All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [55]
With my father dead, I felt curiously free; free to go under, to let myself drift into death.
Whenever I think of him, I relive his agony and a knot forms in my chest. I feel myself becoming an orphan. Yes, you can be orphaned more than once, no matter how old you are. And every time is the first time.
I picture him and tell myself I will never see him grow old. I am already older than he was when he died.
And the heartrending question keeps coming back. What if we had stayed in the infirmary? He might have survived. Who knows, I might have found a way to make him happy, at peace and proud of his son.
On December 10, 1986, at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, as I was about to deliver my acceptance speech in the presence of the Norwegian king and parliament, the diplomatic corps and the world press, I felt unable to utter a word, for Egil Aarvik, president of the Nobel Committee, had mentioned my father in his address: “You were with your father when he passed away; it was the darkest hour of your life. And this is the most glorious. It is therefore fitting that your own son be with you as you receive the highest distinction humanity can bestow upon one of its own.” I was shaken by the linking of my father and my son. I saw them standing together. My lips moved, but no sound came out. Tears filled my eyes, the tears I couldn’t shed so long ago.
With my father gone, I sank into a lethargy that lasted until liberation, on April 11, 1945. I had no desire to live. I didn’t know what was going on in the camp or even in my barracks. I knew nothing anymore, didn’t want to know. For all practical purposes, I had become one of the “Mussulmen” drifting beyond life, into death as into water, no longer hungry, thirsty, or sleepy, fearing neither death nor beatings. They were dead but didn’t know it. These few weeks, devoid of sense and content, are treated in just a few pages in Night. I did not line up for bread and soup. I waited for nothing and no one. I drifted through time and sank into a dreamless sleep. When I woke up, I didn’t know where I was. I no longer counted hours or days. They were all the same to me. Now, with hindsight, I remember certain young inmates from Kovno and Vilna with whom I mechanically played chess (with chessmen made of cardboard). I remember that during Passover I attended services in our barracks morning and evening. But it was another person who lived these events.
Was it on the night of April 5 (the seventh day of Passover) that the SS guards ordered all Jews to assemble in the Appelplatz, the parade ground? On the way we were intercepted by the camp police, the Lagerschütz. They were supposed to herd us to the Appelplatz, but instead they warned us to return to the barracks and hide. Prevent evacuation! That was the directive of the Resistance. But I was so detached from reality that I didn’t even know there was an underground movement in the camp.
Years later, during an official dinner in Jerusalem, the Norwegian ambassador to Israel told me, “I’m happy to see you again—I say again because we may have seen each other in Buchenwald.” Like most of the Norwegian students imprisoned in the camp, he had belonged to the Lagerschütz. “I’ve been looking for you ever since April 5, 1945,” I replied, “to thank you for saving my life.”
Several times during the days before liberation, my block was ordered to the Appelplatz for evacuation. In my enfeebled state, I could never have endured even a single day of forced march. Whether it was fate or providence, on each occasion either air raids forced us back into the “small camp,” or the daily quota of evacuees had been filled, and my group was sent back to barracks. The Stubenälteste, a certain Gustav, a Polish Jew, ruled over Barracks