All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [65]
One evening, during services, a strange man was pointed out to me. Dressed like a vagabond, a tiny hat perched on his enormous head, he stood in a corner, lost in his thoughts. Someone told me his name was Shushani and that he was a genius. “A madman,” someone else countered, while a third observer offered a compromise: “A mad genius.” As it happens, I was wary of geniuses and drawn to madmen, so I wasn’t sure whether to approach him. As I hesitated, he vanished. Too bad, but our paths would cross again.
French lessons were organized for us, but I attended them only sporadically. I didn’t see the point. I had better things to do than to puzzle over the conjugation of irregular verbs and the intricacies of the agreement of tenses. There were drawing lessons too, but perspective held no interest for me compared to the Midrash. I managed to get hold of some Hasidic works and treatises on mysticism. I was determined to continue the quest the Germans had interrupted, which I considered more important and exciting than anything in the real world. After all, I reasoned, the events we experience here below are consequences of what is decided on high, are they not? Granted, these were turbulent times: the signing of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco, the four-power occupation of Germany, the Potsdam Conference, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan’s surrender, Churchill’s defeat in the 1946 elections, De Gaulle’s resignation. But it was God who governed the actions of men, and if we failed to understand Him, perhaps it was because we were too shortsighted to see what our ancestors would have noticed immediately.
In time, though, our instructors managed to interest us in current events. The Nuremberg trials and philosophy of justice: were retroactive laws legitimate? The Iron Curtain, of which Churchill had spoken at a small college in Fulton, Missouri: were we now to fear our former allies? There was also Jewish terrorism and clandestine immigration to Palestine. We were told of acts of sabotage committed by the Irgun and the Stern Gang, such as the bombing of the General Headquarters of the British Army at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Many were killed, many more wounded. Still, the Irgun was said to have warned the British authorities, a local newspaper, and a foreign consulate ahead of time. Why hadn’t an immediate evacuation been ordered? Was it just another instance of British arrogance? We debated these questions at length. Would another resistance movement have acted similarly? More debate. Was there any such thing as a specifically Jewish morality? But there were distractions too. We were told that the French and world press were full of talk of a new phenomenon called the “bikini.”
It was in Ambloy that we celebrated the first High Holidays since liberation, and during Yizkor, the service devoted to the memory of the dead, the floodgates finally opened. All assembled wept tears of submission to God, of contrition and remorse, incomprehension and despair. I tried to remember the last Yizkor I had attended. Was it with my grandfather at the home of the Borsher Rebbe in Sighet, or with my father on the Appelplatz in Auschwitz? It all seemed so distant now, part of another universe and another history, as though time were no longer counted in years.
I recited the grave, solemn prayers with more concentration than ever. Never had I prayed with such intensity. I saw my father and grandfather as they had stood beside me at services, and I prayed for them. I wept for them.
Questions about divine justice and charity weighed upon me, but they had not yet taken shape. I acted as though my faith in God and His Laws and attributes were still whole and intact, even strengthened, as though my relation to God were untarnished, un-shattered.
Today I remember Ambloy with tenderness and melancholy, the more so since our stay there was brief. The OSE soon moved us to Taverny, in the Paris suburbs. I was glad