look at me, his head tilted and frowning, and I knew not a single word I said escaped him, even if I was telling him about my day at school or the latest baseball game. Sometimes he took advantage of a pause to ask for an explanation, usually with just one word, such as “Why?” or “When?”
My brother Itzhak loves him, too, of course. But in his own way: he loves him and at the same time he’s afraid of him, or afraid because of him. He admitted this to me one day. We were adolescents and on our way home from the hospital where our father had undergone elective surgery. “When I see him, my chest becomes heavy with anxiety. And I don’t know why,” he said. In my case, it’s different: when I think of him, I get a lump in my throat. I’m in pain for him.
Since I started working at the newspaper, he had gotten into the habit of reading it more attentively and with greater curiosity than the other dailies. He shares with me his thoughts on given columns. He doesn’t particularly like the articles that proclaim their commitment in the name of truth: “The truth of the journalist,” he often says, “is not the same as the philosopher’s. The former looks for facts, the latter is interested in what transcends facts.” When he talks to me about my articles, there’s a faint smile in the corner of his mouth. “You don’t have this problem. You’re concerned with artistic truth. That’s one truth but not the truth.”
One day I devoted an article to a play set in an Eastern European ghetto. I was harsh on its author, who had included too many erotic elements in the play for my taste. When I walked into my father’s study, he was reading my review. I wondered, Should I ask him what he thinks? The sad look on his face was enough for me. But I still don’t know if it was the play or my article that had made him unhappy. Retired, he spent all his time looking for ancient documents related to the Apocrypha, the book of Jubilees, so dear to his father. Nothing gave him greater childlike joy than others showing an interest in it. He was convinced that countless parchments of this kind, perhaps even the “Maccabees,” lay buried somewhere in the mountain caves near Jerusalem. Who would be so fortunate as to find them? One day I saw him in seventh heaven: he had just read a book annotated by One-Eyed Paritus. The latter referred to a manuscript titled “The End of Time” dating from the age of the Prophets in Judea. “Look,” my father said, jubilantly. “Look at what he says about anger burning the heart whose ashes wait for hatred before being wiped out: ‘God alone has the right to feel it; not his creatures.’ Or envy, look at what the same Paritus has to say about it: ‘Be wary of those who seek to arouse envy: you, reader and student, envy another person’s virtues, but not the power or gold he might possess; what shines today will be dust or ashes tomorrow.’”
IT IS BECAUSE OF Werner Sonderberg that, one fine spring day, I found myself in court, in the bosom of the justice system. Not as a lawyer, as my mother had wished, but as an interested observer. And above all as a drama critic.
This was the boss’s idea. Rather original, not to say harebrained. To tell the truth, I had tried to dissuade him.
“I haven’t studied law, Paul, as you know. I’ve never attended a trial, and never set foot in a courtroom. Do you want me to make a fool of myself? My area of expertise is theater!”
“That’s just it. Trials are like theater. All those who participate in them are playing a part. In England, the judges wear wigs. In France it’s robes. When the lawyer says, in his client’s name, ‘we plead guilty or not guilty,’ it’s as if he himself were guilty or not guilty, too. It’s theater, I tell you. In a criminal trial, especially with a jury, there’s always suspense and drama. That’s why the readers are interested in it.”
“And the defendant, Paul?” I replied. “Is it a game, for him, too?”
“It’s up to you to tell us.”
That’s how, from one day to the next, the aforementioned Werner Sonderberg, nephew of Hans Dunkelman, burst into my life.
I remember: a Sunday, late afternoon. I return from the theater and find a meeting of the editors. They’re preparing the layout. The Middle East is on the front page as usual, as well as a speech by the president at a midwestern university. Then the secretary of state’s televised statement on the subject of bilateral negotiations with Moscow on nuclear disarmament. I listen with only half an ear. My thoughts remain focused on the hapless actors who had to perform in an avant-garde comedy that never took off. Thank God, it won’t have a long run. But how can I express this without being nasty? I’m lost in these considerations when I hear voices getting louder. It’s Paul losing his temper.
“The trial of the year, as they say, starts next week and we are unprepared?”
“Our two legal reporters are away,” says Charles Stone, the old-timer in charge of the metropolitan desk. “James is on vacation and Frederic is getting married.”
“Couldn’t he pick a better time?”
“Maybe he could have,” Charles says, “but not his fiancée. As she sees it, happiness is much more urgent. She’s not a journalist.”
Contrary to what everyone feared, Paul did not explode. Head bent down, hiding his anger, he started to search in his mind for someone who might fit the bill, and I had no trouble figuring out why he was hesitating. No one appealed to him. So-and-so wrote too slowly; another lacked precision and sparkle; another really had to be kept in his assigned job. And suddenly his eyes met mine.
And that’s how I found myself spending hours delving into the archives of our newspaper, looking for material I could use in my first legal column. And after that? Tomorrow is another day. God is great.
Werner Sonderberg is a young German of twenty-four. Born in a town near Frankfurt, he moved with his mother to France, where he attended secondary school. After his mother’s death, he came to the United States to get a master’s degree in comparative literature and philosophy at New York University. Intelligent, hungry for knowledge, as an uprooted person he made a lot of friends at the university; he was even known to have had a few passing affairs. His teachers treated him kindly and predicted an outstanding career for him in his adopted country. Until then, nothing to report. No police record. No alcohol, no drugs.
One fine morning, a wealthy compatriot, Hans Dunkelman, came to visit him, claiming to be his relative; at the time, Werner didn’t understand: Was he an uncle, a distant cousin? His name didn’t ring a bell. Strongly built, dressed with meticulous elegance, he must be a wealthy industrialist, an investor or stockbroker, thought the young man.
They were often seen together. So much so that Werner’s girlfriend, Anna, a young brunette with cheerful eyes, complained about it to their mutual friends.
“When I want to spend an evening with him,” she said, pouting, “I have to make an appointment. I know, he told me, the man is his uncle, the only living member of his family. But still there’s a limit, don’t you think?”
One day, she couldn’t control her anger. “Werner just told me he was going to take time off in the mountains with that Dunkelman. Without me. Take time off from what, from whom? From me maybe? I can’t get over it!”
Indeed, Werner and his uncle went to the Adirondacks, not far from the Canadian border, but the nephew returned alone. Taciturn, he refused to answer when Anna quizzed him about his uncle’s absence.
“We separated,” he finally said by way of explanation, looking annoyed. “That’s all. And I hope I never see him again.”
“But why? What happened?” asked the young student. “Did you quarrel?”
Werner shrugged his shoulders as if to say, don’t harp on it.
Obviously preoccupied, he preferred to remain alone, as though he felt estra
nged from love and happiness. Anna tried in vain to make him relax. This was the first time such a thing was happening to them. He seemed cut off from the outside world, impervious to his girlfriend’s attentions.
Several days later, alerted by a passing tourist, the local police discovered Hans Dunkelman’s corpse at the foot of a cliff. Accident, suicide, or murder? Did he throw himself into the void? Did he succumb to malaise? Did someone push him? The autopsy revealed a high alcohol content in his bloodstream. At the hotel where Werner and he had rented two rooms for a week, they found the name of his nephew, who had returned to New York precipitately.
Two days later, Werner Sonderberg was arrested and charged with murder.
After rereading and correcting my introductory article on the trial, I leave the newspaper office and go home. It is night. Alika welcomes me, looking surprised.
“It’s late. What happened?”
I tell her about the turbulent meeting of the editorial staff, but the solution Paul found doesn’t please my wife.
“Don’t tell me you’re giving up the theater.”
“Don’t be afraid. We’ll still be going to all the good plays … if and when there are any.”
“How are you going to be able to juggle the two issues, writing reviews and summarizing the trial proceedings?”
“No problem: the trial takes place during the day. And it won’t last long. A few days. Maybe a week. That’s what everyone says.”
“But are you sure you can handle this sort of assignment?”
“No, I’m not. But Paul is sure. You know him; he’s stubborn. Once he gets an idea into his head, he won’t budge an inch. And he’s a friend. I’ve got to trust him.”
Alika is just as obstinate as Paul, and she isn’t convinced. But she becomes resigned.