All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [81]
But let us leave all that aside for now, and return to Frankfurt, and to Kassel.
When I visited the camp in which Bea worked in the office of UNRWA (the United Nations agency created to take care of refugees) while waiting for her visa for Canada, I felt a growing anger not only toward the Germans but also toward the “friendly” countries. They were treating the “displaced persons” like lepers or criminals. The situation had improved somewhat since Truman’s letter to Eisenhower, but the sensation of oppression persisted. Every prospective emigrant was subjected to endless requirements and interrogations before being granted a visa. They had to prove that they were in good health both physically and mentally, that they were able to take their places in a “normal” society, that they would not go on public assistance, that friends or relatives could guarantee them jobs in their adopted countries. So much for our dream, in our rare moments of optimistic delirium, that if we survived we would be treated as long-lost brothers, carried in triumph to show how deeply humanity regretted what had been done to us.
This truth must be stated and restated: The suffering of the survivors did not end with the war; society wanted no part of them, either during or after. During the war all doors were closed to them, and afterward they remained shut. The evidence is irrefutable. They were kept in the places where they had suffered. Granted, after some delay they were housed (in barracks), fed (badly), and clothed (pitifully), but they were made to feel that they were beggars and poor relations, extra mouths to feed. Time does not heal all wounds. Some remain open and raw.
Those who were stupid or naïve enough to return to their countries of origin sometimes faced outright hostility from their former neighbors and countrymen. Instead of greeting them with flowers (as was done in Denmark), instead of hailing their survival, begging forgiveness for their indifference or worse, their compatriots regarded them with suspicion and rancor. “What, you’re back? Auschwitz must not have been so terrible after all.” In many places, they were denied compensation for their homes and property. When Bea went back to Sighet, she found strangers living in our house and had to stay with friends. A sociologist has argued that in Hungary the predominant motive for postwar anti-Semitism was that the populace feared the return of deportees whose apartments and factories they had confiscated. Kielce, in Poland, was the site of a genuine pogrom: more than fifty Jewish survivors were massacred in broad daylight. Elsewhere the number of victims was lower, apparently too low for the press to take notice. But everyone knew the Jews were being subjected yet again to hatred and terror. No, the tragedy of the survivors did not end with the liberation of the camps.
The ordeals Bea endured in the camps left her with damaged lungs, and the United States consequently denied her a visa. Like thousands of other survivors, she was considered “undesirable.” Canada, where there was a labor shortage, was less recalcitrant, its immigration laws more flexible. Bea therefore applied for a visa at the Canadian consulate. Here, too, no one was eager to be burdened by her lungs, but in the end she got a visa to work as a housekeeper for a Jewish family in Montreal.
As I wandered through the camp and chatted with refugees, I told myself that the citizens of the free world might someday be forgiven for having done so little to save the Jews of Europe. After all, perhaps they didn’t know, and if they knew, they didn’t believe it, and if they believed it, they didn’t understand it, and if they understood it, they were powerless to change anything. Besides which, there was a war on. The Hitler regime had to be destroyed. So perhaps there were extenuating circumstances. But they will never be forgiven for their treatment of the victims after the German defeat. After the war they knew