All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [51]
I remember, I remember. Unconsciously I took it all in. Well, not the hangmen. I could not describe the SS Blockführer who summoned us, nor the Lagerführer who attended hangings. Strangely, the murderers did not interest me; only the victims. That is why I never felt the need to become a Nazi-hunter. Though I respect those who did, like the Klarsfelds in Paris and Neal Sher in Washington, my obsession was quite different. Of course, I was shocked by the freedom and happiness enjoyed by these murderers. I saw it as an affront to the collective memory of the victims and as a legal outrage. But I knew that I was incapable by nature and temperament of spending the years left to me tracking them down. The victims alone were worthy of my devotion.
But let me come back to the two Brooklyn lawyers. They wore the kipa. For them the Law of the Torah stood above all else. How to apply it to the Hasid they were accusing?
They told their story. In the camp their father had dared to confront a Jewish kapo who, while distributing soup, exhibited excessive cruelty. “Have you no shame?” their father protested. “Have you forgotten you are a Jew?” That night, the kapo and his acolytes came to punish the impudent man. They wrapped him in a blanket and beat him savagely. It was a miracle he survived. Decades later, walking in Brooklyn one day, he recognized the kapo by his voice. His two sons had sworn vengeance.
I asked them detailed, painful questions, interrogated them. If it was so dark, how could their father, wrapped in a blanket, identify a voice and face? Suppose his memory deceived him. That was possible, was it not? I tried hard to lead them to doubt. As they replied to my questions, my thoughts leaped to the synagogue, reviewing names and features. A kapo among them—if so, how old would he be, and from what country? I asked the young attorneys, “Do you sincerely believe that one can judge and punish a man forty years later, at the risk of ruining an innocent life?” They debated the point and were about to reveal the accused man’s name. I stopped them. They then informed me that they intended to report him to the police as well as to the Israeli authorities. How could I dissuade them? I told them of my encounter with a Blockältester in a bus traveling from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv during the Eichmann trial. They knew the story, having read it in Legends of Our Time. “Then you know how I acted in virtually similar circumstances. I let him get away.” The lawyers were not convinced: “Your man didn’t kill your father; this kapo almost killed ours.” I answered, “But you aren’t sure, you can’t be sure.” They persisted, and in a sense, I understood them: it was, after all, their father. Still, I persuaded them not to act hastily.
Why did I refuse to hear the kapo’s name? Again, only the victims interest me.
Are we to be victims of one another?
The truth is I could spend the rest of my days recounting the weeks, months, and eternities I lived in Auschwitz, abandoning all other subjects and devoting my life, my survival, to testifying for those who died in the storm of ashes. But the student of mysticism within me always holds me back: “Wait! One must not say too much. The secret of truth lies in silence.” And that is the dilemma: To be silent is impossible, to speak forbidden. I have therefore chosen to speak of other things—of the Talmud and the Bible, of mysticism and Hasidism. I have written novels and plays about Jerusalem and Moscow. But even while imagining stories ancient and modern, peopled with characters of varying fates, the teller of the tales still lives in the shadow of the flames that once illuminated and blinded him. He sees them, and will see them always. He has sworn never to let them die. Even in heaven, in that world of truth, he will stand before the celestial throne and say, “Look! Look at the flames that burn and burn, hear the mute cries of Your children as they