All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [41]
But strangers were living in my house. They had never heard my name. Inside, nothing had changed: the same furniture, the same tile stove my father had borrowed money to buy; the beds, tables, and chairs were ours, still in the same places. My feverish eyes wandered left and right, up and down. Was it possible that not a single trace of us remained? But there was one, just one. On the wall above my bed had been a photograph of my beloved master, Rebbe Israel of Wizhnitz. I remember it well: I had hung it there the day he died, the second day of the month of Sivan. I can see myself standing there, a heavy hammer in my hand, driving in the nail and hanging the frame. As I write these words, I suddenly realize that my mother died eight years later on exactly the same day, along with my little sister and Grandma Nissel. I cried for the Rebbe’s death as I hung his photograph above my bed. The nail was still there. A huge cross was hanging from it.
“We must go now,” my mother said. “We must stay together.”
It was Tuesday afternoon. We were still in Sighet. Our convoy would not leave for several days. We had been temporarily transferred to the smaller ghetto, whose inhabitants had just been driven out.
We moved into the home of Mendel, my father’s brother. My mother cooked our favorite dish, latkes, potato pancakes. This time there was no rationing; we ate all we wanted.
Mendel was my silent uncle. He had married Golda, daughter of my maternal uncle Israel. He was pious and shy. They had three children. Their photograph lies before me, saved by a relative.
Sacred books were scattered on the floor. Someone must have removed them from his bag at the last minute. The table was set, and there was food on the plates. They had been taken away in the middle of a meal. This was what remained of a family.
After the war I questioned every survivor of the second transport I could find, seeking news of Uncle Mendel and his family. I thought I found the answer in 1988, when an elderly man called out to me in the lobby of a Miami Beach hotel. He was, like me, of Romanian-Hungarian origin, from a small village near Sighet, and he told me he had stayed in the smaller ghetto until its evacuation. In fact, he had been in the same camp with my uncle. “Really?” I exclaimed. “You knew my uncle?” “Knew him!” he said. “For years I’ve seen him, even in my sleep.” And then he told me. At first Mendel and his son had been spared, like my father and me, and had been sent to a camp where conditions were relatively tolerable. But they were in different barracks and saw each other only during the day, at work. One night they could not bear to be separated. When the roll was called, the SS Blockführer counted and recounted the prisoners and ordered: “Let the prisoner who does not belong in this barracks show himself.” Mendel’s son took a few steps forward. “Closer!” the officer shouted. My young cousin obeyed, halting when he reached the SS man. The officer slowly drew his revolver and shot my cousin in the head, point-blank. My uncle, that sweet and timid man, hurled himself onto his son’s body, as if to protect him in death. The SS man stared at him for a long moment and then shot him in the head too. “Ever since then,” my witness said, “I see Mendel and his son in my dreams.”
And I, I think of the biblical law that, out of compassion for animals, forbids the slaughter of an ox and his calf on the same day. The Germans, however, did not shrink from killing a father and son together, without a second thought, as one would step on two insects.
Fishel and Voïcsi, my cousins from Antwerp, later gave me a different version of their deaths. What is certain, though, is that the enemy annihilated