Legends of Our Time

by Elie Wiesel

  Once again he takes shelter behind a mask of indifference, a state of non-being. He thinks himself secure, unattackable. But I pursue him relentlessly:

  “Let’s start again, shall we? We’ve established your place of residence during the war: somewhere in Germany. Where, exactly? In a camp. Naturally. With other Jews. You are Jewish, aren’t you?”

  He answers me with lips so thin they are almost nonexistent, in a tone which still has lost nothing of its assurance:

  “Go to hell, I tell you. Shut up. There’s a limit to my patience. I would not like to cause a scene, but if you force me …”

  I pay no attention to his threat. I know he will do nothing, he will not complain, he will not use his fists, not he, not here, not in public: he is more afraid than I of the police. So I proceed:

  “What camp were you in? Come on, help me, it’s important. Let’s see: Buchenwald? No, Maidanek? No, not there either. Bergen-Belsen? Treblinka? Ponar? No, no. Auschwitz? Yes? Yes, Auschwitz. More precisely, in a camp which was part of Auschwitz, Javischowitz? Gleivitz? Monovitz? Yes, that’s it—there we are—Monovitz-Buna. Or am I mistaken?”

  He performs well, he knows his lesson thoroughly. Not a shiver, not the slightest reaction. As if I weren’t speaking to him, as if my questions were addressed to someone else, dead a long time. Still, his efforts not to betray himself are becoming visible now. He controls his hands poorly, clasping and unclasping them; clenching his fingers which he hides behind his back.

  “Let’s get down to specifics. What did you do there? You weren’t just a simple inmate? Not you. You are one of those who knew neither hunger nor weariness nor sickness. You are not one of those who lived in expectation of death, hoping it would not be too long in coming so that they could still die like men and not like unwanted beasts—unwanted even by death itself. Not you, you were head of a barracks, you had jurisdiction over the life and death of hundreds of human beings who never dared watch as you ate the dishes prepared specially for you. It was a sin, a crime of high treason, to catch you unawares during one of your meals. And what about now? Tell me, do you eat well? With appetite?”

  He moistens his lips with his tongue. An almost imperceptible sigh escapes him. He has to redouble his efforts not to answer, not to take up the challenge. His muscles stiffen, he will not hold out much longer. The trap is closing on him, he is beginning to understand that.

  “What about the barracks number? The seat of your kingdom? Do you remember it? Fifty-seven. Barracks fifty-seven. It was right in the center of the camp, two steps away from the gallows. I’ve a good memory, haven’t I? And you? Is your memory still alive? Or did it bury us all a second time?”

  The conductor announces a stop; the barracks-chief does not move: it seems all the same to him. The door opens, a couple gets off, a young mother gets on pushing her little boy in front of her. The driver calls out, “Hey, lady, you owe me a groosh or a smile!” She gives him both. We start off again. My prisoner no longer notices: he has lost touch with reality. Outside is the city, so close, so unreal, the city with its lights and its sounds, its joys, its laughter, its hates, its furies, its futile intrigues; outside is freedom, forgetfulness if not forgiveness. At the next stop the prisoner could take flight. He will not, I am sure. He prefers to let me act, decide for him. I know what he is feeling: a mixture of fear, resignation, and also relief. He too has returned to the world of barbed wire: as in the past, he prefers anything whatsoever to the unknown. Here, in the bus, he knows what places him in jeopardy and that reassures him: he knows my face, my voice. To provoke a break would be to choose a danger the nature of which escapes him. In the camp, we settled into a situation this way and for as long as possible did anything to keep from changing it. We dreaded disturbances, surprises. Thus, with me, the accused knows where he stands: I speak to him without hate, almost without anger. In the street, the throng might not be so understanding. The country is bursting with former deportees who refuse to reason.

  “Look at me. Do you remember me?”

  He does not answer. Impassive, unyielding, he continues to look into the emptiness above the heads of the passengers, but I know his eyes and mine are seeing the same emaciated, exhausted bodies, the same lighted yard, the same scaffold.

  “I was in your barracks. I used to tremble before you. You were the ally of evil, of hunger, of cruelty. I used to curse you.”

  He still does not flinch. The law of the camp: make yourself invisible behind your own death mask. I whisper: “My father was also in your barracks. But he didn’t curse you.”

  Outside, the traffic starts to move, the driver picks up speed. Soon he will shout, “Last stop, everybody off!” I have passed my stop, no matter. The appointment no longer seems important. What am I going to do with my prisoner? Hand him over to the police? “Collaboration” is a crime punishable by law. Let someone else finish the interrogation. I shall appear as a witness for the prosecution. I have already attended several trials of this kind: a former Kapo, a former member of the Judenrat, a former ghetto policeman—all accused of having survived by choosing cowardice.

  PROSECUTION: “You have rejected your people, betrayed your brothers, given aid to the enemy.”

  DEFENSE: “We didn’t know, we couldn’t foresee what would happen. We thought we were doing the right thing, especially at the beginning; we hoped to alleviate the suffering of the community, especially during the first weeks. But then it was too late, we no longer had a choice, we couldn’t simply go back and declare ourselves victim among victims.”

  PROSECUTION: “In the Ghetto of Krilov, the Germans named a certain Ephraim to the post of president of the Jewish council. One day they demanded he submit a list of thirty persons for slave labor. He presented it to them with the same name written thirty times: his own. But you, to save your skin, you sold your soul.”

  DEFENSE: “Neither was worth very much. In the end, suffering shrinks them and obliterates them, not together but separately: there is a split on every level. Body and mind, heart and soul, take different directions; in this way, people die a dozen deaths even before resigning themselves or accepting a bargain with the devil, which is also a way of dying. I beg of you, therefore: do not judge the dead.”

  PROSECUTION: “You are forgetting the others, the innocent, those who refused the bargain. Not to condemn the cowards is to wrong those whom they abandoned and sometimes sacrificed.”

  DEFENSE: “To judge without understanding is a power, not a virtue. You must understand that the accused, more alone and therefore more unhappy than the others, are also victims; more than the others, they need your indulgence, your generosity.”

  I often left the courtroom depressed, disheartened, wavering between pity and shame. The prosecutor told the truth, so did the defense. Whether for the prosecution or for the defense, all witnesses were right. The verdict sounded just and yet a flagrant injustice emerged from these confused and painful trials; one had the impression that no one had told the truth, that the truth lay somewhere else—with the dead. And who knows if the truth did not die with them. I often used to think: “Luckily, I am witness and not judge: I would condemn myself.” Now I have become judge. Without wanting it, without expecting it. That is the trap: I am at the point where I cannot go back. I must pass sentence. From now on, whatever my attitude may be, it will have the weight of a verdict.

  The smell of the sea rises to my nostrils, I hear the whisper of the waves, we are leaving the center of the city and its lights. We are coming to the end of the line. I must hurry and make a decision, try my former barracks-chief. I will take on all the roles: first, the witnesses, then the judge, then the attorney for the defense. Will the prisoner play only one role, the accused—the victim? Full powers will be conferred upon me, my sentence will be without appeal. Facing the accused, I will be God.

  Let us begin at the beginning. With the customary questions. Last name, first name, occupation, age, address. The accused does not recognize the legitimacy of thi
s procedure, or of the court; he refuses to take part in the trial. It is noted. His crimes are what interest us, not his identity. Let us open the dossier, examine the charges leveled against him. Once again I see the scene of the crime, the uniform face of suffering; I hear the sound of the whip on emaciated bodies. At night, surrounded by his sturdy protégés, the accused shows he is skilled in doing two things at once: with one hand he distributes the soup, with the other he beats the inmates to impose silence. Whether the tears and moaning touch him or irritate him does not matter. He hits harder to make them stop. The sight of the sick enrages him: he senses in them a bad omen for himself. He is particularly cruel with the aged: “Why are you hanging on to this disgusting, filthy life? Hurry up and die, you won’t suffer anymore! Give your bread to the young, at least do one good deed before you croak!”

  One day he saw my father and me near the barracks. As he always did, my father was handing me his half-full bowl and ordering me to eat. “I’m not hungry anymore.” he explained and I knew he was lying. I refused: “Me neither, Father, really, I’m not hungry anymore.” I was lying and he knew it, too. This same discussion went on day after day. This time the barracks-chief came over and turned to my father: “This your son?”—Yes.—“And you aren’t ashamed to take away his soup?”—But … —“Shut up! Give him back that bowl or I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t soon forget!”

  To keep him from carrying out that threat, I grabbed the bowl and started eating. At first I wanted to vomit but soon I felt an immense well-being spread through my limbs. I ate slowly to make this pleasure, stronger than my shame, last longer. Finally, the barracks-chief moved on. I hated him, and yet, down deep, I was glad that he had intervened. My father murmured, “He’s a good man, charitable.” He was lying, and I lied too: “Yes, Father, charitable.”

  How do you plead: guilty or not guilty?

  My father did not conceal his pride: his son had obeyed him. As in the past. Even better than in the past. So there was, in the camp, in the midst of this organized insanity, someone who depended on him and in whose eyes he was not a servile rag. He did not realize that it had not been his will I had been performing, but yours. I was aware of that, and so were you, but I refused to think of it; you did not. I also knew that by obeying you both as your slave and your accomplice, I was cutting short my father’s life by one breath, by one awakening. I buried my remorse in the yellowish soup. But you were wiser and certainly shrewder than my father; you were not deceived. As you moved away, you had an air of assurance, as if to say: “That’s the way it is, that’s life, the boy will learn, he’ll find his way and who knows? someday maybe he’ll succeed me.” And I did not give the soup back to my father. I did not hurl myself at you and tear from you your eyes and your tongue and your victory. Yes, I was afraid, I was a coward. And hunger was gnawing at me: that’s what you had counted on. And you won.

  Has the accused anything to say in his defense?

  You always won, and sometimes, at night, I thought that maybe you were the one who was right. For us, you were not just the whip or the ax in the murderer’s hand: you were the prince who played the game of death, you were its prophet, its spokesman. You alone knew how to interpret the rages of the executioner, the silences of the earth; you were the guide to follow; whoever imitated you, lived; the others would perish. Your truth was the only valid truth, the only truth possible, the only truth that conformed to the wishes and designs of the gods.

  Guilty or not guilty?

  Instead of rejoining the ranks of the victims, of suffering like us and with us, instead of weeping without tears and trembling before the incandescent clouds, instead of dying like us and with us, perhaps even for us, you chose to reign over the work of darkness, proclaiming to whomever wanted to hear that pity was criminal, generosity fruitless, senseless, inhumane. One day after the roll-call you gave us a long lecture on the philosophy of the concentration camp: every man for himself, every man the enemy of the next man, for each lived at the other’s expense. And you concluded: “What I am telling you is true and immutable. For know that God has descended from heaven and decided to make himself visible: I am God.”

  How do you plead?

  The judge hears the stifled moans of the witnesses, living and dead; he sees the accused beat up one old man who was too slow in taking off his cap, and another because he did not like his face. “You, you look healthy to me,” says the accused, and punches him in the stomach. “And you, you look sick to me, you’re pale,” and he slaps his face. Itzik has a heavy shirt: the accused takes it away from him. Itzik protests and he is already writhing in pain. Izso has held onto his old shoes: the accused claims them. Izso, clever, hands them over without saying a word. The accused takes them with a contemptuous smile: look at this imbecile, he does not even resist, he does not deserve to live.

  Well, then? Guilty or not guilty?

  And what if everything could be done over again? What are you now compared to what you were then? Tell us about your repentance, your expiation. What do you tell your wife when she offers you her pride, when she speaks of the future of your children? What do you see in the eyes of the passerby who says to you “good morning,” “good evening,” and “shalom,” “peace be with you”?

  “Well?” yells the driver. “How many times do I have to tell you we’re here?”

  He looks at us in his rear-view mirror, shouts louder. Our inertia is too much for him. He turns around in his seat and shouts again: “Boy, you must be deaf! Don’t you understand Hebrew?”

  My prisoner pretends not to understand any language. He sleeps, he dreams, transported somewhere else, in another time, the end of another line. He is waiting for me to make the first move, to break the curse that separates us from other men. As in the past with his masters, he will follow, he will obey.

  The driver is getting angry. These two speechless and immobile phantoms apparently want to spend the night in his bus. Do they think they are in a hotel? He gets up, grumbling, “I’ll show you, you’ll see.” He moves toward us, looking furious. My prisoner waits for him without flinching, indifferent to whatever may happen. I touch his arm.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  He complies mechanically. Once down, he stands stationary, and wisely waits for me on the sidewalk. He could make a dash for the dark little streets that lead to the ocean. He does not. His will has defaulted. He is not about to upset the order of things, to speculate on an uncertain future. Above all, no initiative, that was the golden rule at camp.

  The bus starts up and leaves: here we are alone. I have nothing more to say to him. A vague feeling of embarrassment comes over me, as if I had just done something foolish. All of a sudden, I become timid again. And in a weak voice I ask him: “You really don’t remember me?”

  In the darkness I can no longer make out his face. I no longer recognize him. Doubt chokes me: and what if it was not he?

  “No,” he says, after a long silence, “I don’t remember you.”

  I no longer recognize the sound of his voice. It used to be gruff, cutting. It has become clear, humane.

  “And yourself? Do you remember who you were?”

  “That is my business.”

  “No. It is my business, too.”

  I suddenly think I must put an end to this: but how? If he whimpers and justifies himself and begs my forgiveness, I will have him arrested. And if he keeps on denying everything? What would he have to say for me to let him go? I do not know. It is up to him to know.

  Abruptly he stiffens. I know his eyes have regained their coldness, their hardness. He is going to speak. At last. In defending himself he is going to throw all the light on this mystery to which we remain chained forever. I know he will speak without altering the thin line of his lips. At last he is speaking. No: he is shouting. No! he is yelling! Without preparation, without warning. He insults me, he is offensive. Not in Hebrew—in German. We are no longer in Israel but somewhere in the universe of hate. He is the barrack
s-chief who, his hands clasped behind his back, “advises” one of his slaves to leave at once or he will regret the day he was born. Will he hit me, break my bones, make me eat dirt, as he is threatening to do? No one would come to my aid: in camp it is the strongest and most brutal who is in the right. Is he going to crush me in his claws, murder me? If he does, I will carry his secret with me. Can one die in Auschwitz, after Auschwitz?

  The barracks-chief is lecturing me the way he used to and I do not hear what he is saying. His voice engulfs me, I let myself drown in it. I am no longer afraid. Not of dying nor even of killing. It is something else, something worse. I am suddenly aware of my impotence, of my defeat. I know I am going to let him go free, but I will never know if I am doing this out of courage or out of cowardice. I will never know if, face to face with the executioner, I behaved like a judge or a victim. But I will have acquired the certitude that the man who measures himself against the reality of evil always emerges beaten and humiliated. If someday I encounter the Angel of Death himself in my path, I will not kill him, I will not torture him. On the contrary. I will speak to him politely, as humanely as possible. I will try to understand him, to divine his evil; even at the risk of being contaminated.

  The barracks-chief is shouting obscenities and threats; I do not listen. I stare at him one last time without managing to distinguish his features in the night. My hands in my pockets, I turn around and begin to walk, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until I am running. Is he following me?

  He let me go. He granted me freedom.

  7.

  The Promise

  Once upon a time there was a poor visionary who set out to rescue the damned from the darkness in which they dwelt. So that they might be compelled to live, he proclaimed himself immortal.