by Elie Wiesel
I was expecting a decisive victory. And so, I thought, were Inge and Hauptmann. Hauptmann had changed; he was getting thinner, as if consumed by a secret flame. Did he doubt the results after all? Was he more lucid than we had thought? He fought hard like all of us, but as the elections drew nearer, he looked increasingly worried.
One evening, as we were going to a demonstration in the suburbs, I told him how worried I was about him.
“What’s wrong with you, Bernard? You’re not your usual self.”
“I’m tired, that’s all. Overworked.”
“Another few days and you’ll be able to rest.”
“Another few days and the real work will begin.”
“Explain that, Bernard.”
“We’re going to win, the people will conquer; then we’ll have to assume our responsibilities,” he said with a smile.
Whatever doubts he had concerned his ability to assume the responsibilities of power, for he was convinced that the masses would carry him in with them. We shared his confidence. We were conducting an earnest struggle for the people, for the militant working class, and our triumph was inevitable. History wanted it that way, and we alone, not the Social Democrats, not any other party, were marching with history.
In the higher levels of the Party, to be sure, coalitions and alliances with other parties, except the Nazis, were under discussion. For us, matters were simpler: all we could see were the contours of the platform the voters were going to shape with their ballots. The poor, the unemployed, the homeless numbered in the millions—they could not help but elect us Communists, who spoke for them, and who proclaimed their right to dignity.
I remember the speech Hauptmann made shortly before the election.
“Workers! Workers’ wives! Pause and reflect. Ask yourselves whether you prefer the shame of alms to a good salary, whether you prefer hatred to solidarity! Pause and reflect, comrades, before committing your future.…”
Inge too spoke that night.
“My parents are rich, so are their friends, they have never put in a day’s work in their lives. Others work for them. I have turned my back on them, and do you know why? To break the chain of evil. To help forge the brotherhood of the workers. I choose you, comrades, I choose you over my parents.…”
And I applauded, I applauded until I was exhausted. As for myself, I never took the floor. Only once did I make a speech—in Yiddish—before a Zionist group. I no longer remember whether the people hissed because of my political ideas or my language: they had expected an address in German. I fled, only to be jeered by Inge:
“Oh, yes, it was a triumph—for the Zionists!”
Election day came. Ensconced at Chez Blum since morning, after a sleepless night, we gulped black coffee while waiting for the first results. Hauptmann made regular trips to Party headquarters and came back shaking his head: too early to know what was happening. The hours wore on. Inge, unable to sit still, left for the offices of the Weltbühne, where she knew one of the political commentators: nothing. She ran back over to the Rumänisches Café on the Budapest Strasse, and came back, out of breath and upset: the first results showed astonishing gains for the Nazis. Hauptmann, with a motion of his hand, kept us from panicking: that particular precinct had been carefully worked over by Goebbels; it did not prove a thing.…
After a second sleepless night we had every reason to panic: it was definitely a Hitler tidal wave. The figures were going up and up; they were entirely out of control. After only two years of political presence, Hitler had won six million votes.
Inge collapsed; she sobbed without restraint. Hauptmann, ashen, put his arm around her shoulder, and, strangely, I was more touched by his gesture than by the tears of my beloved. Was he still in love with her? Had I been wrong to separate them? United, they might, perhaps, have carried off a victory.… Once again I was gripped by old Liyanov complexes, my old guilt feelings. Fortunately, no one was paying attention to me.
For some reason that eluded me, Inge decided not to go home with me; she went to rest at her parents’ villa shaded by linden trees. After parting that night, the three of us went our separate ways.
It was the end of our group. We went back the next day to Chez Blum; we followed our usual routines, but our hearts were no longer there. We saw the inexorable onslaught of the curse: it was soon to strike each one of us in turn.
Inge moved; she rented a room in the apartment of an actress doing one of Reinhardt’s plays. She was no longer in love with me. At least, so I thought and told her.
“With what’s happening these days, we have no right to think of love,” was all she could find to say.
To which I should have answered, “With what’s happening these days, love is precisely what we must think of.”
Bernard spoke less and less. I questioned him. “And the masses, what do you make of them? Their wisdom, their gratitude—have they suddenly disappeared? Explain to me how six million miserable wretches managed to vote for even blacker misery, more unbearable wretchedness! Explain to me, Bernard, the rabble’s triumph over decency and reason.”
Hauptmann gazed at me without wincing, a penetrating gaze. He said nothing; there was nothing to say. Moscow’s instructions had been unequivocal; there was to be no united front with the others opposing the Nazis. Why not? None of us understood; Bernard was no exception.
Then came the fateful New Year’s Eve. One of Hauptmann’s chic girlfriends had offered us her home to celebrate—celebrate what?—a hope gone up in smoke? It was to be our last party together. We drank, we clinked glasses, we forced ourselves to be merry. Loud laughter, noisy kisses, falsely gay songs, promises of love and fidelity: we were actors determined to play all the roles before leaving the stage.
Someone insisted Hauptmann give a toast. He raised his glass and said hoarsely:
“To defeat!”
We were too shocked to respond. Inge, on the verge of tears, implored him with her eyes to add a sentence, a single word of hope. Hauptmann smiled at her and at every one of us in turn. Then, without drinking a drop, he set down his glass.
That night he put a bullet through his head.
THE TESTAMENT OF PALTIEL KOSSOVER VI
I never would have thought that one day I would be happy and proud to be numbered among the subjects of His Majesty the King of Greater Romania, but here I was. Perhaps I exaggerate. But it surely was useful. Thanks to my Romanian passport, valid in spite of my irregular military status, I was able to leave the Third Reich without difficulty.
My German friends could have come along or followed. It was 1934, and the frontiers were still so loosely guarded that all the Jews could have crossed to the other side; the police actually encouraged them to do so.
I tried over and over again to convince Inge and Traub to leave everything and set themselves up in Prague, Vienna or Paris, to go somewhere, anywhere.… Animated discussions that led nowhere. We each clung to our position.
Inge maintained that it was her duty to remain in Berlin. The Party needed the vital strength of its militant members. The Nazi regime would not, could not last; it was necessary to stay in order to hasten its fall.
Traub answered that this was wishful thinking. The Nazi victory was due not to political or economic considerations but to a mystical situation. Hitler embodied a desire for power and domination he had drawn from the depths of the German people. Germany might not be Hitler, but Hitler was Germany. One had to be blind not to realize that. He concluded: The Nazi regime would last; it would weigh upon an entire generation.
Though lucid enough to have given up hope, Traub refused to leave. Paris, Vienna or Prague? His friends, all the people close to him, were still in Berlin. And then, despite all the taunting, cruelty and public humiliation that sporadically marked the onset of the Hitler era, the Jews went on living among themselves as well as before, if not better. Ostracized by the Christians, they had fallen back on themselves. The result was an unfolding of cultural activity unprecedented in the
history of German Jewry. Forced to renounce all assimilationist ambitions, a substantial number were attending seminaries and evening schools to discover their own identity; that was reason enough to remain in Germany.
Is this the right moment to mention this? Later, much later, I learned that my father, Gershon Kossover, of blessed memory, had confronted the same dilemma in Liyanov. Some friends had offered him refuge in Bucharest; from there, with some money, he could have made his way to Palestine. But he could not make up his mind. He discussed it with my mother and sisters, with neighbors and friends. Should he leave the community to its fate? Or wait and see? What was his duty as a Jew, his responsibility as a man? To settle down into uncertainty, or confront the unknown elsewhere? My mother was of the opinion that he should liquidate the business, sell the house and flee; my father chided her for thinking only of their own situation. They stayed on. You know the rest, I imagine.
On the eve of my departure, Inge and I had one final discussion. She was packing my suitcase and I implored her to pack her own. She had no valid reason to remain. Her parents were seeking buyers for their department store and luxurious apartment; they had business connections in England and planned to go there. Her friends and comrades were on the run or in prison. The Party, in disarray, was barely functioning any more. Did she belong to an underground network? Undoubtedly. In fact, she hinted at it.
“I’ve got work to do here.”
“You will always have work. In France, just as here. The same kind of work.”
“No, not the same,” she said, and changed the subject.
She did not go so far as to tell me the exact nature of her work; she didn’t have to. I understood what she meant but did not accept her argument.
A feeling of failure oppressed us. We had failed on every level, as militants, as friends and as individuals. Since Hauptmann’s suicide, Inge and I had drifted apart, though we still met daily. The shadow of our friend, his mocking, indulgent smile haunted us. We avoided talking about him but he remained present. Like remorse, his memory kept gnawing at us.
That evening, again, he was in our thoughts. Why did he commit suicide? Had it been fear of what was to come, or disgust with the events of the year just ended? Traub claimed Bernard had been toying with the idea of suicide for a long time, often citing Seneca’s praise of suicide: The wise man lives as long as he should and not as long as he can. According to Traub, Bernard was afraid of old age, impotence, decrepitude. Inge, however, maintained that Hauptmann’s act was related to mankind and not to his own person. He had killed himself because, in his view, we had just witnessed the decline, the death of the human race.
An idea crossed my mind: Inge insisted on remaining in Germany not because of the Party but out of loyalty to Hauptmann. I asked her, “Is it Bernard who keeps you here?”
“Not really.”
“Inge, when you say ‘not really,’ that means yes.”
“This time it may mean no.”
For the first and last time we spoke openly and honestly about our dead friend, that is, in relation to ourselves. Had we behaved badly toward him? Were we responsible for his despair, therefore his death? In spite of what Traub thought, Hauptmann’s suicide was not in character; it surely was not a solution for a revolutionary intellectual of rigorously logical bent. A man such as he, capable of resisting impulses and irrationality, of fearlessly confronting deepest despair and even integrating it into his own system of values, would not opt for suicide. And yet. How to explain an act that denied his very life? Could it have been Inge’s relationship to me, our love? I rather thought so, Inge did not. She leaned toward the obvious explanation: disappointed by the elections, betrayed by his “masses,” his illusions vanished, Hauptmann drew the most radical conclusion from the situation. Suicide: his way of saying to the German people and to German history, I’ve had enough of you, you’ve chosen to dance with the devil, go ahead, enjoy yourselves—without me.
The question still troubles me today in this cell, where everything seems more remote, yet closer at hand. There are men whose impact is greater dead than alive, and Hauptmann was one of them.
What causes an intelligent, dynamic and creative person to decide one evening to kill himself? Why this choice, this fascination with self-destruction? Why this refusal to live, this implacable, irrevocable refusal? So as not to suffer, not to debase oneself? To punish the survivors and make them retroactively responsible? A man like myself, imprisoned without reason and with nothing to lose, why should I not play with the same idea? Why have I never thought of it? I might, like Atticus, Cicero’s great friend, refuse to eat, and so die hungry and alone, rather than in the presence of the executioner. Why have I not been tempted? Because I have a wife who …? Let us not speak of Raissa, Citizen Magistrate. She is not the one who binds me to life; it is my son Grisha. Will I see him again one day? Will I ever speak to him of my father, whose name he bears? Is it he, or my father, who keeps me from becoming my own executioner? Sometimes, during these interrogations—painful, to put it mildly—I find myself wishing to die—but never to take my own life. To kill myself means to kill; and I refuse, most emphatically, to serve death.
In our conversation—our last—Inge and I did not go to the bottom of the matter. She was reticent. She had had enough of tracking down words which, she said, proved hollow as she grasped them. To make up for this, she announced her intention of spending the night at my place. I was glad. I think I still loved her. She seemed more beautiful to me than ever; her melancholy made her more seductive, more reserved. I began undressing; she turned away.
“Would you rather not?”
She would rather not. She preferred to lie down on the bed fully clothed. Very well—I did the same. Silently we contemplated the night. Others haunted the room. My father was urging me to take along my tephilin, my mother to take care of my health. Ephraim was laughing. Chez Blum’s proprietor was asking for the seventy marks I had owed him for three months. Bernard was explaining that, speaking philosophically, history meant movement, hence change, hence … Hence what? someone asked. I did not hear the answer because I fell asleep. But I know that Inge did not close her eyes all night. Of what, of whom was she thinking? That I do not know; that I shall never know.
My train was not leaving until the evening. Inge, preoccupied by who knows what, no doubt some clandestine errand, decided to leave me in the morning. It was better that way. Standing at the door, we embraced.
I renewed my invitation. “Come to France, Inge. You’ll be more useful there than here.”
She seemed not to hear.
I insisted, “If you change your mind, if you decide to come, will you know how to get in touch with me?”
She looked at me without seeing me.
“Inge! Will you know how?”
“The comrades will know,” she said, her face a blank.
She was already in another world, that of Bernard Hauptmann. She turned away and left without looking back.
And I, remembering her first visit to this very room, felt an almost physical laceration; I wanted to shout, to scream. I wanted to run after her, force her to come back, come with me, live with me, live, period: if I shook her hard enough, if I loved her hard enough, she might agree. But I could not move. The die was cast with irrevocable certainty. Inge would stay in Berlin and I would plunge into the surrealism of Parisian life. I reasoned with myself: Inge will come, you’ll see her again. Sooner or later, they will all come, Traub, Blum and all the other comrades, the liberals and the anarchists, the Communists and the Jews; they’ll suffocate here, they’ll push through to freedom.… Deep down I knew that it was a childish hope. Inge would stay in Berlin. Inge would die in Berlin. And I would live somewhere else, I would take another woman somewhere else. Let’s turn the page, Inge. Thank you for helping me discover love, thank you for initiating me into political action. Thank you for giving me pleasure and pain, thank you, Inge.
My last day in Berlin: farewell visits; de
bts to settle at Chez Blum; a last talk with Traub, who insists on paying for my coffee, and tells me he has written Paul Hamburger about me; a last letter to my parents. Next time, Father, I’ll be writing you from Paris, God willing, of course, God willing. Don’t worry, Father—your son will take his phylacteries along.
A last walk. A splendid April day. The crowded avenues pulse with life. Brown, gray, black uniforms. Countless swastikas. Happy faces. The city is at peace with itself. Hitler in every window: his people gaze at him with undisguised pride, with love. Poor Bernard Hauptmann: the masses do stupid things sometimes, but is that a reason to commit suicide? Poor Inge: these people have repudiated you; they spit on you and yours, and you persist in wanting to sacrifice yourself for them; do you really believe they deserve it—deserve you?
Suddenly, near the Zirkus, a strange figure emerges from the throng: a regal Jew. Dressed with austere elegance, he walks tall and with a firm step. Dignified, majestic, he moves forward in the crowd of pedestrians without fear or mistrust. What makes me think he is a Jew? I could not say. But I know that he is and that he is not from Berlin. He attracts attention. A Nazi, catching sight of him, looks outraged; people stop and stare; he seems to have come from another place, another time. Is he a prince of Israel? A messenger of God? Trimmed beard, eyes sparkling with intelligence, he projects such uncanny strength that it disturbs the passersby. Another second and the whole district will be petrified: all eyes are on this noble, haughty Jew sauntering through Berlin as if the capital were not under Nazi domination.
I catch myself trembling for him; he is in danger and seems unaware of it. What if some lout were to attack him? What if the crowd were to surround him and beat him up? Would I go to his rescue? I like to think so, but who knows? In any case, my problem is purely theoretical. People are so stunned, they do not move; they let him pass. He turns the corner and by the time they recover, he has vanished. Should I rush after him? What’s the use? Besides, it’s getting late. I have to get home quickly. Quickly, Frau Braun, I am in a hurry. How much do I owe you? Will you be kind enough to forward my mail, I’ll send you my address, all right? Thank you in advance, thanks for everything, and so long. Ah, liebe Frau Braun, don’t look so sad, we’ll meet again some day—at home, my people say that only the mountains never meet. Quickly, the suitcase. Is everything inside? Shirts, books. The phylacteries. My briefcase. The passport, where’s my passport? Damn, I have lost it. No, it’s in my pocket. Where’s the ticket? Inside the passport. And I am holding the passport in my hand. I am getting all confused, I am losing my mind in this demented country. Quickly, a taxi. No taxi? Never mind, I’ll walk. There’s a taxi. “Quickly, the station.” “Which station?” “I am taking the Paris train.” “Paris?” asks the driver, startled. “You’re late.” But he adds with a laugh, “Wait a few years and we’ll all meet there.” Not funny, his joke. “Oh, well,” says he, “Oh, well,” say I. He steps on the accelerator. Hard. The streetlights are coming on. The traffic policemen wave their arms. The shop windows are blazing. In the prisons the torturers stretch, and their victims murmur, “It’s only a dream, a bad dream.” A dull uneasiness takes hold of me: Who will come to the station; who is there? Inge? Traub? I run to platform Number 11, the train is still there. I board; jostling the passengers, I find my seat, drop my suitcase on it and start looking for a familiar face. Of all my friends, all my companions, none has made the effort. I am somewhat disappointed. I shouldn’t be. They are afraid, and I am going to a world free of fear. Will I ever see them again? For days and days this question has tormented me: Will I see them again one day? An impersonal, twangy voice answers, “Train for Paris, now departing.” My heart explodes, it hurts and I know why. There is a moment when a man knows everything, and I am living through such a moment now; I think of my comrades, happy and unhappy, wise and bold. I know they will be swept away by the tempest of blood and fire, while I, a lucky deserter, shall go on living.
