All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [57]
“Okay,” the American officers said. “We can understand why you don’t want to go home. But where do you want to go?”
“Palestine,” some answered.
I concurred. It was the only country whose name resonated within me.
“Do you have any family there?”
“Yes,” said one of the group. “We do.”
“Who?”
“Joshua,” he replied. “And Amos. Isaiah. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi.”
“Not Moses?” the officer asked with a smile.
“No. Moses never made it to the Holy Land.”
The officer shook his head sadly. “Neither will you, I’m afraid. You’re in the same political and legal situation as Moses: the English really don’t want you there.”
Then where would we go? Another officer brought good news: “Belgium is ready to accept you.” Bravo for Belgium. And I had had family there, cousins who used to send us Rosh Hashana greetings, Shiku and Reizi, brother and sister. I remembered Shiku’s sweetness and shyness, and Reizi’s haughty bearing. She was beautiful. I wondered what had become of her husband, whom I had run into in Auschwitz soon after I arrived. So be it, off to Belgium.
Had we actually gone to Belgium, I might have met the beautiful young girl who, years later, became the mother of my Elisha. Right after the war, she belonged to a Zionist organization that I might easily have joined as well. But fate decreed otherwise.
One morning we were told that there had been a change of plans. General Charles de Gaulle, informed of our plight, had invited us to France. France, the country of Rabbi Yehiel and of Rashi (that was more or less all I knew of it). In fact, I had met some Frenchmen in Auschwitz. There were Louis and Charles and André, a marvelous flautist. But since I didn’t know their language, we communicated using the concentration camp vocabulary, a mixture of Polish, German, Yiddish, Russian, and Ukrainian. Would I now have to learn French? Well, everything in its time.
First I had to learn—or relearn—to live.
TO LIVE FAR FROM my father, my father who stayed behind, in the invisible cemetery of Buchenwald. I look up at the sky, and there is his grave. When I raise my eyes to heaven, it is his grave I see.
Don’t leave me, Father. No, it is I who am leaving you.
From now on we will be together only in our dreams.
I often close my eyes just to see you.
You are going away, or I am, yet the distance between us is unchanging.
I am leaving the camp, going toward a new life.
And you remain, a fistful of ashes. Not even.
GOD’S SUFFERING:
A COMMENTARY
Here is what the Midrash tells us. When the Holy One, blessed be His name, comes to liberate the children of Israel from their exile, they will say to him: “Master of the Universe, it is You who dispersed us among the nations, driving us from Your abode, and now it is You who bring us back. Why is that?” And the Holy One, blessed be His name, will reply with this parable: One day a king drove his wife from his palace, and the next day he had her brought back. The queen, astonished, asked him: “Why did you send me away yesterday only to bring me back today?” “Know this,” replied the king, “that I followed you out of the palace, for I could not live in it alone.” So the Holy One, blessed be His name, tells the children of Israel: “Having seen you leave my abode, I left it too, that I might return with you.”
God accompanies his children into exile. This is a central theme of Midrashic and mystical thought in Jewish tradition. Just as the people of Israel’s solitude mirrors the Lord’s, so the suffering of men finds its extension in that of their Creator. Though imposed by God, the punishment goes beyond those upon whom it falls, encompassing the Judge himself. And it is God who wills it so. The Father may reveal Himself through His wrath; He may even sharpen His severity, but He will never be absent.