Ever since, I have been looking for them. I have never stopped looking for them. Other friends have come to enrich my life, but not one has resembled either of them. When they left they took with them not only a conception of Messianic hope, but also the ideal of friendship.
My new friends and I try to understand what has happened to our people, and sometimes even to act upon its destiny, but my mystical experiences of long ago remain enveloped in memory.
In other words: friendship has not disappeared from my life; it has only changed in nature. Even in a universe of ultimate horror friendship was a haven.
Of course, the technicians of death tried to deprive us of it. Everyone for himself, they told us. Forget your parents, your brothers, your past, or else you will perish. That is what they kept telling us day and night. But what happened was the opposite. Those who lived only for themselves, only to feed themselves, ended up succumbing to the laws of death, while the others, those who knew whom to live for—a parent, a brother, a friend—managed to obey the laws of life.
I feel uncomfortable speaking of it here—I have always preferred to keep the most private matters to myself—but how could I recall my friends of those days without mentioning the best, the most devoted, the most generous of them all—my father? I lived only for him. And by him. He needed me—and I him—to live one more day, one more hour. I knew it and he knew it. I see him again and, at the core of my being, I feel a nameless sorrow: nothing has replaced that friendship.
· ·
BUT IS THIS not true of any friendship? To the extent that it exists, it will continue to exist. It is its own successor, and nothing can destroy it. Is this too idealized, too optimistic a concept? I have drawn it from the movement of Hasidism, which is a celebration of friendship. No other movement puts so much emphasis on friendship. In Hasidism, friendship is as important as faith in the Masters. The disciple is enjoined not only to follow the rabbi, but also to make friends. Often the Hasid comes to the rabbi not only to see him, but to meet other disciples. Gather together—that is the Hasidic rallying cry in all its joy. Do not isolate yourself from your fellow man, but seek his affection, his love.
This was valid for the generation of the Besht, for that of the Maggid of Mezeritch, and also for ours. An uprooted Hasid will always be able to count on his friends to provide a roof for him. A despondent Hasid will soon find new resources, fervent allies who will help him to fight despair. A Hasid is never alone nor allowed to be depressed. This is permitted the rabbi, but not the disciple. What, then, is a Hasid to do who is crushed by his memories, shattered by his inability to affirm life while he mourns his dead? How can a Hasid who has lived through the long night of the concentration camps still open himself to joy, to ecstasy? Alone, he would not have the strength. With friends, he can undertake anything, relearn everything: the duty of keeping the faith, of loving, of singing, of sharing with others the salt of his life, and his secret, too, through stories and melodies, through words and silences. The unhappy Hasid will have to choose happiness so as not to be a bad influence on his friends, so as to prevent them from following him into the abyss.
Here again, need I reveal to you what some of you perhaps already know? I tried to explore this attitude in one of my first novels, The Town Beyond the Wall. There I told the story of a young man who accepts imprisonment and torture to save a friend who is still free. But his cellmate is a madman. And my character realizes that the torturers have placed them together deliberately. Their purpose? My character is to be infected by the sick man’s madness. If he does not act, he too will lose his reason. So, in order not to sink into insanity, he goes about healing the madman—his brother, his friend.
A great Hasidic Master, Rabbi Moshe-Leib of Sassov, said of sacred love: If you want to find the spark, you must look among the ashes.
Peretz Markish
AFTER A LECTURE on Talmud in Geneva, a young man timidly approached me and said he wanted to speak to me. He was Simon Markish, eldest son of the great Jewish poet Peretz Markish.
I had just published my novel The Testament, in which I tried to evoke the lives and deaths of the Communist Jewish writers, novelists, and poets murdered on Stalin’s orders in 1952.
My principal character, Paltiel Kossover, brought together diverse elements in each of these Communist Jewish writers: their passion for justice, their thirst for fraternity, their love for the poor, for the disinherited. They intrigued me.
I could not understand: How can a real Jew—that is, someone who seeks self-definition by and through his Jewish condition—succumb to the Communist faith, which, at the extreme, preaches total assimilation? How could a traditional Jewish intellectual like Der Nister, the great novelist of the Bratslaver Hasidim, adhere to a totalitarian party in which each member sings praises to a leader as if he were God? How could a poet as gifted as Peretz Markish defer to the fanaticism of Stalin? How could these men of heart and intelligence, educated in the Jewish messianic tradition, take on the roles of soldiers of Communism? And then there was something else I could not understand: What made Stalin slaughter them? Why this fierce hatred? I studied published and unpublished documents. I questioned Communists of that period. I wanted to know, and I wrote the novel as much to learn as to inform.
Of all the writers, two fascinated me in particular: Markish and Der Nister. First, because I admired their talent—the romantic inspiration of one, the poetic power of the other. I hoped to discover who they were beyond their words.
“Perhaps you knew my father?” asked Simon Markish at my lecture in Geneva. I looked at him for a long moment. Was the son a poet as well?
“No,” I said, “I never knew your father.”
He seemed surprised. “But in your book, you speak of him so well. It is as though …”
I interrupted him. “No, I never met Peretz Markish, but I love him very much.”
In fact, Paltiel Kossover was inspired as much by Markish as by Der Nister. Not, to be sure, on the concrete level of appearances, but on a more profound level of being. Kossover drew from their source. Like them, he wanted to sing of man, and like them, he became man’s victim.
Of all the responses to The Testament, that of Simon Markish affected me most. Need I explain the attraction his father had for me? Peretz Markish and his work are part of a landscape at once familiar and strange—that of my adolescence, in my small town of Sighet, which I believed to be the center of the universe. In his poems I found older friends who, before me, had dared to venture into the forbidden realm of action and thought that sometimes opposed religious tradition.
I began to read him, to study him, and have never had enough. His vision of man embroiled in war, yearning for simple happiness. His judgment of the enemies of the Jewish people and of all humanity affected me deeply. His warnings, his promises, his words of consolation—you cannot read them without being distressed. His voice summons and penetrates you; you will not forget him.
To know him better, I read and reread what his widow, Esther Markish, wrote of him, and what others published—commentaries on his work, or on Russian Jewish poetry in general, like those of Abraham Sutzkever and Irving Howe; memoirs, encounters, correspondence about his turbulent years before and after the Second World War.
Thus I discovered a vast literature reflecting every trend in Russian Jewish poetry: the classic conception, lyric vocation, expressionist … the naturalism of Bergelson, the realism of Feffer, the mysticism of Der Nister. In every corner of the Soviet Union, Jewish writers and poets, like others, sang the new hope in which the promise still seemed beautiful and pure. Naive? Possibly. In those times young Jews felt the need to believe in something new. For centuries they had suffered too much, personally and in their collective memory, not to aspire to smash all the old structures and replace them with a revolutionary system in which all would become possible.
Peretz Markish is a good example.
Born in Wolin at the end of the nineteenth century, he knew poverty,
misery, and fear. He attended a Jewish school, studied the holy books, sang in synagogue, awaited the coming of the Messiah, and prayed to God to protect his people in exile. Then came the revolution, and, like so many of his contemporaries, young Markish joined its ranks. Long live liberty. Long live the future. In Communist terms this meant, Down with the past, down with religion. One must be freed from all that recalls tradition: the holidays, the customs, the laws, the songs and dreams of the past. The rabbis, the sages, the ancient philosophers must yield their place to the heralds of modern socialism. Like everyone, Markish is taken in. His writings of this period praise the Communists and condemn all who are not. He is hard on Jewish landlords, employers, and notables—excessively hard. And yet, several years later he is nevertheless taken to task by the political watchdogs of the party who criticize him for portraying only Jews … and then, unlike everyone else, he refuses to bend. He defends himself and perseveres. It is as a Jew—as a Jewish poet and as a Jewish writer—that he expresses his universal aspirations.
Is this why he leaves the Soviet Union in the 1920s? He goes to Berlin, to Warsaw, and visits Palestine. With Uri Zvi Grinberg and Meilekh Ravitch he founds Khalastra, a review bursting with vigor, freshness, and impertinence. He reveals himself everywhere as a brilliant and spellbinding lecturer. He challenges established ideas, unsettles all that appears secure. He questions everything. Ilya Ehrenburg describes him as a Jewish Byron, anxious, romantic, and possessed of a beauty that made one dream. He could stay in the West and build a career. What he wants, he gets. The people acclaim him; he is quoted everywhere. His humor is appealing. His courage in breaking with the traditional lyricism of Jewish poetry is praised. He triumphs. And nevertheless … he returns to the Soviet Union.
Why? A premonition of the rise of Nazism? He senses that Western Europe is collapsing, he foresees the destruction of the Jewish communities of Poland. He is too much of a poet not to be a little bit of a prophet as well. In Russia a sort of Jewish cultural renaissance is taking place. He publishes reviews and books in Yiddish. He teaches classes and gives lessons. Around him one finds Kvitko and Hofstein, Halkin and Feffer, and, of course, on stage, dominating them all, the great Shlomo Mikhoels. Ah, yes, one easily understands how a Jewish poet succumbs to this attention. One understands his wish to be among them.
AND WHY NOT say it? On the surface, Markish seems to be right. The Order of Lenin is bestowed on him. Writing in Yiddish must therefore be something important. The Stalin-Hitler pact? A passing episode. For the Jews, the war against Nazi Germany is the occasion for a full mobilization of forces to participate in the national and international struggle. One must read what Markish writes on the Warsaw Ghetto, on Jewish history in general, and above all, on the war against the Jews. One must read what he wrote about his own times to understand the grandeur of his soul and the profound nature of his pain.
After the war, Markish is never the same. The Communist in him lives in the shadow of the Jew that he is, and whose destiny he wants to fully assume to the end. He appears to be more closed, more solitary. His poetic meditations rejoin the prophetic, classic lyricism of his distant precursors. He writes a long poem, “The Man of Forty.” He spends more time with his son Simon. He takes account of what is happening around him: his friends and companions are being arrested. Soon it will be his turn.
On the morning of January 27, 1949, they come knocking on his door.
We know nothing of what happened afterward. How did he live in prison? What did he say to his judges and torturers? What songs did he compose in his night? I would give much to find out. Could I have created Paltiel Kossover to share his solitude?
NOTE: In 1989 I asked President Mikhail Gorbachev to posthumously rehabilitate Peretz Markish and the other Jewish writers executed under Stalin. In the spirit of glasnost, that request was granted.
Dialogues
1. A CHILD AND HIS GRANDFATHER.
Long ago, I taught you fervor.
I remember.
And passion.
I remember.
And song.
I remember, Grandfather.
Then sing!
I cannot. Please understand; don’t be angry with me. My gaze is burning, but all the eyes it encounters are extinguished. I dwell in a cemetery, Grandfather. Like you, I am dead; only your voice reaches me. Tell me, if I were not dead, would I hear you?
You don’t hear me well; you misinterpret my teachings. You’re alive, therefore live!
I am incapable of it, Grandfather. I did try in the beginning; I failed. I loved you too much; now you’re gone. All those I loved, I love them still, and they are gone. I try hard to emulate them. Also to follow them.
Stop! I shall not permit this. I order you to live! In ecstasy if possible, but surely in faith! And you must sing, do you hear me? You must sing! Do you want me to help you? The last time we were together, it was for the High Holy Days of the New Year.
I remember, Grandfather.
We had gone to the Rebbe to participate in the solemn services. The disciples were weeping, the Rebbe was not. He remained silent. We recited our prayers and our litanies; we implored the heavens to protect us, to let us live, we shed unending tears; not he, not the Rebbe. He may have had some inkling of what was to come and that it was too late: the decree had been signed, it was irrevocable.
But then, why was he silent? If he knew, he should have wept all the more!
At one point, just before the sounding of the shofar, he began to sing, something he had never done before.
Now I recall: his song tore at our insides.
The words, do you remember them?
No. Only the melody.
A verse from the Psalms. “The dead do not sing the Lord’s praise.…” Oh, yes, the Rebbe knew. And therefore he tried to do the impossible: to revoke the edict. If you kill your people, if you condone its annihilation, who will praise you? Who will sanctify you with song? He sang with all his heart, with all his soul, sensing that it was for the last time. That’s what we had failed to understand. For us this was the first time. Of all the men, of all the women present, you are the only survivor, the only one to carry His song in you: let it burst forth, let it ascend to heaven. Sing in His place and in mine!
I cannot, Grandfather. Don’t push me to do the impossible. My place is with you, my heart is in mourning. They have murdered the child that I was, and you want me to sing?
I want you to live.
Try to understand me, Grandfather. Try to forgive me.
2. A CHILD AND HIS GRANDMOTHER.
Beneath your clothes, you were wearing your shroud.
Of course.
You had a premonition? You knew that the train was carrying us to our death?
Of course.
You should have told us.
Who would have listened? An old woman’s delusions, that’s what they would have called it.
You were beautiful that day, Grandmother. Calm, peaceful.
All of them were afraid. I wasn’t. Fear is like pain. It hurts, it hurts very much, and suddenly it no longer hurts; you are beyond pain. And fear.
You were smiling. Like …
Shabbat eve?
No. Like Friday mornings. On my way home from cheder, breathless, I would stop by to see you. You held out the challah. Quickly, I washed my hands; quickly, I recited the customary prayer; quickly I bit into the warm bread. And you, Grandmother, you would sit there, in the kitchen, your black scarf on your head, watching me, smiling, and to me your smile was a haven: it announced Shabbat and its joy, Shabbat and the angels of peace that escort it into time and even into the heart of man.
That last Friday, do you remember it?
I shall remember it to the end of my days, Grandmother. We were already in the ghetto.
We were a little cramped but we were not sad.
We didn’t know.
I did. Yes, I did. On that particular Friday I put the dough into the oven the same as always, and when I to
ok it out it was charred. I tried again. Failure after failure. I was unable to produce even the tiniest challah. Then I knew.
And yet you seemed serene.
You forget You didn’t see me. You entered the kitchen and I turned my back to you. So as not to see you, so as not to be seen by you. I handed you a piece of cake. You asked, But where is the challah? I answered, We must keep it for tonight, for the Shabbat meal.
But that evening, I remember, you seemed at peace.
It was already Shabbat. I thought, It’s our last here, the last with my grandson and his parents. The last Shabbat of my life. What good will it do to protest? I chose resignation, submission to His will. In a sense I even experienced a strange satisfaction. I no longer loved the world and those who live in it; I no longer loved Creation.
That Sunday you wrapped yourself in your shroud underneath your clothes.
I felt like attending my own funeral. Only there was no funeral. God turned away from earth; in its stead He chose fire. What? You don’t know? God saw somebody set the world on fire, and He began to cry so that His tears might douse the flames. But His eyes were dry.
3. A CHILD AND A STRANGER.
Stranger, tell me a story.
Look away, my boy. To look at me is dangerous. I bring bad luck.
Tell me a story. Any story. I cannot live without stories.
Don’t listen, my boy. Close your ears. To listen to me is dangerous. My words wound. They will distress you, they will tear you apart. Go, find someone else to talk to, someone else to be with.
It is you who interest me, only you.
Why? Do I remind you of someone?
Perhaps.
Your father?
Possibly. I have forgotten what he looked like.
Your brother?
I’ve forgotten him too. I’ve forgotten everything, stranger. I wish to listen to you in order to rebuild my memory as others rebuild their careers or their lives.