“What’s the deal with all the stuff you’re documenting? Everyone’s talking in the family. When will you show me?”
“Most of it’s already finished, but not everything. There’s so much material, you have no idea.”
“Then show me what’s ready, come on, the Shoah isn’t a secret.”
“You have no idea how much material there is.” (My desperation grows right in front of her eyes.)
“Another reason why it’s good the Shoah ended in ’45. And oh yes, talking of Germans, I told you, didn’t I? Hans Oderman is coming!”
“Yes, you told me already.”
“Show me what you’ve finished.”
She examines the pages, amazed at the length of the testimonies. She didn’t know that Uncle Antek and Aunt Frieda and Aunt Zusa could remember so much, that there was so much unknown inside them.
“You know, I saw Hirsch today.”
“So?”
“Hirsch…who we used to see around the neighborhood.”
“Yeah, I know. So what happened?”
“Oh, nothing. But I was thinking about him. And you know, I dreamt about him a few days ago.”
“About Hirsch? Nice choice.”
“Well, never mind…”
She looks at me sitting among the pages, the drafts, the index cards. “You’re going a little crazy,” she opines.
“A little,” I agree.
“It’s only out of politeness that I still love you.”
“Thanks.”
“I really love you.”
“Thanks again.”
She leaves.
I really did have a dream about Hirsch, and my encounter with him has summoned up a fragmented memory of the extremely vivid dream. Hirsch was sitting in his hut in the woods. I came to him to ask for something. Something I’d been wanting for a long time, that everyone used to want, and now only the two of us had, except I didn’t know where mine was. Hirsch’s hut was surrounded by stray dogs, limping, exhausted. Tortured dogs with runny eyes, bald dogs. Old dogs thrown out of moving cars, resting with broken legs among bowls of bread and meat. Hirsch came out to me in his incarnation as the upright beadle of the Admor of Tipow, and said, “This is my penance. To right in dogs what I could not right in humans.”
Crazy or not, that’s what I dreamed. Crazy or not, I continue to document. It must be documented, the criminals and the victims. I must try and understand what is understandable. Crazy Hirsch struggles in his own way, Attorney Perl in his, and I in mine. Effi doesn’t understand that something greater than the individual stories is emerging. Out of the chaos, a logic is transpiring. Everything can finally be combined, the framework comprehended. We can understand the clear process of the Nazi plan. Combine my father’s story, random from his point of view, with the despotic framework of the plan around him, the simple cold calculation that declared Aktionen on certain dates in Bochnia, declared Bochnia “clean of Jews” on October 1, 1943, performed a liquidation Selektion in Plaszow camp towards the middle of May, 1944, and sent his mother — Dad was saved — to a transport where no Selektion was held at all; they went straight from the train cars to the ovens, because in the organized formal procedure, the massive shipments from Hungary were supposed to have arrived at Auschwitz, according to the destruction plan drafted by Adolf Eichmann and Franz Novak. Orders, reports and commands were issued, postal trains passed by trains transporting Jews, Dad included, and documents containing action plans, dates, quotas — all of these together could explain each day in Dad’s Shoah. They could also explain the transfer of Grandpa Yosef from one camp to the next and clarify why Attorney Perl was transferred to Dora-Mittelbau and why he was transferred again. Everything was in the documents, even answers to questions the family members asked themselves, sometimes out loud, sometimes silently, over and over and over again.
“I escaped in the middle of the Death March from Stutthof. Where did they end up taking the ones who didn’t escape? How far did they get?” (Mrs. Kopel.)
“Why didn’t they make allowances for our work permits in the Vilna ghetto? Why did they take my family away even though they had permits?” (Uncle Antek.)
“What was the end of SS Landau, Goddamn him, who was with us in Drohobicz?” (Aunt Frieda.)
“Perhaps you know what happened to the Greenspans from Koretz? Adella, Adella Greenspan, she was a friend of mine.” (Aunt Zusa.)
And Dad, always practical. “Why did they want to send us to be gassed anyway?”
I should have shown Effi the Nazis’ words too, the speeches, the declarations. So she would read and understand, so she would know that we mustn’t stop thinking about the people who didn’t hate Jews. The people who were just doing their jobs. The ones who did not derive pleasure from torture, from murder. The camp commandants who tried to give Jews the regulated calorie quotas even during shortages. The commandants who punished officers who cheated and withheld the prisoners’ codified rights. The original SS people who enlisted in the purest of armies and swore not to lie or cheat or drink or curse. The people who saw themselves as exemplary human beings, whose enlistment in the SS was supposed to personify the oath they had taken towards all that was noble in the human soul. Even when they ruled over the lives of thousands and tens of thousands of people willing to do anything for a chance to live, they did not harm a single prisoner unless it was required for proper order in the camp. Pedantically and gravely, they continued to do their jobs. Effective, fair, non-murderous murderers. In the heart of a world gone mad they were not tempted to sin by enjoying the suffering of others. They squeezed, yes, they squeezed the gold out of Jews, out of their vessels, their teeth, out of what they tried to hide in their bodies. But for themselves they took not a crumb of loot. They produced raw materials — hair, teeth — for a Germany at war. They managed the annihilation efficiently. They shot anyone who hindered the process — the elderly, children — without enjoyment, without evil. Non-murderous murderers. Around them raged sadists, some in SS uniforms, uncurbed plunderers of property, rapists, demented minds, psychopaths — the war gave them a boundless cushion for their actions. Around them raged SS people who, at the beginning, did not demonstrate sadism or greed, but who slowly discovered in the camps a simple, supreme fact — that everything was allowed. The righteous purity of these paragons was vanquished by the intoxicating feeling that everything was allowed. Torture and murder and beatings and pranks — everything was allowed. Rape and plundering and a good laugh or two — everything was allowed. Simple souls who gradually comprehended that there was no one to punish them, no one to reprimand them. Sadism opened up like a fan and the temptation drew them on — how much further could they go? Without balance, without boundaries, these simple souls were dragged along in amazement — they still hadn’t reached the limit, everything was still allowed. We-are-doing-the-unthinkable-and-still-it-is-allowed. We-are-doing-everything-we-want-to-and-no-one-is-punishing-us. Allowed! Like creatures erupting into a vacuum with nothing to hold them back and prevent them from bursting forth, out came the unstoppable urges. Everything was allowed, everything allowed. After the war it would all go back inside neat boxes. Twenty years later, judges and prosecutors would ask in astonishment — is this the man accused of the charges?
Those sadists, I understand. It is not them that I fear. People like them are hiding everywhere around me today. I can guess who they will be and where they will come from if-what-happened-there-happens-here-too. What frightens me is the ones who maintained their integrity. The-people-who-did-not-hate-Jews. The-people-who-were-only-doing-their-job. Those people, I cannot understand, and I have no idea where they will come from.