All Rivers Run to the Sea_ Memoirs - Elie Wiesel [82]
But despite all this—astonishingly—I encountered neither anger nor spite in the camp itself. There was no trace of bitterness. On the contrary, the community showed a boundless spirit, and an unparalleled joie de vivre.
In several barracks young people were organizing to combat the British occupation of Palestine. Elsewhere in the camp plays by Sholem Aleichem or Peretz Hirshbein were staged. Humor and satire were dominant. There were cultural conferences, political meetings, evening concerts. The camp was a whirlwind of ideas and calls to action. An atheist intellectual introduced me to the works of Hugo Bettauer, another had me read Karl Kraus and Otto Weininger. I attended morning and evening services at the synagogue, where they studied the Mishna and pored over the Hasidic tales of the Besht. It was the same in other D.P. camps. People were getting engaged and married, schools and nurseries were opened, newspapers published. Yossel Rosensaft—about whom I will have more to say later—talked to me at length about the “Jewish kingdom” of Belsen. The Jewish poet H. Leivik described “The Marriage of Föhrenwald.” If some traded on the black market, what of it? What other kind of market was there in occupied Germany? If some merchants got rich, more power to them. I confess there was a time when I resented those survivors who dreamed of personal fortune instead of working for the honor and memory of our people. But later I changed my mind. Who was I to judge them? If they sought wealth while a few friends and I devoted ourselves to study, that was their right. They had lost enough, suffered enough. Let them seek their happiness however they saw fit. Indeed, I am proud of their defiance and success. Instead of nihilism, they chose society. But where did they find their confidence in the future? How could those who had seen so many families annihilated now rebuild homes? How could they hope to integrate their children into a society whose murderous and dehumanizing end they had every reason to fear? I cannot account for their faith in man or in themselves, but I am eager to state how proud I am to be one of them.
I knew that someday it would be my duty to testify. And that the fate of those in the D.P. camps would be part of my testimony.
Bea was much appreciated by her superiors in UNRWA. Serving as executive secretary and personal assistant, she had many languages and was a jack-of-all-trades, drafting requests and documents, answering mail, serving as liaison between various agencies. She was like our father in that she liked everyone and everyone liked her. She was always ready to do a favor. I was moved by her popularity. She was known in all the barracks, in all milieus. Religious Jews, Zionists, intellectuals—everyone spoke of her with warmth and gratitude. She gave them all advice, information, and assistance. In the office she dealt with ten visitors at a time, giving each of them the impression that she was concerned only with him or her.
Her quarters, which she shared with several friends from Sighet, were so crowded late into the night that it was hard for us to find time to see each other alone. When we did, we held hands in silence.
The day of my departure came too soon. The night before I left we spent a moment alone, and I was finally able to ask some questions. I wanted to know about Sighet. Who had survived? What had she found in the house? She told me that very few Jews had come back, about a hundred at most—disoriented, lost, seeking a father, a mother, a husband. Who in our family had survived? She said there were only a few cousins, some distant relatives. What about those Nyilas