All day, everyone in town was speaking of nothing other than yesterday’s bizarre law. It is not a sick joke, as I thought at first. It is a genuine decree, which has now been published in the Monitor official.
Thursday, 23 October
How glum are the streets after ten at night! Dark, cold, empty, with a chill November wind. Very rarely you hear the distant bell of a streetcar or the noise of a car; it is as if they were in another city, another time, another world.
Spent a long afternoon at a bar table with Branişte (on our way back from lunch at Alice’s). My liking for him becomes ever greater. He is a decent man—which is rarer than a genius. I told him that I am thinking of leaving Romania, and he said a lot of useful things. He showed me that it will be much more difficult than I expect, and that it also has a dangerous side. The mere fact of applying for a passport is enough to make me look suspicious. I shall try nevertheless: without illusions, with something more like resignation or indifference. But I shall try.
Some people are actually preparing to buy the overcoats, suits, boots, etc. demanded by the law (Aristide, Paltin . . .). I can’t even think of doing it. Where could I find that much money? Isn’t prison simpler?
A fierce German attack on the Crimea, where they seem to be making important advances. In Moscow, major new attacks through breaches in the fortified lines. Timoshenko has been replaced—which may be the prelude to the city’s collapse. Against your will, you think of Gamelin’s replacement in the hour of irreversible disaster. But let’s wait and see.
Saturday, 25 October
Nothing new on the Moscow front. But in the south (where Timoshenko has taken command), there have been serious German advances. The fall of Kharkov was announced today—a major loss for the Russians, though it had been expected for some time. The situation in the Crimea is also grave, and in Rostov almost desperate.
I saw Vişoianu today. He talked in a friendly way about my planned departure. He doesn’t think it impossible and will try to help me get a Turkish visa. I am less eager than I have been recently, but I’ll press on with it. Who knows?
Sunday, 26 October
The Sunday papers publish Marshal Antonescu’s letter in reply to Filderman’s appeal concerning the Jews deported to the Bug ghettos. That measure—the letter states—is no more than just punishment for the crimes and atrocities committed by Jews in Bessarabia and Bukovina, in Odessa and Ukraine. “Their hatred is your hatred.”
Fear, bewilderment, terrible waiting. The published text is so sharp that it makes possible any act of violence against us. Tomorrow morning we could be taken from our homes and thrown into ghettos—without this seeming excessive to anyone. I find it hard to believe that the publication of such a text can be a chance event without political intentions behind it. I find it hard to believe, or at least to write, that certain things will not follow from it.
I am petrified with fear and anxiety. I feel sorry for old people and children, and sorry for Mama. I don’t know what to say to her, how to comfort her. I force myself to smile but am unable to.
I saw Zissu this afternoon. He was pale and withdrawn. The news he told me was even worse than I imagined: namely, that by the first of November our whole legal position here will change. He’s not yet sure what this will involve: withdrawal of citizenship? the herding of the whole Jewish population into a single district? its removal from the city?
The Zissu family (sisters, brothers, Zimmer Senior) are thinking of escape: I think they have even started to make preparations. There was a kind of family adviser there. As they are hugely rich, I think they will succeed. I left them alone because I could feel I was disturbing them. It occurred to me how naive are my plans for going away, if this is a difficult problem even for them with all their money. Hundreds of thousands of lei are being paid for a Turkish visa—and I expect to get one for my pretty face? Anyway, now that the danger is so grave and so close, I realize that I would not have the heart to abandon my loved ones.
Late in the evening, after writing the above lines, there came the delight of Benu’s return from Fierbinţi for twenty-four hours.
Tuesday, 28 October
All of today’s papers comment on the Marshal’s letter and violently address “the Jewish problem,” calling for radical solutions to be introduced. It is not hard to see a guiding hand in this. In Berlin the German press has given a lot of space to the document, and preparations are being made at the propaganda level for new anti-Semitic blows. We cannot make the slightest gesture in our defense. We wait.
Vicky (Roman’s second secretary) tells me that an officer friend of hers, recently returned from Transnistria, is horrified by what he saw there.
“They had orders to shoot all Jews, but he felt so sorry for them, he was so horrified at the butchery, that—when he had to execute a hundred Jews—he ordered the soldiers to shoot them at once, without tormenting them. Those were his very words.”
Wednesday, 29 October
Details of how the Jews were driven out of Gura Humorului. (Fanny told us them on the basis of news from her parents and sister, who have reached Mogilev alive.) On Friday, 10 October, people went to bed in peace. Nothing unusual had happened that day or in the past few days. After midnight they were awakened by the beating of drums in the streets. People went outside, not knowing what was afoot. Jews were told that they must be at the railway station by 3 a.m. at the latest—which meant that they had two hours to put some bundles together, lock up, and leave. At the station they handed over their house keys and their residency papers, and were given in exchange a personal identification number. Then they were put on a train. They did some of the journey by train, the rest on foot, and crossed the Dniester on boats. They kept selling the clothes on their backs in order to have money for food. A loaf of bread was not easy to buy at eight hundred lei. Now they are in Mogilev: some have found room in a house; others haven’t and are in the fields. They wait there to be sent on farther, to an as yet unknown destination.
“Let’s try not to think of the Jews in Ukraine,” Lena Constante said yesterday. “There’s nothing we can do for them. Let’s try to forget. Let’s try to live.”
Maybe she is right. But it is a nightmare from which I cannot detach myself. And the nightmare is also ours, even if it is not yet dragging us under, even if it still allows us to keep our heads above the surface, before we sink for good. Today’s papers comment again on Antonescu’s letter, even more violently than yesterday’s. The echoes persist in Germany, Bohemia, and Italy. It is a European event. Organized anti-Semitism is going through one of its darkest phases. Everything is too calculated for effect, too obviously stage-managed, not to have a political significance. What will follow? Our straightforward extermination?
I listened at Lena’s to Franck’s Symphonic Variations. A moment of forgetting—before I returned to the same terrible nightmare. Sometimes I tell myself that everything is untrue: suffocating, painful, overwhelming— but not actually true. Perhaps I could make an effort and wake up. Perhaps I could open my eyes and suddenly realize that everything has vanished into thin air. Never has life seemed to me so unreal.
Thursday, 30 October
Yesterday the finance minister called to his office ten leading Jews, including the chief rabbi and Filderman. He received them standing up, without saying good day or offering his hand or asking them to take a seat. He shouted at them and did not allow them to say a word in reply. With Filderman, in particular, he was extremely harsh, again telling him that the Jewish population must make a loan of ten billion lei, and giving him one month to deliver.
I spent the evening at Alice’s, with Vişoianu, Branişte, and Aristide. Always the same discussions, which obsess, tire, and exasperate us. We live with two or three idées fixes. None of us knows more than the others; no one can think or say anything new. Nor is there room for anything new. The war will last another two years, says Aristide. Two and a half, adds Vivi. Maybe only one year, say I. Maybe not even that, says Branişte. To
morrow we’ll set different time schedules, arguing stupidly for things about which we are ignorant. But our life is caught up in these things, and we feel each day that we are losing it.
“I am being objective,” I said yesterday to Camil, who was again having an attack of anti-Semitism.
“A stupid person is objective.”
I feel that this whole war does not concern me, precisely because my chances of surviving it are minute. I speak as if I am beyond life—as if it were a question not of a war in 1941 but of a long-forgotten war that is part of history.
There is no detailed news from the front. The situation of Moscow continues to be very grave; no sign that it might resist much longer. Also very grave is the situation of Rostov. As for the Crimea, the Germans report that they have broken through the Perekop Isthmus and are easily advancing into the peninsula.
Saturday, 1 November
Two hours of music. I had asked Lena to invite me round, just me, so that we could listen to some records. She let me choose the program alone: four preludes for piano by Debussy, the Ravel Quartet, a Bach piano concerto in D minor, the Debussy Quartet. We didn’t talk either about the war or about the deportation of Jews.
November! Time passes without any resolution, without any alleviation. We keep thrashing about in the same fog, in the same night.
Monday, 3 November
A summons to the recruitment office. I didn’t tell Mama that I had received it. There will be time enough tomorrow. I have vague hopes of escaping—who knows? Usually in such matters I am both unlucky and incapable. Anyway, I wait with resignation.
Simferopol has fallen. The German advance is making rapid headway toward Sebastopol. The whole Crimea is going. The resistance was serious at Perekop, but now the gates are wide open. Fighting continues in Leningrad and Moscow.
Tuesday, 4 November
Last night’s dreams. I am with Izi at a Legionary demonstration, on the Şosea. We are marching in the front row. A girl in the row behind looks at us with surprise and says: Legionary yids! We start walking faster and distance ourselves from the column while she turns round to another column to denounce us. We reach the left-hand pavement, at the beginning of Calea Victoriei, but the girl catches up to us and asks to see our papers. We run as fast as we can. Izi says: “Not so fast; I can’t take it.” We are being followed and don’t know where to hide ourselves. On the right-hand pavement, more or less drescu, someone who used to be employed at the Foundation (probably Costea) suddenly appears coming in my direction. He is wearing the uniform of a ministry doorman. He points a way through the gardens of a public institution. We take it and arrive at some steps, on which a number of passersby have taken refuge. The dream continues, but I don’t remember any more.
Another dream. I am at a trial for the murder of five Legionaries (among them Misu Polihroniade). At first I am a witness, then a defendant. The presiding judge is Istrate Micescu, though I am well aware that he is the killer (he admitted it some time ago in an interview). Filderman gives his testimony (sharply interrupted by Micescu), then Zissu, in a calmer atmosphere. The proceedings are adjourned so that a symphonic piece may be played in honor of the murder victims. A religious ceremony takes place at what seems like the same time. Micescu orders us defendants (among whom I am now definitely one) to be taken away. I am kept in a hall outside, where I meet Dinu and (I think) Wendy. Both of them, or perhaps only he, make great sport of the statement I made.
Evening
A day spent rushing around: to the school, to the recruitment office, to Alice’s, to Timus’s,5 to the Union . . . I haven’t done anything for the time being. I haven’t reported for duty, and I don’t know if I will do so tomorrow. Timuş was very nice: he offered not only to requisition me at the Alhambra but even to give me some work there. Nothing definite, of course. We shall see.
For the last two or three days a major new German offensive has been directed at Moscow. The situation there seems to be worsening all the time. Still, it is one relatively fixed point in the course of the war. Yesterday was one month since Hitler’s last speech, which seemed to announce more decisive blows. I think we can soon expect a fresh German initiative, which might give a push to the somewhat slackened pace of events. And the time passes so slowly.
Thursday, 6 November
A day of endless errands. Impossible to get a postponement for a week, or even for less. Colonel Negulescu has been told that I must report to the recruitment office, where I shall be assigned to a detachment at Romanian Railways. At school, however, they say that I shall receive exemption from labor in the next two to three days. But this is uncertain, even unlikely, and meanwhile I could be stopped in the street (there are police checks every day). Then how would I justify myself? I greatly fear that I shall eventually be forced to leave—which would further complicate my already sufficiently complicated life.
Rumors of a change of government. Rumors of Legionary disturbances. There is something murky in the air. Branişte claims that a national government is being cooked up. Everyone (Alice, Camil, Rosetti) is talking of a governmental crisis. I don’t quite understand what this means—if indeed there is a crisis.
It would seem that the offensive against Moscow has been slowed, if not actually halted. London, which oscillates between gloom and satisfaction, is going through a new period of optimism. The German communiqué focuses on the southern front, saying nothing about the center and the north. But if the war continues at its present rhythm, there will probably soon be a new German blow.
Friday, 7 November
In the end, I hope I have obtained a few days’ respite. I had registered on the teachers’ list at the recruitment office, in the belief that this would reduce my risk of being called up. In reality (and no one could say why), teachers are being called up, whereas lawyers (even if disbarred) are not being called up. Colonel Negulescu successfully applied for me to be reclassified as a lawyer, and this has (for the time being) led to cancellation of my call-up. Meanwhile, until my turn comes as a lawyer, I shall try to arrange something for myself in a theatre.
I am reading Hamlet in English with difficulty. The vocabulary and syntax are incomparably more difficult than anything I have read before. Even with a parallel French text, it is tough going.
I have no news about the course of the war. Tomorrow the victorious Romanian troops will have their triumph in Bucharest. Already this evening the city was decked with flags and, for the first time in a long while, properly lighted up. It sounds as if the next couple of days will be hard for Jews. A public ordinance, printed in today’s papers, forbids ritual methods of slaughtering poultry, as well as the selling of it (dead or alive) in Jewish districts.
Saturday, 9 November
Recent German communiqués no longer mention the Leningrad or the Moscow front, and speak only of operations in the Crimea. It would seem that the war has come to a standstill in the other sectors. According to Tutubei (whom I saw this evening at Camil’s, together with Rosetti), Hitler said yesterday in a speech not yet published in the papers that he will not sacrifice any more soldiers for Leningrad. That is another sign that the offensive has been halted. Moreover, winter is fast approaching. Today was quite cold, murky and overcast, with bluish-grey skies. We expected it to snow at any moment. It is a time when Anglophilia is on the rise again. This evening, Camil, Rosetti, and Tutubei were of one mind that the Germans are coming off losers. All that is necessary is another German attack or another success in the next few days, and all three will agree that the British are lost. It is a psychological pendulum, operating with clockwork regularity.
The Jews of Dorohoi and Botosani have received deportation orders. The pharmacist Arie, who has a seventy-year-old mother and a ninety-year-old grandmother there, is rushing around in a furious attempt to escape. Nevertheless, both George Brătianu (according to Rosetti) and Doctor Lupu (according to Branişte) have received assurances from the Marshal that nothing bad will happen to native-born Jews. Nothing ne
w there at least. But I can’t believe that moderation is still possible on the road that leads to pogroms.
Last night and this morning I read with great pleasure Molière’s Amphitryon. So much more direct, more palatable, more simple than Giraudoux! Surprising things in it about double personalities. A kind of Pirandellism sans le savoir,6 I’d have enjoyed writing some notes along these lines.
Monday, 10 November
The papers publish the speech Hitler gave last Saturday. Violently anti-Semitic. Is there a need for diversion? Anyway, it is not an optimistic speech. It seems to come at a difficult moment, and the violence of the phrases is not enough to mask the concerns. There is an interesting statement that they are on the defensive in the Leningrad area. “If anyone asked why we are not advancing at present, I would answer: because it is raining, or because it is snowing, or because the railways are not yet ready.”
Similarly interesting is a sentence about Italy: “His (the Duce’s) country is poor, overpopulated, still badly off; it doesn’t know where the next day’s bread will come from.”
Wednesday, 12 November
The city hall has forbidden Jews to have dealings in the market outside certain hours (ten to twelve), and has laid down penalties for traders who sell to them in breach of this order. Each day you wonder what they will think up next; it must certainly take a lot of imagination. In fact, since they expropriated Jewish housing and started the deportation and killings, all the rest has become grotesque, puerile, mindless. It is no longer even depressing. In anti-Semitism there is sometimes a demonic element, but now, when there is not a bloodbath, we have to wade through the muck of petty meanness.
Journal 1935–1944 Page 54
