“Every night Adler sat on the edge of my bed, untouched by tiredness, by hunger. And do you know what Adler did before the dying body of Yosef Ingberg? He recited his studies. He told me about the theories he investigated, the matters on which he had almost completed a conclusion or two that were important for humanity, before the world had lost its mind. I lay at his feet, deathly ill, with only a spark remaining in my soul, a small candle’s light not yet extinguished. And to that flame, it seems, Adler talked, night after night. What little remained of me was there in the core of the flame, and each night I had to regain strength for the next day, another day of Vernichtung durch Arbeit. During work too, between the trenches of dirt we dug only to fill up again — the purpose, after all, was extermination — Adler recited his studies softly, as if leafing through pages he had left only a moment ago on his desk at Lvov University. He was respectful of his only student, the dying Yosef Ingberg, as I lay on the side of the trench while he himself worked a double quota. The supervisor turned a blind eye, and against the background noise of the picks softly tapping, only Adler’s voice could be heard. Every day he took a book off the shelf and taught me its content. The great Khans of Mongolia and the travels of Attila the Hun. The history of the Ancients and the mystery of the Danube. The ascendance of Jewish agriculture and the travels of Alexander the Great. He spread before me everything he had studied of the past and the present, until the war had snatched him away from his desk. And he revealed a new topic to me, which he had only just begun to explore, a study on the true nature of pirates. Every night when we returned from work, after he had fed me the extra soup, Adler told me of his preliminary conclusions, and in those moments it seemed that for him the Holocaust was merely a slight nuisance, as if he had been called away from his office to discuss a tedious memorandum with the faculty treasurer. He was not pained by the whip that cut through his flesh, nor by the hangings in the center of the camp, nor the bad food. His spirit fell because of the pirate Subatol Deul, who was waiting for him, unexplored, on the deck of the Costa Negra. There he stood, the skull-and-bones flag above him, while Adler carried baskets of dirt from the trenches to the mounds.
“What can I say? My soul was tiny, practically devoid of life, but Adler’s words penetrated it and brought health. Slowly but surely, thanks to his lectures, I recovered. And Adler? From the moment it became clear that I would live, it was as if I had graduated to the next class, and he added advanced topics to the curriculum. Adler taught me — to survive. He taught me the ruses of existence and the customs of the camp and what was required if one wished to live. Every day one had to wage a careful war against the SS, against the Ukrainians, against the Jewish police — God help us — and do not forget Farkelstein and his gang. Among all these troubles and hardships, Adler roamed like a king, a lion, directing justice, obtaining here and giving there, and all in aid of the weak, the sick, to save one more soul from death. Not that Adler was able to help much. Prisoners died every day, and every day new ones came, and there was no clear law dictating what saved a man from death, what brought him to death. But Adler did not give up. His dealings were many and dangerous, always engaged in quick transactions intended to maintain human dignity.
“It is very difficult to describe the greatness of a man like Adler in such a place. Many prisoners ended up in the Ravensbrück men’s camp, rabbis and intellectuals, community leaders and public figures. You cannot imagine how quickly one’s soul declines in a place like that, and if it does not decline, the body withers. It is hard, hard to survive, to remain human. Many struggled to save their lives, to save a human soul, and some managed, but someone like Adler…nu, how can I describe him?
“One day I told him I would like to be like him. Adler smiled, waved his pick, and kept on digging the trench.
“He dug twice as many trenches as he needed to, completing quotas for the sick and the weary, in return for the supervisors’ silence. His Jewish soul burst through like a young lion. Sometimes he said nothing, and I was enveloped by a silence of awe. I examined this marvelous man closely, wondering if bad memories tormented him, as they did me, or if perhaps he was plowing ahead, making inroads in his research. My eyes examined, my ears mined. And slowly I noticed a series of grumbles escaping silently from his lips, kind of furious mumbles, as if he were conducting a bitter negotiation with someone. The anger and mumbling did not go on for long. A short time later he taught me about the Pharaonic kings, the education of children in Sparta, the customs of the Greek Olympics. But I was intensely curious — what went on during those silences? What was the cause of Adler’s bitterness? I had already learned that it was best to stay away from the truth, better not to know of peoples’ wounds. Had he lost six children like Hirsch had? Had some other disaster befallen him? Curiosity has a way of triumphing, so one day I dared to ask about the meaning of his mumblings and anger.
“Adler, embarrassed, admitted that these murmurs of his were a theory he was trying out, a survival method, and he did not know if the theory was ripe for instruction yet. I demanded — teach me! And Adler began to teach me a simple theory. He explained that I had to contemplate the future that had been robbed from me and cry out in bitter resentment — how had they dared take the future that had been planned for me?! ‘Grow bitter! Be furious!’ he urged me. ‘Imagine the future that was ready for you, and cry out against the reality trying to cancel it out!’ And that was not all. I also had to outline before him the precise details of my robbed future, and complain, and rage, and wave my fists at reality.
“And so, every day, we both bitterly protested the theft of our futures, and threatened like lions — who would dare take this future from us? Adler was extremely fanatical about this future theory. The past was completely forbidden. He demanded that I rid myself of memories, throw them all out, shake out my pockets. When one day I began to tell him about Feiga and our good days in Bochnia, he grew enraged. ‘The future! The future! If you wish to live, think about her and you in the future, only in the future!’ He waved his pick in the air and the Ukrainian supervisor looked up in surprise and curiosity, thinking he might be lucky enough to witness one Jewish prisoner murdering another.
“There was no choice. From morning to evening the future preoccupied us. We were full of anger at all that had been stolen from us. Adler commanded the future to appear in all its details. At roll-calls, at food distribution, always we lived in the future. Day after day I left the splendid house I had built for my Feiga and myself in Bochnia, to study at a fine yeshiva. In the evenings we sat and dined and talked about life. And Adler, who held a chair at a university, labored over his book about pirates. He went to the Caribbean once or twice to expand his studies. He tasted pineapple, palm fruit, papaya. Studied the world of the pirates. And life in the future was simple and good.
“When we grew slightly tired of the future, we dwelled on Adler’s research. I began to gain courage and ask questions, make comments, even construct a few hypotheses and semi-proposals of my own. Every single moment, from before sunrise until after sundown, waving our picks up and down, it was inexplicable how death had not yet taken us, but with Adler the hours passed pleasantly. Pleasantly, nu, perhaps that is an exaggeration. But it was tolerable. There was a hint of a reason to go on living in the trenches, in the stench of the hut, with the horrible punishments and the dead we no longer counted or thought of. Every morning I longed for the moment when we would be positioned alongside the pits after roll-call, after the interminable march, after the morning punishments, and there, in the pits, a few cigarettes for the supervisor, and then I could regale Adler with ideas built up overnight. My lust for knowledge impressed and amused Adler. He straightened up over his pick for a moment, giggling, ‘As soon as you were brought here, I knew I could not lose my best student.’