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By Root 2066 0

in Yiddish. Almost all were refugees. To my astonishment, they praised Franco. True, he was a fascist; true, he had strangled the republic; true, the Jewish religion was not recognized in this country, but … But what? During the war Franco had treated Jews honorably. A conscientious reporter, I conducted a minor inquiry, interviewing Spanish officials, foreign diplomats, and American and British colleagues. The evidence was clear: Unlike “humanist” Switzerland, Spain never rejected Jews fleeing persecution. The philosopher Walter Benjamin had been wrong to commit suicide: The Spanish would not have handed him over to the Vichy police. In fact, Franco had instructed his legations in the countries occupied by Germany to issue Spanish passports to Sephardic Jews. “And yet,” a high official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs complained, “Israel refuses to establish diplomatic relations with us.” For David Ben-Gurion, Spain was a fascist country, and that was enough to disqualify it. Later Israel would change its position, but then it was Spain that demanded concessions. Nevertheless, as I walked through the streets of the capital, I was annoyed at myself for feeling so content in this land. The memory of the victims should have affected me more.

We spent unforgettable hours in Toledo. A beautiful old synagogue had been turned into a church, but the Hebrew letters refused to disappear from the walls. (In 1992 and 1993 the banker and philanthropist Edmond Safra tried to buy the building back from the Church to restore it to the Jewish community.) The former residence of Shmuel Hanagid—where El Greco had also lived—had its own underground tunnel. If the priests broke in, the Jews could escape toward the sea.

Saragossa: city of the renowned mystic visionary Rabbi Abraham Abulafia, who in the late thirteenth century conceived the idea of hastening the ultimate redemption by converting all humanity to the Law of the Torah. It was a perfect idea and a fine solution, but where to begin? In Rome, of course, with Pope Nicholas III, no less. After that, things could only go smoothly. Sadly, the poor dreamer died before he could bring about redemption.

While visiting the immense cathedral, I was approached by a thin, middle-aged man with an angular face and deep-set, somber eyes. We conversed in French, which he managed with difficulty. He asked me where I was from and what I was doing in Saragossa. I told him I was a Jew living in Paris but that I worked for an Israeli newspaper. He was astonished. Do Jews still exist? Yes, they do. And Israel—that has something to do with the Bible, doesn’t it? Yes, I said, but with history as well, including contemporary history. He listened to me intently then invited me to his home to show me something he thought might interest me. I went with him, and when we got to his house he handed me a small, rolled parchment. It took me some time, but eventually I managed to decipher the Hebrew text: One Moshe ben Abraham called upon his descendants to remember their origins. I wanted to buy the document at any price, but the man refused to sell. And when I persisted, he became angry. This parchment, he explained, was an heirloom, handed down from father to son; it had never left his family I was so overcome by emotion that when he began asking me questions, I couldn’t answer. Then, standing with him at the window, I read and reread for him the contents of the testament, first in Hebrew, then in French.

Years later I met him again by chance in Jerusalem, where he was living modestly with his family. As I was leaving, he said to me with a smile, “By the way, I never told you my name. It is Moshe ben Abraham.” Whenever I think of Saragossa, it is him I see.

We continued our travels, which became a pilgrimage to the sources of our collective memory. Every stop was marked by a discovery, an encounter.

In Algeciras we spent the night in a small hotel near the port. I couldn’t sleep. My journey through this country, with its Jewish, Christian, and Muslim past, haunted me. I spoke of it in Legends of Our Time,