All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (28 page)

But knew what? The truth is there was nothing to know. I worked in an ordinary office, translating articles that had already been published elsewhere, and spent long hours in a small printshop engaged in thoroughly legal activities. I had no information on arms sales or chartered ships; I asked no questions and was privy to no rumors. In fact, after the United Nations vote there was hardly any underground activity in Palestine anyway.

But I felt privileged, important, and useful. Though I was in no danger, I thought of my situation as problematic, and somewhat heroic: militant journalist, fighter for Jewish freedom. I was very young and very enthusiastic and in search of a cause.

The choir had been dissolved and I went less and less often to Versailles. But when I did, I had to restrain myself from strutting around like a “resistance fighter,” especially in Hanna’s presence. How could I convey to her that I was worthy of her attention if not her affection, that she might be interested in what I was doing, that she ought to ask me certain questions so that I could reply that I had no right to reply? There was no need to pretend with Niny, whom I still saw in Paris. She had guessed. Did she approve? I suppose so. “Be careful,” she told me one Sunday morning, and added with a wink, “Don’t neglect your studies too much.”

I didn’t. Perhaps there is some truth to the American saying that the busier you are, the more time you have. There were Shushani and the Talmud, François and Kierkegaard, asceticism and
Zion in Kamf
. I did what I had to do. I would have liked Hanna to have noticed the toll that lack of sleep had taken, but when she looked at me it was in order not to see me. Or so I thought.

The newspaper took up more and more of my time. With Joseph’s encouragement, I got better at choosing news stories and articles to translate or adapt. I began to suggest headlines and to carry manuscripts to Gutkin’s printshop. I composed the front page and the cultural section. Week by week, I was learning the trade.

At the office Gutkin and I chatted about religion, culture, and Zionist politics. I remember Jacotte, his daughter, still young but so dynamic, impish, and tireless. I remember the linotypist named Sam, an Auschwitz survivor who worked relentlessly into the night, concerned
that every issue be worthy of its mission. His assistant, Jackie, would be the last Yiddish linotypist in Paris.

Through work I met Shlomo Friedrich, the leader of Betar, Jabotinsky’s Youth Movement. He was a tall, vigorous man with a rapid gait, a former prisoner in the Gulag. Remarkably intelligent, inventive, and inspired, he led his movement with passion and imagination. There was great kindness in his smile, and I loved his voice. Friedrich could do everything, from singing in Yiddish, Russian, and Hebrew while accompanying himself on the accordion to drafting a political agenda. When young members of his group wanted to get married, he presided over the ceremony and made sure there would be gifts. If a cantor was needed for the High Holidays, he willingly volunteered, performing the task to perfection. He spoke to government ministers as easily as to the lawyers who came to see him. I met his wife Shoshana and later his children. (I was living in New York when Shlomo died of cancer in a Paris hospital. When I heard the news, I was immensely saddened.)

The process of becoming a journalist involved attending press conferences, public meetings, and demonstrations, and offered a chance to meet such “colleagues” as Henri Bulawko. As we talked, we discovered that we had been in Auschwitz-Buna at the same time. And I met Léon Leneman, one of the first to sound the alarm for Soviet Jews. I kept learning about my new craft. I was still translating but soon I would be writing articles.

The world was in flux. Young King Michael of Romania was forced to abdicate and abandon his country to the Communists. Burma won its independence. Gandhi was assassinated, Jan Masaryk pushed to his death. British soldiers were being killed in Palestine, and so were Jews. Arab terrorists blew up the Jewish Agency building in Jerusalem: eleven dead, eighty-six wounded. In Paris people mourned the death of Antonin Artaud, the great poet who died in an insane asylum. At the time I didn’t even know his name.

Envoys from the Irgun came to the editorial offices every day. All were from Palestine and I was supposed to know only their aliases. Their commander, Élie Farshtei, was shrouded in mystery, but, after swearing me to secrecy, Joseph told me of an incident from his past. In 1946, when Élie was head of the Irgun’s intelligence service in Jerusalem, he was captured and tortured by agents of the Haganah. It seems he spent months chained to an iron cot in a kibbutz run by
Mapai (Ben-Gurion’s party). He and his aides, Aryeh and David, would often closet themselves in Josephs office. I ached to know what plans they were hatching. Military attacks? If so, against whom? A new wave of illegal immigrants? When and from what country? I was flattered when Élie Farshtei stopped by to ask whether I wasn’t working too hard, whether my studies weren’t suffering. I told him that everything was fine, and that I hoped he was pleased with my “contribution” to “Zion in Struggle.”

I remember a man called Marcel, who spoke English, which at the time I didn’t understand, as well as Hebrew. He gave the probably false impression that he was always armed. There was Zeev, who served as the link with the Irgun groups in Germany, and Saul, more professor than man of action. There was Mendel with his poet’s air. In the corridors I might have encountered a young Jewish girl from Vienna, beautiful and daring, who transported documents and provided a hiding place for guns: my future wife.

The situation in Palestine grew increasingly tense. A wave of terror swept over the Jewish communities in various Arab countries. The synagogue in Aleppo, Syria, was burned by a mob. Dozens of Jews were slaughtered in Aden. Jerusalem was besieged, and gangs loyal to the grand mufti, the pro-Hitler Haj Amin el-Husseini (former ally and protégé of Himmler), attacked Jewish villages and convoys. It would soon be May, and the day of independence. Mobilized units of the Haganah, the Palmach, the Irgun, and the Stern Gang united their efforts and their wills. It was imperative to protect every kibbutz, every settlement. The Zionist organizations in the Diaspora worked tirelessly to supply our brothers in Palestine with political and financial support. In France, and in the United States as well, we were mobilized. Young and old, rich and not so rich, all felt the fever our ancestors had known in antiquity. Representatives of all the resistance groups worked day and night, though separately, procuring arms and ammunition, raising funds, recruiting volunteers who would set out for the various fronts of the nascent Jewish state. Élie and his aides no longer found time to sleep. Out of solidarity, neither did we.

My personal circle narrowed. Kalman left for America; Israel Adler was recalled by the Haganah and was now in a training camp for volunteers, the Grand Arenas, near Marseilles. He was an officer in charge of cultural activities. My friend Nicolas informed me that, despite his love for French poetry, he planned to abandon his studies:
“Our people are fighting for our homeland. How can I stay here doing nothing.” He was going to fight. What about his parents? They would understand. “And Myriam? She loves you, you know.” He knew it and didn’t. In Versailles he had loved her madly, but now it was the other way around; he loved her a little less. No problem: she could join him in Israel and it would all work out. Whether out of a desire not to be separated from Nicolas or a pang of patriotism, I suggested we go together. I discussed the possibility with Joseph, who cleared it with his superiors. Naturally, they would have preferred that I enroll in the Irgun, but they told me to do as I pleased.

Deep down, I had reservations. Military life was not for me. The routine of training, the sergeants’ shouting, the overcrowded barracks, the dissolution of personal identity in the mass—I sensed I would find all that intolerable. And what if I died in combat? I hadn’t yet done anything with my life, had written nothing of the visions and obsessions I bore within myself, hadn’t yet shared them with anyone. Even at the newspaper all I did was translate and transmit the thought, demands, and wrath of others, the frustrations and aspirations of others, but nothing of my own, nothing of myself. My history threatened to die with me. Besides which, I felt I still belonged to the Diaspora. Nevertheless, I decided to heed the call to arms.

Nicolas and I signed up at the recruitment office on Avenue de la Grande Armée. There were so many eager volunteers that we had to stand on line. The atmosphere was one of camaraderie. People greeted one another, gossiped, passed on rumors and jokes. We were already part of the Jewish army. Everything seemed fine, except that a problem arose during the medical examination. The doctor was “displeased” with my state of health. He suggested a minor operation, not serious but necessary. “Take care of yourself,” he told me. “You’re not in good shape. Come back another time.” I didn’t feel sick, so why was the doctor trying to scare me? I envied Nicolas, who was declared “fit.” I pictured him joining Israel Adler in the south of France. He would disembark in Haifa and don the uniform of the resurrected Jewish army. He would be a warrior, a hero, unlike me.

Disappointed, in utter disarray, I went to Versailles for Shabbat. I was among the last of the “children” who still visited the home, and the old atmosphere was gone. I had the feeling they all looked at me askance and even that some were passing judgment on me. That probably included Hanna. It was what she had been doing ever since we met. At table we sang the usual songs, but my heart wasn’t in it.

I also went to Orsay, where Léon Ashkenazy (nicknamed Manitou) headed a modern (Sephardic-style) yeshiva. By then he was already a well-known and charismatic leader, his teachings a seamless poetic blend. I liked both his method and his songs. I felt a need to celebrate Shabbat by praying, singing, and studying. In Paris that was difficult. In Orsay I learned Ladino tunes and taught Hasidic songs.

At the editorial office we worked around the clock. We talked about having mounted the seventh wave, the highest of all. The Jewish state was being born, the ancient dream on the point of realization. Of all the peoples of antiquity, Israel alone had reestablished its national sovereignty in the land of its ancestors.

Then came the much-awaited day, the dawn of our dreams. It was a Friday. May 14, 1948. All the world’s radios broadcast David Ben-Gurion’s speech. In a museum in Tel Aviv, a few hours before the onset of Shabbat so as not to violate its sanctity, he read the Declaration of Independence, and as I listened, as I read and reread it, I was unable to contain my emotion. When had I last wept? It was in an almost painful state of reverence that I greeted Shabbat, the most beautiful and luminous Shabbat of my life. That day Shabbat was not an offering to Israel. That day Israel was an offering to Shabbat.

The world held its breath, suspended as it was between wonder and anguish. Would the Jewish people, realizing its ancient dream, finally change its destiny?

At nightfall I hurried to synagogue to greet the Queen of Shabbat, not so much to pray as to mingle with a living community. The service had not yet started. The elated faithful were discussing politics and strategy. An aged master in a broad-brimmed felt hat drew me aside and asked, “Do you believe in miracles now?” I told him I did. “And you will no longer deny the beneficence of heaven?” I wouldn’t. He stared hard at me, and his voice turned harsh. “Well, young man,” he said, “you’re satisfied with very little. You forgive and forget too fast.” But I needed this turning point, or at least this sign. “No,” the master exclaimed, full of scorn. “Though I have no right to reject salvation that comes too late, I cannot call it salvation, for we paid too dearly. A true, redemptive salvation would have had to have come sooner.” He began to pray, his teeth clenched, while in Israel, despite inferior numbers and insufficient weaponry, they were already fighting as in the days of the Maccabees. To lose would mean the end of a dream, the end of Eretz Israel. (I recalled this conversation often when
visiting Israel. Israel as recompense for the Holocaust is a far too expedient explanation, one that borders on blasphemy. The two experiences have in common only the people who lived them.)

Public opinion was favorable to the newborn Jewish state. Truman and Stalin vied for the honor of being first to recognize its existence de facto and de jure. The French press dispatched its best reporters and most prestigious commentators. I envied them. War correspondent—what I would have given for that title. Insofar as “Zion in Struggle” needed my services, it was in Paris, as an ordinary journalist-copyboy-editor-messenger.

I therefore lived the historic events from a distance, vicariously: Israel at war, Israel greeting its repatriated children from distant camps and prisons, Israel structuring its government. I read the wire-service dispatches, compared political reports and military analyses, underscored particularly significant images, listed especially striking expressions. I learned to associate names and events: the death of Abdelkader Husseini near Kastel; the attack on Deir Yassin (whose bloody details we did not yet know); the fall of Kfar Etzion; the massacre of a convoy of doctors. I “accompanied” the glorious units of the Palmach as they fought to open the road to Jerusalem and of Brigade 7, famous for its victories in the south. I shouted for joy when the Irgun conquered Jaffa, applauded when Menachem Begin proclaimed his commitment to democracy by creating a new political party, Herut, which succeeded the Irgun, whose officers and soldiers were integrated into Tsahal, the Israel Defense Force. I screamed with rage and sadness when I learned of the surrender of the Old City. And then, in June, I was finally given the right to publish an article of my own, a fictional commentary on the incomprehensible tragedy of the
Altalena
, which aroused fury even more than pain at
Zion in Kamf
, for we considered it not only a tragedy but a crime—namely, murder and treason.

After the declaration of independence, Tsahal absorbed all the underground movements on national soil, except in Jerusalem, which was internationalized by the UN and where the Irgun and Lehi preserved their autonomous infrastructures, bases, and commands. The Irgun, short of men and matériel, chartered a ship, the
Altalena
, that carried about a thousand refugees from displaced persons camps and enough arms and ammunition (donated by the French government) to equip all its own units and others besides. But this initiative posed a
twofold problem. On the one hand, it violated the embargo decreed by the UN; on the other, there was Prime Minister Ben-Gurion’s fear (whether real, imaginary, or politically useful) that the detested Irgun commanders might attempt a coup d’état. The prime minister’s entourage claimed the two camps had not reached an agreement, while Begins swore they had. The Irgun’s argument: If we were planning a coup, would we have informed the government of the date of the ship’s arrival? Subsequent testimony from many witnesses confirmed that there had indeed been negotiations about the distribution of the arms. The talks failed either because of the provisional government’s fear of being condemned for violating the UN embargo, or because of Ben-Gurion’s unconfessed desire to liquidate the separate armies of the Irgun, the Lehi, and especially the Palmach.