Elie Wiesel (6 page)

Elhanan never again recited the kiddush from memory.

When he told Tamar about it, Malkiel could not erase the image of his father’s crumpled face: “You can’t imagine what he looked like. You would have thought he was a child who had misbehaved or a lost old man. He didn’t understand what was happening to him. For him, forgetting the kiddush is like forgetting my mother’s smile, or yours.”

Another incident. Tamar was in California, and Malkiel took his father to Carnegie Hall. The soloist played divinely, people said; in his hands the violin sang. Eyes shut tight, the artist withdrew from everything but the piece he was playing. He seemed to be flowing through a universe of sound where fragmented melodies fled, sought one another, flowed together, tore themselves apart in order to say what the soul had been trying to tell us in its own language for an eternity: of its pain, its first and last yearning.

“Bravo! Encore!” shouted an enthusiastic, almost hysterical audience. “A triumph,” wrote the
Post’s
critic. “He has surpassed himself,” his colleague on the
Times
prudently agreed.

The young violinist let the audience plead, and finally reappeared for a short, light encore, demonstrating that his virtuosity was varied if not unlimited. Again the house gave him a standing ovation.

Malkiel was thinking he must mention this in his piece about the musician. He had a passion for music but had not come to this concert in the capacity of music critic. Personal curiosity or professional obligation toward the readers
of his obituary page? He had to meet personalities of whom he would one day write. Sometimes while he was watching someone important, he would find himself thinking of his death. Not tonight. Tonight he was carried away by the artist’s contained violence and dizzying perfection. “Did you like it?” he asked his father.

“Very much.”

Outside Carnegie Hall, jostled by the crowd, they headed for Seventh Avenue, where the usual traffic jam blessed pedestrians with a pleasant feeling of revenge. How lucky I am not to own a car, Malkiel thought. “Are we walking?” Malkiel asked.

“Why not,” said Elhanan. “It’s a perfect, mild April evening.”

Suddenly Elhanan stopped. Someone had called his name. He turned. A middle-aged gentleman approached him, hand outstretched. “Did you enjoy it, Professor Rosenbaum?” Elhanan said, “Yes, it was great.” The man chattered on, and Malkiel noticed that his father was upset. Back in the apartment, Elhanan explained: “I know that man, but I can’t remember his name.”

“A colleague, maybe?”

“Maybe. I just don’t know. All I know is that I know him, or rather I used to know him. While he was talking I identified him, but I couldn’t dredge up his name. Brauer? Saftig? I had the strange feeling that it had simply vanished from my brain. Some ruthless criminal hand had snatched away my memory. I knew certain things without remembering them. Didn’t you notice me trying to lead the conversation so he’d tell me his name? One single haunting question lashed my mind: Who is this man? My thoughts scattered, and roamed through my entire past. Nothing. I felt a sharp pain in my head. The phrase ‘my head is bursting’
became real to me. At that moment the man’s identity seemed a more important question to me, more essential than all the metaphysical problems of all the world’s philosophers put together. I felt real panic.… Wait! I remember. His name is Rubinstein, Sender Rubinstein! He teaches mathematics at Hunter College. His people were Belgian.”

“There! You see? You were wrong to be upset.”

“You can’t imagine what it was like, Malkiel. I was afraid of falling into a bottomless well, where the laughter of the Tempter was waiting for me.…”

And that, too, alas, was to happen. It was decreed on high that Elhanan ben Malkiel would be spared nothing.

In his moments of lucidity, which would later become increasingly rare and painful, he suggested an explanation of what was happening to him: “I am a guilty man. That is why I am being punished. Like Abuya’s heretical sons, I gazed when I should not have gazed and turned my eyes away when I should not have. I saw a sin committed … a crime.… I could have, I should have, done something, called out, shouted, struck a blow. I forgot our precepts, our laws, that require an individual to struggle against evil wherever it appears. I forgot that we can never simply remain spectators, we have no right to stand aside, to keep silent, to let the victim fight the aggressor alone. I forgot so many things that day.… That is why I am forgetting other things now. Can there be anything worse than that?”

Yes, there was worse, there is worse: to forget that one has forgotten.

Malkiel was jumpy, out of breath, couldn’t sit still.

Elhanan asked, “You won a Pulitzer Prize?”

Malkiel handed him an AP story. They were in the living room. Elhanan was in his armchair near the window, loosening his necktie. He was worn out, dissatisfied with the hour of therapy he had just administered. A couple of survivors, childless. They were very much in love, and that was why they wanted to separate. Each was suffering for himself and the other at the same time, and the load was too heavy.

“The OSI—the Office of Special Investigation—has turned up a former SS man who supervised the liquidation of the ghetto in Feherfalu. His trial starts next week. Tamar’s going to cover the story, and I want to go there. It should be a big story. How about coming with me?”

Elhanan rubbed his brow with his hand, as if considering the matter closely.

“Why are you hesitating?” Malkiel pressed him. “Don’t you care about learning how your own town—and mine—prepared for death?”

“I already know that,” Elhanan said without looking up.

“But that SS man may tell us something you don’t know!”

Elhanan was not persuaded. “I’ll read about it in the
Times.
”

Malkiel was surprised. His father was fascinated by Jewish history and insisted on keeping up with everything that touched on Jewish life, and therefore on Jewish death. Why was he now so recalcitrant? “I don’t understand your reluctance,” Malkiel said.

“It’s complicated,” Elhanan answered. “Reading stories about the catastrophe is one thing; meeting one of the criminals is another. Do you want to know the truth? I’m afraid. I’m afraid to see him. Afraid he’ll see me.”

Later Malkiel would realize that his father was afraid of something else too.…

With Tamar’s help, Malkiel finally prevailed. Elhanan
found a substitute for his classes and accompanied them to the federal courthouse. Rain mixed with snow caused gridlock that morning. Schoolboys laughed their way to school; their mothers called out, “Be careful! Button your coat!” People in the street slogged forward without looking left or right.

The courtroom was full. Television, radio, the print media: all the stars were there. Yet the defendant’s life was not at stake, only his American citizenship. The prosecutor was trying to prove that the former SS man lied when he applied for a visa. If the defendant was worried, he didn’t show it. His immediate problem was to dodge cameras and blinding flashbulbs.

An order rang out. The spectators rose. Judge Hoffberger warned the public to keep order and to refrain from emotional outbursts. Anyone disturbing the proceedings would be immediately ejected.

Sitting bolt upright and motionless, Elhanan listened intently. His eyes never left the defendant, a bald, puny specimen in an oversize gray suit. A twitch twisted his lips. His gaze was furtive, his hands nervous.

“He doesn’t look like one,” Malkiel whispered to his father.

“One what?”

“Murderer. Or rather monster.”

There followed an exchange between prosecutor and defense attorney bearing on the identity of the defendant, who, upon arriving in the United States, had changed his name and falsified his age. The defense attorney claimed such alterations were common practice here. The prosecutor did not deny that, but …

The parade of witnesses began. The defendant watched them out of the corner of his eye. His lips tight and his eyelids
drooping, he listened for flaws in their testimony. Often he pulled his attorney’s sleeve and whispered into his ear.

PROSECUTOR
: Your name, address and profession?

WITNESS
: Jacob. Jacob Neimann. Butcher. Kosher butcher, course. Sixteenth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street, Brooklyn.

PROSECUTOR
: Place of birth?

WITNESS
: Romania.

PROSECUTOR
: Where in Romania?

WITNESS
: In a small town that reverted to Hungary in 1941. Feherfalu. The white village.

PROSECUTOR
: How long did you live there?

WITNESS
: Until the end.

PROSECUTOR
: Until the end of what?

WITNESS
: Until the deportation.

PROSECUTOR
: And when was that?

WITNESS
: In May 1944.

PROSECUTOR
: Do you remember the exact date?

WITNESS
: May 17.

PROSECUTOR
: And where were you on May 17?

WITNESS
: In the ghetto.

PROSECUTOR
: How long had you been in the ghetto?

WITNESS
: Since Passover. They drove us into the ghetto a week after Passover.

PROSECUTOR
: Who are they?

WITNESS
: The Germans.

PROSECUTOR
: How many Germans were there?

WITNESS
: I don’t know.… Not many. After all, they had the Hungarian police to help them.

PROSECUTOR
: But who gave the order for the deportation? The Hungarian police or the Germans?

WITNESS
: The Germans, of course. They were the masters. The Hungarians only followed their orders.

PROSECUTOR
: Look at the defendant.

WITNESS
: I’m looking at him.

PROSECUTOR
: Do you recognize him?

WITNESS
: I recognize him.

PROSECUTOR
: Who is he?

WITNESS
: Captain Hans Hochmeier of the SS.

PROSECUTOR
: Are you sure of that?

WITNESS
: Absolutely.

PROSECUTOR
: You saw him in your town?

WITNESS
: I saw him more than once.

PROSECUTOR
: Under what circumstances?

WITNESS
: The night before the first transport left, he came to inspect the ghetto.

PROSECUTOR
: Was he alone?

WITNESS
: He was accompanied by several officers, SS and Hungarian.

PROSECUTOR
: And then?

WITNESS
: After that he came back every day. He always had a riding crop in his hand. He inspected the deportees gathering in the courtyard of the synagogue. Then he went down to see them off at the station.

PROSECUTOR
: He saw them off, and never spoke?

WITNESS
: Oh yes, he spoke. He ordered the Hungarian police to be harder on us. To be crueler. They made us lighten or empty our knapsacks. Then they herded us into the freight cars and slugged us as we went.

PROSECUTOR
: Are you sure it was because of him that the police were cruel?

WITNESS
: He gave the orders.

PROSECUTOR
: Was he himself cruel? I mean, did you yourself witness an act of brutality on his part?

WITNESS
: Yes. At the station, a Jewish doctor approached him to report serious worries—there were three sick people
in the boxcar; they needed room.… The captain listened and then struck him. The doctor fell to the ground. The SS captain kicked him until the doctor couldn’t stand up and had to be carried onto the boxcar. The captain beat the men who were carrying him.

PROSECUTOR
: You witnessed this yourself?

WITNESS
: I was there. I was on the last transport. I saw it all.

Reporters were scribbling notes, the audience was holding its breath. The judge, somewhat remote, gazed upon prosecutor and witness in turn but seemed unaware of the audience. Elhanan had never felt more present, or more absent. His face hardened when the defense attorney cross-examined the witness; it betrayed pain and anger at the same time.

DEFENSE
: Mr. Neimann, you seem to have a good memory. Am I right?

WITNESS
: I believe I’ve always had a good memory.

DEFENSE
: I congratulate you. If only all witnesses were as gifted as you … In this connection, May 17 remains vivid in your memory, does it not?

WITNESS
: Yes.

DEFENSE
: You rose early that day?

WITNESS
: At dawn. To say my prayers. Dress. Get ready to leave.

DEFENSE
: Your family also? Up early?

WITNESS
: The whole ghetto—or what was left of it—rose at dawn.

DEFENSE
: What day of the week was that?

WITNESS
: A Sunday. Yes, Sunday.

DEFENSE
: You’re sure of that?

WITNESS
: Yes … I think so.

DEFENSE
: Then you’re not positive.

WITNESS
: Yes, I’m sure.… I think.

The lawyer broke off to consult his documents and, without raising his eyes, asked a deceptively casual question of the witness.

DEFENSE
: What was the name of this SS captain in your village?

WITNESS
: I told you before. Hans Hochmeier.

DEFENSE
: You’re sure?

WITNESS
: Yes.

DEFENSE
: Absolutely?

WITNESS
: Yes … yes.

DEFENSE
: Not Rauchmeier?

WITNESS
: N-no. Hochmeier.

DEFENSE
: How do you spell that?

WITNESS
: Just like it’s pronounced.