Asylum

by Moriz Scheyer

  There is a great deal of talk these days of the ‘re-education’ of Germany. It is rather as if one were to talk of a degenerate individual being put right again by a spell in a sanatorium: it might be doubted whether such re-education would have a lasting effect. Even if that possibility did exist, it could only happen after a very, very long time. Until such time, the Swastika-Mentality will always risk reverting to type, even after the disappearance of the Swastika itself–just like a habitual criminal, to whom wrongdoing has become second nature, if not first nature, and whose instincts are unlikely to be altered either by a stay in a sanatorium or by ‘re-education’.

  My comrades from the concentration camp of Beaune-la-Rolande, my comrades from all the camps–I have already confessed that I feel something like guilt towards you. Since the day on which I was first able to venture outside again, I have more than once encountered the criticism that I do not seem sufficiently to appreciate this good fortune; that I seem not to have grasped what it means not to be a hunted animal any more–to have survived.

  Oh, no. You, my unhappy comrades–you may all be my witnesses, that they do me an injustice. Not grasped it? It is precisely because I have grasped it so well that I cannot give way to anything like unalloyed happiness. There is a bitter aftertaste that stays with me. It is the thought of you that will not leave me alone. And it should not leave me alone. If it were to leave me alone, even for one single day, I would feel that to be a betrayal of you.

  If I knew that you had been saved, then I would not regret my experience of a concentration camp. On the contrary–I would regard it as a test which led to spiritual enrichment. Because it was with you, in our Hut 8, that I learned what that word ‘comradeship’, which is so often and so thoughtlessly bandied about, really means. The fortunate can never learn that. Only the most unfortunate of the unfortunate can learn its true significance.

  In the straw of Hut 8 we shared everything: sorrows as well as pieces of bread, the darkness of our nights as well as the fleeting glimpses of hope, our humiliation as well as our last cigarette. If, now, I were able also to share with you my liberation, then, I assure you, no one would be able to criticise me for not appreciating the miracle to the full.

  And so, this is not a farewell that I address to you. I just wanted to tell you, that without you my liberation seems to me incomplete–almost unreal. Whenever I want to breathe deeply of this air of freedom, to drink it in, then I taste the ashes that that air brings with it: your ashes.

  And yet, at the same time, this freedom defines the place that you occupy in my life. What this freedom signifies is, first of all, the presence of you who have departed, the voice of you who were made silent. This freedom is one more bond that binds me indissolubly to you–with you, and with the hatred for your murderers. No vow could ever be stronger or more unbreakable than this bond.

  A great writer once said: ‘The mystery of love is stronger than the mystery of death.’ May the deeds of Hitler’s Germany at least have the consequence that, throughout the whole world, the mystery of hatred, too, shows itself stronger than the mystery of death–of that death which is called ‘forgetting’.

  38

  The undeserving survivors

  IN FRANCE, the overwhelming majority of the Jews who have been fortunate enough to survive Hitler’s extermination programme are not foreigners, not immigrants ‘sans feu ni lieu’, without a hearth or a home. They are mainly Jews who, being established French families–resident here for generations–had previously thought that they had all possible citizen rights.

  It was the Germans, and their Vichy accomplices, who began the process whereby these Jews were demoted from français israélites (French people of the Israelite religion), first to juifs français (French Jews), and in the end simply to juifs (Jews) pure and simple. The net of persecution grew tighter and tighter around them, until finally they too were at the mercy of any arbitrary action, just like the immigrants. They too became hunted animals, who were forced to seek shelter in the darkness of clandestinity.

  And now these Jews are back again–and, would you believe it, they want to reassert their rights! They are not content with simply having saved their lives; they refuse to regard their entire social and material fabric of their past as something that has gone forever, or to regard their future as a problem whose solution must be left to chance and to the goodwill of others. Instead of considering every breath they take an undeserved boon, and every hard-earned bit of bread as generous gift–as well as every humiliation as an unalterable fact; instead of accepting that they must start again from zero, this kind of survivor is so presumptuous as to want to carry on from the same place from which he was violently snatched away! They have the temerity, these survivors, to make claims on things which belong to them; claims on everything that they were viciously robbed of, in both the moral and the material sense. They stubbornly refuse to take account of the fact that, if things had been done in the proper Hitler way, they would be long dead and gone, just like all the others.

  To put it bluntly: they shouldn’t have survived. And there is a whole host of people who cannot do enough to show their resentment of that.

  I do not mean here just the born anti-Semites, who proudly boast that they ‘did not wait for Hitler before they became anti-Semites’; nor just the anti-Semites by training, in whom the poisonous seed of Nazi propaganda found a particularly fertile environment for germination; nor, indeed, just the professional anti-Semites, the exploiters–big and small–of Jewish suffering, of Jews’ fear of death; the hyenas in the office of the Banditariat aux affaires juives and the countless private gangsters and graverobbers of all kinds, for whom the cessation of the great witch-hunt against the Jews meant the end of a quite unprecedented period of prosperity, the termination of a fabulous age of bounty, a time when the plentiful riches to be had from plundering the Jews simply fell into waiting ‘Aryan’ laps.

  No. This sense of outrage is shared by another category of anti-Semites, too. Let us call them the neo-anti-Semites.

  The fact that Jews who have been guilty of the impropriety of escaping the cut-throats–the fact these lucky beggars are no longer prepared to be satisfied with hiding timidly in a hole, but actually demand to take their place like everyone else, and alongside everyone else, is unforgivable to many even of those who previously prided themselves on not being anti-Semites in the German mould, those who previously were even so generous as to accept that Jews are after all human beings–human beings with a right to life. Especially those Jews who were thought to be dead. These were the fine, tolerant principles they had in the past–that is to say, as long as that right to life could not be exercised by any actual survivors.

  But, as I have said, we now see Jews suddenly popping up–Jews who one had every right to believe had gone forever; and they have the extraordinary presumption to want to return to their previous rank and position, or to want to repossess the dwellings and workplaces that were stolen from them. They want to be master in their own house once again, and again to enjoy the fruits of their own labour. This is all the thanks they show for having been allowed to survive: they have the gall to go looking for their own spiritual and material possessions in the hands of those who stole or received them–to demand compensation, or even a full rendering of accounts. It really is going too far. And quite apart from any of these other grievances, they are bringing competition back again; we thought that that, at least, had been stamped out once and for all. Everything could be so nice, so simple, so comfortable if only they had not reappeared from nowhere–these troublemakers, these spoilsports, who should by rights have been dead long ago. It really has to be said that the Gestapo and the Extermination Camps did not complete their task.

  That is the position of many people who have taken advantage of Jewish misfortune–people who had thought that at least this inheritance that they had come into from the missing Jews was incontestably theirs. Now they are bitterly disappointed; now–just imagine it�
��they are expected to give back some part of the bounty that fell into their laps without any effort on their part. And so they react with outrage, and start up the hue and cry: we can see the Jews in action all over again: worming their way in, pushing themselves forward, getting everywhere, grabbing everything for themselves without taking account of anyone else. The ‘Jewish Question’–these people assert–must be considered afresh: it is more pressing than ever.

  After the unspeakable sufferings that were visited on them, it would perhaps have been understandable–even justified–if the survivors had been granted some kind of favourable treatment–or at least a bit of goodwill. For–without in any way wishing to minimise the sufferings of the ‘Aryan’ populations of the occupied countries–it cannot be repeated often enough: what was done to the Jews had nothing to do with the War itself.

  Witness the events which took place, long before the War, first in Germany itself, then in Austria and Czechoslovakia, and which were allowed to take place without any obstruction. From the Nuremberg Laws onwards, the Jews were accorded the negative privilege of an anti-Semitic extermination plan. They might, perhaps, have been accorded a positive privilege, for once.

  But we do not demand any privilege, or any special treatment. All we demand is justice, in other words precisely and objectively the same rights and duties as all other people; to be subject to the same criteria of judgement, whether on the positive side or on the negative side. What is really sad is that something as self-evident as this needs to be stated in the first place. We do not demand any pro-Semitism. All we want is that everyone be judged as an individual, without prejudice, according to his merits, his strengths and his weaknesses, rather than as part of a collective and according to an accident of birth. For any kind of anti-Semitic discrimination is by its very nature also an incrimination.

  We are, of course, very far from being perfect. Just like everyone else. We too–of course–have among our number the normal percentages of good and bad human beings–the better element and the not-so-good element–with every gradation in between the extremes. Just like everyone else. And each of us, of course, has his good and his bad characteristics; his virtues and his vices. Just like everyone else. And we of course want these eternal, universally valid human norms (which are only not relevant in the case of the Nazi non-humans) to be applicable to us too.

  Far be it from us to claim any special treatment or recognition for any positive qualities or achievements. We do not labour under the illusion that we are more intelligent, more talented, more able, cleverer than everyone else.

  But when Mr X, say, who happens to be a Jew, is guilty of some misdemeanour, then it should be enough to say, ‘Mr X was guilty of a misdemeanour,’ instead of adding the self-satisfied term of emphasis, ‘The Jew X…,’ let alone the spiteful statement, ‘Of course: all Jews are like that.’ It would not occur to anyone to say that the Catholic, the Protestant or the Muslim X had been guilty of a misdemeanour, let alone ‘There you are, that’s what they are all like, the Catholics/Protestants/Muslims.’

  This self-evident truth–that each person is answerable for his own actions, and that a whole people cannot be made answerable for the actions of individuals, nor be taken as a kind of hostage for them; that one’s religious allegiance should be regarded as a private matter, not a criterion for other people’s judgement–this most basic truth is all that we wish to be observed.

  In any case, if you want to make such judgements–and to use those absurd, pejorative anti-Semitic terms of reference–it would be easy enough to show that there are many Jews who are far more ‘Christian’ than many Christians, and many Christians who are far more ‘Jewish’ than many Jews.

  In day-to-day life one is often tempted to pose the question: If a Herr Bloch or a Monsieur Lévy had behaved like this Herr Brand or this Monsieur Dupont, what a terrible uproar would there be against the Jew Bloch, the Jew Lévy, in particular, and against Jews in general?

  Among the surviving Jews there are, naturally, some whose behaviour is not beyond reproach. A less worthy individual remains a less worthy individual before and after the Liberation. But is there anyone who could seriously deny that for every such Jew there is, at least, a corresponding number, proportionally, of ‘Aryans’, who would attract, at least, the same level of reproach? And these ‘Aryans’ cannot even bring forward as extenuating circumstances for their behaviour the mistreatment and humiliation that every one of us survivors, without exception, has experienced–the best as well as the worst of us.

  What, then, of the so-called ‘Jewish Question’? It is a fiction. The Question only ever existed because it was raised, rather than being raised because it existed; indeed, it was raised in order that it might exist. Its existence was a necessary precondition for the outrages committed in the name of anti-Semitism. It served the purposes of Hitler and his ‘Comrades of the People’ in their performance of the most ghastly–and also the most cowardly–crime in world history.

  There is, and always has been, one extremely simple solution to the ‘Jewish Question’: to admit that it does not exist. Wherever Jews have not been prevented, either by the force of written laws, or by the more insidious unwritten laws, from rising out of the Ghetto, from bettering themselves, from entering into society–from assimilating, rather than merely adapting themselves to pressure and oppression; wherever they have been granted full equality, not just on paper but in reality too, there has been no ‘Jewish Question’. The most striking example of this is Soviet Russia–the same country that a relatively short time ago (within a few decades, in fact), was the Tsarist Russia of the pogroms and the anti-Semitic laws of exclusion. (Still, of course, an utter paradise compared with even the early days of the Third Reich.)

  In Soviet Russia the entire ‘Jewish Question’ was removed from the equation with a single stroke of the pen. And if one is to judge from results, it would appear that Russia has had no cause to regret this action of Lenin’s. (I should note here, just to avoid any possible insinuations, that I neither belong to nor ever have belonged to any political party.)

  And so, for the Russian Jews, their country was transformed–at a single stroke of the pen–from the land of their birth to their fatherland. A fatherland, as any of us would dream of it: a place that you could feel that you belong to, that you can devote yourself to with all your strength, without being humiliated and rejected for your pains. A land in which you feel rooted, in good times and in bad, in life and in death, along with your children and your grandchildren. Your beloved soil, which means security, constancy, permanence, and no longer the perpetually foreign road trodden by Ahasuerus;15 and into which you may return even after your death, as it were into the arms of a mother.

  It is hardly surprising, then, that so many Jews even outside Russia have become grateful adherents of an ideology that knows of no ‘Jewish Question’.

  This, of course, provides another God-given opportunity for those anti-Semites who specialise in anti-communist propaganda too to accuse the Jews of a double crime: Judaeo-communism. An accusation which of course dates from the time of Hitler’s invasion of Russia. Before that these same Jews were branded–by these same anti-Semites–‘Judaeo-plutocrats’.

  It is not clear whether this term ‘Judaeo-communists’ is intended to malign Jews for being communists or communists for being Jews. All that is clear is that no distinction is to be made between the two categories–communists and Jews.

  The Russians adhere to the same principle, albeit in a different sense. They also make no distinction, for example, in their attitude to war criminals. The many hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women and children who were brutally pursued to their deaths in Russia will not be forgotten any more than their ‘Aryan’ counterparts. Here, too, Russia acknowledges no ‘Jewish Question’.

  In many other countries, meanwhile… There, I fear, the Jewish victims will have been ‘only’ Jews; and the question of their fate will be a Jewish question, which here means
a question without importance. A Jewish question which one passes over with a shrug of the shoulders. They are dead; why waste any more time talking about it?

  The other ‘Jewish Question’, on the other hand, is a live one, for those who have survived but should not have. Because they have the impertinence, not just to go on living, but to want to go on living like everyone else.

  Yes–and to die like everyone else, too: to die a natural death. Instead of doing what they should have, which was to meet a painful end, long ago, in the persecution camps, the gas chambers, the ovens–these citadels of Germanic culture and civilisation; to follow the excellent example of those six million Jews who can never again be accused of wanting anything, of demanding some kind of position. Not even a grave.

  39

  Still in Labarde: but free

  DOWN IN THE VALLEY, where a path turns off from the main road from Belvès to Ste-Foy, a path which climbs up a hill towards a rambling building, half hidden by lime trees and chestnuts, there is a primitive wooden signpost. The inscription it bears is half worn away by age, wind and weather. ASILE DE LABARDE.

  Throughout the entire period of our first stay in Belvès we never heard anyone speak of Labarde. It was only in November 1942, on a bleak, wet, cold morning, that we deciphered the inscription for the first time.

  Labarde is, of course, well-known to the neighbours in the various farmhouses dotted around the nearby area. Most other people who pass by the signpost have no idea of the identity of this ‘asylum’. They continue on their way without a second thought. And even those who may have heard that it is a Franciscan convent, with a hospital for the mentally and physically disabled and for epileptics–even these people have no further curiosity and prefer to move on and think of something more pleasant.

  Hospital. Mentally ill. Disabled–deficient–dementia… They are not things that one likes to dwell on. A person finds himself unconsciously quickening his step, anxious to get away. And besides, this war has brought about quite different things, which one has long since got used to.