All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [104]
In this atmosphere little attention was paid to the Holocaust. For many years it was barely mentioned in textbooks and ignored in universities. In the early fifties, when David Ben-Gurion and his colleagues finally decided to pass the Knesset bill creating Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial, the emphasis was on courage. Resistance fighters were presented as a kind of elite, while the victims—the dead and survivors alike—deserved at best compassion and pity. Allusions to the fate of the victims were rare, especially in public. The subject was considered embarrassing.
This unhealthy, demoralizing state of affairs aroused in me an uneasiness that I could not shake. It tarnished my joy at breathing the air of Jerusalem. I vainly sought to regain my equilibrium. It occurred to me that it might help to write an article on the subject, but when a former Irgun emissary I had known in France asked me not to mention him in any article I might write, I understood. I decided to keep my disenchantment to myself.
Still, I decided to extend my stay, and the old question of what I would live on reasserted itself. I stayed with cousins and friends here and there. Itzu Junger, my friend from Sighet, loaned me his room in a Tel Aviv suburb, a sort of windowless cage in which you could spend no more than a few hours without risking suffocation. But it was better than nothing. I went to see Joseph, my first employer, who now worked in the editorial offices of Herut. He offered me a temporary position until I could find something else. “But I don’t plan to stay long,” I told him. “Besides, I’m not a member of this political party” He smiled. “You expected to be writing editorials, maybe?” At least it would help me perfect my Hebrew. For three or four weeks I was half proofreader, half errand boy. Then one day I ran into a friend from Paris in the hallway, and he suggested I come with him to Beer-Yaakov, where there was a children’s home. I jumped at the chance, and soon became a full-time counselor. I wondered what Niny would think if she saw me in her role.
The “children” were adolescents of Romanian and Bulgarian origin. I spent a few enjoyable and instructive weeks with them. There were campfires, of course, as at Fantana and Ambloy, and songs and tales. We studied Scripture and ancient Jewish history as well as modern European philosophy and literature. I was astonished at these young people’s breadth of knowledge. The Romanians in the group were remarkable for their fervor. There were many evenings of music, lectures, and discussions in the orange groves. There were also some flirtations. As usual, they came to nought.
The autumn rains arrived, and I withdrew further and further into myself. A wave of depression courses through my notebooks. In Shushani’s absence I made little headway in my study of asceticism. And once again I was at a crossroads, and once again I forced myself to draw a balance sheet. I was not yet ready to settle down in this, the country of my dreams, in which I felt not alien but useless and superfluous. I loved Israel with all my heart, and yet I felt it was time to go back to France. I needed friends. Nicolas was still in the army, Israel Adler had resumed his studies in Paris. A little love affair would have been just the thing, but there was nothing on the horizon. Solitude weighed heavily upon me. I dreamed of love and yearned for Paris, where surprises happen every day. I missed the sidewalk cafés, strolling along the Seine,