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By Root 2137 0

” and was surprised to find that in ancient times the Jewish quarters were created by the Jews themselves, out of fear of alien influences. Such was the case for the communities of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria. Only later were ghettos imposed on them, under various names: Judería in Spain and Portugal, Rue des Juifs in France. In 1288 King Alfonso III ordered the Jews of Saragossa to live apart from the Christians. In 1480 the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella issued a similar order. In 1555 Pope Paul IV drove the Jews from his cities, except those who lived in the ghettos. In Mainz in 1662 the Great Elector Jean-Philippe deprived the Jews of the right to live outside the walls of their quarter. But the ghetto, however deprivational, could be spiritually rewarding. It helped to preserve the culture and tradition that constitute the Jewish heritage. After all, in 1652 my own ancestor, Rabbi Yom-Tov Lipmann-Heller, rejoiced in having helped to build the walls ringing the Jewish quarter of Leopoldstadt.

The truth is that some Jews in Sighet could have escaped the ghetto. It was a mild spring, and they had only to flee to the mountains until the ordeal was over. Maria—our old housekeeper, wonderful Maria who had worked for us since I was born—begged us to follow her to her home. She offered us her cabin in a remote hamlet. There would be room for all six of us, and Grandma Nissel as well. Seven in one cabin? Yes, she swore it, as Christ was her witness. She would take care of us, she would handle everything. We said no, politely but firmly. We did so because we still didn’t know what was in store for us.

It was April 1944, just a few weeks before the Allied landing in Normandy, but the Jews of Sighet had not been informed of the ramifications of the Final Solution. The free world, including Jewish leaders in America and Palestine, had known since 1942, but we knew nothing. Why didn’t they warn us? Though this in no way attenuates the guilt of the killers and their accomplices, it is impossible not to feel indignation at the passivity of our brothers and sisters in America and Palestine. How many of our people would have escaped the enemy if Roosevelt, Churchill, Ben-Gurion, Weizmann, and the leading lights of world Jewry had issued radio appeals: “Hungarian Jews, don’t let yourselves be locked into ghettos, don’t get into the cattle cars! Flee, hide in the caves, take refuge in the woods!” Had we been told that the road from the ghettos led to the railroad stations, and that the trains’ destination was Auschwitz, had we been told what Auschwitz meant, many Sighet Jews would have chosen to go underground—and thereby would have survived.

This question has haunted me ever since the war: Why did the Jews of the free world act as they did? Hadn’t our people survived persecution and exile throughout the centuries because of its spirit of solidarity? Driven from their land after the defeat of Judea, the Jews found a haven among their brothers in Rome and Cyprus. Expelled from Spain, they were welcomed by their fellow Jews in Turkey and the Netherlands. When one community suffered, the others supported it, throughout the Diaspora. Why was it different this time?

In my first essay on the Eichmann trial, published in Commentary, I suggested that, before condemning the criminals and their accomplices, we confess our own shortcomings. Free Jews did not do all they could to save the Jews of Europe. The Palmach in Palestine could have sent emissaries to Poland and Hungary to train Jews for combat, or at least to inform them. It did not.

This article drew the wrath of Golda Meir, then Israeli minister of foreign affairs. “You forget,” she replied, “that the world was at war, that Palestine was under a British mandate. How could our boys have reached occupied Europe?” Usually I didn’t dare argue with her. I respected her and was careful not to irritate her. But this time I decided to answer: “Every boy or girl who risked his or her life going from ghetto to ghetto or community to community to maintain contact among persecuted Jews