All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [46]
Was it the will to testify—and therefore the need to survive—that helped pull me through? Did I survive in order to combat forgetting? I must confess that at the time such questions did not occur to me. I did not feel invested with any mission. On the contrary, I was convinced that my turn would come and that my memories would die with me. When I heard fellow inmates making plans for “afterward,” I thought it was no concern of mine. I repeat: It is not that I wanted to die, just that I knew I would not survive, first of all because I was convinced the Germans would keep their promise and kill us all, down to the last Jew, if necessary in the final hour before their defeat. And also because I knew that beyond a certain point I would be incapable of bearing the hunger and the pain.
If anything motivated me, it was my father’s presence. In the camp we were close, closer than ever, perhaps because we thought we might be the last survivors of our family. But there was something else as well: Finally I had my father to myself. At home he had been away often. In the camp I saw him from morning to night, dusk to dawn. I saw no one but him. We depended on each other: he needed me as I needed him. Because of him, I had to live; because of me, he tried not to die. So long as I still lived, he knew he was useful, perhaps even indispensable. In my eyes, he was the same man, the same father, he had always been. If I was gone, he would lose his role, his authority, his identity. And conversely: Without him my life would have neither meaning nor goal.
In this the Germans’ psychological methods often failed. They tried to get the inmates to think only of themselves, to forget relatives and friends, to tend only to their own needs, unless they wanted to become “Mussulmen.” But what happened was just the reverse. Those who retreated to a universe limited to their own bodies had less chance of getting out alive, while to live for a brother, a friend, an ideal, helped you hold out longer. As for me, I could cope thanks to my father. Without him I could not have resisted. I would see him coming with his heavy gait, seeking a smile, and I would give it to him. He was my support and my oxygen, as I was his.
And yet. Did I really help him, or did I merely sharpen his sorrow? For is there any misfortune, any curse, more devastating to a father than being unable to come to his son’s rescue, unable to release him from the lash of hunger and fear? I asked him countless questions in an effort to show him that his authority over his son was still intact, that my confidence in his judgment was as absolute as ever: Should I try to move to a different kommando or barracks? Should I trade my ration of margarine for a piece of bread, or pick up a string I had found at the work site and sell it despite the risk of twenty-five lashes? He didn’t know what advice to give me, but my questions did him good.
One day I saw him on the verge of tears. He had noticed how emaciated I had become, and he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to pull me through the next selection. He was crying inside, and I felt the weight of his despair. I wanted to console him, reassure him, but didn’t see how I could without making him feel even worse. There is no sharper pain, no more shattering grief, than seeing one’s father shed tears of impotence.
Being closer to him made me love him more than ever. Sometimes I would offer him a spoonful of soup, telling him I wasn’t hungry. He did the same. “My stomach hurts, I can’t eat a thing,” he would say, handing me a crust of bread. I ached to do something to bring back his smile, his strength, his wisdom and dignity. At night, lying side by side, we would talk about the past: a rabbinical marriage we had attended; the burning of the barracks (who were the saboteurs?); the disappearance of a rich merchant’s son—had he fled to Soviet Russia, as people said, or gone to Budapest