by Elie Wiesel
“How do you know?” he muttered impatiently. “Man’s goal is not defined by man. We are all too weak, too ignorant to foresee the outcome of our plans. True encounters are those set in heaven, and we are not consulted. Look, what if I told you that the sole purpose of your wanderings was to hear me speak on this winter night in Dragmuresh?”
I started. “Dragmuresh? You say we are in Dragmuresh? And here I was thinking I was in Petrova.”
I am not sorry I mistook one village for another. Just as all suffering is a test invented by God, the sorrow of having been subjected to it is an invention of the devil.
Another encounter, elsewhere, with another kind of Na-venadnik. Abrasha, like myself, wandered from one Jewish community to the next, though not as a penitent but as an agent of the Komintern. His mission was to arouse the youth, organize and activate it, arm and integrate it into the international revolutionary movement. A speaker of talent, a born activist, Abrasha succeeded so well with his recruitment campaign that every police force of the region was at his heels. There was a price on his head; his description was posted on every wall. He slipped through their nets with the help of his sympathizers. But he still had to reckon with parental hostility. Pious for the most part, parents fought emancipation and assimilation as much as atheism. To them communism represented both aberration of the mind and repudiation of the holy tradition. Therefore, it had to be opposed with vigor; all the more since the young, yearning for freedom, eagerly listened to its message.
“You could be of real help to me,” Abrasha was saying. “You could take charge of a sector which as an outsider is closed to me: the Yeshivoth, the Talmudic schools. This is unbroken ground, unjustly so. My instinct is sure, infallible, in this domain. There are, inside the Yeshivoth, numerous, unsuspected comrades. They are waiting only for a signal, a first contact, to join us and militate with us. They are waiting only for you.”
We had met at the outskirts of Batizov, a tiny hamlet in the mountains. Chased by an unfriendly dog, we were crossing the forest together. I had not disclosed to him who I was nor whence I came; as for my destination, I knew as little about that as he did. To him I was one of those mystical vagabonds he termed the true outcasts of the earth.
“You could keep up your way of life,” he said. “You would be my double. Together we would accomplish—I was about to say miracles, but no—useful, important things. We would help our fellow-men, transform them into free and happy creatures. We would abolish slavery and injustice. We would build a new society, create a new man …”
“All that?” I exclaimed. “Aren’t you overestimating my abilities?”
“Therein lies the beauty of the revolutionary ideal. You and I must change the world. You and I—that is a lot. You think we are alone? The movement has many comrades like you and me.”
Robust, energetic, dynamic and obstinate to boot, he impressed me.
“All that is very nice,” I said, “but …”
“But what?”
“You want me to be your double? You must be joking. Did you take a good look at me?”
“Appearances, you worry about appearances.” Abrasha was annoyed. “You surprise me. More than anyone, you should know they don’t count. It’s what’s behind the appearances, right? Take them away—and what remains, tell me? Two people. Equal. We eat when we’re hungry, sleep when we’re tired; we laugh when we’re amused, right?”
“No,” I said, thinking of Kolvillàg.
“What do you mean, no! Without your beard you would be me; and I with your beard would be you.”
“No,” I said.
“All right. The beard is not enough. Add the clothes. And the upbringing. And the faith. All these may be acquired. You see? I could easily be you.”
“No,” I said. “You will never be me.”
He assumed that I was indulging in dialectics and took pleasure in beating me at my own game. Excitedly he began to use a vocabulary strange to my ears. From time to time I would catch a more or less familiar word, which then remained isolated and opaque without becoming integrated into a complete sentence or an intelligible idea. Meanwhile Abrasha spoke on and on with a fervor not unlike that of a Talmudic student grappling with a difficult text. I waited for him to calm down before I mentioned that I had understood nothing of his tirade.
“All right,” he said. He was not discouraged. “Let’s start all over. I am a communist …”
“What’s that?”
“A communist is someone who states that all peoples, all men form one big community. Do you agree with that principle? Let us continue. The communist declares that man owes it to himself to abolish evil and suffering, hunger and poverty, social injustice and war.”
“Your communist seems to take himself for the Messiah, right?”
“Why not? You want to know what communism is? Simple. It is messianism without God, just as Christianity is messianism without man.”
“Words,” I said. “You don’t make sense. A messianism without God is like bread without flour, dough without yeast, a body without life, a life without sunshine. If that is your most convincing argument …”
Nevertheless Abrasha, knowing human nature, intuitively found the right words to overcome my resistance: “You don’t understand, you can’t understand. You have lived as a recluse, preoccupied with your own salvation. And the others, what about their salvation? Those who cannot afford the luxury of a purely metaphysical struggle, those to whom a loaf of bread represents unattainable riches. Do you ever think of them? The farmers reeling under their debts, the overworked laborers, the starving children, do you happen to think about them sometimes?”
“That’s irrelevant,” I said.
“Oh, but no! Communism is precisely that: the theory of relevancy. It demonstrates that every phenomenon relates to all others and that—”
“A theory, another! I have no use for your theories! I don’t understand what they’re about!”
“You interrupt me, you listen badly and you demand that I explain to you what you don’t know. Do you think that is fair?”
“All right,” I said gruffly, “I am listening.”
But he knew better; I was in no way ready to listen. “You seem angry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I was wrong to annoy you with my philosophical riddles. A simple definition should suffice: communism is a theory for some, a dream for others …”
A dream. Changing tactics, Abrasha described it to me with childlike simplicity. A society based on justice and predicated on work, with no overlords or servants, no criminals or executioners. No man would bow to any other; no man would experience shame or fear. Finished, poverty. Abolished, terror. Down with the superstition of bigots. Long live liberty. Imagine a happy Isaiah. Imagine Jeremiah appeased. Imagine our prophets reconciled with the people and their God. That is the communist dream. Imagine our peasant brothers no longer forced to plow sixteen hours a day to make the local landowner richer. Imagine our poor less poor and less ignorant. Imagine our children less frightened and their parents less weary. Imagine Jewish men and women freed from all anguish, all threats …
Oh yes, he knew, good old Abrasha, he knew how to handle me. I became his accomplice, his brother-in-arms. Together we visited dozens and dozens of communities, outwitting police and thwarting informers, recruiting new members, training militants, extending the borders of the clandestine network from province to province, from region to region. We had our tasks divided: he took care of the working circles, I was in charge of Talmudic schools. While he distributed pamphlets and tracts among the tailors and shoemakers, the apprentices and clerks, I attended the places of worship, participated in the services, then in the studies. In the evening I would detain the best students to delve with them deeper into this complex Sugya or elucidate that obscure commentary, and soon the cell was ready to function. I don’t remember how many schools I seeded. Only once did I face danger—a rabbi, the head of a rabbinical school, caught me in the act.
It happen
ed late one night, in a mountainous village buried in snow. We were in the middle of a cell meeting. The comrades in caftan were leaning on their desks, swaying forward and backward, listening to me, concentrating on my every word as though they were attending an advanced course in Talmud. The very idea that they could consider me a sage robbed me of my usual earnestness; there was in this scene an element of the absurd. Several times I had to repress a violent urge to laugh. I quickly lost that urge, for suddenly the door opened with a bang. The police, I thought—we are lost. No, it was only the rabbi. Nevertheless we were lost. There he stood—tall and erect, fierce, personifying power and implacable will. He stared at us, and then, without uttering a word, he went from student to student, sizing them up, curling his lips, as though taking stock of the extent of the betrayal: You too, you too. Then, with one motion, he sent them all away. Like reprimanded children, they left humiliated, their heads bowed. In less than a minute we were left face to face, he and I, he and his cold anger, and I, curious, waiting for what was to come. I was somewhat intimidated but I managed not to show it.
I chose a direct, frontal attack. “My compliments,” I began. “Bravo. You are tough. You terrorize your students. They are like slaves. The same fear, the same obedience. Are you proud, proud of your power? Are you proud of crushing spirits so as to rule them? Is that your concept of Judaism?”
His eyes would not let go of mine; they were taking possession of me. Only at the price of great physical effort was I able to hold my head high. There emanated from his person such strength that he canceled my will. What was he going to do? I felt the blood rushing to my face. I was swimming in fantasy. One of us was out of place. I knew I ought to break up this strange confrontation, and disentangle myself before it was too late. But my body obeyed him, not me. I gripped my desk, knowing I was defeated, without recourse. And all this time the rabbi was not saying a word. Why was he staring so? What punishment did he have in store for me? Was he planning to hand me over to the authorities? He guessed my fears and shook his head. What was the meaning of this no? That I had nothing to fear or nothing to hope? He began to speak and the gentleness of his voice stirred me to the core.
“And so once more a stranger comes to bring us the good news: salvation is possible and its name is communism. If what he says is true, then our lives so far have been mistakes and lies. The future would matter more than the past, progress more than inherited values. Is that what he came to teach us? That in order to build the future, we must destroy the past? Or in other words, that man will continue his work of destruction until the end of time. And he dares call that a message of hope! What else does he tell us? That man is cast into the world and forgotten? That there is no eternity for him? That work is more valuable than meditation and slogans more important than prayers? That happiness negates faith, knowledge kills mystery? This is what he tells us. And he wants us to believe, this stranger, that his truth is more just than ours and his justice truer than ours. He claims to be able to explain everything, even suffering, even Jewish suffering.
“Well, if he doesn’t understand that knowledge is a mystery in itself, that a man without a past is poorer than a man without a future; if he doesn’t understand that the miracle lies not in the beauty of twilight enveloping the forest, but in the eye of man beholding and sharing that beauty. If the stranger fails to understand that, then I pity him as I would pity anyone who lived alienated from his people and from all creation. For us there can be no salvation outside the community. Yes, the stranger has just told us that in order to save man, one must annihilate the Jew in man, and that our people must disappear so that mankind may prosper. His mouth betrays his ignorance. Whoever opposes man to himself becomes his enemy; whoever opposes man-as-a-Jew to man repudiates both. If the stranger wishes to help us, let him remain in our midst. Let him eat at our table, participate in our festivities. A Jew’s place is among Jews. If the stranger agrees, I’ll see him tomorrow at study time. If not, I won’t see him again. If he decides to leave, let him leave right now; he has a long night before him.”
Thereupon, without waiting for my reaction, he left.
For one moment I was stunned. Mad thoughts whirling through my mind. Should I accept the invitation—stay, lose myself in studies and friendship, start all over? This time it was I who shook my head. I would not be tempted. I could not remain. A Na-venadnik must not remain in any one place. What had the rabbi said? That I had a long night ahead of me? Was that a threat, a blessing? I left the village with a sense of failure. I never returned.
Later, in a nearby village, I learned that Abrasha had been summoned to Moscow. I waited for his return, in vain. Much later I learned why Abrasha had not come back. A victim of the first purges, he was killed by a bullet in the neck in the name of the dream he had awakened in so many hearts. This marked the end of my activities on behalf of the revolution.
I don’t regret having believed Abrasha, nor having helped him. At my age one doesn’t regret the dreams that have carried us—and that we have carried—all over the world. They are what is left of a lifetime.
The thing is that as a child I believed that the Messiah would deliver us all from solitude. It was dark and I shivered with fright. I contemplated the stars and heard nothing but the thumping of my heart, heavy with growing fear and anticipation. Fool that I was, I was convinced that at the end of night there lay redemption. But Satan interfered and man stood by idly. Man is strange; he is waiting for the Messiah, yet it is Satan he follows.
And yet, and yet. I, an old man with one foot in the grave, persist in believing, in proclaiming that the world needs the Messiah, that men cannot survive without the hope that one day he will come to judge and free them—judge them in their freedom—so that the game may end, once and for all. He will come. Sooner or later. Oh yes, he will come, but it will not be a man—no, it will no longer be a man—who will redeem us. Mankind no longer deserves to be redeemed by God, but only by a demon, an evil angel. Man is strange—he clamors for the Messiah, yet it is death that fascinates him.
A fierce sadness closes in on the old man. Abrasha shot; his dreams murdered. So many men betrayed by so many false prophets. So many promises flouted by so many idols. And yet, and yet. He recalls his father, his comrades, his mad friend, his mad friend most of all—for it was he who had personified for him the messianic dream in all its ardor and serenity. He had never showed his truest smile, saving it for the great day; he had never sung his purest song, reserving it for the same occasion. He died, my mad friend, without knowing that the great event was not the one he had expected; it was a conflagration and not a celebration. But I do know—and what good is that? Tomorrow I shall die and my knowledge will die with me.
What then is the significance of this mute testimony deposited within me? An invisible force compels me to walk a stretch of road, my head bowed or held high, alone or at another’s side—and we call that life. I look back, and we call that conscience. Someone smiles at me and gives me his hand, and we call that love. Someone offers me his support and his complicity, and we speak of friendship. I close my eyes, and that is called questioning. And then if one finds oneself a few steps ahead, a few encounters later, at the side of the road, at the entrance to night, at the edge of the precipice, one says: That’s it, it’s over. And all the wealth of this existence, all the mystery of the I vanish in one sweep: a man has lived.
Is that why you want to put an end to your life? To prove—prove to whom?—that you are not like the others, that you withdraw from the game whenever you choose? You want to write the last act of the scenario? As for me, you see, I have no need for that sort of proof. I am older than you, but I go on. Step by step I move closer to the abyss, behaving as though death itself is part of the adventure, as though, beyond death and in spite of it, eternity exists inside me, around me, as though it were me. I eat, I sleep, I walk, I search, I read, I question the days and the nights, I answer the curious who want to know whether old age is a blessing or a
malediction and whether I am frightened at the thought of death. No, it makes me ashamed. A key word, one more: shame. If you die, I shall not feel guilty, but ashamed. I think of Kolvillàg and shame comes over me. An understandable, normal reaction. Man is incapable of imagining his own death; he imagines that of his fellow-man. The survivor resents his survival. That is why the Christians imagine their Saviour expiring on the cross. They thus situate him outside the circle of shame; he dies before the others, instead of the others. And thus the others are made to bear his shame. The Messiah, as seen by the Jews, shows greater courage; he survives all the generations, watches them disappear one after the other—and if he is late in coming, it is perhaps because he is ashamed to reveal himself.
For us, the living—therefore the survivors—the great shame is that we claim to be brothers when we are nothing but wild, solitary beasts. I could force you to accept life, but you would remain alone. I could save you from death, but not from yourself. What are you to yourself: savior or wild beast? Both perhaps? You are proud and ashamed at the same time? One does not cancel the other, I know. But then, where is the solution? I don’t know. Perhaps there is none, but what of it? Is that sufficient reason to want to die? Who says that the solution lies in death and not in the refusal of death?
When I was your age I already knew that the world was guilty and doomed; I was already convinced even then that man labored against man and that the Messiah himself was against him. Don’t you think I wanted to die? Only I couldn’t. Worse—I had no right to speak of dying.
I remember the last time I let my eyes wander over the landscape plowed by death, ruins over which a black and pestilential smoke still hovered like a network of highways encrusted in the clouds. I was leaning against an oak. I could not tear myself away. My legs were riveted to the ground, my eyes fixed on the dying embers. The fiery wind had run out of breath, and was now retreating. What was left was a devastated, ghostly cemetery. I gazed at the ashes and was overwhelmed by a feeling of solitude that has never left me. Another feeling, darker, angrier, welled up inside me: my uselessness. All right, I thought, I’ll go. You rejected me, excluded me, you chose for me. I would have come to hate you; the easiest to hate are the dead.
