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
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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.