All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [59]
Commenting on a verse of the Prophet Jeremiah according to which God says, “I shall weep in secret,” the Midrash remarks that there is a place called “secret” and that when God is sad, He takes refuge there to weep.
For us this secret place lies in memory, which possesses its own secret.
A Midrash recounts: When God sees the suffering of His children scattered among the nations, He sheds two tears in the ocean. When they fall, they make a noise so loud it is heard round the world. It is a legend I enjoy rereading. And I tell myself: Perhaps God shed more than two tears during His people’s recent tragedy. But men, cowards that they are, refused to hear them.
Is that, at last, an answer?
No. It is a question. Yet another question.
SCHOOLING
All aboard, please. No more cattle cars. A luxurious, second-class railroad car had been set aside for us. We walked from the camp to the station. In my desk there is a photograph that shows a long column of children and adolescents with old men’s faces. I never looked back. No point in trying to see the invisible. Two Jewish chaplains from the American army went with us. Neatly dressed, carrying generous military rations, we left the Buchenwald station. Several boys from Sighet and its environs made the journey. One of them sat in my compartment. He knew a few words of French, and he assured me that life in France was good. I wondered if there was any place where death was good. I thought about my father. We had arrived together, but I was leaving alone.
The trip took two or three days, I’m not sure which, for I was too absorbed in looking at what there was to see. The train stopped at the border, and they had us get off. A police official made a speech, of which I understood not a word. When I saw people raising their hands, I assumed they were volunteering for some task. In the camp I had always tried to pass unnoticed, to make myself invisible, and I saw no reason to act differently now. I later found out that the policeman had asked for a show of hands of all those who wished to become French citizens. Since I did not respond, they probably wrote in my file: “Refused French nationality.” The consequence of my blunder was endless harassment and administrative hassles every time I renewed my residency permit or applied for travel passes at the Préfecture de Police.
We reboarded, and broke into applause when the train set out again: we were now in France. It was a different landscape, more cheerful and more human. I liked the peasants in berets. People waited for us at every station, showing compassion by offering us hot meals, which the observant among us refused. But we gladly accepted the bread, café au lait, fruit, and cookies. My friend was right: Life in France was good.
Representatives of the OSE, the children’s rescue society, greeted us in a splendid château in Écouis, in the department of Eure. There were smiles, plans, and promises. They gave us the same message in many languages: “Here you will recuperate. All we ask is that you let us take care of you.” We were given medical examinations. I blushed when undressing for a female doctor. They housed us, clothed us, offered us lavish meals. The weather was beautiful. It was a marvelous June, the first anniversary of the Normandy landing. I went to see the director in his office and shyly asked for a pen and paper. I began a private journal: “After the war, by the grace of God, blessed be His name, here I am in France. Far away. Alone. This morning I put on my own tefillin for the first time in a long while.” The group of