“But what will happen if Russia doesn’t fall by winter?”
“That’s absurd! Impossible!”
Tuesday, 22 July
A month since the start of war with the Russians. Impossible to predict how it will work out. Week after week I had the feeling that we were close to the “decisive” phase—and I kept having to postpone the “decision” to “next week.” Are the Germans exhausted by their great offensive? Will they be forced to call a halt for the time being? Or are the Russians virtually finished? Has their resistance been using up their last reserves? I don’t think that either is true. The Germans will continue to attack, and the Russians to resist. It is all a question of time: not whether Leningrad, Kiev, and Moscow fall, but when they fall. And we, however well or badly informed, cannot know anything. We have to wait and, if possible, keep calm.
Two alerts last night: at one and at three. Exhausted by insomnia, we wonder whether we will be allowed to sleep at all during the night.
They are going into Jewish homes—more or less at random—and carrying off sheets, pillows, shirts, pajamas, blankets. Without explanation; without warning.
Aderca, met yesterday evening:
“Anyway, though it is not his aim, Hitler is doing Europe the great favor of opening the gates of the great Soviet prison, in which 200 million people were suffocating.”
Today I read the section in Tolstoy about the battle of Borodino. A bit too labored. “Grande toile d’exposition.”3 Instructive nevertheless.
Thursday, 24 July
A long sleepless night. The first alarm was at ten (loud thundering, strange lights streaking like lightning across the sky), the second at two o’clock. I returned from the shelter absolutely all in, but I found it impossible to get to sleep. The police came and woke up the whole building; there was a constant sound of voices and boots on the stairs, doors slamming, people shouting. Apparently a maid had left an attic light on during the air raid. AH the maids were taken to the police station, and until six or seven o’clock someone or other—sergeant or gendarme— kept returning to investigate, to check, to question. We were petrified that they would take us too. A building full of Jews—quelle aubaine!4 A kind of cardiac constriction kept choking me.
Moscow has been bombed for three nights in a row. Is a direct attack on the city under way? Too soon—as long as there is still heavy fighting in the Smolensk region, and even farther west, in Vitebsk and Polotsk. But all the papers have the headline: “Moscow in Flames!”
On the morning of 2/14 September 1812, a few hours before entering an evacuated Moscow, Napoleon said: “Je dirai à la députation (de boyards) que je n'ai pas voulu et ne veux pas la guerre, que j'ai fait la guerre seulement à la politique mensongère de leur cour, que j'aime et respecte Alexandre et que j'accepterai à Moscou des conditions de paix dignes de moi et de mes peuples,,”5
The burial of Danacu (who died in two days somewhere in the country and was brought back yesterday to Bucharest). At two in the afternoon, when the family of mourners was preparing to get into cars and drive to Bellu, the air-raid sirens sounded. We all huddled together in the shelter, they in black funeral clothes, we tenants in pajamas and white trousers. A grotesque situation.
Friday, 25 July
Yesterday evening’s German communiqué: “On the whole of the eastern front, the operations of the German and allied armed forces are continuing methodically, despite important local resistance and despite the poor state of the roads.”
Last night there was an alert between two and three. We went down to the shelter, dropping from sleep and convinced that the disturbance was pointless, but irritated and resigned.
Zoe has been trying to reach me by phone despite my long silence (I haven’t wanted to see anyone since the 23rd of June), and she says that once she was so worried that she came to Strada Antim to see what had happened to me, but did not dare ring the bell. She was about to leave “voluntarily” for Bukovina, where the ministry had offered her triple pay on condition that she remain there for at least a year. In the end she gave up the idea for fear she would not be able to return. I asked her why she didn’t go away from Bucharest for a month—and she protested that she would feel like a deserter. She is in an unusual phase of civic awareness.
Last night I dreamed Brahms’s Double Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra. It’s the first time something like that has happened to me. I don’t remember anything else at all from the dream: neither who I was with, nor where, nor in what surroundings. I only know that I listened to a long piece of music, and that, after the first bars and a little hesitation, I said it was the Brahms concerto.
Saturday, 26 July
Yesterday evening’s German communiqué: “All along the eastern front, operations are proceeding as planned, with sometimes fierce fighting.”
I met Camil Petrescu yesterday:
“The war with the Russians is hard, very hard. It was the intuition of a genius that Hitler attacked now. In another year they would have been invincible.”
(Gafencu, back from Moscow, would agree with that.) But for all their resistance, Camil continued, they will be defeated by autumn, and then we shall have a compromise peace. As Hitler will no longer be able to attack Britain this year, he will have to get through another winter. He will therefore prefer peace. As for the British, the war has tired them, and even if they don’t want to accept peace, they will be forced into it by the Americans. Russia will pay for everything. The West will be left to the Anglo-Americans. France will be put together again. Poland and Yugoslavia will be reconstituted in one way or another. Germany will get the whole area of Russia, and Hitler general recognition for having saved the world from bolshevism. In the end, concessions will also be made to the Jews (“it can’t go on quite like this”); they will be given a state somewhere in Russia, maybe even in Birobidzhan.6
Two hours later, Carandino:
“The situation is grave. The German losses are incredibly high. At present it is still not known whether the Germans will crush the Russians, or the Russians the Germans. Probably Moscow will fall—in two, three, or four weeks, but it will fall. But only then will the crucial moment arrive. If the Russian armies collapse (having been promised land by Hitler, in a repetition of Lenin’s “coup”), then all will be perfect. But if they don’t collapse, if an army of Russians remains somewhere far off, even beyond the Urals, they will launch a counteroffensive and nothing will stop them until they reach Finisterre. They will conquer the whole of Europe. It will be terrible: we’ll be ruled by a Georgian, Tartar, or Kalmuck general, with no escape for anyone.”
Berlin was bombed last night by the British. A response to the bombing of Moscow?
We had a night without an alert. I woke up at two, surprised that “they haven’t come yet.” Will they let us sleep tonight as well?
Sunday, 27 July
A night with no alert. Pretty sound sleep.
After Napoleon’s retreat from Russia, Alexander—back in Vilna—said to his generals: “Non seulement vous avez sauvé la Russie, mais vous avez sauvé l'Europe.”7 To save Europe—an old stylistic figure. Yet no one tires of repeating it.
The German communiqué speaks of Russian counteroffensives repulsed to the south and southeast of Vyazma. (Vyazma is halfway between Smolensk and Moscow, so that would mean that the pocket keeps getting deeper.) In Ukraine “the Russian rearguards have been crushed, even though the weather is bad and the roads poor.”
Today I saw Vişoianu. In his view, the war will last at least another year, because only after next June will the British begin to have air superiority.
Again, out of the blue, a feeling of exasperation, impotence, weariness. Until when? I keep asking. “Out of the blue” is rather a ridiculous thing to say. All I mean is that nothing new has happened, that everything is as it was yesterday, the day before yesterday, a week ago, two weeks ago—and yet I suddenly have a sharper and more oppressive sense of choking. I should like to shout, to scream.
>
Tuesday, 29 July
The German communiqué of the day before yesterday said that “operations are continuing successfully.” The one yesterday evening said that “the battle in the Smolensk region is on the point of being victoriously concluded,” while in Ukraine the pursuit continues “even though the roads are washed away.” There is no longer any mention of Vyazma. The general impression, both from the communiqués (uniform for the last ten days or so) and from the commentaries (a little stilted), is that the front has more or less stabilized. Lightning war has given way to positional warfare. The official German press warns its readers that time will be needed. “More time than in the old days on the western front” is how a Rador8 dispatch put it this morning.
The optimists get on my nerves. For two or three days there has been a mindless wave of optimism. Yesterday Suchianu assured me that the war will be over in another four months at the latest.
I finished War and Peace yesterday. It is a great work, both as document and as novel. Anyone who wants to write the history of our times will have to wait until at least ten, twenty, or maybe thirty years after the end of the drama. How ridiculous was my attempt in De două mii de ani to chronicle dramas that were still only beginning! Can youth be a valid excuse? Will life allow me to have my revenge sometime later?
A Ştefani9 dispatch, printed in large letters, reports that “plague has broken out” in Russia. Material, or at least suggestions, for my newspaper comedy.
Camil Petrescu. He told me this afternoon that he feels the Jews in Bessarabia really did fire on the Romanians. What is happening to them now is no more than they deserve. They started it.
Ghiţă Ionescu. It amused me some time ago when I first learned (I meant to record it here) that he was doing great business at the Economics Ministry, where he went to work a couple of years ago. By chance I heard Paltin say that he, Ionescu, had claimed and taken from him forty thousand lei for some official formality. But what I found most amusing (I heard it today) was the fact that, in his capacity as official of the Romanianization Bureau, he compiled and signed a report on the expropriation of Sacha Roman’s villa in Sinaia, a villa in which—a delightful touch, this—he now lives with Gina and another couple from the same ministry. Communism, like journalism, mène à tout. Même sans en sortir peut-être.1
I am so terribly weary. For some time I have been writing even this journal mechanically, without any real inclination. And I’m afraid of losing the taste for reading.
If I could spend a few days somewhere in the forest, in the countryside or a mountain chalet, I would be able to breathe and come to myself again.
Thursday, 31 July
Vague communiqués, muddled commentaries. No definite information, only all kinds of interpretations, formulas, and euphemisms, so chaotic as to be amusing. One thing does seem fairly certain: the front has hardly changed; the central battle is still at Smolensk. But there too the situation is confused. Who holds the town? Who is attacking it? Who encircles whom? The encirclers seem in their turn to be encircled. I wait for the morning paper, then for the evening paper. These are the two events that divide up my day. I am tired of not being able to think of anything but the war. Not a moment of freedom, not a moment of rest.
Lunch with Branişte and Aristide at Alice’s. I like Branişte, but how uninteresting he is! He is as honest as they come, but quelle pauvreté dans tout ce qu'il dit.2 Not one idea, not one broader view. Still, life is possible with people like that.
Friday, 1 August
There was a time—not so long ago—when the first was a day to celebrate: another month has passed! But now, the more time passes, the more the circle draws in on us and the more suffocating life becomes. It is true that the way we must still travel is ever shorter, but it is all the more dangerous for that. You hardly dare look back at the thirty-one days of the July just passed—but nor do you dare look ahead to the thirty-one days of the August now beginning. Our life is a miracle that is repeated every day, every hour.
Saturday, 2 August
All Jews aged twenty to thirty-six must report to police headquarters this evening or tomorrow morning, with three days’ food and a change of clothes. That means both Benu and me. For a moment I felt dumbfounded, petrified, desperate. Then came my old sense of futility, of submission in the face of adversity, of open-eyed acceptance of catastrophe. And now, this evening, after a few hours of fretting, I promise myself that I will sleep and try to forget. We’ll see tomorrow.
Sunday, 3 August
A day of fasting (Tishah b’Av). A day of feverish activity and tension, yet calmer than yesterday. For the moment it does seem to be simply a call-up for labor service (if “simply” is the right word). Anyway, it is not— or is not yet (as I feared yesterday)—a repetition of the calamity in Iasi, which also began with a “simple” summons from the police. We have been assured that we will be decently treated. And the fact is that so far no acts of brutality have been committed. I shall make various attempts to find a solution. If they don’t work, I’ll leave with a brave face! I am worried only about Mama and my poor state of health. I feel tired and worn out.
Monday, 4 August
Early this morning the sergeants and policemen went from house to house in various parts of town—and woke people to inform them that not only Jews aged twenty to thirty-six, but also those aged thirty-six to fifty, must report to police headquarters. The alarm I felt at first is returning. Are we again facing a mass roundup of Jews? Internment camps? Extermination? When I went out at ten, the city had a strange air: a strange kind of nervous animation. Agitated groups of people hurrying around. Pale faces lost in thought. Looks that wordlessly question one another, with the mute despair that has become a kind of Jewish greeting. I quickly did some shopping to prepare our rucksacks for this afternoon, for when we had decided to present ourselves. Shops were taken over by Jews buying all kinds of things for their departure. After a couple of hours there were no more rucksacks on sale anywhere. The shops selling canned goods had only a few odds and ends (it was impossible to buy a tin of sardines, for example). The price of the simplest things suddenly shot up. I went to Calea Văcăreşti to buy a couple of canvas hats for Benu and myself, and the labels with yesterday’s price (160 lei) had been covered over with the new price (250 lei) in ink that was not yet dry.
From Văcăreşti, small groups of pale, famished, ragged Jews, carrying wretched bundles or sacks, head toward the center of town. Apparently several thousand are gathered in the square in front of police headquarters. On Calea Victoriei, sad women with worried, stupidly imploring looks turn round and round, not daring to get too close and probably waiting for news from their husbands inside. I know that look, I know that waiting. I have seen them so many times in the last two years, in the area around army barracks.
The whole day was one of torment and exhaustion, spent in an atmosphere dominated by the sense that something terrible was in store. The Iasi massacre is an obsession that we cannot shake off. Toward evening, however, things seem to have grown a little calmer. The news has come that they have given up the plan of calling up people between thirty-six and fifty. It is also said that tomorrow or the day after, an official communiqué will clarify the situation and bring some order into the recruitment process. Meanwhile nobody knows what to do. To report? Not to report? To keep waiting? Everyone has a hope, a “protection,” an answer for which they are waiting. And many groups have already been enlisted, allocated, and sent off.
As for ourselves, we have decided to wait. I have run all kinds of errands, as I did yesterday. (Alice, Branişte, and Vişoianu are admirable in their devotion, their friendship, their eagerness to do anything they can.) We’ll see how things look tomorrow. There is extreme confusion: I don’t think even the authorities know our exact situation, the purpose of all this turmoil, who ordered it, why, and for whom. . . . One possibility among others is that it is a form of pressure (and security), to ensure that the Jewish population comes up wit
h the ten billion lei that have been demanded of it. I am too tired to write any more now. It’s only eleven, but I am absolutely done in. Maybe tomorrow.
Tuesday, 5 August
Nothing new. We didn’t report today either, and I don’t yet know whether we will tomorrow. Confusion, bewilderment, constant uncertainty. People aged thirty-six to fifty were again summoned and kept this morning. There seems to be a conflict of authority between the recruitment office and the police, and this may explain the fact that no coercive measures have yet been taken. It is impossible to get certificates from the doctors who treated my food poisoning. Dr. Kahane advised me to eat contraindicated food so as to bring things to a crisis: only then will the commission believe I am really sick. And this evening I did begin methodical eating of Sibiu salami. Tomorrow I’ll drink black coffee. Then we’ll see. . . . I’m just afraid of causing something too serious from which it will take weeks to recover.
Journal 1935–1944 Page 48
