Daniel Stein, Interpreter

16. April 1988, Haifa

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ANTMAN

Dear Esther,

You remember what a rush and panic I left in. There really was no need. A week has passed since the stroke and the doctors tell me her condition has stabilized. Everything is rather sad, but at least it is better than a funeral. She has been transferred today out of intensive care into an ordinary ward. She is still festooned with tubes and flat on her back but the doctors say there is a “positive dynamic.” They are very good. They operated on Mother to remove the haematoma in the brain and believe she can be rehabilitated to some extent. At all events, she can feel the right side of her body although she can’t move either her hand or foot. She isn’t talking but I have the impression that is just because she doesn’t want to talk to me because I went to Santorini instead of going to see her. Yesterday while I was with her she said fairly distinctly to the nurse, “Bastard!” which made me think I could come back home now. She is well looked after here, much better than she would be in America unless she was in a private clinic. No, do not think that I am going to leave right now. I shall stay here some time yet, at least until she is moved back to that almshouse of hers.

I have nevertheless allowed myself one little treat and went to Jerusalem for a couple of days. I was there a few years back, just passing through, and it was so hot I hardly poked my nose outside the hotel. As if that wasn’t enough, I decided last time to go and take a look at my roots. I went to the religious quarter and got mugged. Well, not mugged perhaps, just scratched, but it was tremendously interesting. The males were all wearing caftans and had their hair in payots, and the females were in wigs and hats. In America you sometimes meet this kind of thing, too, but here it all seemed much more real. The faces were attractive. I was incredibly curious because I can see that if fate had taken a different turn, these medieval beings might have been my own relatives, friends, and neighbors. While I was just staring at them everything was fine, but when I went into a shop to buy some water, two old ladies pounced on me. One pinched my criminally bare arms, and the other started pulling my hair. They were completely off the wall. I was barely able to fight them off and escape. At the edge of this kosher paradise I stopped by some school railings. It was time for their break and boys of every caliber, from scrawny five-year-olds to well-fed bullocks came primly into the courtyard and started walking around in pairs, occasionally forming groups, and gravely discussing weighty matters. I stood by the railings gaping and waited for them to start playing football or at least fight. It never happened. My first attempt at investigating my roots thus came to an entirely inglorious end. I didn’t much care for the roots, and my arms were all scratched.

This time I decided to adopt a different approach to delving into the past and went to the Old Town to see the two main sights, the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre and the Room of the Last Supper. The Temple of the Holy Sepulchre I found less impressive than expected. There was a crowd and it was an ordinary tourist attraction just like anywhere else in the world. There were even Japanese groups. Where the sepulchre used to be, there is now a small chapel with a queue, and before entering, each tourist turns around and the next one photographs him or her. I just left. I found my way to the Room of the Last Supper using a guidebook. I have to confess, dear Esther, that I still have a few favorite themes from my Catholic childhood and the Last Supper is one of them.

I went inside and immediately felt that nothing of the sort had ever happened in this building. The Master and the twelve disciples had never assembled here, no bread had been broken, no wine had been drunk. They had clearly met in a different place which did not have Leonardo da Vinci windows. That room had been small and quite possibly had no windows at all. It would have been somewhere modest on the outskirts of town and not right on top of the Tomb of King David. In other words, I was having none of this Last Supper of theirs.

The next morning, though, I climbed up to the Garden of Gethsemane, and the olive trees growing there were entirely real and so old that they might well have been growing there all that time ago. The olives I really did find convincing, and stood there desperately wanting to break off a twig as a souvenir but could not bring myself to do it. Just then a little monk who looked completely penniless came out of a door, broke off a twig and gave it to me. I was so delighted. I climbed higher up the Mount of Olives, walked along the walls of the old Jewish cemetery and came to a chapel. It was a small modern building in the shape of a teardrop, the Dominus Flevit Church. The Lord wept. It was in this place that Christ lamented the coming destruction of Jerusalem. Since then Jerusalem has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times that now there is no knowing quite which destruction he was lamenting. Do we have to expect another or have there already been enough?

The view which opens before you is indescribable, but the place itself is compact and welcoming. The grass is vivid with tiny poppies and white daisylike flowers. It reminded me of my favorite tapestry from Cluny, only without the unicorn or Virgin, but you feel they will be back any minute. It’s because of that precious grass. The spring is so short here, and the fact that in a week’s time everything will become parched and turn into whitish hay means that you are particularly aware of the blessedness of this place.

I did afterward go into the old Jewish cemetery, which takes up half the mountain. I was reluctant at first because I don’t like cemeteries, but if I had to be dragged to the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, it was ordained by heaven that I should go in here. It was a place of dust, stones and rubble. Near one rock an elderly Arab suddenly materialized and offered to show me around for $10. I declined saying that I was not an American tourist but a simple woman from Poland. Then he offered me a cup of coffee but this, too, seemed to be fraught with far-reaching implications and I again declined. Then he told me he had 50 camels and I expressed my admiration. I said, “Goodness, very well done! 50 camels is better than 50 cars.” He was terribly pleased and we parted as friends. Tell me truthfully now, Esther, do you know anybody who has 50 camels? Then I took a taxi to the bus station and a few hours later I was in Haifa. I ran to the hospital and sat under the burning coals of her eyes. She is not speaking, but in any case I know everything she wants to say to me, down to the very last word.

In the depths of my heart worries about Alex and Grisha are constantly stirring, but I drive them away.

Love from

Your Ewa

17. April 1988, Boston

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ANUKYAN

… I just can’t get through to you on the phone. I have a favor to ask. I’m not sure whether you can do it, but perhaps while you are in Israel you will be able to help me. The thing is, recently all my time has been taken up with sorting out Isaak’s papers, of which there are a great many, and I unexpectedly happened upon a registered parcel he had not opened. It proved to contain a book sent after his death from an auction sale. Only now, two years later, I have opened the parcel and found an antique book of heavenly beauty. It seems to be a manuscript with wonderful illuminations. I took it to the Jewish Museum and they told me it was a rare edition of the Haggadah. They immediately offered to buy it, but for the time being I have no intention of selling the book.

What I really want is to restore a number of damaged pages. They told me at the museum it was best to have such books restored by Israeli craftsmen, but the one they employed died recently and they have yet to find a replacement. Perhaps you could ask your friends whether they can find such a person. If not, never mind. After all, the book has been lying there for such a long time that it can lie a bit longer just as it is.

Love from

Esther

18. April 1988, Haifa

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Sweet Esther,

I am staying here for another week. I have changed my departure date again and it is now 6 May. I have finally hired a car and driver. All the cars here have a mechanical gear change, which I’m not used to. I have been driving automatics for a long time and did not want to take a risk. The country is so small that if you get up early, by four in the afternoon you can have seen half of it. I have been back to the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. I only didn’t make it to Eilat. How I like the miniature nature of this land! Everything is within easy reach.

Yes! Your request! One of the best restorers is the neighbor of my Jerusalem friends, Steve and Isabel. I had only to mention it to be invited to his house that very day. Here in Israel every person is a walking novel. They have such improbable histories, such biographies that even mine pales by comparison. When Steve told him I had been conceived in a ghetto, the restorer was overcome with such sympathy that he invited me on Friday evening to his home. As a result I found myself at a real Shabbat for the first time ever. You know all about it, of course, but it made a profound impression on me. I think I have told you that throughout my childhood I always longed to have a real family. There was the refuge, then the orphanage, then life with my mother who totally rejected family values, then life with Eric, which was nothing special, no love or friendship, just a lot of thrashing around in the sack. Then my unsuccessful attempt with Ray when Alex was born. It didn’t even occur to him to cancel his tour! When Grisha came on the scene, I thought at last everything had fallen into place, but what I now foresee is the complete and utter collapse of my family dream!

And here, picture it, was the table with candles and a beautiful Russian woman, past her first youth, who I later discovered had converted to Judaism. She was so big, with large hands, and she moved like a great animal, perhaps a cow, but in a good sense. She slowly turned her head, slowly moved her eyes. She had a great bosom which hung over the table, and she had red hair which was already fading a little. The head of hair she must have had in the past you could tell from her two boys with their fiery ginger mops. Her two girls resembled their father, with fine noses, fine fingers, very miniature. I realized later that Leya is really not much taller than her husband, but Yosef is such a thin, fleshless person, he looks like an elderly angel. I think I mentioned that I brought my love of icons with me from Russia. I suddenly understood why Jews don’t and couldn’t have them. They themselves have such faces they have no need of icons.

Before supper Yosef took me to his workroom. He is very highly skilled. There were books of miniatures, and simple antique prayer books. He said the greater part of his work comes from America now. American Jews buy old Jewish books at auction, have them restored, and then present them to museums. It’s a kind of mitzvah. Yosef is an ex-Muscovite. He graduated from some department of restoration and in Russia restored icons. He lived in a monastery for several years and was presumably Orthodox, but I didn’t care to ask. Isn’t that interesting? He was in prison for three years because icons he restored were smuggled to the West and somebody informed on him. He also met his wife through restoration.

She was an elder in an Orthodox Church and gave him work. He told me all this himself, then smiled and fell silent. I could see a story here fit for a novella. My friends told me afterward that the older boy was from her first marriage. We spoke Russian until we sat down at the table. Leya lit the candles with a prayer—in Hebrew. I was too shy to ask what kind of prayer it was, but even without translation it was clearly some kind of Grace. Anyway, why am I describing things to you which you already know very well?

Then the man of the house broke bread with a prayer and poured wine into a large wine glass. It was the Eucharist, there’s no two ways about it. Then came all kinds of food: two challot under a napkin which Leya had baked herself, fish, some salads, a roast. There was an old Russian lady at the table, Praskovia Ivanovna, Leya’s mother, in a headscarf! Before the meal, she crossed herself and with her wrinkled hand crossed her plate! Shabbat shalom, Christ is risen!

I was consumed with envy. For my whole life this is what I have been yearning for. Half the people with whom I have met on this visit, the doctors, these restorers, another neighbor of my friends who is an English nurse from the hospital, every one of them has an improbable history.

Rita is clearly feeling better. She met me with the words, “Ah, you’re back …” as if I was 15 and had come back from a party in the small hours of the morning. Next week she is being taken back to the home. I will stay here for a few more days.

Love from

Ewa

19. 1988, Haifa

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ASSETTE SENT BY

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ITA

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OWACZ TO

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AWEŁ

KOCI

SKI

Dear Paweł,

I am sending you this cassette in place of a letter. I can no longer write, my hands no longer do what I tell them. My legs neither. I am altogether lying much like a corpse with only my head working. It is the most dreadful torment which only God could have invented. Now I think He does exist, or more likely the Devil does. At all events, if the existence of the Devil can be regarded as proof of the existence of God, then I acknowledge that this pretty pair exists, although I don’t see any fundamental difference between them. They are the enemies of man. But now for some reason I am alive instead of lying peacefully in the cemetery and not bothering anybody.

You can’t imagine the fuss they made over me, and for some reason brought this old bag of bones back to life. Whatever I ask for they give me. They even bring me millet porridge, but I have one special request they won’t fulfil and that is to let me die. I say that entirely calmly. I often found myself in situations where I was within a hair’s breadth of death, but I wanted to live and fight and I always won. You may not believe it, but I always came out on top, even in the camp. In the end they rehabilitated me, which means I won. Now for me to come out on top means to die when I want to, and I do want to, but they are treating me. You understand, they keep on treating me. The most ridiculous thing about it is that they are even having a bit of success. They drag me to a chair, I slowly move my arms and legs, and that’s called a “positive dynamic.” All I want from this dynamic of theirs is to be able to drag myself to the window, upend myself over the balcony railings and hurtle down. There is a very pretty view and I am increasingly drawn to it.

Apart from you nobody will help me. You loved me when I was young and I loved you for as long as that itch was alive in me. You are my comrade, we come from the same nest, and that is why you are the only person who can and should come to help me. Come and help me. I have never asked anybody for anything. If I could do without someone else’s help I would not ask, but I cannot even get off the bedpan by myself. If we were in the war I would ask you to shoot me but my request is more modest. Come and take me over to the balcony. Is that too much to ask?

Yours,

Rita

20. 1988, Haifa

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There Paweł I write like a chicken but at least I can write. My hands are just about moving but not my legs. I expected nothing better from you never there when you are needed. Well, fine. Don’t think you and Ewa that I can’t do anything without you. There are other people who will give me support. Pass my greetings to your wife Mirka and remind her that a heart attack is better than a stroke. As to your son I share your regret. What on earth has he done your Trotskyite? Do not forget that I spent eight years in Polish prisons and another five in Russian prisons. I don’t suppose a French one is any worse. Three years is not a long sentence especially when he is still young. In today’s Western prisons they serve coffee in the mornings change the bedlinen once a week and put a television in the cell so the prisoner does not get bored. That is more or less what I myself have now with all my medals only the television is in the corridor.

Rita

21. May 1988

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ANUKYAN’S DIARY

How deep seated all this is in me! Not only do I regularly go to see Esther as if going to confession to receive absolution of my sins, I even have to write it down. The sad truth is that I cannot free my head of all the accusations I have been storing up against my mother all through my life. I have long ceased to experience the fury and indignation she used to make me feel when I was young. I feel infinitely sorry for her. She lies there pale and dry, like a shrivelled wasp, and her eyes are like headlamps, full of energy. But, Lord have mercy on us, what kind of energy is it? Distilled, concentrated hatred. Hatred of evil! She hates evil with such passion and fury that evil can rest assured. People like her make evil immortal.

Looking at Rita, I have long found social injustice preferable to the struggle against it. When she was young, she had cosmic ambitions. They scaled down over time until now she seems to be fighting the injustice of fate toward herself. Before her stroke, she concentrated her fire on the director of the old people’s home, fat, bald Yohanan Shamir. First she quarrelled with him, then she started writing denunciations of him until a commission of some description arrived. After that, I don’t know all the details, he retired. On my visit this year, Yohanan visited her while I was there and she talked to him amicably enough. That was all before her latest stroke. She is already back to talking a little now but cannot get out of bed, of course. In fact, she can’t even sit up on her own at present.

When she had the stroke I thought, with relief, that the poor woman would now finally die. Then I was ashamed of myself, and now I’m even more ashamed. Did I really want her to die? Now I don’t want anything for her. I just keep thinking how odd it is that she is still able to torment me. Why, from morning till night, do I think, not even about her but about my attitude toward her? Of course, she thinks I am a bastard, and has told me as much on many occasions. Now, however, I have to agree with her because I cannot forgive or love or feel sorry enough for her.

Esther listened to all my ramblings and then said, “There is no advice I can give you. We are fated to feel this way. Those left behind always feel guilt toward those who have gone. It is a matter of time. A few decades from now your Alex will tell somebody close to him how guilty he feels about not having loved you enough. It’s like some basic chemistry of human relations.” Then she said very firmly, “Be at peace with yourself, Ewa. What you can and need to do you should do, but what is beyond your ability you should not attempt. Allow yourself that. Look at Rita. She cannot be different, and you let yourself be the person you are. You are a good girl.” Her words left me feeling happy.

22. 1996, Galilee

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ANUKYAN

Dear Ewa,

A few days ago Noami brought me a letter Daniel sent her some 20 years ago when she was bedridden in a sanatorium for six months being treated for osseous tuberculosis. It is one of the few extant letters he wrote so I am sending you a copy.

You have no idea how many people come to ask me about my brother: journalists from various countries, an American professor, a writer from Russia.

Milka sends you her best wishes. If you decide to come to Israel, we will be glad to put you up.

Avigdor

1969, Haifa

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OPY OF A LETTER FROM

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ANIEL TO

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OAMI

My dear, good Noami,

Can you believe it? A certain very attractive individual, very fluffy with very green eyes, has drawn me into her life and is demanding that I should adopt her three children. Here is what has happened. We have no locks on the monastery cells. We don’t really have anything for anyone to steal, and in any case, outsiders are never allowed into the monks’ living quarters. My door does not close very tightly and no effort is needed to open it. Anyway, imagine, I came home late one evening and saw the door was ajar. I went in, washed without lighting a candle, sat on my chair, and started pondering. It is a habit I have had since I was young: before going to sleep I spend a little time thinking over what I have done during the day and about the people I have met or, indeed, not met. For example, you. I haven’t seen you for more than a month, and very much miss your sweet little face. So, there I am sitting in the dark quietly thinking about one thing and another when I suddenly sense that I’m not alone. There is someone else and I am certain it is not an angel. How can I be so sure? Although I have never met an angel, I am just sure that if one did appear, I would be in no doubt about it. I don’t think anyone would be likely to confuse the coming of an angel with the arrival of the gardener or our hegumen. Be that as it may, there was someone there. I stayed motionless and did not light a candle. It was a very strange feeling, with even a slight suggestion of menace.

Outside the moon was bright, so the darkness was not so much dark as rather gray. I cautiously looked from side to side and saw somebody lying on my bed, someone small and round. Very carefully, scarcely breathing, I went over to the bed and found there an enormous cat. She woke up, opened her eyes, and they shone with a terrible light. You know yourself how animals’ eyes glow in the dark. I said hello and asked her to let me have my bed back, but she pretended not to understand. Then I stroked her a little and she immediately started purring loudly. I stroked her some more and found that she was not just a cat but an exceedingly fat cat, and one which was very quick on the uptake because she promptly moved over to make room for me. I tried to explain to her that I was a monk and there was no way I could share my bed with a lady, so would she mind moving to the chair. She refused. Then I had to put my sweater on the chair and her on the sweater. She did not resist, but as soon as I lay down, she got back on to the bed with me and delicately settled down on my feet. I gave in and fell asleep. When I woke in the morning she had gone, but that evening she again appeared and showed she was quite unusually clever. Can you imagine, I found her sleeping on the chair, and when I got into bed she again settled herself on my feet. To tell the truth, I found it rather pleasant.

For five days she would be there on the chair in my room every evening, and when I went to bed she moved over to join me. I never did get a good look at her, because when I awoke she had already gone. In any case, I’m always in a hurry in the mornings and had no time to go looking for her in the monastery or the orchard, which is fairly large.

Anyway, picture the evening when I came back and didn’t find the cat on my chair. I wasn’t sure whether I was feeling disappointment or jealousy. Where had she gone? To whom had she transferred her affections? I even wondered about it during the day. I was stung by her infidelity!

Imagine my astonishment when I came home the next day to find a whole feline family on my bed. So that’s where she had disappeared to the night before! Hiding herself from people, in the dark and in secret, she had given birth to three kittens and brought them back to me. I was rather touched that the cat had considered she could trust me with her newborn kittens. To cut a long story short, she has been living for a month now on my blue sweater together with Alef, Betka, and Shin. As regards Shin, I have some doubts about him and think that he may yet turn out to be Shina.

Now I have to provide for an entire family. When I come back in the evenings, I bring a carton of milk for Ketzele (as I have called the cat) and some leftovers from dinner, if I have happened to dine that day. Oh, and I have omitted to mention one very important thing. In the light of day, my cat has proved a rare beauty. She is fairly dark gray in color and has an especially fluffy white patch of fur on her chest. One ear is white, which makes her look rather flirtatious. She is very fastidious and spends half the day washing and grooming herself and her kittens. If only I could train her to clean the room she would make an excellent cleaner. On top of that she is highly intelligent. She has somehow detected that keeping animals in the monastery is prohibited and behaves like a specter. To this day nobody has seen her, and I, too, pretend not to see her, so that when the hegumen asks me what this delightful creature is doing in my room, I will say I hadn’t noticed her.

No, unfortunately I will not be able to say that because I am a monk and monks are not allowed to lie. That is really unfair, because everybody I know does just occasionally tell a little white lie, but I am not supposed to. No doubt that moment will sooner or later arrive, so I need to think about the fate of the entire family.

I am planning to negotiate with my brother over this but am not sure the negotiations will be successful. As you know, I constantly disagree with your father about all sorts of things. Here, though, I am counting on his kind heart, and for some reason I am sure of Milka’s support.

The fate of the kittens is already almost decided. One will be taken by my assistant, Hilda, a second by her friend Musa, and a third perhaps by a sister from Tiberias.

My love to you, dear niece. Ketzele sends you her very best wishes and hopes you will get well soon.

Your Dodo,

Daniel

23. 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

A direct link with the ghetto was established through Moshe Milshtein. I soon started stealing firearms from the store in the police station attic. These were mainly captured Soviet weapons. Forwarding them to the ghetto was not easy, especially the rifles. Every item taken from the store I first hid in the garden, then tied it in the evening to my bicycle frame, wrapped it in rags, and cycled home by a roundabout route past the castle. Near a hole in the wall, young people were waiting to take the gun from me. I never once went into the ghetto. A number of those living there were already aware that they were marked for extermination and wanted weapons in order to defend themselves and their families. My view was that they needed to decide on a mass break-out. I knew that the partisans included local Communists, escaped Red Army soldiers, and Jews from the ghetto, but at first those still in the ghetto would not listen to me. Many had had bitter experiences in their dealings with non-Jewish fellow citizens, who had betrayed to the Germans both Jews and Red Army soldiers who had escaped the encirclement. In any case, the people in the ghetto were far from certain that the partisans would welcome them with open arms.

In the end they no longer had any choice. In late July 1942, I was present when Major Reinhold was talking on the telephone. His concluding sentence was, “Jawohl. Operation Iodine will take place on thirteen of August!” I knew immediately what was meant. The major said to me, “Dieter, you are the only witness of this conversation. If anything leaks out, you will bear full responsibility!”

I replied, “Jawohl!”

I had very warm relations with Reinhold. He was old enough to be my father. He had sons in Germany and there was something paternal in his attitude toward me. Like me, his oldest son was called Dieter. Believe me, I got on very well with Reinhold, better than with his subordinates. I knew he respected my honesty, so by doing my duty as a human being I would be betraying this man personally, as well as signing my own death warrant.

When I entered service in the police I had to swear an oath of allegiance to the Führer. Later, as a Russian partisan, I swore allegiance to Stalin, but these oaths were invalid because they were sworn under duress. Breaking them was the price I paid to save not only my own life but the lives of other people.

Among the situations I was fated to experience, some were tragic, some painful, and some very frightening. I can talk about them now, although I do so reluctantly. Nevertheless, I believe I should share these experiences with you because there is no knowing in advance what kind of situations a person may face in their life.

I reported the planned operation to the couriers that same evening. They were determined to defend themselves with the weapons I had given them but I managed to persuade them that that was pointless. They had far too few firearms and would all be killed. It was considerably more important that at least some of them should be saved. That mattered more than shooting back for ten minutes at the Belorussians and Germans who would be coming to destroy the ghetto. I managed to persuade my contacts they should attempt to escape, but the ghetto’s affairs were managed by the Judenrat, and it was for the Judenrat to take the decision.

Was I afraid? I don’t remember. I adapted to the circumstances and they dictated my actions. I had an awareness of bearing responsibility for many people, and accepting responsibility is more important than carrying out orders. I thank God for endowing me with that ability.

The date of the breakout had to be agreed upon and the night of ninth of August was chosen. The Judenrat was not in favor of the plan and granted permission only for those in the resistance group to escape. The old gentlemen were still hoping that the Belorussian official they had bribed would save everybody.

The day before the escape, I fed my chief a false report that that night a group of partisans would be passing through a village located to the south. This was in the opposite direction to the vast and almost impenetrable forest into which the ghetto dwellers intended to flee. All the police and gendarmes went off to catch the partisans, leaving behind only four men at the police station. The ghetto was not being patrolled. Along with the other policemen, I sat all night in a futile ambush waiting for the promised partisans.

We returned early in the morning. At eight o’clock I was already at the police station when the agitated Burgomeister came to tell my chief three hundred Jews had escaped from the ghetto. As always, I translated. Major Reinhold asked why that had happened and the Burgomeister told him Jews were being shot in one place after another and those in the ghetto had decided their turn had come. The previous day peasants had come wanting to buy their furniture, and the people in the ghetto had taken fright. The chief ordered sentries to be posted to secure those who were still there.

When I heard only three hundred people had escaped, my heart sank. Why had they not all broken out? I had hoped to save the whole ghetto! It was only many years later that I learned the details of the tragedy which occurred the following night. To this day it is a source of great pain.

I was arrested the next day, betrayed by one of the Jews in the ghetto. It was someone I knew. He was an electrical fitter, Naum Bauch, and came several times to the police station to repair electrical wiring. He came to see Major Reinhold the morning after the escape and talked to him in his office for a long time. Reinhold did not invite me in. Up till then not a single conversation had taken place without my involvement and I realized I must be the topic of their conversation. I could have fled while they were talking, but where to? I could not go to the partisans because as far as they were concerned I was collaborating with the police.

After midday he finally ordered me to be summoned and said he suspected me of treachery. I made no reply. Then he asked, “Is it true that you revealed the date the ghetto was to be destroyed?”

“Yes, Herr Major, it is true.” It was the only reply I could give to his direct question.

He was astonished. “Why do you admit it? I would have been far more likely to believe you than this Jew. Why did you do it? I trusted you so completely!” That reproach hurt me. I replied that I did it out of compassion, because these people had done nothing bad. They were no Communists, just ordinary workers, artisans, and simple people. I could not do anything else.

Reinhold said, “You know I have not personally shot a single Jew, but somebody has to do it. An order is an order.” It was true. He had never taken part in the executions. He understood what an injustice was being perpetrated against defenseless people, but his human decency had a limit beyond which his duty as a soldier took over and could silence his conscience.

He then asked me about the weapons, and he himself listed the quantity and type of weapons transferred to the ghetto. I realized they had already checked the store. I admitted everything. Then he said he had no option but to arrest me. I was disarmed and imprisoned in the basement.

The next day he summoned me again. Major Reinhold told me that he had not slept all night and could not understand what secret motives were behind my behavior. “I imagine you have acted as a Polish nationalist, in order to take revenge for the extermination of the Polish intelligentsia,” he said.

At this I thought it would be easier for him if I told the truth. “Herr Major, I will tell you the truth on condition that you give me the opportunity of committing suicide. I am a Jew!”

He clutched his head. “So the police were right after all. Now I understand. What a tragedy!”

I repeat this word for word, because it is impossible to forget something of that kind. You see the kinds of situations Germans sometimes got themselves into. They did not know how they should behave or what they should do.

“Write me a detailed confession,” he ordered. No punch in the face, no harsh words. Our relations remained as they had been before, like between a father and son. There is no other way of describing it. I wrote the confession and said, “Herr Major, one time I looked death in the face and managed to escape. I ended up here through chance. I was brought here, could not refuse, and in my situation had no option. I think you understand me.”

He called the sergeant-major and said, “Make sure he doesn’t do anything foolish.” I asked him to give me an opportunity to shoot myself before the Gestapo started liquidating the other Jews. Now I could only wait and was completely calm.

During the day and evening everybody usually ate together and that day I still ate with the gendarmes. In the evening my chief again summoned me and I reminded him, “Herr Major, you promised that you would give me an opportunity to shoot myself.” He said, “Dieter, you are a levelheaded and brave young man. You managed to avoid death once before. Perhaps you will succeed on this occasion too.”

I had not been expecting that. It was the amazing reaction of an honest man in an impossible situation. I held out my hand to him and said, “Thank you, Herr Major.” He hesitated, but then shook my hand, turned, and left. I never saw him again. I was told much later he had been severely injured by partisans and died of his wounds. At that time he gave me courage and the will to live.

The gendarmes did not treat me like a criminal. Even after reading my confession and discovering that I was a Jew, they took me from the locked room where I was detained to the communal table. The way my escape was arranged was that I said I wanted to write a letter to my family, and they took me to my old workplace. I wrote a letter in the office and said I wanted to ask the boy who did the cleaning to take it to the post office. I knew he had already left. I went out unhindered into the corridor and ran from the building toward the fields. Three policemen were standing talking in the courtyard. They were from a different station, not from Emsk, but I knew them. They paid no attention to me.

When I had run quite a long way, I was pursued by some forty people on horseback and bicycles. I lay down in a freshly harvested field and hid among sheaves which had been piled up in a stack. Somebody ran past. They knew I was hiding somewhere and started combing the field in broad rows. As they were passing barely five meters away from me, the sheaves collapsed and the stack leaned over.

To this day I cannot imagine how they failed to notice me. I prayed fervently. Everything inside me was screaming. There have been two moments like that in my life, the first time in Vilnius when I hid in the cellar, and again now. They did not notice the movement of the sheaves and ran on. I heard one of them shouting, “It looks as if he’s got away!”

I lay there and waited for darkness to fall before coming out. I wandered to a shed, went in, and fell asleep. Later, at around five o’clock in the morning, I heard protracted shooting. It was Operation Iodine. They were shooting the people who had remained in the ghetto. It was the most dreadful night of my life. I wept. I was destroyed. Where was God? Where in all this was God? Why had he hidden me from my pursuers but not had mercy on those five hundred children, old people, and invalids? Where was divine justice? I wanted to get up and go back there to be with them, only I had not the strength.

24. 1967, Haifa

F

ROM

H

ILDA’S DIARY

Today is my 25th birthday. How awful! It seems no time at all since I was 16, and wailing because I had won the girls’ skiing competition and Toni Leer told me it was unfair because I ought to be competing with the boys. He said I needed to be checked to see whether I was really a man or a woman. I beat him up. Musa came early this morning and brought me a present, a staggering gold bracelet in the form of a serpent with sapphire eyes.

I prefer silver, as Musa knows, but he said he couldn’t give me silver when I am gold myself. He wanted us to go to Netanya for a whole day but I was busy all morning. I had promised Kasia to take her to find a job and then to collect a parcel for Daniel from the post office and go to the library. Musa waited four hours for me and then we did go to Netanya.

Today he absolutely had to go back home and I was a bit hurt that he had to leave immediately when I so much wanted to stay with him a bit longer. We had only three hours at the hotel and I cried when we had to part. He tried to explain that he does not belong to himself as much as Western people do. He is dependent on his family. His uncle had arranged to meet him today and he could not refuse or postpone it. He was very upset, too. We have been meeting for almost three years but I never know the next time we will see each other. We meet very rarely, apart from in church. It’s dreadful. Musa told me I look more like a boy than a 25-year-old woman, and I remembered thumping Toni Leer for saying just the same thing. How funny.

25. May 1969, Haifa

L

ETTER FROM

M

USA TO

H

ILDA

Dear Hili,

I couldn’t sleep last night after what you said yesterday about how difficult it is to be a German in the modern world. Daniel will tell you how difficult it is to be a Jew, and I can tell you what it’s like being an Arab. Especially if you’re a Christian by faith and an Israeli by citizenship.

It’s fine being German. Germans live in shame and penitence. It’s not too bad being a Jew. The whole world hates them, but everybody knows they are the chosen people. They amaze the world with their Israel, built among rocks and ruins, their tenacious brains and many talents which put all other peoples in the shade. There are any number of Jews in prominent positions all over the world: scholars, musicians, writers, lawyers, and bankers. This annoys the majority.

But what’s it like being an Arab? There are 1,000 times more of us than there are Jews but who does the world know? Nasreddin Tusi? Avicenna? Imagine belonging to a people which always feels slighted and is always right. Islam gives the Arabs confidence and a sense of superiority. Arab Muslims are underestimated by the outside world and praise themselves. An Arab Christian is an unfortunate creature: the Jews barely notice the difference between an Arab Muslim and an Arab Christian. For them, both are their historical sworn enemies, except that a Muslim is a more reliable enemy.

The Jews do not trust us, even though we have chosen Israel and become its citizens in the hope that it will be our shared home. We are not trusted by the Muslims either. For them we are worse enemies than the Jews.

I would emigrate to Europe or America, but being an Arab I am bound by extremely strong family and tribal ties. My family does not see me as a separate unit. I live subject to all my relatives: the elder because it is my duty to respect them, and the younger because it is my duty to support them. It is almost impossible to escape from this. I would divorce Miriam if only I could, and you and I would immigrate to Cyprus, get married there, and live in any country where trees and flowers grow and people need parks and orchards. For that, though, I would need to stop being an Arab, which is impossible. You will remain a German, lamenting the aberration and brutality of your forebears, Daniel will remain a Jew with his crazy idea of making all people the children of God, and I will remain an Arab, longing for liberation from the oppressive Arab tradition of not belonging to myself but always to someone above me, be that my father, God, or Allah.

Dear Hili, when I am with you, just your presence is enough to free me from these burdensome thoughts and the hopelessness of our situation. Only when I am with you do I feel happy, and believe me there are very few Arab men in the world who could bring themselves to say such words to a woman. I love you, and I love the freedom which stands behind you, although both of us suffer from knowing it is not for us, that we are stealing it, although I do not know from whom. I am, nevertheless, profoundly convinced that God is on our side.

Do not leave me.

Musa

26. 1969, Haifa

F

ROM

H

ILDA’S DIARY

Daniel brought me a branch of flowering almond yesterday. I can’t believe he cut it. I looked at him in astonishment and he said, “Hilda, we have been together for five years.” Daniel is right, it is precisely five years since I came to Haifa. The flowers are somehow only half real, as if made of mist or vapor, and they smell of something nice which is not in them. Perhaps the germ of the almonds which will come later? No, almonds have a much more definite and edible smell. This smell is not at all culinary.

Daniel celebrated the Mass. I was the only person there. He is disappointed that almost none of our residents are much bothered about the church but, as he says, “We are not feeding them with an ulterior motive. Who knows, perhaps they will come and pray with us sometime.”

Actually, that is not really fair. On Saturdays and Sundays quite a lot of people come together here. In the evening, after Daniel had gone, I decided to write down how many of us there are. Here’s the list: Daniel, me, Vera, Kasia and her children, Irena and her children, Olaf, Shimon, Yosef and his family, the sisters Susanna and Cecile, Boena, Chris, Aidin and his family, Musia and Tata, Henryk and Louisa, Elena, Isidor. Those are the ones we can rely on. Then there are another twenty or so people who come from time to time, for festivals, but who do nevertheless participate in the life of the community. There are perhaps thirty or so who drop in occasionally, like Musa. We can add those in the shelter who, whether they like it or not, belong to the community by the fact of staying there. Eight of them are permanent and perhaps another ten are transient. Beggars, tramps, and drug addicts: we call them “residents.” They are ours, too. A rough total is around sixty people.

We have also lost people. Samuel and Lydia emigrated to America. Miriam died, poor Anton was killed, and Edmund and his family went back to Europe. Aaron and Vita and their children and a few other people have left us for the synagogue.

Daniel is very upset when he loses a person, but also always repeats that, “Every person should seek their own way to God. The path is personal, otherwise we would not be a community of volunteers in the Lord but an army led by generals.”

We have most difficulty with the transients. Daniel insists nobody should be sent away, so we sometimes get homeless people coming here. In Israel there are fewer of them than in Europe, but they are drawn to us like a magnet. Since the night shelter was built we always have a few people settling there for several days, or even for up to a month. Daniel said they should pay by bringing a bucket of water up from the spring. It has wonderful drinking water but the stream is very weak. The water we get from the Druze does not taste so good.

Now my German experience is proving unexpectedly useful. There are certain rules for treating homeless people which really do help us to find a common language. We currently have a pair of junkies, a very pleasant girl and a young man from Hungary, and they smoke some kind of trash. They are spaced-out, slowed down, and good humored. The girl, Lora, is Jewish, a hippie, and covered in flowers.

She is a real musician and plays the flute marvelously. I told her how good she is and she laughed and said that she is really a violinist but doesn’t have a violin anymore. She has such a vivid personality that her young man, a gypsy called Giga, rather pales in comparison. They have been living here for two months already. I have heard that Lora plays in the street near the market. She sometimes even brings money for the church funds, and Giga washes the dishes very conscientiously.

Last week a terrible drunkard wandered in. He was really ill, made everything filthy, and I spent two days cleaning up after him. Then I persuaded him to go to the hospital and drove him there. I went to visit two days later only to find he had run away. We can’t afford a cleaner or a cook and do everything with our own hands. It’s lucky Daniel earns money with his guided tours, and we get donations from abroad.

Daniel works very hard. Now that he has his own corner in the church he often stays until late. He is translating the New Testament and other texts from Greek into Hebrew. Actually, there have long been translations but Daniel considers them to be full of inaccuracies and even downright mistakes. I once asked him how many languages he knows. He said he knows three well, Polish, German, and Hebrew, and thinks he speaks others very badly. That is simply not the case. He conducts tour groups in Italian, Spanish, Greek, French, English, and Romanian, and I have heard him speak with Czechs, Bulgarians, and Arabs in their languages. That he has conducted services in Latin all his life goes without saying. It seems to me he has the gift of speaking in tongues which once descended on the apostles. He does have textbooks of various languages on his bookshelf, so some things God has given him but others he has learnt himself! Where did he find the time to learn all these languages? I asked him one time and he said, “Do you remember the Pentecost?” and laughed.

Of course, I well remember this extract from the Acts of the Apostles, when “tongues like as of fire” came down upon the apostles and they began speaking with other tongues and every man out of every nation under heaven heard them speaking in his own language. Daniel seems to be endowed with that tongue of fire.

Although, one time when we were expecting Romanians, I bought him a Romanian textbook. He had it on his table for two weeks and used to take it away with him in the evenings. “It’s very beneficial to put a textbook under your pillow,” he told me. “You wake up in the morning and all the lessons have been learned.”

Looking at him, I recognize that language is not that important. All that really matters is what the language is expressing. I feel there is something of a contradiction here. If it doesn’t matter which language you conduct the service in, why make so much effort to translate everything into Hebrew? I am forever making new copies of the liturgy with variant translations because he believes every word has to be comprehensible. I do occasionally notice contradictions in his views. He will sometimes says one thing and sometimes another. I can’t always keep up with him.

27. 1959–83, Boston

F

ROM

I

SAAK

G

ANTMAN’S NOTES

The problem of national consciousness here, in America, is to some extent subsumed by the problem of self-identification. Although close in meaning, these are different things. National consciousness, at least among the Jews, has both internal and external constraints. Declaring themselves the People of the Book, Jews have programmed themselves to master, assimilate, and implement the Torah. It is an ideology. It establishes the chosen nature of the Jews, their exclusiveness and preeminence over all other peoples, but also their isolation in the Christian and any other communities. Needless to say, there have always been individual representatives of the Jewish people who have demurred from the overall fixed programme and not fitted into the mainstream of the national life.

The hermetization of Jewish society led naturally to the legend of “the Secret of the Jews,” which developed over many centuries into the notion of the “global Jewish conspiracy” against everybody else. The last exposure of such a plot, already within living memory, was the Doctors’ Plot in Russia shortly before the death of Stalin. In our secular age the blow fell not on the traditional Jewish community but on professionals, the majority of whom, if I understand correctly, were not religiously inclined. They were no more than the remnant who had survived the Catastrophe. It is probably the same “remnant” spoken of by the Prophet Isaiah. It is not the first time in history that this kind of destruction of the majority of the people has occurred. The Babylonian Captivity, of course, reduced them to slavery but did not take lives. The same occurred in Russia during the Stalin period.

European Jewry as it had existed for the last three centuries has been destroyed. I do not think it is capable of regeneration. A few hundred Hassids who have removed themselves from Belorussia to New York with their charismatic Lubavitch tzadik and several hundred yeshiva students led by Orthodox Mitnagdim rabbis are unlikely to prove viable in the modern world. The children of Orthodox Jews who wore tallit prayer shawls are taking Hollywood by storm, and also the Arabs in Palestine. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that after the Catastrophe, the Jews have lost the rigorous skeleton which supported them. As an atheist, I encountered, both during the war and in the postwar years, many Jews who had suffered a crisis of faith. Our people turned into a collective Job sitting in ashes, having lost their children, their health, their property, and the very meaning of their existence. They had also lost to a large extent the treasure they most prized, their faith itself.

My wife’s unfortunate niece, Tsilya, at the age of six stood in a village street, in a crowd, a Polish peasant woman holding her by the hand as all the local Jews were locked in a shed which was going to be set on fire. The little girl prayed to God to save her mother but they set light to the shed and 80 people, including her mother and sisters, burned to death. Tsilya was hidden by kind Catholics, survived the war, and emigrated to Israel. She was from a very religious family but since then has never once been inside a synagogue. “If He exists,” she says, “He has wronged me and I will not forgive Him; and if He does not exist what is the point of talking about Him?”

That is logic. I do not suppose Job was placated by the new children he was given in place of his earlier ones. And those innocent children killed by a collapsing roof purely because of a questionable wager between the Creator and some monster known as the enemy of the human race, is he supposed to have forgotten them? The book of Job is very poetical but lacks logic. As was demonstrated to us by that delightful and intelligent man, Professor Neuhaus in Jerusalem, the reading of Jewish texts is a great art which I have scarcely approached—only enough to understand what it is that Jewish thought ponders.

I have found that to be a cosmogony of the most abstruse nature, entirely divorced from reality, a grand Glass Bead Game. Over the course of the 2,000 years during which boys from the age of five have studied at this school of logic, Jewish brains have been trained to a very serviceable level. All those Jewish mathematicians and physicists, Nobel prizewinners and unsung inventors are byproducts, people who renounced the royal road of the Kabbalah , which considered the same problems as all the other esoteric sciences of other times and peoples. It was, however, the Kabbalah which became suspected of being a kind of intellectual terrorism extending over half a millennium. It is pointless to seek to disprove this craven idea: all intellectual activity can be seen as terrorism against established canons, whether in science, culture, or sociology.

Ultimately, any attempt to establish identity, to provide a rigorous definition of one’s personality, is based on a particular hierarchy of responses taking in gender, nationality, citizenship, educational level, professional affiliation, political affiliation, and the like.

My own identity derives from my profession. I am a doctor, and this is the foundation of my life and activities, as it was even in the ghetto and the partisan unit. In all contexts I remained a doctor. The most unsettling time of my life was after the war when I was required over a period of many months to provide a medical assessment of evidence at the Nuremberg Trials. With the threat of physical annihilation no longer present, I lost my inner bearings, my equilibrium, and the ground shifted beneath my feet. It was not living in the ghetto or our uncertain existence in the forests, but the sum of the knowledge about what happened to the Jews from 1939 until 1945 which changed my outlook. My self-identification as a doctor became irrelevant. As far as the Nazis’ Nuremberg laws were concerned I, as a Jew, was subject to the 1935 “Law for the Preservation of German Blood and Honor.” The law forced me, an atheist who had consciously repudiated Judaism, to resume my national identity. I readily rose to the challenge and the outcome was my illegal immigration to Palestine.

For almost ten years I lived in Israel. I was there when the United Nations declaration creating it was signed, and I hope the Jewish state will continue to exist far into the future. I have never shared the ideals of Zionism and have always believed that the modern world should be organized not along lines of religion or nationality but on a straightforward basis of territorial citizenship. The state should be organized by citizens living within the borders of a particular territory and that is what its legislation should ensure. Few people agree with me, not even Esther. I had no hesitation in accepting the Boston offer. From a professional point of view, I could find no better place to work anywhere in the world. Having lived several years in the United States, I have concluded that it is the US which most closely adheres to the principle, which I believe optimal, of organizing the state on a basis of territorial citizenship. In other respects, it is the same cesspit you find anywhere else in the world.

Any thorough religious upbringing promotes rejection of those who think otherwise. It is only through general cultural integration, with religion removed to the sphere of private life, that a society can develop in which all its citizens enjoy equal rights.

This was the guiding principle of the Roman Empire, and Joseph II, Emperor of Austria-Hungary in the 18th century, tried to apply the same principle in 1782 with his Toleranzpatent, the “Decree on Tolerance.” This proclaimed the principle of the equality of all the state’s citizens before the law. It is an extremely interesting collection of documents and undoubtedly reflects the influence on the Emperor of Joseph von Sonnenfels. The decree offered Jews the prospect of assimilating without being subjected to compulsory baptism, and opened the way for development of a secular state which integrated all its citizens. Von Sonnenfels himself was a baptized Jew, and his ideas about the structure of the state were not supported by the majority of Jews who viewed the new laws as merely impeding their traditional way of life. It was Joseph II who abolished the self-governing Kahal which allowed Jews to live in a state within the state. He allowed them to engage in trades and agriculture, accorded them freedom of movement, and gave them access to higher education institutions. He introduced conscription for Jews, giving them equality with other citizens in that onerous duty also, made German the medium for teaching in Jewish schools, and Germanized Jewish names and surnames. That is where such surnames arose as Einstein, Freud and Rothschild. Amusingly, I read somewhere that Hoffmann played a part in devising such extravagant German-sounding names as Rosenbaum and Mandelshtam. These laws, which so upset simple people, nevertheless created a community of educated people free from national narrowness who could participate in the overall activity of the state.

Right up to our own days there was an underlying difference between the descendants of the Western, “Austro-Hungarian,” Jews and the Jews of Eastern Europe. The latter, until the end of the war, or more exactly until the Catastrophe, preserved an inward-looking way of life in the stetls. The exception were the Jews of Communist Russia, some of whom were carried away by the new ideology in the early years of the Revolution. For the most part, however, the Jews of Yiddishland—Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland—tended to look back to the old traditions. Even today there is no shortage of Jewish men wearing long-tailed early 19th-century lapserdaks, and women with wigs on their shaven heads.

My redoubtable teacher, Professor Neuhaus, calls modern Hassidism “a glorious victory of the letter over the spirit.” In his criticism he went further, considering all the ultra-conservative trends of Christianity, both Western and Eastern, to be the cousins of Hassidism. National consciousness in our time draws strength not from the veneration of dogma but from recipes, the cut of your clothes, how you perform your ablutions, and also from the fallacious but ineradicable conviction that traditionalists possess the full measure of truth.

28. May 1969, the Golan Heights

L

ETTER FROM

D

ANIEL

S

TEIN TO

W

ŁADYSŁAW

K

LECH

Dear Władek,

The bus bringing a tourist group to the Golan Heights has broken down. There is an oil leak which indicates lengthy repairs. We have already seen all the sights, I have told them all I have to say, and now we find there will be at least a three-hour delay before another bus can be sent for us.

The Germans from a Cologne evangelical group have gone off for a walk. I am sitting beneath a fig tree, my helper Hilda is asleep, her head covered with a cowboy hat she was given by a tourist from Texas.

It is not the first time I have brought tours here. There is an enormous graveyard of military equipment, Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks, antitank ditches which have caved in, and an enormous quantity of mines. It seems nearly everyone has been planting landmines for several decades, Turks, English, Syrians, and Jews. Several hundred Soviet tanks were destroyed here. You can only walk in areas which have been cleared of mines. The local sappers are goats and donkeys, which get blown up periodically. So do people sometimes, but there are few people here. It is a No Man’s Land, a vast plateau and mountains of volcanic origin. In the crater of one extinct volcano there is a radar station. There are black and gray boulders, thorn bushes, and occasional clumps of trees. There is an almost biblical legend about the trees. An Israeli agent in Syria occupied a prominent post in the government. When Israel was created in 1948, the Syrians constructed a strong defensive line here with underground fortifications. The agent suggested to the Syrian government that they should plant trees by each of these so that soldiers could shelter in their shade from the heat. A bonus was that the soldiers would be invisible from the air. His proposal was considered sensible and trees were planted.

The Golan Heights are a strategic area from which you can fire on the whole of Northern Galilee, and Syrian missiles were sited here. During the Six-Day War the Israelis were able to destroy them from the air within ten minutes. The Jews knew that above each of the secret installations they would see a grove of trees. Over 20 years these had grown to maturity and pinpointed the targets. The agent, Eli Cohen, was arrested and publicly executed in a square in Damascus. The Jews did everything they could to ransom or exchange him, but Syria was adamant. Tourists tend to be far more interested in stories of this kind than in facts from biblical history.

The early Syrian Church was just as ascetic and forbidding as the volcanic plateau here. Perhaps the extraordinary diversity of the scenery in Palestine, so still in Galilee, so harsh in the deserts, so harmonious in Judaea, engendered the diversity of religious schools. Everything was born here.

All these lands conquered in the Six-Day War are to be given back, but you have the impression that nobody particularly wants them. They are not unpopulated. There are 1 million Palestinians in Gaza. Does Egypt really want them with all their problems? There are several hundred thousand Palestinians on the West Bank and these are a great burden on Hussein. The only point of this whole campaign has been to demonstrate military might and there will be a high price to pay in years to come. Such are the local problems as I see them. It is almost impossible to live here without getting caught up in the daily flow of events. Indeed, working as a priest in Poland, are you able to ignore the pressure from the Soviet Union? We know that in every age it has been raw politics which has determined the direction of the life of the Church.

The most important thing for me has been a gradual recognition of the oneness of life. In the past I had a great sense of hierarchy and ranked events and phenomena in terms of their relative significance. That sense is dwindling. “Significant” and “insignificant” prove equal. More precisely, what you are doing at a particular moment is significant, and then washing up the dishes after a lot of people have had dinner becomes entirely the equal of the liturgy you celebrate.

I will finish. My helper Hilda has woken up, seized the binoculars, and immediately spotted a local cliff hare, which actually looks more like a badger. Jewish hares don’t look anything like Polish hares. Even without binoculars the very sight of them lifts your heart.

With brotherly love,

D.

29. May 1969, Haifa

L

ETTER FROM

H

ILDA TO HER MOTHER

Dear Mother,

Yesterday Daniel and I went to the Golan Heights with a group of German tourists from Cologne. It was the first time I had been there and it was staggering—the ancient ruins, the scenery, and the signs of war. Absolutely everything there, even the ancient history, is evidence of warfare, destruction, and an endless barbaric militarism. Since ancient times everything that has been ruined here has not just collapsed from being old or becoming decrepit. It has been smashed and destroyed by enemies. It’s probably the same everywhere in the world, but here you really notice it. That, though, is not what I am writing about. You know Daniel worked as an interpreter in the Gestapo during the war, and when he was arrested for helping the partisans he was saved by his superior officer who let him escape. They were on very good terms, and this Gestapo officer had children who were Daniel’s age, and even a son born in the same year. Perhaps it was thinking about his son that made him treat what he thought was a Polish youth so well.

Can you believe it, in the German group there was a man, he was one of the oldest because most of them were young, and he turned out to be the son of that same major. As the sightseers ask their questions, Daniel always invites them to give their names, and the man said he was Dieter Reinhold. Then Daniel said, “The father of Dieter Reinhold saved my life during the war.” They shook hands and embraced. Nobody knew what was going on, and this German knew nothing about the story. His father died on the Eastern front in 1944 and all he knew was that he had been a major and served in the Gestapo, so he was a war criminal. Such a silence descended. Nobody asked any more questions. They were all silent and only Daniel and Dieter Reinhold talked together quietly. I don’t know what they said. Of course I was thinking about our own family, you, your father, and grandfather. It struck me that this simple division of people into Fascists and Jews, murderers and victims, evil and good is just too straightforward. These two men, I mean the major who was killed and Daniel, stood on the very borderline where things are not that simple.

Daniel told me that when he is remembering those who died, he always prays for that major. I found that meeting so moving that I can’t tell you everything that is in my heart. I want to learn to pray like that, too, for everybody, but not in the abstract, really and truly.

Love from

Hilda

Oh, I forgot to write that there is an ancient monument here on the Golan Heights which looks like Stonehenge in England. It is the place where the legend of Gilgamesh was acted out! They are excavating it at present and Daniel knows the archaeologist in charge and has promised to show me over it some time. He says that there is evidence of the most ancient civilization in the world and even, perhaps, of the presence on Earth of people from other planets! Everything here is like that. No matter where you turn you just gasp in amazement.

30. June 1969, Haifa

S

ERMON OF

B

ROTHER

D

ANIEL AT

P

ENTECOST

My dear friends, brothers and sisters!

Every festival is like a bottomless well. You look into it and see down into the depths of human history and the depths and antiquity of relations between man and his Creator. The Jewish Feast of Shavuot, or “Weeks,” predates the Feast of Pentecost historically. It is entirely possible that the festival existed even in the pre-Christian, pagan world. Then, too, people brought the first fruits of their harvests in thanksgiving to the Lord. On this day Jews commemorate the giving of the Torah, the ten commandments. In the Christian world, Pentecost acquires an additional significance. The first fruits of the harvest are still brought, and that is a reminder of the ancient sacrifice of thanksgiving. But we also remember another event, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit of the Lord upon Christ’s disciples. The disciples heard “a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind” and they saw “cloven tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues.” The Acts of the Apostles go on to list the tongues which were heard from the lips of the disciples: the languages of the Parthians, Medes and Elamites, of dwellers in Mesopotamia, Judaea and Cappadocia, in Pontus and the province of Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, in parts of Libya, and in Rome, Crete, and Arabia. In effect this was all the languages of the ecumene, the known inhabited earth. It was a prototype of the world in which you and I live now. Today Christ’s disciples speak all the languages of the world, and you and I celebrate the Feast of Pentecost in the language of our Master.

There is one more thing I would like to say on this day: tongues of fire appeared above each of the disciples, but what happened to the tongues after that? Is there a vessel in man, a receptacle in which he can retain that fire? If we do not have that receptacle within us, the Divine Fire departs and returns to where it came from, but if we have that vessel within ourselves, it will stay.

Jesus in his human life was a vessel which fully received the Holy Spirit poured into it. The Son of Man became the Son of God.

Human nature combines with Divine nature following just this recipe. Each of us present here today is a vessel for receiving the Spirit of the Lord, the words of the Lord, Christ himself. That is all theology has to tell us. We are not going to be asked for our thoughts about the Divine nature, but we will be asked, “What did you do? Did you feed the hungry? Did you help those in trouble?” May the Lord be with us all.

31. November 1990, Freiburg

F

ROM A TALK BY

B

ROTHER

D

ANIEL

S

TEIN TO SCHOOLCHILDREN

I lay there and waited for darkness to fall before coming out. I wandered to a shed, went in and fell asleep. Later, at around five o’clock in the morning, I heard protracted shooting. It was Operation Iodine. They were shooting the people who had remained in the ghetto. It was the most dreadful night of my life. I wept. I was destroyed. Where was God? Where in all this was God? Why had he hidden me from my pursuers but not had mercy on those five hundred children, old people, and invalids? Where was divine justice? I wanted to get up and go back there to be with them, only I had not the strength.

I later recollected blundering through the forests not far from the town for three days, but then I lost track of time. I desperately wanted not to be, just to cease to exist, but I never thought of committing suicide. I had a feeling of having been killed five hundred times already, of being lost between earth and heaven and, like a ghost, belonging neither among the living nor among the dead. At the same time, the instinct of self-preservation was alive in me and, like an animal, I started back at the slightest threat. I must have been close to madness. My soul was crying out, “Lord! How could you allow this?” There was no reply. He was not in my mind.

I was wearing a police uniform. It made me a target for everybody: the Germans who had announced my escape; the partisans hunting down stray Germans; and any local villager wanting to claim the reward for turning in a Jew and a criminal all in one.

For three days I ate nothing. I remember at one time drinking my fill from a brook. I did not sleep either. I stumbled deep into a place to hide, among bushes, fell asleep for a minute but immediately leapt up when I heard the rattle of machine gun fire. Again and again I had flashbacks to that moment when I realized the inhabitants of the Emsk ghetto were being executed. From time to time I heard real shooting. One evening I came out to the edge of a village which I had saved from the executioners but even there I could not count on refuge. I sat down on a fallen tree and no longer had the strength to go on. Anyway, where should I go? For the first time in three days I fell asleep.

The prioress of the displaced Convent of the Sisters of the Resurrection, Mother Aurelia, came to me. She was wearing a long black habit which had turned reddish-brown over the years and a winter jacket which was too small for her and was patched at the pocket. I could see all the details incredibly clearly, as if they were slightly magnified: her pale face covered with a fine down, her sagging cheeks, and her unwavering bright blue eyes. I began speaking but do not remember the words I spoke, although we were talking about something more important than my life, far more important and significant. I asked her to take me to someone. I think we were talking about the Walewicz sisters. At all events, I imagined that dead Marysia was also there, nearby, only no longer looking at all as she had. Her appearance was not altogether human. She was shining and radiating peace. Before I had finished speaking, I suddenly realized I had asked the prioress for death, and that this figure which looked like Marysia was not her at all but Death. The prioress nodded, agreeing, and I woke up. There was nobody beside me. I could not remember what exactly I had said, but after this vision I felt amazingly serene. For the first time since my escape, I had slept properly.

That same night I returned to Emsk. I knew where the sentries were posted, where I needed to take particular care, and went to the nunnery in the building next to the police station. I knocked and one of the nuns opened the door to me. I rushed in past her to the prioress. She knew I had helped the partisans because sometimes my information to them had been conveyed through her. By this time there were notices on every post in town that I was wanted, and everybody by now knew that I was a Jew.

I did not have to explain anything to her. I was hidden in the attic.

It was a Sunday. Every Sunday since Father Walewicz had been murdered, the nuns had walked to the nearest church, sixteen kilometers from Emsk. The prioress said to the sisters, “We shall ask our Lord for a sign as to what we should do about the young man.”

The prioress and one other sister entered the church just as an excerpt was being read from the Gospel about the Good Samaritan. You may have forgotten that extract. It is a parable which Jesus taught his disciples. A certain Jew was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by bandits. They robbed him, beat him, and left him by the roadside. A passing Jewish priest saw him and walked by on the other side. In just the same way another Jew walked past. And then a foreigner, a man from Samaria, walked by and took pity on him. He bound up his wounds and took the unfortunate victim to an inn. There he left the sick man, paying the landlord to take care of him. Jesus then asks which of the three was the neighbor of the man who had fallen among thieves. The one who had shown him compassion. “Go, and do thou likewise.”

It was these words that the nuns saw as a sign from God. They returned and told the others what had happened. It has to be said that of the four nuns, two were against allowing me to stay, but they accepted the sign.

I hid in the attic. This house had belonged to a Jew who had been shot, and his books had been put up there. The nuns had also stored the convent’s library there. The first book I picked up was a Catholic magazine in which I read about the apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes. Before this I had read the Bible and knew about miracles, but none of it had seemed to have any bearing on my life. The miracles in Lourdes had occurred only a few decades previously and were being described by one of my contemporaries. I was amazed by the sense of their immediacy, especially after the incredible events I had experienced myself. After all, had not my salvation, in Vilnius and in the field when my pursuers passed within a few yards without noticing me, not also been a miracle of this kind?

I asked them to give me the New Testament, which I had never before held in my hands. In the Polish school where I had studied, I was excused from the Scripture classes. I read it for the first time and found the answer to the question most urgent for me at that time: where was God when those five hundred people from the ghetto in Emsk were being shot? Where was God in all these things which were happening to my people at that moment? What was one to make of Divine justice? Now it was revealed to me that God was with the suffering. God can only be with the suffering and never with the killers. He was killed together with us. The God suffering together with the Jews was my God.

I saw that Jesus really was the Messiah, and that his death and resurrection were the answer to my questions. The events in the Gospel had happened in my ancient land, to Jesus the Jew, and the problems dealt with in the Gospel were so important to me precisely because they were Jewish problems, associated with the land for which I was so homesick. Here everything came together: the resurrection of Christ with the testimony of St. Paul, and the discovery that the Cross of Christ was not a punishment from God but the path to salvation and resurrection. I identified that with the cross which my people bears and with all I had seen and experienced. This understanding of suffering is also to be found in the Jewish religion. There are rabbis who think the same way, but at the time I did not know that.

I became reconciled to God through Christ, and it occurred to me that I should be baptized. For me this was an extraordinarily difficult decision. For Jews it means taking the path “down the stairwell which leads away.” Anyone who accepts baptism no longer belongs to the community of the Jewish people. I wanted, nevertheless, to be baptized without delay.

The prioress considered that I needed first to be prepared, to learn more about Christianity. I protested, “Sister, we are in a war. Nobody knows whether we will be alive tomorrow. I believe that Jesus was the Son of God and the Messiah. I beg you to baptize me.”

The prioress was perplexed and went to pray in the shed in order to reach a correct decision. At noon she came to me again and said that when she prayed she had suddenly sensed that I would become a Catholic priest. That really had not occurred to me! I forgot her words for several years, and recalled them only much later. That same evening I was baptized. One of the nuns christened me.

I left their house then, because I did not want it to seem that I had been baptized only in return for the refuge they had granted me.

For several days I wandered through the surrounding area, afraid that people I met along the way might recognize me. There were posters everywhere, detailing the reward for my capture. I could not go into the forests because the partisans would not take long to make up their minds about me. For them I was a German policeman.

I could see no alternative, and four days later I returned to the sisters. They took me in and I spent the next fifteen months with them. Their windows looked out at what was now the police station.

32. 1972

F

ROM

H

ILDA’S DIARY

We left the car and went up the track. Daniel had a small sack with about 10 kilograms of flour. An Arab came toward us with a donkey with two panniers. We said hello and went on up to the village. A Syrian village still surviving in Israel after the war is a great rarity. Either they had not heard the news or hadn’t taken it in. There was a wonderful, verdant valley between brooding hills through which a stream which, curiously, hadn’t yet dried up was flowing. There were fig trees and olives. It was not particularly dirty but so poor they didn’t even have the usual old car tyres strewn around the place. Daniel confidently climbed the hill above the village towards a remote spot where there was something halfway between a house and a dog kennel. A little courtyard had rocks piled up in it and there was a strange round stove which looked African.

Daniel shouted, “Rafail!” Out came a decrepit old grasshopper with a big bony head, wearing an Arab galabiyya smock and a Central Asian tubeteyka on his head which had faded until it was quite colorless. Daniel said, “This is my assistant.” Rafail nodded and did not once glance at me. Daniel gave him the sack of flour and he took it, muttering what sounded like “Good” rather than “Thank you.” “I have no tea or coffee,” he said, as if apologizing. “That’s okay, I wasn’t expecting any,” Daniel murmured.

Within ten minutes, a flock of Arab children of varying ages had come running. They squatted among the rocks and stared avidly. “Go away now. I’m busy today. I’ve got guests. Tomorrow morning,” the grasshopper said, and the children moved away. They stood a little way off and listened to a language they couldn’t understand.

“There’s only one girl here speaks Hebrew. She lived in Haifa and learned it there. She’s very proud of it. The others speak Arabic, but can’t write. I am teaching them. There is no school in the village, and 13 kilometers is too far for them to walk.” We drank some water from a jug. “Do they annoy you?” Daniel asked, pointing to the children. “I chase them away sometimes, and sometimes I just go away myself. I have a cave I can hide in in the mountains. Well, not a whole cave, I only rent half. The other half is occupied by bats,” he said as if he’d made a good joke. I felt sick. I am scared of ordinary mice, and can’t bear even to think about bats. We spent less than an hour in his courtyard and left.

On the way back, Daniel told me Rafail was born in Jerusalem, in the old Bukhara Jewish quarter which still exists. He was the fifteenth son in his family and ran away to the Jesuits. They brought him up in a Catholic school, he became a monk, and has only recently come to live in the Golan Heights. Before that he lived 15 years or so with the Bedouins.

“Was he trying to convert them?” I asked, but Daniel laughed. “He tried when he was young. Now he says that he just lives with them. He says he doesn’t believe he can teach anybody anything.”

“Is he as fatalistic as that?” I couldn’t refrain from asking, although I always curse myself for asking too many questions. But Daniel laughed again and replied, “No, he’s just very intelligent. He is really one of the most brilliant people I have ever met. It’s just that all his teeth have fallen out, he goes around barefoot and in rags, and washes only when it rains and a lot of water gathers in his trough. That’s why nobody wants to see how clever and educated he is. If you were to put a jacket on him and boots and make him give lectures, he would do it better than anyone. Better than many, anyway. I made a point of bringing you with me so you could take a look at him. He is a great rarity is Rafail.”

I had a strange feeling. It’s as if Christianity in Europe and here in the East are completely different things. With us everything is terribly decent, rational, and genteel, but here it has something extreme about it. A stone hovel with an earthen floor, ancient asceticism, a complete break with civilization. What do the two things have in common? Nothing. So why are they both called Christianity?

Is it only Christ? Which one? The Christ of the Crucifixion or the Christ of the Transfiguration? The Christ performing miracles or the Christ preaching sermons? Lord, help me to love everybody.

33. 1972, Dubravlag-Moscow

C

ORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN

G

ERSHON

S

HIMES AND HIS MOTHER,

Z

INAIDA

S

HIMES

I got my latest instalment of mail on Wednesday, four postcards and two letters. The men in neighboring bunks are amazed and wonder who writes to me so much. Today is the Sabbath. We don’t go to work on Saturdays. We managed to negotiate that. Instead we have a roster, but that is our choice so it’s cool. I have had no time all week to finish writing my reply. I will hand the letter in tomorrow morning and may add a bit more. Yesterday morning we went to work early and saw an aircraft in the sky. It looked so beautiful, leaving a thin trail behind it. A long, long tail.

I have finished Joseph and His Brothers. Many, many thanks to Kirill for getting it and sending it. How amazing the book did not disappear on the way, which happens sometimes. It is both incredibly interesting and tedious but there is so much information about history and all sorts of thoughts. Personally I prefer Feuchtwanger as a writer, although as a child he was too keen on big moustaches.

It seems to me that Kirill exaggerates Thomas Mann’s significance, but I love Kirill so much and I’m so grateful for everything that I am prepared to agree with him about anything. Let Thomas Mann be the greatest genius of all times and peoples, a coryphaeus of the sciences, and even the best basketball player in the Uruguay national team. Unfortunately the little book written for our grandmother in spidery lettering got lost in the post, but here I have met an old shoemaker from Grodno who speaks the language of the people to me.

The inmates are very interesting. There are Lithuanian and Ukrainian nationalists, all sorts of religious types. One young guy is a Baptist and refused to serve in the army on religious grounds. There is one amazing geezer serving out his time. He is a writer. There were a couple of them, really famous. I see him when I have free time, which isn’t often, but it’s like being at the university.

Thank Kostya and Masha. Their letters are fun. Ask them to tell me when the heir arrives. I am not losing hope we will live on the same street one day. I even dream of it sometimes, although in my dreams it looks more like Koktebel than anywhere else.

Svetlana’s postcard is so funny. I liked the picture. It doesn’t say who the artist is, but I think it must be Chagal. My wish to get a real education gets stronger and stronger. When everything finally comes to an end, I shall study, study, and study, as Lenin said we should.

Medvedev will probably be interested to know there is a library here with prewar magazines, not complete series just odd issues. I sometimes find very interesting articles in them. The older the magazine the more interesting it is likely to be.

Last month I fulfilled my work norm for the first time and for some reason felt very proud.

Dubravlag, Lagpunkt No. 11

1976, Flight from Vienna to Lod Airport, Israel

L

ETTER FROM

G

ERSHON TO

Z

INAIDA

S

HIMES

Dear Mama,

You always said I had a hellish character. I thought so myself, but apparently it is not so. The proof is this letter I am writing to you directly from the plane. I thought it would be a long time before I wrote to you, and perhaps even … I was very disappointed with your choice but will try nevertheless to understand why you have decided to stay in that cesspit. The plane has been flying toward Eretz for two hours. I feel a greater happiness than I have ever felt before. No joy can compare with that of someone flying back to a home he has never seen. Our group consists of twelve people and we spent several days together in Vienna: a Jewish family from Riga, religious, with an old man in a skullcap leading them. They speak Yiddish among themselves! How on earth did they survive the war? Then there’s another couple on the plane who are very famous, a China specialist and his wife who have been campaigning to emigrate for a long time. He gave an interview to an American radio station and there were protest meetings in support of him at Columbia University which caused a big stir. He also signed a letter to our defense just after we were arrested and there was hope we might be released without a trial, so it did us no good at all. I want to go over to him but he looks very important and I am just “‘an ordinary Soviet prisoner.”

Don’t be sad, Mama. Concentrate on Svetlana. My dear sister will give you plenty to worry about and have lots of baby goyim whose noses you can wipe. I have nothing against Seryozha, but Svetlana always finds “non-standard solutions.” She should have married a nice Jewish boy and we could all have emigrated together but no, she had to marry a Cossack. I don’t understand why she spent so many years trying to emigrate and then got stuck in such a banal manner “at the prompting of her heart”! That’s it! The plane is coming in to land! Through the window I can see the Mediterranean and the coast of Israel.

1977, Hebron

F

ROM A LETTER FROM

G

ERSHON TO

Z

INAIDA

S

HIMES

… can’t compare it with any anything else. Of course, it is a mobile home not a real house but it is fair enough for the home of a Jew to be a tent, a tabernacle or a shelter. We live like the settlers of the early 20th century, except that where they had rifles we have machine guns. Ever since I landed at Ben Gurion Airport I have been feeling a little drunk. For now there are five of us men, four women, and a child. The man without a woman is, of course, me. Only it’s not because I have a hellish personality, as you have always been telling me. It’s just that I suggested to the girl I brought here that she should leave. At least now I know exactly the kind of woman I do not want by my side, but the kind I do need I have yet to find. In general I like Israeli women very much. The ones I met while I was in the ulpan learning Hebrew were very strong and independent. Admittedly it was mostly Russians there (they call Jews from Russia “Russians” here). Only the teachers were Israeli. I like the Russians here very much, too, but you meet such beauties among the local girls they take your breath away. What would you say if I married a Hebrew girl who couldn’t speak a word of Russian? We work, we stand guard, and we sleep in turn. We have a tractor we bought with a bank loan. It is six kilometers to Hebron, but the road is not safe. It passes an Arab village. Something you will find interesting is that the Cave of Makhpelah where all the patriarchs, Abraham and the others, are buried is near here. It didn’t make a great impression on me, but the others were in raptures. To tell the truth, I have no time left for raptures. There is a lot of work. I remember sewing mittens in the camp. What a nightmare! At that time I could not imagine that all those samizdat Jewish magazines, Hebrew language circles, and Jewish discussions in kitchens would lead to a real life like this. The people are mixed. Among the settlers there are religious and non-religious Jews, like us. The local rabbi from Hebron visited us recently. He is very famous, and right wing. Incidentally, it is very interesting. In Russia I was considered practically a Trotskyite in our circles, very far-left, but here I am considered to be on the right. In Israel there’s no telling your left from your right!

I used to not have much time for the lads who wore skullcaps, but here they are splendid, sturdy boys and very jolly, especially the rabbis.

INSCRIPTION ON A PHOTOGRAPH: Our women prepare for the Sabbath. You can see part of the laid table.

1978, Hebron

F

ROM A LETTER FROM

G

ERSHON TO

Z

INAIDA

S

HIMES

… came over to me. He looked a hundred years old, but his mind was completely clear. He asked whether my ancestors might have been from Nikolayevo. I said yes. Then he asked whether I might be a relative of David Shimes. I said yes, he was my grandfather. At this the old gentleman gave a little wail of delight. “Oy, weh! He was my best friend!” I said, “Don’t be upset, but he got shot in the 1930s.” “That,” he said, “is really no surprise. All his brothers and sisters were shot and poisoned, too.”

“Perhaps those were not his brothers and sisters, but somebody else’s,” I said. “My grandfather did not have any brothers or sisters because he was born in shame. His mother bore him out of wedlock, and in a good Jewish family that was a great scandal. My grandfather’s mother, my great-grandmother, contracted tuberculosis because of a nervous disorder and was sent to Switzerland for treatment, where she died.”

“Entirely so,” said that frail old man. “The father of your great-grandmother was a grain merchant, and there has never been a poor grain merchant since the world began. It was he who sent Rakhil to the sanatorium, to escape the disgrace. But everybody in the town knew which revolutionary had given her the baby. Entirely so. David was brought up by two maiden aunts. We were in the same class at grammar school, and he was the only friend I had in the whole of my childhood. In 1918 my father brought me to Palestine and I have lived here ever since. It was only after the war that I read Stalin had managed to murder the father of my friend David even though he was in Mexico. Stalin murdered all of David’s brothers and sisters who were born legitimately, too. I read a big book about it. It’s all described there.”

I was simply astounded, Mother. How come this old stranger knows more about our ancestors than we do ourselves? Or did you know but concealed it from your children? In short, when this old man mentioned Mexico, I realized who he was talking about.

Perhaps in his old age he is confusing everything, but if this is true, it is a complete kick in the back for me. Knowing how cautious you are, write back just one word, “ice-pick,” and I will take that as full confirmation. To tell the truth I just can’t believe it!

Ma! I remember now why I am writing to you. I have gotten married. My wife is an American Jewish girl. You will like her very much. Her name is Debbie, Deborah. When I have photographs I’ll send them.

So long,

Gershon

1981, Hebron

F

ROM A LETTER FROM

G

ERSHON TO

Z

INAIDA

S

HIMES

… Why are you so surprised? It is iron logic. In the early 20th century all nonbelieving Jews rushed to support the revolution because socialism was a very seductive idea and I understand my ancestor very well. He was an idealist. They were all idealists, only first they had no luck with socialism and then they did no better with internationalism. It all fell through. The next step was for new idealists to immigrate to build socialism in one country, Israel. That’s what we have now. What is more, it was all non-religious lads again, because the believers had a religious idea: we already have our Holy Land. It was the non-religious men who came to the Holy Land to build socialism, and I am one of them! I do not like capitalism, I like socialism, only not the kind we had in the USSR.

You are surprised I am living on something like a collective farm, but it is my collective farm, a kibbutz, and I like it. I have an even bigger surprise for you. I did not write about it before, but now I don’t think you will be surprised by anything I do. When Binyomin was born I was circumcised at the same time as him. I won’t discuss the reasons I did that with you, but I am sure I did the right thing.

I am glad my wife supports me. So there, I have become a Jew at 30 years of age, together with my firstborn. Deborah will be having another baby soon, another boy I hope. She promised me to have as many babies as she has strength for, and she is a very strong and sturdy woman in every respect.

I have never referred again to your refusal to immigrate to Israel because of Svetlana’s idiotic marriage, but now you write that relations between her and her husband are terrible and that they are practically at each other’s throats. Perhaps we should look at that again. Let her divorce her Cossack, take her daughter, and I will send you all an invitation. Nowadays it is all much simpler than it was five years ago. I am quite sure that if my father were alive, he would have brought you here in 1976. You will always think I killed him with my samizdat and prison sentence and that his heart failure was my fault. Perhaps you are right, but do you really not understand that even if I had not been so determined to emigrate then, I would still have come into conflict with the regime over something else? Think about my suggestion. I am quite sure father would have sided with me.

INSCRIPTION ON A PHOTOGRAPH: This is a view from my window. To the left in the distance was the Oak of Mamre, but now there is not even a stump left and one can only point out where it used to stand.

INSCRIPTION ON A PHOTOGRAPH: This is Binyomin. He has puffy cheeks when he is lying down, but when you pick him up he is less of a piglet.

June 2006

L

ETTER FROM

L

UDMILA

U

LITSKAYA TO

E

LENA

K

OSTIOUKOVITCH

Dear Lyalya,

I am sending you a revised section of text, provisionally Part Two. The editing is insanely difficult. The whole vast amount of material crowds in on me, everybody wants to speak, and it’s difficult to decide who to allow up to the surface, who should wait, and who I should just ask to keep quiet. Teresa Vilenskaya is particularly persistent. There have been many Saint Teresas, of Ávila, of Lisieux (who was called “of the Child Jesus,” or “the Little Flower of Jesus”), and the contemporary Mother Teresa of Calcutta who died recently. That is just by the way. My Teresa is alive and well and awaiting the appearance of the Messiah.

Like the other major books, this one is grinding me down. I can’t explain to myself or to you why I ever took it on, knowing in advance how impossible the task would be. Our minds are such that we reject the notion of insoluble problems. If there is a problem there must be a solution. It is only mathematicians who know the redeeming formula that “under the given conditions the problem is insoluble.” Even if there is no solution, it would be good at least to be able to see the problem, to view it from the back, the front, the sides, from above and below. Ah, that is what it is like: it can’t be solved. There are so many such things—original sin; salvation; redemption; why God, if he exists, created evil; and, if he does not exist, what meaning life can have. All questions for good children. While they are little, they ask the questions; and when they grow up, they find a handy answer in a tear-off calendar or a catechism.

I would very much like to know, but no logic provides the answers. Neither does Christianity, or Judaism, or Buddhism. “Reconcile yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, to the fact that many problems have no solution. There are things you just have to learn to live with, and put up with, and not resolve.”

Now something splendid: my grandson Luka has been born. He weighs 3.2 kilograms and is 53 centimeters in height. The threatened snagging of the umbilical cord did not happen and everything went fine, without a Caesarean section. I saw him the day after he came into the world. What a remarkable distance there is in a single generation: you are still standing there, but now there is a new main character, who is concerned solely about physiological matters. You see the magnificence of the event which is the birth of a new infant. It is the formation of a new world, a new cosmic bubble which will reflect everything. He wrinkles his nose, wiggles his fingers, jerks his little feet, and does not yet give a thought to all the nonsense which so preoccupies us: the meaning of life, for example. For him his digestion is the meaning of life. I will send you a photo eventually, when I have learned how to download it from a telephone to a computer.

How are Marusya and Lyova? Have you stopped taking their temperatures? I suspect it was no coincidence that Marusya’s thermometer broke. She wanted you to give up taking her temperature, decide it was always high, and stop taking her to school!

Love,

L.