by Elie Wiesel
All the members of our unit thought as he did; he was the spokesman for the entire Red Army. Hatred of the invader was the order of the day, vengeance the most burning of obsessions. No mercy for the SS murderers of the young and the old, no pity for their collaborators. What else could be expected from hardened soldiers who, while repulsing the invader, came upon gallows and mass graves in every village? I too shared this thirst for reprisal on our arrival in Kharkov. Had I been able, I would have carried the ruins of the city to Germany, and all over the world. Its scorched linden trees, its broken, withered poplars—men hanging from their branches—I would have carried them into all the parks, all the streets of all the cities inhabited and embellished by men.
The outlying factory districts destroyed; the suburbs ravaged; buildings, churches, stores, warehouses, schools, homes of officials and hovels of workers: the Nazi “scorched earth” policy had left nothing but ashes. An inferno. One sergeant, a native of Kharkov, sobbing, showed me his city: “That’s Sumskaya Street, whose splendor made us dream; there’s Petrov Street, where my uncle, a university professor, lived; there’s the square where we used to celebrate our holidays.” He was hallucinating; he was seeing animated, bustling streets where we saw only death and desolation.
Our division, camped in a village a few miles outside the city, dug itself in to resist the German counteroffensive which, we knew, was coming soon. The front was moving away, but our commanding officer, General Kolbakov, received permission from the High Command to consolidate our positions while waiting for reinforcements. A few days of relief, a few nights of repose, at last.
Lebedev was quartered in Kharkov itself, I with a peasant woman in the village. I had nothing to complain of; I had better food than my superior officers. My landlady, Olga Kalinovna, a splendid grandmother in black skirt and kerchief, treated me like a son, her own having disappeared after the fall of the town in October 1941. Her retarded grandson lived with her. In the evenings I asked her to tell me about the German occupation. She would fall asleep while speaking, but I was unable to close my eyes until morning. Of the hundred thousand Jews who had lived, studied, taught, worked in Kharkov, few remained. I was afraid to meet them, mutilated and tortured, in my sleep.
I roamed around the city looking for my own people. I questioned former officials, partisans, shirkers, military security agents. In vain.
Then I went alone to Drobitzky Yar, where between fifteen and twenty thousand Jews had been massacred. I wanted to weep, but I did not. I wanted to say something, but I said nothing. One day, I thought, I’ll come back and recite the Kaddish. Not yet. One day.
I returned there every day for an hour or two. The place exercised a fascination over me I could not explain. I felt I was on familiar ground, at home. These dead were my people. What could I say to them? And yet … to recite the Kaddish one must have at least ten persons; and if I were to ask Lebedev to help me mobilize ten men …
“Whenever you like,” he said.
One day, but when?
I went to see the black-market places. Men and women in rags assembled to buy and sell … nothing at all. Empty boxes, clothes so patched they could not be worn. A tragic farce: someone was laughing, and I wondered who.
Our day of departure arrived. Kolbakov had ordered us to start moving by two in the afternoon, but at eleven in the morning the enemy launched a blistering attack. The division fought valiantly, lost several tanks, and had to fall back in order to avoid encirclement. Lebedev saved his unit, but he forgot me. Wounded in the head, I lay unconscious in a shell hole. I awoke later in a dark, humid cellar. Blood streamed from my eyes, nose and mouth. A piercing rhythmic pain pounded my temples. In a panic, I tried to stand up, to get my bearings: Where was I? Since when? And where were my comrades? I heard someone breathing. “Who’s there?” I whispered. A hoarse, muffled sound came in response. I understood—it was my landlady’s retarded grandson. I called to him to come closer; he did not understand. But his presence did me good: I was not alone. Then a door opened. The grandmother entered, and, kneeling, began talking in a barely audible voice: “God have mercy on us, they’ve come back; they took the village again; our soldiers left, I brought you into the cellar, with the help of my grandson. If they’d found you outside they would have finished you off; if they find you here, they’ll kill all of us.” I heard her as from a distance, across other voices, other sounds, and I resigned myself to the idea that I would not witness the great day of victory: I was going to die like the Jews of Drobitzky Yar—not like them, not as a Jew—but only as a Russian prisoner. No one would know who I was, no one would come to recite the Kaddish for me. “Promise me you’ll be careful?” the grandmother went on. “I know them: bloody, greedy murderers, they’ll ransack the houses, let their dogs loose in the ruins—I know them. Be careful, promise?” I did not answer. One urgent question tormented me: “When did it happen?” “This morning,” said the grandmother. “Before noon. They fell on us like thunder, the whole thing started all over again.” “And Kharkov? Who’s holding Kharkov, Grandmother?” “I don’t know, my dear, I know nothing. Our soldiers, I hope. Kharkov is too big a city to let go, not like our little Rovidok: why sacrifice our young heroes for a little village? If it’s not liberated today, it’ll be liberated tomorrow. Don’t you think so?” “Yes, Grandmother,” I said, “I think so.” Actually I did not think so; I was not thinking about anything except death.
She gave me a bowl of hot, sweetened water: I swallowed a few gulps. And my blood was flowing, flowing—and my life was flickering out. And my heart was growing heavy.
“Rovidok,” said the grandmother. “I wonder if this little village isn’t more important than a lot of better-known places? So much blood’s been shed here, so many lives lost.… Five times invaded and liberated, and always at tremendous cost. Would people fight for a little place without any importance?” “That’s right, Grandma, in high places they consider Rovidok of great strategic importance,” I said to make her feel good. Rovidok, Rovidok: I had never before heard its name.
“You’ll stay here,” said the grandmother, “Mitya and I will watch over you. Be careful, my son. And we too, we’ll be careful. We’ll leave you now; a neighbor might come knocking at our door, and we better be there.”
I remained in the cellar three days and two nights, delirious with fever and pain, biting my fingers and arms to keep from groaning. From time to time Mitya came, bringing me some warm water and a boiled potato: he would sit down on the ground in the half-darkness and stare at me, uttering small grunts like a beaten animal. Was he really retarded? I didn’t think so. It probably was a ruse invented by his grandmother to keep him home. He understood me, he understood many things, I was sure of it. If I asked him to bring me a wet towel he pretended not to understand. But an hour later his grandmother would arrive with a wet rag and wash my face. “I thought this would do you good,” she would say. “Thanks, Grandma, thanks a lot. If we win the war, and we will, it’ll be because of people like you.” “You’re talking nonsense. Our soldiers, our heroic warriors, are fighting the war, not old women like myself.”
During my isolation I received another visitor: a cat, a tomcat, made his way into the cellar. At first he was afraid of me, but little by little, he realized I was not moving; I was not chasing or kicking him with my boot. Then he must have said to himself: This fellow is in hiding, he’s a fugitive; I can do whatever I please. And, in fact, he did: he became an anti-Semite, that Rovidok cat! He gnawed at my boots, leaped onto my stomach and off again, only to come back from another direction. How that beast kept pestering me! I hated him more than anything else in the world. He guessed it, and made my life even more miserable. He bit my ear, jumped on my neck, my face. It was hard for me to hold back tears of rage and impotence.
I mentioned it to the old lady. “I’m afraid to close my eyes; he’s capable of devouring me, that vile cat.” “Do you want me to kill him?” she asked. “He’s useful. You’re not my only lodger
, my dear. There are lots of mice and rats in my house.” “I’ll go mad, Grandma.” Finally Mitya locked the cat up in the barn. High time; I was at the end of my rope.
When our soldiers finally reclaimed the village, and when Lebedev saw me again at his new emergency station, this time on the operating table, he thought I had gone mad for good: all I spoke about was cats; I insulted them, cursed them, called them murderers, cannibals, barbarians. Lebedev, my friend, you who know so much about human nature, explain to me: Why do cats hate Jews and poets?
I was evacuated to Kharkov, but I went back to Rovidok later, much later, after the victory. With faltering heart, I returned to Grandma Kalinovna’s. Was she still alive? I knocked at her door, listened to the approaching steps. There she was, but aged, apathetic. I took her into my arms, presented her with a skirt I had bought in the black market, kissed her sparse white hair, her bony, bluish hands. “Cry,” I told her, “it’ll do you good—cry!” She shook her head: she did not want to cry. “And Mitya?” I was looking for him. He wasn’t in the room, he wasn’t in the kitchen. The old lady kept shaking her head: she did not want to cry. “And Mitya?” I asked again. And then the dam broke: she burst into sobs. Mitya had gone away. Carried away by the torrent of fire, her fine, mute grandson. “What happened, Grandma?” “They came back,” she said, wiping her face with a corner of her kerchief. “Yes, my son, they came back again after you left.” “And …?” “And their last siege was the worst of all.” “Tell me, Grandma. What did they do with Mitya?” “It’ll upset you, I don’t want to do that.” “I want to know,” I insisted, taking her hands in mine. But she just went on shaking her head, refusing to tell me about her grandson. “Okay,” I said, “then let’s talk about—the cat, yes?” She started to laugh, while tears rolled down her cheeks. It made me sick to see her crying and laughing at the same time. “If you like, Grandma, I’ll stay with you awhile, I’ll keep you company, I’ll help you. Would you like that?” “This is no place for you,” she said, struggling to regain control of herself. She was thinking of Mitya; so was I. Mitya, the victim of educated, civilized men.
My hospital stay, followed by convalescence, lasted until the fall. I took advantage of the opportunity to fall in love with Tatyana and Galina, and then with a nurse everyone called “the saint,” I forget why. After that I rejoined the 96th, which was regrouping with a view to attacking the Carpathians. I reported to my company and asked to see Colonel Dr. Lebedev. A brawny, grumpy sergeant answered me: “Never heard of him.” “But he’s the head of …” “Never heard of him, I tell you.”
Outside, in front of the division commander’s bivouac, I ran into an orderly I knew, one of the veterans from my old team. He embraced me. “Glad to see you, Paltiel Gershonovich!” He brought me up to date on the changes that had taken place in our unit. The news hit me like a giant fist. No need to go on, I guessed the rest. Lebedev … I would never see him again either. I felt lost. Abandoned. Was there anyone left to turn to? I was climbing a mountain of ashes. On the other side an old man was waiting. And he was saying, “Come, my son. Come.”
From then on, and until the victory, I lived in a kind of trance. I no longer sought the living; only the dead interested me, only the dead needed me. I was their companion, their savior.
The new medical chief of the division, Colonel Zaronevski, refused to accept me in his unit, and so I wound up with the gravediggers. Their commanding officer, a permanently drunk Caucasian, was recruiting whomever he could get; all you needed was two arms in good condition.
I could not understand Zaronevski’s hostility. Did he resent my friendship with his predecessor? Did he think I was too weak to be a stretcher-bearer? More plausible: he detested Jews. In his eyes we were all cowards, but since our military exploits contradicted his theories, he preferred to keep us away from the front, the better to despise us.
As for myself, I went on fighting. Not for the fatherland—it had already been liberated by the Red Army—but for the corpses: I saw nothing but corpses, breathed nothing but the stench of their putrefaction. During that winter and the following spring I crawled through mud and puddles, through plains and forests, to bring them to their final assembly point.
I lived with them, for them. By dint of excavating the ground I stopped seeing the sky.
Finally, the Red Army was smashing through the enemy defenses, liberating cities and villages set on fire by the invaders before retreating. The Germans were fleeing, and we were pursuing them, like angels of supreme punishment. Our men celebrated each victory by drinking and singing at the top of their lungs. Not I. I confess I did not associate with the Soviet heroes who joyously celebrated our triumph. I could not celebrate. I followed them, I admired them, I prayed for them, for they were inflicting the defeats the enemy deserved. But beyond that, I preferred to remain in the rear with the dead who had become my own.
The newspapers were describing page after page, the historic battles of Voronezh, Odessa, Kiev, Kharkov, Oman, Berditchev.… As for myself, I remember only the burnt corpses of Voronezh, the gallows of Oman, the mutilated children of Berditchev. How many corpses did I see? They were of all ages, all social and religious origins. I would invent lives and destinies for them. And attempt to unravel their final thoughts, fixed in their sightless eyes. Let no one tell me the dead all look alike; whoever says that has not seen them. Whoever says that must have looked away—I did not. I have seen thousands of unrecognizable bodies and yet I recognized them. I knew nothing about them, but I knew the thing that had been more important to them in their lifetimes than their names and trades. I once knew it, but—stupid of me—I no longer know what it was.
Those hands knotted in death—what secret did they enclose? Those arms stretched out—what justice were they demanding? A young officer weeping with rage, another with pity; their tears trickled down on me, I absorbed them all. An old man seemed to implore me, another to rebuke me. So intently did I listen to what they were not saying, I no longer heard the sounds of life.
I was going mad.
• •
The worst was the summer of 1944, when we reached the blessed, cursed city of my childhood. The Germans stubbornly refused to let go: Liyanov was theirs. They clung to it and were impossible to dislodge. Despite the ceaseless firing of our artillery and our aerial bombardments, our shock divisions were encountering too many obstacles to dislodge the enemy from his positions. Reinforcements and reserves were arriving at an accelerated pace to replace our lost men and materiel. And after each attack I would rush out to collect the shattered, trampled, abandoned human debris. And my heart would tremble. My father, my mother. My sisters, their husbands and children. Were they still alive? Would I recognize them? Sixteen years had gone by since I had abandoned them, five since their last letter. What would I tell them of my life? I could neither sleep nor eat. So near to them, and so far. Ilya, a comrade, lectured me: I was neglecting myself, I was letting myself go, I was taking refuge in death. “You can’t understand, Ilya.” But I was wrong: he did understand; Ilya was a Jew. At eighteen he had already seen and learned a great deal. The day we made our breakthrough and our crack troops flung themselves on Liyanov like wild beasts, he was beside me. His eyes bloodshot, he tried to calm me. No other offensive had filled me with such tension. My nerve ends were raw; I kept exasperating our commander: “Isn’t it our turn yet? Are we moving?” “Not yet, the battle’s still raging. Let’s wait for it to quiet down.” “But what are we waiting for? Comrades are dying, some are already gone, and we’re twiddling our thumbs!” “Patience,” Ilya said to me. “I understand what you’re feeling, but be patient.”
I had no choice. Our unit was supposed to follow the third wave. Ilya would not move from my side. Though younger than I, he was my protector. I needed his presence. Without him, who knows what I might have done that day at the gates of Liyanov.
The fighting was still going on in the outskirts. With Ilya at my heels I ran to my childhood home. The sun was sett
ing, leaving a flaming sky beneath which I looked for my school, then the little market, then the House of Study. The roofs were being fired at, grenades were being thrown into the cellars, but I rushed to my house, where my parents and their children, their prayers and mine, were awaiting me. Twilight enveloped all the houses. I stopped in front of ours. Paralyzed, I could not open the door. Ilya did it for me. I was overcome by a deep, dark fear: this is not my house. I call out, “Anyone there?” No reply. I go out into the courtyard, I see the barn—yes, this is my house. I look at the apple trees, the plum trees—yes, this is mine. But the silence is not mine. And the soldier hearing it does not come from here. I retrace my steps. Here’s the kitchen: “Anyone there?” Ilya opens the door to the dining room. Empty. My parents’ bedroom. Empty. My fear is mounting, I am about to explode. If the house is my house, why is it empty? Where is my family? Why is nobody here to welcome me? A distant memory surfaces: the pogrom, the attic, the cellar. Might they have hidden there, as in the past? I run to see. Nothing. A mad idea shoots through me: the house is my house, but I … I am not I. I am really beginning to believe that when Ilya discovers a man and a woman beneath the bed in the children’s room. Terrified, they get up, overturning a chair. Are they my parents? Have I forgotten what they look like? Is it possible? Anything’s possible, since I am not myself. Ilya questions them in Russian. Who are they? They don’t answer. In Yiddish. They don’t answer. Ilya is irritated; they’re in a panic. They lament in Romanian: they’re innocent, they’ve done nothing, they never belonged to the Iron Guard.… I feel like hitting them, but how can you strike a couple of terrified old people? I ask them how long they’ve been living in this house. Forever, says the husband. Seeing the glint in my eyes, he begins again: “Oh, excuse me, excuse me.… You speak Romanian, Mr. Officer.… This house, they gave it to us.” “When? Who gave it to you?” I shout. The husband stammers, “The municipality.” I shout even louder: “When?” The husband tries to find words: “When … the Fascists … when the Fascists took away … the … Jews.”
