Daniel Stein, Interpreter

17. 1963, Haifa

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ETTER FROM

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ANIEL

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TEIN TO

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ŁADYSŁAW

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LECH

Dear Władek,

Let me try to explain what is going on. The picture I had in my mind of the country I so loved from afar bore absolutely no relation to reality. I have found here nothing of what I expected, but what I have seen has greatly exceeded my expectations. I came to Israel as a Jew and a Christian. Israel has welcomed me as a war hero, but does not accept me as a Jew. My Christianity is the touchstone for my people. All the years I have been here, I have been reluctant to write to you about the long saga of my lawsuit, but everything has finally come to a conclusion and I will summarize what it was all about.

My difficulties with the immigration service began the moment I arrived at the port of Haifa. I considered that I had the right to come to Israel under the Law of Return, which was framed to enable Jews to come and settle in Israel no matter where they had been living before the state was created. For this purpose a Jew was defined as anyone born of a Jewish mother who considered himself a Jew. The young official when he saw my soutane and cross furrowed his brow and concluded I was a Christian. I confirmed this dreadful surmise and compounded his misery by informing him that by profession I was a Catholic priest and by nationality a Jew. A whole conclave of customs and immigration sages assembled who, after much disputation, put a line through the box for ethnicity.

This was the beginning of an epic which developed into a seemingly endless three-year lawsuit and reached its culmination a month ago. I lost. It was a ridiculous waste of time. I asked permission from my superiors at Stella Maris, they asked their superiors, and I was allowed to appeal to the Supreme Court of Israel. I then had to raise money for the legal fees. Everybody tried to talk me out of it but, as you know, I am stubborn. The other side proved even more stubborn. They have not granted me citizenship as a Jew but have promised it by naturalization. I will shortly become an Israeli citizen but will have no right to call myself a Jew in Israel. If I go to Poland or Germany everybody accepts that I am a Jew. Not the State of Israel. My certificate reads, “Nationality not established.” I did pretty much come out on top in my struggles against the Gestapo and the NKVD, but suffered ignominious defeat at the hands of Israel’s bureaucrats.

You are bound to wonder why I made such a fuss about this. Władek, I was thinking about the Jewish Christians who will come to this country after me. You cannot imagine what a hullabaloo there has been around this lawsuit. Judges and rabbis have fallen out over it, which was not at all my intention.

I would like Jewish Christians, and there are not a few of them in the world, to be able to return to Israel and restore the Church of St. James, the Jerusalem community whose origins lie in the Last Supper of the Master and his disciples, which all Christians venerate. So far I’m not succeeding too well. We have, nevertheless, a small group of Catholics, mainly Poles, which includes several baptized Jews. We meet in an Arab church, where our brothers allow us to celebrate Mass on Sunday evenings after their own service.

I’m very grateful for the magazines and have to admit that you are my only source of news about the Church. Our monastery lives outside of time and recent Catholic publications are rarely available. Instead the library is full of the kind of literature I am not very keen on, although sometimes it can be interesting. You do not write about the state of the Pater’s health. Has he had his operation?

Brotherly greetings,

Daniel

18. 1959–83, Boston

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ROM

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SAAK

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ANTMAN’S NOTES

I have come across an Israeli newspaper with an item which took me back in memory to events which occurred 20 years ago. In the spring of 1945 Esther and I emigrated on the very first train out of Belorussia to Poland. A young Jew was traveling with us, Dieter Stein, who had played a crucial part in saving some of those in the Emsk ghetto. In other words, it was he who had saved our lives. We knew nothing about him at first beyond the fact that Stein had helped us in some way, been arrested and sentenced by the Germans to be shot, but had escaped. We were told there were “Wanted” posters with his portrait in the towns. A considerable reward was offered for his capture.

We met him later when he turned up in Durov’s brigade. They very nearly shot him, too, but fortunately I had just been brought to the brigade to operate on a wounded partisan. Because I was there and able to vouch for him I managed to save the life of the man who had saved mine.

All the details of our train conversation two years later have quite gone from my mind. He gave the impression of being a somewhat exalted young man. He was talking about entering a Catholic monastery, but in those years to be unbalanced was the norm. Genuinely normal people were the first to die. Survivors were the few individuals endowed with exceptional toughmindedness and a certain insensitivity. Highly strung people were ill-equipped to get through the ordeal. If I had been a psychiatrist I would have written a research paper about psychological adaptation in the extreme conditions of a partisan camp. Actually, that would have comprised only one section of a major study about prisons and camps. It is a book which should be written and no doubt someday will be, but not by me. I hope others will write it.

The mental adaptations I observed in this young man served a noble purpose, and no doubt originated in a refusal to accept the kind of actions he had observed. This rejection motivated him to withdraw to a monastery. It was an escapist impulse.

Over the following years I lost track of Dieter Stein and, although I maintained contact with one or two people, it was sporadic. Most of the “partisan” Jews who survived ended up in Israel or, less frequently, in America, but they were all “am haaretz.” very simple country people, and I’m not so sentimental as to want to meet them more frequently than once in ten years.

To come back to the monk, Dieter Stein. Even after I moved to America, I always read the Israeli newspapers, and in 1960 or so discovered they were full of photographs of him. He had evidently gone to live in Israel, entered the Stella Maris Monastery on Mount Carmel, and promptly started a lawsuit against the State of Israel, demanding that he should be granted Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return.

The newspaper commentaries accompanying this news were fairly surprising and I could feel that the issue had brought hidden tensions to the surface. Stein was an unusual instance of a war hero who had achieved something extraordinary, but who had also to explain having served in the Gestapo, which in itself is considered a crime. To cap it all, Stein was a Roman Catholic priest, a Christian.

Living in Israel, I had been fully aware of the extent to which the country’s unity and identity were defined by shared opposition to the surrounding Arab world. A theme, which could be heard in the articles and which people usually prefer not to articulate, is that the very existence of Israel is predicated on permanent resistance to Arab hostility. In addition, Jews profoundly believe that the Catastrophe which befell them ripened in the bowels of Christian civilization and was perpetrated by Christians. The Nazi state separated itself from the Church, and many Christians not only did not approve of the murder of Jews but indeed saved their lives. Nevertheless, there is no escaping the fact that for 2,000 years official Christianity, although supposedly guided by precepts of Christian love, harbored an undying hatred of the Jews. Accordingly, Stein’s adoption of Christianity was regarded by many Jews as renegacy and betrayal of his national religion.

Stein, for his part, was claiming his right to Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return which grants it to anybody who considers himself a Jew and was born of a Jewish mother. Stein was turned down without being given any reason and then appealed to the Supreme Court.

The legal issue was that he was granted citizenship not under the Law of Return but through naturalization. He was demanding recognition of his Jewishness, and entry of the word “Jew” in the box on the form for “Ethnicity,” in full accordance with Jewish law or Halacha.

All this prompts one to reflect that secular and religious laws should be more clearly separated, and that there is a disjunction between theocratic ideals and the democratic arrangements of the modern state.

We left Israel before the Stein lawsuit began and I simply lost sight of him. The lawsuit went on for several years and yesterday I read in an Israeli newspaper that Stein had finally lost. That seems to me the height of idiocy. Here is one Catholic who actually wants to be a Jew, so why stop him?

It would be interesting to know whether the situation is analogous on the Christian side, and whether Stein is persona grata with the Catholics.

19. February 1964, Jerusalem

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ILDA

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NGEL TO

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ATHER

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ANIEL

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TEIN

Dear Father Daniel,

You probably don’t remember me. My name is Hilda Engel. We met in a kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley where I was working and learning Hebrew. You brought a group and stayed overnight in the kibbutz hotel. I cooked for your group. People usually remember me because I am taller than anybody else. I should say immediately that I am writing because I want to work with you. I have thought a great deal about what you said after supper when we were all together in the dining room. It was just what I was looking for.

I did not write at once because I knew that without appropriate training I would not be much use to you. I took a parish workers’ course in Munich for priests’ assistants and Church social workers and came back to Israel. At present I am working at the Catholic Mission in Jerusalem, but I’m little better than a filing clerk and that is not what I had in mind in wanting so eagerly to return to Israel.

I know a lot about you, of course, while you know nothing about me, and since we shall be working together in the future, I want to tell you all about myself now. That is very important.

My family comes from the Eastern territories. To this day the estate of my great-grandfather is falling apart near Schwedt, not far from the border with Poland. He was a rich, eminent man with a political career. During the Third Reich my grandfather was a general and a member of the Nazi Party. He was a military specialist, a scholar even. At all events, I know he was involved in the German missile programme. I bear my father’s surname and for a long time did not even know the surname of my grandfather. My mother never told me anything. My father died on the Eastern front in 1944 and after the war my mother emigrated to West Germany, married my stepfather, and I have three stepbrothers. I am on good terms with one of them but the other two are complete strangers to me, as is my stepfather. I know nothing about his past. He is a salesman and not very interesting. I spent the whole of my childhood not asking questions. In my family nobody ever talks about anything. They were afraid of questions, afraid of answers. We were most comfortable with silence. On Sundays we were taken to church, but even there we didn’t talk to anyone. In the early 1950s my stepfather bought a big house in a small town on the banks of Lake Starnberg near Munich. A lot of people living there did not want to talk about their past. When I was 14, I came upon The Diary of Anne Frank. I had known before then about the extermination of the Jews. I had half heard certain things but my heart had been unmoved. That book broke my heart. I could tell it was best not to ask my mother about it, and that is when I began to read.

Later I did nevertheless ask her what our family did to save Jews. My mother said her life had been so hard during the war she had had no time to worry about Jews, and anyway, at that time she had known nothing about the concentration camps or gas chambers. I went to the town library and found a great many books and films there. More than that, I discovered there had been a vast extermination camp, Dachau, not far from Munich. What most shocked me was that people lived there, slept, ate, laughed—and it wasn’t a problem for them!

My mother’s cousin came from Schwedt to pay us a visit and I heard from her that my grandfather had committed suicide one week before Germany surrendered. She also told me my grandfather’s name. If he had not shot himself, he would probably have been hanged as a war criminal. It was then I realized I wanted to dedicate my life to helping the Jews. Of course, the historical guilt of the Germans is immense, and as a German I share it. I want to work now for the State of Israel.

I am a Catholic, was a member of a Catholic children’s group, and when I applied for the Church training course, I was immediately given a reference. Now I have completed it, finished my fieldwork with problem children, and have been working in a hospice for three months. I don’t have much experience but am willing to learn. I also have some knowledge of bookkeeping and speak Hebrew reasonably well. I thought it best not to try to write to you in Hebrew because I did not want you to receive a letter with mistakes, and it is in any case much easier for me to express my thoughts in German.

I am 20 years old, in good health, and can work both with children and elderly people. I am not well educated and at one time thought of going to university, but that no longer seems to me to be necessary.

I look forward to hearing from you and can come to Haifa immediately to start work with you.

Yours sincerely,

Hilda Engel

March 1964, Haifa

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ANIEL

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ILDA

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NGEL

Dear Hilda,

You wrote to me in German but I am replying in Hebrew, which will be good practice for you. You wrote me a very good letter which I fully understood. I would be glad to work with you but we have only a small congregation and no money for paying a salary, so how could you afford to live here? I myself live in a monastery, but you would need to rent a flat. So I think it best, when you are free at the Mission, for you to come any time to Haifa for a service, to meet our congregation and spend time with them. During the service we usually spend a few hours together, have a simple meal, sometimes read the Gospel together, and then talk about a variety of things. Give me a call when you intend to come and I will meet you at the bus station because otherwise you won’t be able to find us. It’s not a simple matter.

The Lord be with you.

Brother Daniel.

I prefer that form of address, is that okay?

May 1964, Jerusalem

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ROM

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ILDA

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NGEL TO

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ANIEL

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TEIN

Dear Brother Daniel,

My mother always said that my stubbornness would break down walls. I wrote to our board in Munich, then rang them up two or three times, and now they have promised to try to transfer my post of pastoral assistant from Jerusalem to Haifa. I mentioned that I have learnt Hebrew, but I don’t know Arabic and that makes it difficult for me to communicate with the local Catholics who are all Arabs. They promised to reply promptly, but need a letter from you to say that you really do need me at your church. The address to write to is below, and then in a month’s time I will be in Haifa. Hurray!

Hilda

Oh, by the way, I rang my mother and told her that now I would be working as an assistant to the priest in a Jewish church and she said I was mad. She thinks I have decided to work in a synagogue! I did not try to explain. Let her go on thinking that.

June 1964, Haifa

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ROM

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ROTHER

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ANIEL TO

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ILDA

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NGEL

My dear child,

You forgot half your belongings: a sweater, one shoe (were you wearing the other or did you bring a spare pair?), your Hebrew textbook, and a very badly written detective novel in English. Having piled them all together, I decided that being a pastoral assistant is your true vocation.

With love,

Brother D.

20. November 1990, Freiburg

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ROM A TALK BY

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ROTHER

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ANIEL

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TEIN TO SCHOOLCHILDREN

We know that today many Christians do not conduct services together because they split in the past over theological disagreements. The Church, which at one time was united, divided into three main churches: Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. There are, however, many other smaller churches, some with only a few hundred members, which nevertheless have no liturgical relations with other Christians. They do not pray together or conduct services jointly. Among Christians such splits, or schisms, have sometimes been very violent, even leading to religious wars.

The Jews also experienced a schism of this kind in the late eighteenth century. Two tendencies arose at that time, the Hassidim and the traditionalists, or Mitnagdim. They did not recognize each other, although they never got round to waging war on each other either. The Jews living in Poland belonged in the main to the Hassidic tendency, while Wilno, as Vilnius was called at that time, remained a traditionalist city. The Hassidim were mystics who would lapse into prayerful ecstasy. They set great store by study of the Kabbalah and expected the Messiah to come soon. This latter belief makes the Hassidim resemble a number of Christian sects.

For the past two centuries Vilnius was the capital of Jews of the traditionalist tendency. To this day the differences between these trends are of interest only to practicing Jews. The Nazis took no interest whatsoever in such subtleties, and set themselves the task of exterminating all Jews, Hassidim, Mitnagdim, and nonbelievers alike. It was ethnic genocide.

When we young Jews from the Polish periphery reached Vilnius in December 1939, we found not only a great city in a European state but also the capital city of western Jewry. It was often referred to then as the “Lithuanian Jerusalem,” and Jews made up almost half the population.

At the time of our arrival, Vilnius had been ceded under the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to Lithuania, and the Lithuanians promptly started expelling Poles. There was a brief period of Lithuanian independence. We believed our dream of reaching Palestine was about to come true. Little did we realize we had fallen into a trap which would shortly snap shut. In June 1940, Lithuania was occupied by the Red Army and within a month and a half had become part of the Soviet Union. In June 1941, Vilnius was taken over by Wehrmacht troops. There was no way we could have foreseen such a turn of events.

We really liked Vilnius. We climbed Mount Gediminas, strolled through the Jewish quarters, and walked along the embankments. The city had a smell of its own, with a suggestion of smoke from wood-burning stoves. There was almost no coal and it was thanks to that we were able to find work. The first winter we earned our living by chopping firewood and taking it around the apartments and to the upper stories of the houses in Vilnius.

A number of Jewish organizations were still functioning in the town, including Zionist ones, and we immediately got in touch with them. You needed a special certificate to be allowed to emigrate to Palestine. They were issued free of charge if you were under the age of eighteen, so for my brother, who was sixteen, the chances of emigrating were quite reasonable. As I was already eighteen, mine were very low.

We had to keep body and soul together somehow while we waited for a certificate, and organized a kibbutz, a commune where everybody works together and nobody has a personal income, like a monastery. We moved to a fairly spacious house where each group had its own room. The only girl among us did the housework and all the rest of us went out to work. The work was sometimes very hard. At first I worked together with all the others as a woodcutter, and then I was invited to become an apprentice cobbler. The cobbler was very poor, with lots of children, and I spent almost the whole day with him. After work I stayed behind with the children and helped them with their homework. I learned how to be a shoemaker and to this day mend my own sandals.

We managed to get in touch with our parents through the Red Cross and wrote to them. After we parted they had gone back home but immediately been resettled to another part of Poland. The Red Cross forwarded the letters. Our parents were last seen alive by our cousins. For a time they all lived together in a small Jewish shtetl, but after that there was no more news. We do not know exactly in which of the death camps they were killed.

In the last letter from our mother to reach us, she begged us under no circumstances to separate, but separate we did. My brother obtained the certificate to emigrate to Palestine and made his way there by a very dangerous route, via Moscow and Istanbul. That was in January 1941 and it was a very sad parting. We did not know if we would ever meet again.

After my brother’s departure there were dramatic developments. On twenty-second of June 1941 the Russo-German war began. An hour after war was declared the bombing began, and three days later the Russians surrendered the city.

By then we had left and gone some sixty kilometers before finding we were in German-occupied territory.

We returned to Vilnius and heard distressing facts. On the day the Red Army abandoned Vilnius, Lithuanian gangs spontaneously organized themselves and began murdering Jews, even before the city was taken by the Germans. Later, large numbers of Lithuanians joined German execution units.

Anti-Jewish laws came into force: confiscation of property, prohibition of appearing in public places, prohibition of walking on the pavement. Finally, it was made compulsory to wear the Star of David as a distinguishing mark. Arrests began.

At that time I was so naive that I could not believe the Germans had a policy of systematically exterminating Jews. I had been brought up to respect German culture and argued with my friends, trying to persuade them that individual acts of violence and abuse were just a result of the general disorder. I simply could not believe it. Everything that was going on seemed an absurd mistake. I kept saying, “That’s impossible! Don’t believe the slanders! The Germans will soon restore order!” We had yet to see the reality of German order!

They began rounding up Jews in the streets of the city and people disappeared. There were rumors of shootings. I completely refused to believe what I was seeing.

All the Zionist organizations still in the city were disbanded. We could forget Palestine. I decided to find my parents through the Red Cross and make my way to join them. On the way to the Red Cross center I was caught in one of the hunts for Jews and arrested.

From that first detention on thirteenth of July 1941 until the end of the war I faced death every day. There were many occasions when it might have seemed that I should have died, and yet every time I was miraculously saved. If a person can get used to miracles, I got used to them during the war. In July 1941 the miracles in my life were only beginning.

What do people mean when they talk of a miracle? Something nobody has ever seen before, which has never happened before? Something beyond the limits of our experience, which is contrary to common sense, which is so improbable or happens so rarely that there are no living eyewitnesses of such an event? If it suddenly snowed in Vilnius in the middle of July, would that be a miracle?

On the basis of my own experience I can say that the defining characteristic of a miracle is that it is performed by God. Does that mean miracles do not happen to nonbelievers? No. The way a nonbeliever thinks means that he will explain a miracle by natural causes, the theory of probability, or as an exception to the rule. For a believing person a miracle is intervention by God in the natural course of events, and the mind of a believer rejoices and is filled with gratitude when a miracle occurs.

I have never been an atheist. I began consciously praying when I was eight, and I asked God to send me someone who would teach me the truth. I imagined this teacher would be handsome, educated, and have a long moustache, rather like the president of Poland at the time. I never did meet such a teacher with a moustache, but for a long time the One whom I met and whom I call my Teacher talked to me precisely in the language of miracles. Before learning to understand this language, you had first to learn its alphabet. I started thinking about that after the first roundup when I and my friend were seized in the street.

The group of Jews who had been arrested were taken from the police station to chop firewood for a German bakery. For the first time in my life I saw two German soldiers beat a young man almost to death for chopping logs badly. My friend and I were barely able to drag him to the courtyard of the Lukiszki Prison, to which we were marched after a long day’s work. The courtyard was crammed with Jews, all men. They took all our possessions and documents and questioned us. When they asked what my training was I wondered whether to say I was a woodcutter or a cobbler but decided on the spur of the moment that I was a better cobbler than a woodcutter and answered accordingly. At that moment a miracle occurred. The officer shouted, “Hey, give Stein his belongings and documents back!”

I was taken to the stairs and a few others were brought, all of them cobblers. Cobblers, as we later discovered, were needed by the Gestapo because they had confiscated a large warehouse of leather from Jewish traders. The local German authorities decided to put it to good use, not sending it to Germany but using it to make boots for themselves. Of the one thousand people detained in that swoop, only twelve were cobblers. I was told later that all the others were shot, but I refused to believe it.

There was so much leather that the work lasted a long time. For the first six weeks they did not let us leave the prison, but then they gave us a pass with a Gestapo stamp and sent us home. We had to return each day to the prison workshop to make boots.

One day when I was going back home, a peasant offered me a lift on his cart. I did not realize at the time that my meeting this man, his name was Bolesław Rokicki, was itself another miracle. We know how many people have killing on their conscience, but he was one of those who saved lives. I understood very little at that time.

Bolesław lived on a farmstead two kilometers from Ponary. He told me some thirty thousand Jews had already been buried in the antitank ditches dug by the Red Army before it retreated. Mass shooting was going on around the clock. Again I refused to believe it.

Bolesław offered to let me move to his small farm, which he thought would be the safest place for me.

“You don’t look like a Jew, you speak Polish like a Pole. You don’t have ‘Jew’ written all over you. You can just say you’re Polish.”

I declined. I had a German pass with a stamp saying I was working as a cobbler for the Gestapo and thought that was sufficient protection.

A few days later, on my way back from work, I was again rounded up. The street was blocked and all the Jews in the crowd were forced into an inner courtyard, a dead end built of stone and with only one entrance through heavy metal gates. The roundup was being conducted by Lithuanian security guards in Nazi uniform and they were exceptionally brutal. They were unarmed but had heavy wooden truncheons and they made good use of them. I went to a Lithuanian officer, handed him my ID, and told him who I worked for. He tore up my precious pass and slapped me in the face.

All the Jews were herded into the courtyard and the gate was locked. The houses around the courtyard were empty, their inhabitants having already been expelled. Some people tried to hide in empty apartments, others went down to the cellars. I decided to hide, too, and found a cellar. Many houses in Vilnius had compartments in their cellars for storing vegetables. In the darkness I found a door but it was locked. I prized the planks apart and squeezed in. Instead of vegetables the little room was piled with old furniture. I hid there.

A few hours later trucks arrived. I heard orders shouted in German, and then Germans with torches appeared and started searching.

It was like a game of hide and seek, except that you would only lose once. Light fell on me through the cracks in the planks.

I heard a voice say, “The door here’s padlocked. There’s nobody else. Let’s go,” and the torch beam disappeared.

“Look though, there’s a gap in the planks,” someone replied.

I had never before prayed so hard to God.

“Are you joking? A child couldn’t squeeze through that.”

They left. I sat for an hour and then another in total silence. I had to get out somehow. My German document issued by the Gestapo had been torn up by that Lithuanian officer and all I had now was my school ID card issued in 1939. It gave no indication of nationality, only the name Dieter Stein, an ordinary German name. I tore the yellow star off my sleeve and decided my Jewish self would be left behind in the cellar. The person emerging would be a German and would behave like a German. No, a Pole. My father was German and my mother Polish, that would be best. And they had both died.

I went up and out to the courtyard where dawn was already breaking. I pressed against the walls of the houses like a cat and crept to the gate. It was locked and mounted so close to the stonework there was no way I could squeeze through the crack. The stones were laid close together and you would need a tool to prize them out. I had that tool: a small cobbler’s claw hammer! Everybody had been searched as we came into the courtyard but the hammer in my boot had been overlooked. “It’s a miracle,” I thought, “another miracle.”

It took fifteen minutes for me to chip out two small stones. There was only a small space but it was big enough for me. Even now, as you can see, I’m not a big person, and in those days I did not weigh even fifty kilograms. I squeezed through the gap and found myself out in the street.

It was early morning. A completely drunk German soldier came staggering around the corner surrounded by small boys who were taunting him. I asked him in German where he was going and he held out a piece of paper with the address of his hotel. I sent the boys packing and hauled him there. He was muttering something barely audible, but from his rambling I gathered that he had been involved that night in a massacre of Jews.

I must behave like a German, no, a Pole I thought, and said nothing.

“One and a half thousand, can you believe it, one and a half thousand.” He stopped and began retching. “I don’t like them, but why should I have to do this? I’m a linotype operator, a linotype operator. The Jews are nothing to do with me.”

He did not look like he had enjoyed shooting people.

I got him to the hotel at last. It would never have occurred to anyone that a drunken German soldier was being helped back home by a Jew. That same evening I sought out Bolesław’s farm. He was very welcoming. Two Russian prisoners-of-war who had escaped from their prison camp were already in hiding there, and a Jewish woman with a child.

That night, lying in the boxroom after a good meal, wearing clean clothes and, most importantly, feeling safe, I was filled with gratitude to God who had gone to such pains to rescue me from these traps.

I fell asleep rapidly, but was wakened a few hours later by bursts of gunfire coming from the direction of Ponary. I now no longer had any doubt what was going on there. Much of what I was to encounter is unacceptable to any normal human mind, and what was being enacted just a few kilometers away was even more unbelievable than any miracle. I had personal experience of miracles as expressions of a benign supernatural will, but what I now experienced was an agonizing sense that the supreme laws of life were being violated and a supernatural evil was being perpetrated which ran counter to the fundamental order of the world.

I lived on Bolesław’s farm for several months, working in the fields with other hired workers, but in mid-October the Germans issued a law imposing the death penalty on anyone who hid Jews.

I did not want to endanger Bolesław and decided to leave. An opportunity soon arose when the local vet, who had come to deliver a calf, suggested I should move to Belorussia. His brother lived in a place so remote that no Germans had even been seen there.

The day came for me to take to the road. I was very frightened and thought as I walked along that I would not survive unless I could conquer my fear. My fear would betray me. It was a fear of being a Jew, of looking like a Jew. I decided I must stop being a Jew and become the same as the Poles and Belorussians. My outward appearance was fairly neutral, and in any case, I had no way of changing it. The only thing I could change was my behavior. I must behave like everybody else.

The road was full of German cars. From time to time men would hail them, and sometimes they would get a lift. Women were afraid of hailing anybody and preferred to walk. I overcame my fear and hailed a German truck, which stopped. Two days later I reached the remote Belorussian village which was my destination.

Except that the Germans had not overlooked it. The week before I got there all the Jews had been shot. The largest building in the village housed the school, which had had to make room now for a police station. In one place there was a store for clothing which had been taken off people while they were still alive, or removed from them after they were killed.

Most of the police were Belorussians. There were fewer Poles because around one and a half million of them were deported from the eastern regions to Russia in 1940 and early 1941.

I went to the police station the next day to obtain a permit to live in the village and was seen by the police secretary who was a Pole. My cover story about my parents aroused no suspicions. My school card was my only identification document and could not be faulted. It gave no indication of ethnicity and Polish really was my first language. I now received documents confirming that my father was German and my mother Polish which conferred the right to become a Volksdeutscher, an ethnic German, a privilege of which I did not avail myself. Knowing German was to prove sufficient.

Thus I became legal. At first I earned my keep by shoemaking and was paid not in cash but in food. Later I was invited to become the school cleaner and given a small room next to the one occupied by the chief of police. My duties included cleaning, cutting firewood, and keeping the stoves alight. Soon, teaching German to the pupils was added to my duties.

When the cold weather arrived, I had no warm clothing and the police secretary, who was in charge of the store, invited me to choose some new clothing. I had a dreadful feeling when he opened the door and I saw the piles of clothing which belonged to Jews the Germans had killed. I was frightened even to touch them. What should I do? I prayed and mentally thanked my murdered kinsmen. I took a worn sheepskin coat and several other items. There was no telling how long I myself might be fated to wear these clothes.

When German authorities came, I was summoned to translate for them. This was worrying, because I knew very well I should keep as far away from Germans as possible. On one occasion the district police chief, Ivan Semyonovich, arrived at the police station. The Belorussian Auxiliary Police of the German Gendarmerie in the Occupied Territories was a Belorussian organization subordinate to the Germans, and its chief had a bad reputation as a brutal drunk. He was accompanied by some German high-up and I was asked to translate. That evening Semyonovich summoned me and invited me to work for him as his personal translator and German teacher.

I had no wish to work for the police and had just one night to come to a decision. The very thought of a Jew collaborating with the police was appalling, but even then it occurred to me that if I did work for Semyonovich, I would probably be able to save the lives of at least some of those the police were hunting, to do something at least for people in need of help. The Belorussians were a very poor and downtrodden people fearful of anyone in authority, and were impressed even by such a paltry post as interpreter in the Belorussian police. The job would give me influence.

I agreed to work for Semyonovich and, oddly enough, felt a sense of relief that I could now be useful to the local people and those in need of help. Many simply did not understand what was required of them, which led to their being punished. That opportunity of mediating gave me back a sense of self-respect, and it was only by doing something for other people that I could salve my conscience and retain my integrity. From the instant I started my new job I understood that the least slip could be fatal.

I began acting as an interpreter between the German gendarmerie, the Belorussian police, and the local populace. I shed the last trace of my Jewish legacy, the clothing from the police store, and now wore a black police uniform with a gray collar and cuffs, breeches, boots, and a black peaked cap which did not, however, sport a skull and crossbones. I was even issued a pistol. SS units wore a black uniform and ours differed only in having a gray collar and cuffs.

I thus became in effect a German policeman with the rank of Unteroffizier. I entered military service with the rank my father had risen to when he retired. Nobody could have foreseen such a quirk of fate. It was December 1941, I was nineteen, I was alive, and that was a miracle.

21. June 1965, Haifa

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ULLETIN BOARD IN THE VESTIBULE OF THE

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ATHOLIC

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HURCH OF THE

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ORMITION OF THE

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OLY

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ARY IN

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AIFA

(Notices in Hebrew and Polish.)

Dear parishioners,

On 15 June at 7 pm there will be a reception for representatives of the American organization Jews for Jesus.

Hilda

Dear parishioners,

A family outing is being organized to Tabgha on the Feast of Peter and Paul. Meet outside the church at 7 am.

Hilda

Dear parishioners,

Our newly organized old people’s home needs a heater, a camp bed, and several large saucepans.

Hilda

Dear parishioners,

Study and reading of Holy Scripture are canceled because Brother Daniel is away. Instead Professor Chaim Artman of the University of Jerusalem will visit us and talk about Biblical archaeology. Very interesting.

Hilda

Children’s bunk bed available. If anybody needs it, please see Hilda.

Children’s hour—drawing.

Hilda

22. 1964, Haifa

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ETTER FROM

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ANIEL

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TEIN TO

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ŁADYSŁAW

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LECH

Dear Brother,

Apologies for the delay in replying to your letter and for not thanking you for sending the magazines. Thank you very much, although unfortunately I have not read them yet. The trouble is that I have found myself in the thick of quite different problems, far removed from issues of theory and theology. We have long known, of course, that theological controversies are invariably a reflection of the circumstances of the Church and of the people who comprise it. The people around me can hardly even be characterized as a congregation in the traditional sense, and confront me with entirely different issues. Working in Poland, I was dealing with Polish Catholics who had been brought up in a certain tradition within the framework of their national culture. What I observe here is nothing like that. While recognizing the catholicity of the Church, we sometimes forget that in practical terms we are always dealing with ethnic religion. The Christian ambience which has evolved in Israel is highly diverse. There is a multiplicity of Churches, all with their own traditions and outlooks: even Catholicism is present here in a wide variety of forms. Besides my brother Carmelites, I find myself talking to an assortment of Maronites, Melchites, and many other Christian organizations, many of them monastic “Little Brothers of Jesus” and “Little Sisters of Jesus.” each branch with its special characteristics and insight. There are pro-Palestine and pro-Israel ‘little brothers and sisters,’ and these have their own particular areas of contention. One such Jerusalem Brotherhood was even closed recently because it proved too difficult to live among the Arabs without sharing their hatred of Jews. I make no mention of the various Orthodox churches which are also unable to agree among themselves. The Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is at loggerheads with the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, and so on ad infinitum. I won’t even attempt to take in the whole picture.

As a parish priest I constantly encounter problems within my own small community. Polish women and their children, Hungarians, Romanians, individual people who were unable to live their lives in their homeland but who remain loyal to the traditions of their homeland find the process of cultural assimilation in their adopted country very trying. Jewish Catholics, no matter which part of the world they live in, do not generally feel at ease there, but mine are especially uneasy.

Here, in Israel, in this Babel of nationalities, I have seen for myself that in practice a priest works not with individuals in a vacuum but with representatives of a particular people, each of which evidently has its own, national path to Christ. The result is that in the minds of that people there appears an Italian Christ, a Polish Christ, a Greek Christ, a Russian Christ.

My mission here in this land, among the people to which I belong, is to seek the Jewish Christ. There is no need to labor the point that He, in whose name St. Paul declared earthly nationality, social distinctions, and even gender to count for nothing, was, as a matter of historical fact, a Jew.

I have made the acquaintance of a young Ethiopian bishop. He said something important: “Africans cannot accept European Christianity. The Church lives within its own nationality, and you cannot impose the Roman interpretation on everybody. King David danced before the throne, and the African is ready to dance. We are more ancient than the Roman Church. We want to be as we are. I studied in Rome, and prayed for many years in Roman churches, but my black-skinned parishioners have not had that experience. Why must I demand that they renounce their nature? Why must I insist that they become the Roman Church? The Church should not be so centralized. Universalism is in delegated freedom!”

In this I agree with him. The Ethiopian Church formed before the split into Eastern and Western Christianity. Why should it concern itself with the problems which arose after that?

I can share that point of view, not as an Ethiopian but as a Jew. In Poland that would never have occurred to me. You know, in Belorussia, among the Germans, I wanted to seem to be a German, in Poland I was almost a Pole, but here in Israel it is as plain as can be that I am a Jew.

Something else: while I was showing Mount Carmel to two seminarists from Rome, we wandered into a Druse settlement and, higher up the hill, came upon a derelict church. Two monks once lived in a hovel adjacent to it but there is nobody there now. It isn’t obvious whom to ask for permission. I got my parishioners together and we set to tidying it up, clearing away all the rubbish and litter. We placed 12 stones for an altar. Of course, a great deal of money would be needed before it would be fit for holding services, but in the meantime I have written to the local authorities asking for permission to restore the church.

By the way, I have been granted Israeli citizenship, but not at all as I would have wished. I have been naturalized on the grounds of having been resident here, but they have not registered me as a Jew. I think I may have told you about this already. After I lost my lawsuit the law was amended, so that now a Jew is defined as somebody born of a Jewish mother, who considers himself a Jew, and has not converted to another religion. I have only succeeded in making matters worse than they were. Now on entering Israel an immigrant has to declare which faith he professes, and Jewish Christians can be refused citizenship.

The entry in my identification document reads, “Nationality not established”!

Dear Władek, there is a great deal of work to do here, so much that I sometimes have no time to think. Why has the Lord arranged my life this way? When I was young I hid from the Germans for a whole year and a half with nuns in a ruined monastery, not daring to poke my nose outside. I had more time for reflection than I had thoughts to fill it. Now I constantly feel a lack of that “empty” time. There is no time for reading either, but in that respect I have a request. If you should come across the works of the English biblical scholar Harold H. Rowley, not The Relevance of Apocalyptic but his old book about the faith of Israel, please send it. I found a mention of it, but without a bibliographical reference.

It has long been understood that Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” was mere rhetoric, but the question “What is faith?” is not rhetoric but essential for living. There are too many people in the world who believe in rules, candles, sculptures, and other bits of this and that. They believe in interesting people and peculiar ideas. Perhaps it is just as foolish to seek there for meaning as for truth, but I would like faith, which is the personal secret of each one of us, to be stripped of the husk and the clutter, down to the wholesome, indivisible grain. It is one thing to believe, and another to know, but most important of all is to know what you believe.

Your Brother in Christ,

Daniel.

23. January 1964

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EWSPAPERS

On 4 December 1963 Pope Paul VI announced his intention of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

He made no mention of the State of Israel, but instead used the word “Palestine,” which of itself shows Paul VI’s attitude to the Jewish people and their state.

In Jerusalem the Pope’s decision has caused consternation. The customary prior consent when a head of state visits has not been sought. Press reaction has been hostile to a perceived slight. Doctor Herzl Rosenblum writes in a lead in Yedioth Ahronoth, “It is astounding that no attempt was made to inform us, that our ambassador to Rome learned of the decision of the Holy See from the newspapers, while members of the government heard about it on the radio.”

The Italian Information Agency has declared on behalf of the Vatican that the visit is of a purely religious nature and in no way implies recognition of the State of Israel.

The Vatican has announced that on 4 January 1964, Paul VI’s plane will land at Rabat-Ammon Airport in Jordan. From the Jordanian capital “His Holiness” will proceed in his limousine to the Old Town (Jerusalem) where he will spend the night in the Vatican Mission. The following day Paul VI will cross the border to Israel. He will visit Galilee and Nazareth, proceed to the Jewish part of Jerusalem, ascend Mount Zion, and then return to the Old Town through the Mandelbaum Gate.

On the third day of his visit the Pope will visit Beit Lechem and will then return to Rabat-Ammon, from where he will fly back to the Vatican.

A desolate stretch of road between Jenin and Meggido has been chosen as the venue where the head of the Catholic Church and the leaders of the State of Israel will meet. It is an ordinary place on the map which testifies eloquently to the state of war in which our country finds itself.

Maariv wrote that Paul VI’s choice of Meggido for the meeting had hidden implications. “Is there really nobody out there conversant with the Book of Revelation? It is explicitly stated there that at the End of Days a battle will take place at Meggido between Good and Evil (the forces of the Antichrist). Are we really going to meet the Pope there and, moreover, with a full government turnout? In recent weeks the Vatican has repeatedly declared that it does not recognize the existence of the State of Israel.

This is the spot Paul VI has chosen to meet the leaders of the Jewish state, on a ruined road nobody has traveled along since 1948.”

A ministerial commission recommended raising no objection to the Pontiff’s wishes and organizing a ceremony at Meggido. It was decided that President Zalman Shazar, Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim, and several ministers would go to Meggido. This was given a chilly reception by the Israeli public.

Dr. Zerach Warhaftig, a member of the commission, expressed the view that since the visit was of a purely religious nature, neither the president nor the members of the government should be in any hurry to pay their respects to “His Holiness.” That could perfectly well be taken care of by officials from the Ministry of Religions.

In the midst of the preparations for this exceedingly important event the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rav Yitzhak Nissim, announced that he would not be going to Meggido. There was an almighty scandal. Everybody promptly forgot about controversy over the president’s attendance. The Chief Rabbi refuses to go along with the government’s decision and nobody can change his mind. Rav Yitzhak’s refusal has become a hot topic for the world’s mass media. The Pope’s pilgrimage was been pushed off the front pages and now all the talk is about a standoff between the head of the Catholic Church and the rabbi, which is, of course, being presented as a confrontation between Catholicism and the Jewish world.

Rafael Pines, Special correspondent

REPORT ON THE VISIT OF POPE PAUL VI TO ISRAEL

Pope Paul VI spent just 11 hours on the territory of Israel, from 09.40 on 5 January 1964 until 20.50 on the same day. The Pontiff entered Israel via the Jenin-Meggido Highway and left through the Mandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem.

The previous day he flew from Rome to Rabat-Ammon, from where he traveled to Jerusalem. The Jordanians exploited the Pope’s visit for a barrage of furious anti-Semitic propaganda. In the Old Town crowds of people turned out to meet the Pope and the police had difficulty in controlling the pressure. The Pontiff almost got crushed. His reception in Israel was fairly cool. In Nazareth 30,000 people gathered in the streets of the city, but little excitement was evident in Jerusalem.

The formal meeting in Meggido was attended by the President of Israel, Zalman Shazar; Prime Minister Levi Eshkol; his deputy Abba Eban; the Minister for Religious Affairs, Zerach Warhaftig; the Chairman of the Knesset, Kadish Luz; and the Minister of Police, Bechor-Shalom Shitrit. Golda Meir broke her leg the day before, so was unable to see the Pontiff, whom she “adores.” Anybody expecting the Pope to mention the State of Israel was sadly mistaken. Although government representatives tirelessly repeated that the visit was of a purely religious nature, they emphasized that Paul VI’s visit was of great significance for the state. Eleven hours after arriving, the Pope gave a farewell speech in which he first thanked the “authorities” and said he would never forget his visit to the Holy Places. He also noted that “the Church loves all,” but then, like a bolt from the blue, the Pope referred to Pius XII. “My predecessor, the great Pius XII, did everything he could during the last war to succor the persecuted irrespective of their origins. Today we hear voices which accuse this holy man of sins. We declare that these accusations could not be more unjust. His memory is sacred for us.” (Who was Pius XII? It was in large measure with the connivance of this “holy” man that 6 million Jews died. He did not raise a finger to try to save them. He had only to say a single word! How many lives could have been saved!) Even Catholics were outraged by Paul VI’s claims. The very mention of the anti-Semitic pope’s name in Jerusalem was, at best, tactless. From on board the aircraft the Pontiff sent telegrams expressing gratitude to all who had received him. He addressed King Hussein of Jordan with his full title, added his thanks to “our beloved people of Jordan.” The pilgrim did not give Israel the same treatment. His telegram began, “To President Shazar, Tel Aviv.” Not Jerusalem. God forbid.

From our own correspondent, Ariel Givat

24. July 1964, Haifa

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ETTER TO THE

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RIOR OF THE

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ARMEL

Your Grace,

I have to inform you that last month I received distressing information regarding the reaction of one of the brothers of our house to the meeting of the Pontiff with a group of political leaders in Meggido. I refer to Brother Daniel Stein who transferred to our monastery from Poland in 1959. There was a great need at that time for a Polish-speaking priest to conduct services and pastoral work among the Polish-speaking population of Haifa. Brother Daniel copes successfully with his duties and all comments from the parishioners are extremely positive, which is more than could be said of his predecessor.

After receiving an appeal from one of our brothers, I summoned Brother Daniel Stein for an exhortatory talk. He informed me of his viewpoint on certain issues of Church policy, which can be summarized as follows:

1. Brother D. believes that a Jewish Christian community should be reestablished in the land of Israel.(!)

2. Brother D. believes that the contemporary Catholic Church, having broken with the Jewish tradition, has been severed from its roots and is in a diseased state.

3. Brother D. believes that this “disease” can be healed only by “de-Latinizing” the Church and inculturating Christianity into local cultures.

I drew his attention to the ecclesiastical discipline to which he is obliged to adhere in his service, about which he agreed with me only in part and stated that conducting services in Hebrew, something he is attempting to effect, does not contradict any church directives.

Not feeling sufficiently competent to reach any decision in this matter, I consider it my duty to convey to you the gist of our talk. I attach with this letter the primary document on the basis of which the present talk was conducted.

With profound respect

Brother N. Sarimente

Abbot of the Stella Maris Monastery

June 1964

Reverend Father,

I consider it a duty of my monastic obedience to tell you about impermissible things being said by our fellow monk, Brother Daniel Stein, which he has been indulging in for a long time in respect of the position of the Holy See.

In the past D. Stein has made statements saying he disagrees with the Church’s policy in the Middle East. He has declared that the Vatican not recognizing the State of Israel is a mistake and a continuation of the Church’s policy of anti-Semitism. He has allowed himself to make a number of specific statements condemning the position of Pope Pius XII during the years of Nazism and blaming him for not opposing, the extermination of the Jews during the war. He has also expressed himself to the effect that the Vatican is engaging in political intrigue in favor of the Arabs because it is afraid of the Arab world. Brother Daniel is a Jew and has pro-Israel views and I think that is because of his origins and that partly explains his position.

However, his comments on the most important event of recent times of the visit of His Holiness to the Middle East and His Holiness’s historic meeting with Israeli state leaders on the Jenin-Meggido highway amount to condemning the Church’s position, which I find very upsetting and which I cannot but bring to your attention. His views appear not altogether to correspond with the opinions accepted within our Order.

Brother Elijah

August 1964

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ROM THE

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ARMEL

Your Eminence, dear Brother General!

I am forwarding to you a number of documents relating to the presence and activities in the Stella Maris Monastery of the priest Daniel Stein. May you perhaps consider it expedient to forward these documents to the competent departments of the Roman Curia?

I had a talk with Father Stein and invited him to put in writing his views regarding the conducting of services in Hebrew. I do not presume to reach a decision without your recommendations.

Prior of the Lebanese Province of the Order of Barefoot Brothers of the Most Holy Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel

25. 1996, Galilee, Moshav Nof a-Galil

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ROM A TAPE-RECORDED CONVERSATION BETWEEN

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CASSETTE 3

AVIGDOR. Well, Ewa, what can I tell you about Daniel’s life in the monastery? In the first place, I have never been there. You went there, you know better than I do how everything stands in that place.

EWA. I didn’t see much. They wouldn’t let me through the door. They don’t allow women in. They only once admitted Golda Meir. Nobody wanted to talk to me. They said the abbot wasn’t in, and his secretary, a Greek, didn’t speak English. He just waved his arms at me as if to say, “No, no!”

AVIGDOR. If you remind me, I will show you a letter I received from one of our friends in Akiva shortly after the war. I have kept it. It speaks about the beginning of his monastic life, back in Poland. Why did you not ask him about it?

EWA. At the time, he was asking me the questions. Anyway, we were talking about other matters.

AVIGDOR. That’s quite right, he did not like talking about himself. He was like a partisan: if he didn’t feel it was necessary to say something, he didn’t give anything away. Five years must have passed before I realized how difficult he was finding life in the monastery. A great deal depended on the abbot, you see. If the abbot was a tolerant, broad-minded person, sensible relations were possible, but abbots change. Every three years, I think it is. They changed many times during the years he lived at Stella Maris. Just short of forty years Daniel lived in that place.

One abbot, as I recall, positively hated him. I do not know what the other monks there do or how they live, but they all live in the monastery and hardly ever go outside. None of them can speak Hebrew. If one of the monks fell ill and had to go to hospital, Daniel always went along as the interpreter. Without him they could do nothing that involved the world outside. And then there was the car. You see, soon after he arrived he bought a motor scooter, a Vespa, and started haring all over the country. Then he bought a car. That was after he had started earning money as a tour guide.

First he had a completely beat up Mazda, then a little antediluvian Ford. You can imagine how I viewed all this from the wings. There were perhaps twelve or fifteen monks living there. Daniel would get up at four in the morning to pray. What the rest of them do I don’t know, I suppose they work in the orchard. There is a marvelous orchard there and a small vineyard. Daniel never worked in the orchard. He would leave after morning prayers. From the very beginning he became a kind of social worker. He was a priest only in name! You see, the truth of the matter is that he should have been a doctor or a teacher. He would have made a very good doctor. He was probably a good monk. Absolutely everything he did, he did honestly and conscientiously, but the local monks were a different kettle of fish. For them he was an outsider, in the first place because he was Jewish. There was one monk living there who would not even speak to him. He spent his whole life in the same monastery and to the day he died he never talked to Daniel. Daniel would laugh about it. He would take him to visit the doctor and the monk would say nothing and look away. It was a difficult situation for him. But you know what he was like. He never complained, only gently laughed at himself.

And what about his parish? What kind of parishioners did he have? They were adrift, people displaced from their homes, mostly Catholic women who had married Jews. Some were ill, some were crazy, with children who were completely disorientated. Please don’t think I don’t know how difficult it is for a non-Jew to live in Israel. It is extremely difficult. Before Daniel came, the priest was an Irishman and the parishioners just wanted to get rid of him because he was a real anti-Semite. All these local Catholic women were linked to Jews by ties of kinship. One of Daniel’s parishioners had saved her husband’s life. He had lived in a cellar for a year and a half and every night she brought him food, took away his chamber pot, all this under the nose of the Germans. And that priest told this extraordinarily brave woman, “You have just spawned a lot of Jewish brats!” In the end, the Irishman was transferred to a Greek island where nobody knew anything about Jews and everyone was happy. Daniel, though, was sent to Haifa, to the Catholics here. During his first years, he conducted the service in Polish, but then to the Poles were gradually added Hungarians, Russians, Romanians. He had all sorts, speaking all sorts of languages. All the new arrivals were learning Hebrew, finding out how to travel around, how much to pay for bread. Gradually their common language for communicating became Hebrew, and after a few years Daniel began conducting the service in Hebrew. Almost all his parishioners were penniless, incapable of real work, all having babies and living on social welfare.

I came to Israel in 1941 and within three days I had a job. In the same place as I am now. At first, of course, I was just an assistant technician, but the thought of social welfare never entered my head! All those parishioners of his, though, were helpless and hopeless. My brother became a social worker. He filled out forms for them. He got them into schools, and their children too.

Then there were the tourist groups. At first there were Church delegations, Italian Catholics, German. He took them everywhere. Then it was non-Catholic groups which came, just plain tourists, and they wanted him to show them the Holy places. He knew Israel better than I do. I haven’t traveled around the country much. Where would I find the time? I had my work, my children, but he knew every bush here, every byway. Especially in Galilee. He made money that way. Part of it he gave to the monastery and part he spent on his parishioners. My elder daughter always said, “Our uncle is a real manager. He can organize anything.” He set up a school for newly arrived children, and a children’s home, and an almshouse. He bought a community center for the parish.

EWA. Why didn’t he leave the monastery?

AVIGDOR. I think because he was a soldier! He was like a soldier doing his duty. There was a strict discipline there. He always went back to stay overnight in the monastery. In the morning he would leave, but he was always back before midnight. I don’t know what use the monastery was to him. I told him long ago he should come and stay with us, especially later after the children had left. We already had this house, a big house. There were just Milka and I here. He could at least have enjoyed a bowl of homemade soup! But he wouldn’t hear of it.

People wrote denunciations against him. I had one sad little paper here for a long time which Daniel brought. He was summoned one time by the abbot and given a notice to attend the Office of the Prime Minister. Daniel came and showed it to us, wondering what it was all about. This was after his court case. All that fuss in the press seemed to have died down. I looked at the paper and the address there was not the Prime Minister’s Office at all but the Israel Security Agency, Shin Bet. Something along the lines of your CIA. I told him not to go. He sat there, said nothing, scratching behind his ear. He did that when he was thinking.

“No,” he said. “I shall go. I’ve been dealing with these services the whole of my life. I worked in the police, and I was in the partisans. By the way, I have two medals, one with Lenin on it and one with Stalin. I even worked for the NKVD for a couple of months before I ran away.”

I was amazed. He had never told me about the NKVD before. He told me that when the Russians entered Belorussia, they first awarded him a medal but then he was summoned to the NKVD. One officer interrogated him while another took notes and a third just sat there listening. When and where was he born, who were his father and mother, his grandfather and grandmother, who had he sat next to at school, who was his neighbor to the right, to the left. He gave them the answers and then they repeated the questions for a second time, then for a third: when, where, mother, father. Then they said, “Help us and we will help you.” “I told them, ‘I don’t need your help, but what can I do for you?’” “Help us to make sense of the secretariat where you worked in Emsk. Everything is in German. We need to trawl through it and find their agents.”

Daniel wanted only to get away from the lot of them. He had already decided to become a monk but knew they wouldn’t just release him, so he agreed to translate everything they needed, all those Gestapo documents. They took him to Emsk, to the very house he had escaped from, back to that very table, except that now he was working under a Russian captain instead of a German, and now there were two lieutenants, one Russian, one Belorussian. They provided him with a uniform and gave him the right to eat in the same canteen he had sat in with the Belorussian police. The work was exactly the same only everything he had previously translated from Belorussian into German he now translated into Russian. He had not the slightest doubt that as soon as it had all been translated, they would arrest him. A couple of months passed until a day came when the captain was called to Minsk and the Russian lieutenant went with him, leaving the Belorussian in charge.

My brother was a highly intelligent man. He thought carefully and went to the lieutenant to ask for leave. He told him, “I have done all the work as agreed. I have family in Grodno and want to visit them. Give me a few days’ leave.” The Belorussian lieutenant felt very competitive toward Daniel. He was afraid Daniel might get his job because of his knowledge of foreign languages, so he thought it over and said, “I don’t have the necessary authority to grant you leave, but if you go to visit your relatives I can personally know nothing about it.” He didn’t say straight out, “You can go absent without leave,” but that was more or less what he implied. At that, Daniel escaped, for the last time as far as I know, from the secret services.

Now he was being called in by his own, Israeli, secret service. What should he do? I told him not to go. I said, “You have a perfect right not to, and moreover you are a monk. You shouldn’t go. That’s it.” Daniel finished scratching his ear and said, “No, I shall go. This is my country. I am a citizen here,” so he went.

He came back three days later. I asked him how he had got on and he laughed. “In the first place,” he said, “All these captains are as alike as peas in a pod. They asked exactly the same questions: when and where were you born, who were your father and mother, your grandfather and grandmother, who did you go to school with, who was on the right, who was on the left? I told him and he asked all the same questions again. And for a third time. It seems they all go to the same academy!”

He told it so amusingly, Ewa, although there didn’t seem much to laugh about. Then he was asked whether he wanted to help his country. Daniel said he was always glad to help his country. The captain got excited and asked him to pass on information about his parishioners. He said that there were bound to be one or two agents sent by Russia among them.

EWA. What are you saying, Avigdor! I can’t believe it!

AVIGDOR. What is so impossible, Ewa? All sorts of things go on! You think there were no agents? There were dozens. Here from Russia, there from us. All over the place. Everybody knows how many British intelligence services there were here. After all, this is the Middle East. Do you think that, living here in a village, I don’t know anything about politics? I know no less than Daniel, even though he read all the foreign newspapers.

Anyway, what happened then was that he refused. He told the captain, “I have a professional duty and a professional duty of secrecy. If I detect a threat to the state, I will think what to do about it, but so far I haven’t encountered that situation.”

Then the captain said, “Perhaps we can do something to help you? We respect you, know about what you did in the war, and your medals. Perhaps you have some problems we can help you to resolve?” “Yes,” Daniel said, “I have left my car in a paid parking place. It will cost three lirot. Perhaps you could reimburse me.”

That is how the story ended.

EWA. What year was that?

AVIGDOR. I don’t remember exactly. I remember he said lirot, so it must have been before 1980.

26. August 1965, Haifa

L

ETTER FROM

D

ANIEL

S

TEIN TO

W

ŁADYSŁAW

K

LECH

Dear Brother,

Thank you for the books. I have just received the parcel. Unfortunately, at the moment I have no time at all for reading, or even to reply properly to your letter. I therefore promise to write a long letter with “explanations.” You were right in intuiting that a certain internal process began shortly after I arrived in Israel and a great many of my old views were shaken. This is a country of incredibly intense living, social, political, and spiritual—a word I don’t care for because I don’t accept the distinction between life on a higher and lower, a spiritual and a material plane. I would formulate the question which so agitated me after my arrival in Israel as: what was the faith of our Master? The issue is not what he preached, but what precisely he believed in. That is what is of supreme interest to me. I can’t promise to write to you with my thoughts on this matter in the immediate future, but will not fail to do so eventually.

I send you my best wishes on this festival of the Transfiguration. I served Mass on the top of Mount Tabor yesterday. There are two temples there, one Catholic and one Orthodox, and and they have railings fencing them off from each other. We found a place on the mountain slope slightly below the summit. I believe it was the very spot where the apostles fell to the ground blinded by their vision. Then we prayed. There were two Anglican women and several Orthodox in addition to my regular parishioners. It was a great joy.

I even dreamed about that rusty railing separating those two churches. It is dividing Peter from Paul, and in such a place! I couldn’t stop thinking about it and, since pondering matters at great length is not my style because I am quite impulsive, I have already written a petition to the Latin Patriarch seeking permission to create here in Haifa a Christian union of all the denominations for communal prayer. I am also turning over in my mind the possibility of a common liturgy. If we work toward that, we could see it during our lifetime. I am not mad. I am well aware how many obstacles there are on that path, but if God wills it, it will come to pass.

With brotherly love,

Your Daniel

1 March 2006, Moscow

L

ETTER FROM

L

UDMILA

U

LITSKAYA TO

E

LENA

K

OSTIOUKOVITCH

Dear Lyalya,

I have something unexpected to tell you. Back in November, in Vollezele, with a telephone which had been cut off, a computer which didn’t work, and a landlady who spoke only Flemish, in a room with a meditation mat of Indonesian tapa, I realized that what I want most of all is to write about Daniel. Not a gripping mythological theme, not Imago, which is already partly written. None of that, only about Daniel. However, I have completely rejected the documentary approach, although like a conscientious slave I have studied all the documents, books and papers, publications and reminiscences of hundreds of people until I know them by heart. I have started writing a novel, or whatever it will be called, about a person in those circumstances, with those problems today. With the whole of his life he raised a heap of unresolved, highly inconvenient issues which nobody talks about: the value of a life turned into mush beneath one’s feet; the freedom which few people want; God for whom there is ever less room in our life; efforts to extricate Him from archaic words, all the ecclesiastical garbage, and life which has closed in on itself. Have I packaged that temptingly?

From the day I met Daniel I have been circling around this and you know how many times I have attempted to make contact with it. Well, I am making another attempt, only this time I shall try to free myself from the pressure of documents, of the names of real people who might be offended or harmed, and to retain only what has “non-private” significance. I am changing names, inserting my own fictional or semi-fictional characters, changing the setting and time of events, being disciplined, trying not to be capricious. In other words, I’m interested only in complete truthfulness of utterance, although as always I retain the right to fall flat on my face. That is perhaps the greatest luxury an author can afford in this age of market relations.

Be that as it may, I am sending you the first part of what I have written so far. I don’t believe I can cope without your support, friendship, and professionalism. I have told you a lot about this before, but you will meet completely unfamiliar characters I have just invented, so that they are still soft and warm like new-laid eggs. Did you know that inside the hen an eggshell is far softer than after it emerges from the cloaca? Birds, my dear, do not have a backside but a cloaca. That is one of the remnants of my biological education.

How are the children and your Andrey? My Andrey has flown to Zürich in the wake of his works. The children are fine and not giving me too much trouble. The big news is that I will have a second grandchild by the summer.

Love,

L.