All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs (61 page)

I left for Moscow in time for the High Holidays, then went on to Leningrad, Kiev, and Tbilisi. I returned transformed. I who have striven to give testimony for the dead now found myself a messenger of the living. I immediately felt close to these forgotten, tenacious Jews. I admired their capacity to resist oppression and their fidelity to their people. Having survived the massacres of the Nazi era and the Stalinist persecutions, they proclaimed their Jewishness even in the heart of the Gulag and the cellars of the NKVD and KGB. And these were not religious men and women like the Hasidim or, before them, the Marranos, who practiced and taught the Torah and its Laws in secret, risking their freedom and their lives. No, these were people who had received a secular education, and who had been part of the Communist dream.

In
The Jews of Silence
I described my experience and presented as best I could the point of view of the courageous Jews whose struggle I now shared:

My response was to tell the world of the clandestine gatherings—usually at the cemetery—where young Soviet Jews studied Hebrew and learned Israeli songs. I told of samizdat publications, those secretly printed, worn sheets one read with a virtually religious respect. I described the terror of old people in Kiev, Hasidic joy in Leningrad, the celebration of the Torah in Moscow, the jubilant crowd near the central synagogue on Arkhipova Street. If one day I appear before the celestial tribunal and am asked, “What did you do that was worthy of benevolence?” I will reply, “I was present at the dance of Jewish history in Moscow.”

On Simchat Torah, the celebration of the Torah, I stumbled like a sleepwalker through a huge crowd of young people singing and dancing. I moved from one group to another, taking in the beauty of their voices and the urgency of their appeals.

I wrote:

My attention was drawn to a lovely young woman who seemed to dominate the crowd. She was shouting, “Who are we?” and they all responded,
“Evrei
, Jews, we are Jews!” And she called out again, “Who were we yesterday?” and again they all responded, their faces flushed,
“Evrei
, Jews, we were Jews, and Jews we want to be!” It was a delirious dialogue in which all the Jews of all exiles and all times seemed to participate. At one point I found myself next to the young woman. I asked her what she knew of Judaism. “Not much,” she said. “Only what my grandparents told me.” Then why was she so determined to be Jewish? She shrugged and did not reply. But when I turned to leave her for another group, she caught me by the sleeve of my raincoat. “You asked an important question,” she said, “and I owe you an honest answer. Why do I so want to remain Jewish? Well, it’s because I love to sing.” Her answer dazzled me and I felt like embracing her. Yes, a Jew is someone who sings. He even sings a few steps from the Lyubianka Prison. And he sings when he is joyful and when he is not. A Jew is someone who turns his suffering into a song, his solitude into a chanted prayer. I thanked the young woman: “I will not forget the lesson you have just taught me.”

Years later, during extended stays in Israel in 1971 and 1972, I would go as often as possible to a remote section of Lod Airport to witness the arrival of the first Soviet Jewish immigrants. They came in on predawn flights from Vienna. I would watch the stirring reunion of the young and the old, the religious and the freethinkers. They would kneel to kiss or just touch the ancestral soil. There was weeping and laughter, hugging and silent embracing. Their joy was contagious. One morning a handsome young woman came down the passageway. She looked vaguely familiar. Then I realized who she was, but she didn’t recognize me. Probably mistaking me for an official of the Jewish Agency, she said something to me in Russian. I was about to remind her of Moscow, 1965, when suddenly a broad, lovely smile lit her face. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “imagine how much singing I’ll do now!” And for the second time I felt like taking her in my arms to thank her.

It is through song that the Jewish soul expresses itself best; it is
melody that keeps it alive when there is every reason for sadness. I am told that during the funeral of the great Yiddish theater director Solomon Mikhoels, in the middle of a Moscow winter, a violinist appeared on the roof of a nearby building and began to play Kol Nidre.

Meir Rosenne, Ephraim Tari, and Izso Rager were among the earliest and most effective advocates for Soviet Jewry and all three became my close friends. All three have had interesting careers. Meir and Ephraim were appointed ambassadors, Izso was elected mayor of Beersheba. Sometimes we meet in Paris, New York, or Jerusalem, and sooner or later the conversation always turns to the days when we were young and enthusiastic and ready for anything. We were determined to help the Jews left behind the Iron Curtain, even if we had to defy the Kremlin and all its police. We had been privileged to make the surprising discovery that with a number of notorious exceptions, even Communist Jews had remained Jewish.

A journalist friend told me that Zinoviev—Lenin’s companion and ill-fated admirer/adversary of Stalin—faced execution with the Shma Yisrael on his lips. All his life he had clung to his atheism. For a Jew to be a Communist meant repudiating his or her Jewish faith, Jewish tradition, Jewish history. And so many became resigned to integration, assimilation, and mixed marriages—anything to ensure that their children would no longer be tied to the Jewish people or to Jewish destiny. And yet …

Ilya Ehrenburg was an example. During the last years of the war, along with Vasily Grossman (author of the brilliant
Lije and Fate)
, he scoured cities and villages, gathering chronicles and testimony from survivors of the ghettos and the camps. Together they compiled an anthology of human cruelty and Jewish suffering reaching from Vilna to Minsk, Berdichev to Kiev, Kharkov to Odessa. This “black book” contained accounts one cannot read without feeling despair. It was not published because by 1945 Stalin had changed his policy toward both Germany and the Jews. The Kremlin’s spokesmen and propagandists received orders to no longer emphasize German atrocities or the calvary of their Jewish victims. Ehrenburg had to relinquish the original manuscript, and it was thought that the secret police had destroyed it, an assumption that proved not entirely correct: A single copy had been preserved and covertly transmitted to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Only twenty years after Ehrenburg’s death was it revealed that the writer himself had taken steps to protect this work of Jewish
memory. It was he who had entrusted a copy of the manuscript to a reliable friend who was to convey it to Jerusalem when the chance arose. Novelist, pamphleteer, propagandist, and Communist, if not Stalinist, Ehrenburg nevertheless had remained a Jew at heart.

My stay in the Soviet Union had brought encounter upon encounter, adventure upon adventure. I had promised everyone I spoke to that I would not forget them, that I would transmit their greetings to their uncles and cousins in Tel Aviv and Brooklyn, and most of all that I would try to be their spokesman. Though I did try my best, I was later to acknowledge that I had failed in America and France. Yes, my testimony did cause a stir, but despite the publication of excerpts of my book in
L’Express
in France and
The Saturday Evening Post
in America, the movement to support Soviet Jews remained largely lethargic. Because Arthur Cohen wanted the book to be published as soon as possible, he asked Neal Kozodoy to translate it from my
Yedioth
articles written in Hebrew.

I decided to return to the USSR about a year later. Thinking that it would be safer not to go alone, I asked my friend, the physician and poet Michel Salomon, to go with me. The KGB, it seems, was more brazen when dealing with lone travelers. Michel was doubtful: “Do you really think they’ll give you a visa after what you’ve written?” I explained that I had submitted my application before my book was published. He agreed to come along. We left from Paris, determined to keep a low profile. The first thing I saw when we deplaned was that the Israeli chargé d’affaires, David Bartov, and his wife, Esther, had come to greet us. I called out to them, and David answered in Hebrew. Michel nudged me to remind me that we were supposed to be inconspicuous. We sped through the city in David’s diplomatic vehicle. Two spacious rooms had been reserved for us at the National Hotel. That very evening the Bartovs took us to a performance by a traveling Yiddish troupe. It was an enthusiastic audience, with many young people. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. There were standing ovations for the actors. After the performance people gathered around us, asking questions about what was happening “outside” and especially in Israel. I remembered some of them from the year before. When they asked if they would see me at the synagogue, I told them nothing could keep me away, but the next day David said it was “out of the question” for me to go to services. “You’re not going anywhere except to the airport,” he said. “It’s imperative you get on the first plane for
any Western capital.” He had learned from a reliable source that the KGB had just realized that the author of
The Jews of Silence
was on Soviet soil and that I was about to be arrested. But I never like to take action based on rumors. David insisted. Childishly, I refused to listen. “It’s the eve of Yom Kippur,” I said. “Where shall I go to listen to the Kol Nidre prayer? And, anyway, how can I let down the rabbi and his congregation?” David tried in vain to reason with me. But I was stubborn: “To be in Moscow and not be at the young people’s demonstration is inconceivable.”

For security reasons, we held our discussion outdoors, in the street, and at one point David told me to look behind us. “See those two thugs pretending to be looking for an address? We know them. They’re watching you. We know that orders have been issued to arrest you on the slightest provocation. Do me a favor and get out of here.” I refused. “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you,” my friend finally said.

I went to the synagogue on Arkhipova Street. The entire embassy staff was there, and Michel went with me. At first he felt ill at ease. All those people praying, all those old women weeping, all those informers spying on foreigners. But soon he too, was drawn into the atmosphere, and the poet in him began to sing the soft evening prayers with us, celebrating the Kippur with us, in his fashion. Then came the festival of the Torah, and he was transformed. He glanced sidelong at me as I danced among the faithful with the sacred scrolls. And finally he overcame his reluctance and joined us. Michel claims to be the ultimate cynic, but I could see how moved he was as he clutched the Torah tight to his chest. He who considered himself “far from all that” was not so far after all.

My memory of that festival is as powerful as mine of the previous year’s celebration. The crowds in the street carrying torches, the collective defiance, the dances of the brave young dissidents and refuseniks—their eloquence and simplicity had their effect. “Now I understand why you love them so” was his only comment. He dedicated several elegant, bitterly lyrical poems to them.

We returned to the hotel shortly before dawn, escorted by an “adviser” to the Israeli embassy. Interestingly, though Michel was a French citizen and I an American, it was Israeli officials who saw to our security. I teased them and David, calling them paranoids who saw KGB agents everywhere. As if the secret police had nothing better to do.

I returned for morning services without Michel, who was exhausted from the night before. I felt the same soaring excitement at seeing the familiar faces again. As before, slips of paper were stuffed into my pockets: “I have an aunt in Chicago.… A relative of mine lives in Rishon Le-Zion.…” People whispered in my ear. “For the love of heaven, don’t forget us.” Or: “Tell the American Jews, the European Jews what you are seeing here.” Knowing that I was being watched, I would answer barely moving my lips, promising that I would do all they asked of me, promising to keep the faith, to come back as soon as possible, surely for next year’s High Holidays. An old man kissed my hand as though I were a rabbi. I wept.

When I got back to the hotel, my room had been searched. I wasn’t surprised. The year before I had walked in on a KGB agent rummaging through my things. He had shrugged without the slightest embarrassment, as if to say, Sorry, just doing my job. I opened the closet, checked my suitcase, the drawers, the bathroom—everything was in its place. But my notebooks had been opened, my shirts moved. Suddenly I remembered the book. I ran back to the closet, reached into the inside pocket of my raincoat—it was gone, the copy of
The Jews of Silence
I had foolishly brought along to give to a Soviet Jewish intellectual so he could let as many Jews as possible know that I had kept my promises, that I was speaking of them, for them. And now the volume was in the hands of the KGB. When I phoned David, he told me to wait there for him. I knocked on Michel’s door. After he had let me in, he whispered that his room had been searched that morning while he was at breakfast.