Chapter 79 Chapter 78

A Jew's Journey (from Ellen Jastrow's manuscript) April 22, 1944. Natalie went to a Zionist secret meeting, and I'm waiting for her to come back.It's a cool night in spring, waiting, worrying.Just yesterday the Beautification crew placed boxes of geraniums on our window sills, and the sweet scent wafts into the room from these boxes at the window.I think she is stepping into serious danger.Although it will cause a row that I don't have the strength to deal with, I still plan to talk it over with her when she comes back. How many days have passed since I last wrote in my diary?I do not know either.The last few pages have long since been hidden.The work of the Beautification Movement has somewhat worn me out in libraries and committees.Also, after I gave a speech on the Baen Riel surprisingly appeared.This is a difficult thing to record, so I put it off, put it off, and let the days go by.Now, I'm going to make it up.I'm already getting ready to teach a section of the Talmud tomorrow.This is the best way to kill the rest of the time.I don't sleep until she comes back.

Baen Riel surprised me that night by coming out of the darkness.What a grotesque and dreadful meeting!I haven't seen him for almost fifty years.Oh, what a change time has wrought!The red-cheeked, plump boy had become a stern, aging man, with thick gray hair, a broad, protruding chin, bushy eyebrows, and a shaven face with some Deep wrinkles.There was a hint of ghostly friendliness in his smile, that's all.Ragged, with a yellow star on his ragged sheepskin jacket as a cover, he looked more Polish than Jewish, if the notion of racial profiling had any validity.He was a terrible and suspicious old Silesian peasant, cautious and nervous, looking around and turning his head as we walked.He said he had come to the Jewish Quarter on a mission and left before dawn; he did not explain how or when he entered or how he intended to leave.

He came with us to our apartment and immediately proposed to get Louis out of Theresienstadt!Natalie turned pale at the thought.But just after the Germans ordered another group of people to be deported, she became emotionally shaken and was willing to listen.It was Ben Riel's idea to place the child in foster care with a peasant in the Czech Republic, as some Jews in Prague did with their children before they were sent to Theresienstadt.This was successful; the parents heard from the children now and then, and even had letters smuggled in from the older children.In order to get Louis out, some deceptively fake diagnoses had to be made to land him in the hospital.For that, Ben Real said he had the necessary connections in the Health Service to get a death certificate to satisfy the Central Secretariat's index, and maybe hold a fake funeral or cremation.The child will be secretly removed from the hospital and sent quietly to Prague.Ben Real met him there, led him to the farm, and visited him often, passing his news to Natalie.The war might go on for another year or more, but whatever happened, Ben Real would take care of him.

When Ban Ruier was talking, Natalie's face became more and more depressed and ugly.Why is this necessary?she asked.Louis is adaptable and thrives.Seeing his mother every day is the happiest thing for him.Barrel did not refute any of these reasons, but he insisted that, on the whole, it was better to let Louis go.Disease, malnutrition, deportation, and German brutality were constant dangers here, worse than the momentary risk of getting him out.Natalie could not give any reason.Here, I'm excerpting from a whispered conversation in "Yiddish" that took place for over an hour. Ben Real then ended the conversation by saying he had something to tell me. Natalie went to bed. We Talked in Polish, which she couldn't understand.

My pencil stopped.How can I write down what he told me? It is not my intention to give a brief account of his travels and ordeals.Imagination is numb, and belief does not work.Germany turned Eastern Europe into hell, and Baen Riel passed through all seven circles of hell.The worst legends about the fate of the Jews are not only true, but understatement of the truth.My cousin once personally exhumed thousands of murdered men, women, and children from thousands of homes and cremated them.Such burials can be found all over the vicinity of former Jewish cities in Eastern Europe.According to his conservative guess, there were 1,500,000 dead bodies buried.

In some camps, including the one outside the ancient city of Auschwitz, which housed the rabbi school, there were huge gas vaults that could kill thousands at a time.A group of people who could fill a large opera house were stuffed into a huge basement, and they were all suffocated to death at once!They had just arrived on sealed trains from all over Europe, and they were killed there as soon as they stepped off the train.Massive cremators burn the bodies.Chimneys soaring into the sky dominate the view of the camp, and whenever an "action" is taken, the chimneys spew out flames, oily smoke, and human dregs and ashes twenty-four hours a day.Ban Riel was not narrating rumors.He worked in a building brigade and built one such cremator.

The Jews who were not killed immediately all worked until they died.They were slaves in giant arsenals, rationed with the hope that they would starve to death quickly. We Jews in Theresienstadt, he says, are cows in the shed, waiting our turn.The beautification campaign was a lucky "suspension sentence", but the day after the visit to the Red Cross in a neutral country, the deportation work will start again.Our hope is for the victory of the Allies.The war was certainly not good for the Germans, but the end was far off, and the extermination of the Jews was speeding up.His organization (he didn't say what it was, I guess the Communist Party) was planning an uprising in case a mass deportation was ordered or the SS started a massacre here in Theresienstadt words of action.But that would be desperate work, and Natalie and Louise are unlikely to survive such an uprising.Jews must see the future, he said.Lewis represents the future.It was he who should be rescued.

He didn't want to tell Natalie about the killing camp because he could tell she was in a good mood, which was the secret to surviving under German rule.I should try to persuade her to let Louis go without scaring her too much. I asked him how widely news of the killing camp had spread in Theresienstadt.He said that everyone in high positions had been informed about it; he himself had told two people.The usual reaction is disbelief, or anger at the person telling such "horrible tales", followed by a quick change of subject. I asked him again if the outside world knew a little about it at this time.He replied that news reports were just beginning to appear in overseas press and radio broadcasts.His microfilmed documents and photographs from Auschwitz had been sent to Switzerland.These documents and photos may be doing something.But the British and American people do not seem to believe this yet, just as the Jews here in Tryonstadt, who know the SS well, are not prepared to believe it.At Auschwitz, people at Auschwitz saw chimneys spewing flames at night and smelled singed hair, muscle, fat, but many people in the camp still avoided the gassing. The topic of murder, even denying that it was happening.

(My hands were shaking as I wrote these things down, which is why the handwriting is scribbled on this page.) In order to bring this visit to a quick end with Barrell, we chatted sadly about family matters.We, the Jastrows, have been wiped out from root and branch in Europe, save for himself and the family of one son.His eldest son fought with Jewish partisans behind the German lines in Belarus.Daughter-in-law and grandson are safe and sound on a farm in Latvia.All the others Baen Riel are lost, and so am I.After I went to the United States, a large number of smart and lovely relatives were never seen again, leaving some pleasant memories.He had been wandering around with a mutilated photo of his grandson, so worn and waterlogged that all he could see was a blurry baby face. "Our future," Barrell said as he showed me the photo.

He elaborated on how I would inform him if Natalie changed her mind about Louis.We hug each other.The last time I hugged Barrell was fifty years ago in Medjes, when I was leaving for America; nothing could be more bizarre than what actually happened.When he let me go, he tilted his head and gave me a flashy glance that always meant he was going to ask me a tough question about the Talmud next.He shrugged one shoulder, an old gesture that time and suffering hadn't changed in him. "Herrel, I hear you wrote several books about that man." "yes." "Why do you dafka have to write about that guy?"

Dafka is an untranslatable Talmud word.It has many meanings; necessarily, because of this, perversely, defiantly, recklessly.Jews have a temper and like dafka to do things.This is the nature of stubborn people.For example, they had to worship the golden calf in dafka at the foot of Mount Sinai. This is a moment of honesty and honesty.I replied, "I wrote it to get some money, Barrell, and to make a name for myself among the Gentiles." "Look how it helps you," he said. I took out of a drawer my phylactery which I had recently acquired for a diamond, and showed them to him. "You have this?" He smiled sadly. "Did it begin here in Theresienstadt?" "Here in Theresienstadt, dafka, Barrel." We hugged again, and he slipped out.For two months, I heard nothing more from him or about him.I figured he probably got away safely.During World War I, Ban Riel escaped from prison camps twice.He was tenacious and resourceful. It's past midnight.There was no sign of her at all.It wasn't smart to walk the streets at this hour, though her assistant nurse's ID card would probably protect her. Now, let me briefly outline the beautification movement.This is something that must be said in the years to come.Future generations may find this even harder to believe than the gas vaults at Auschwitz.After all, those basements, however hideous, were merely the natural end product of National Socialism.All you need to understand is that Hitler intended to do it, and the Germans, who were ordered to do so, did it. The landscaping movement is even more bizarre.It was an elaborate affectation to show that the Germans were as European as the rest of the world, obeying the principles of Western civilization; the legends and reports about the Jews were too stupid to be disputed, or else Vicious atrocity propaganda on the part of the Allies.In this matter the Germans are putting on a show, and are at pains to deny the center of their effort in this war; the annihilation of one people and the two religions of the world.Yes, there are two kinds.I believe with full confidence that the Jews and Judaism will survive in the end, but Christianity cannot survive after a Christian country has done this kind of thing.Nietzsche's antichrists arrive in boots and swastika armbands.In the fire and smoke belching from the chimneys of Auschwitz, the Crucifixion of Europe was in flames. Our new commander, Ram, is a rough and true brute.The beautification campaign he orchestrated pushed hypocrisy into new territory.Because I am an elder in charge of cultural work, I am deeply involved.I'm in his office.Hours were spent looking at a city map spread out on the table.The routes taken by the guests were drawn on the map with a red pen, and each stop was numbered.A large map on the wall shows how renovation and new construction work is progressing at each numbered stop.My department put on music and theater shows along the lines it took, but the actual work was all done by my deputies.My task "for the day" was to show guests around a library that had been miraculously renovated; I had twenty men cataloging it, and the beautiful books kept pouring in.We are amassing the best collections of Jewish literature and history left in European soil, all for the sake of a day off. The Germans were staging the visit as if they were staging a Passion play; it was going to be a city-wide spectacle.However, the operation was limited to the route marked in red on the map.For a hundred yards on either side of that line the same filth, disease, crowding, and starvation of the past were rampant.Wherever the eyes of the guests could see, they spared no expense in constructing a narrow, mock idyllic amusement resort.Did the Germans really expect this ridiculous scam to get away with it?They seem to be.Of course, the previous inspections by the staff of the German Red Cross proved that there was no problem.Guests came and went, spreading glowing reports about Jewish Paradise.But this time, the guests were outsiders from neutral countries.How could the Germans be sure to keep them under control?A determined Swedish or Swiss Red Cross just says, "Let's go down that street," or "Let's look at the barracks over there," and the bubbles pop.Beyond the deceiving rainbow-colored smoke lay horrors that would frighten neutrals to death.But of course we got used to the situation and thought it was nothing compared to what happened in Auschwitz. Did Ram have some ruse to fudge such an embarrassing request?Was he counting on mild threats to keep his guests in line?Or, as I very much doubt, is this whole beautification campaign just a prime instance, a model, of that idiotic sophistication?This delicacy has characterized everything the Germans have done since Hitler came to power. In dexterity, energy, attention to detail, and sheer skill in science and industry, they were equal to, perhaps even more than, the Americans.In addition, they are capable of displaying maximum charm, intelligence and taste.As a people, it is their characteristic to devote themselves unreservedly, wholeheartedly, and energetically to carrying out plans and orders that are absurd, insane, and unexpected.Why this is so may take the world a thousand years to figure out.Right now, it happened like this.They unleashed a war of bloodbath that would almost inevitably lead to the destruction of Germany.At the center of this carnage is their crime against my people.And at the center of this, is this beautification campaign, with the innocent German face turned to the outside world, scowling, "Look at how unfair you are, accusing us of doing bad things?" The idiotic sophistication with which this beautification campaign was carried out is daunting.If Ram and his advisors can get guests to follow that red line, there's nothing they don't expect.Very little work has been done, but the plan is fully drawn up.The hustle and bustle of these days in Theresienstadt is like being on a stage halfway through rehearsal work.Two or three thousand able-bodied Jews were working on the technology from morning to night to build the narrow, whimsical and unreal lane—and all night long the lights were on everywhere. The itinerary for the guests to visit has been determined months in advance.Ram carried with him a thick, red-and-black gingham-bound document that we on the committee (among us) called the "Holy Book of the Beautification Movement."We, the heads of departments, contributed to it all, but the final details could only have been worked out by the Germans.This official document included those selections that the municipal orchestra was to perform in the town square, although the technical department was just laying the foundation stone for that concert hall.Our musicians are busily copying out the parts—two Rossini overtures, several army marches, some Strauss waltzes, and miscellaneous pieces by Donizetti and Bizet.Transcript paper is now available in large quantities.Fine new instruments keep arriving.Theresienstadt, like Prospero's enchanted island, is becoming a place of melody in the air. If guests go to the opera house in the playground, they will see a colorful orchestra and a large chorus rehearsing Verdi's: more than 150 talented Jews dressed in neat clothes. Clothes, with a yellow star logo and more, playing a piece that could be played in Paris or Vienna.Downstairs, in a smaller theater, they would happen to see a masquerade rehearsal of the ghetto sensation, the delightfully original children's opera Blondibar.As they walked down a street lined with flowers, they would hear a string quartet playing Beethoven in one private house, and a superb contralto singing in another. Schubert's Romance, while in the third house a wonderful clarinetist is practicing Weber.In cafes, they'd come across costumed musicians and singers playing while the customers drank coffee and ate brioche.Guests will take a break for a snack in a café where customers will pay, leave or enter in a thoroughly trained and natural manner. Guests will see a wide variety of products in the store, including many luxury food items.Customers came and went at will, buying what they were willing to buy, paying with Theresienstadt banknotes emblazoned with a picture of Moses.Of course, this worthless currency was the worst joke in the ghetto; Ram's holy book contained a stern warning that these "customers" must immediately "purchase goods" as soon as the guests leave return.Anything less will be punished.If one food is missing, those who violate the prohibition will have to be locked up in the small fort. This program touches on all aspects of life in the ghetto.A fake super clean hospital, a fake children's playground, a fake printing factory for men, a fake clothing factory for women, and a fake sports field are all listed in the project.The bank is being renovated.A fake public school for boys had been built, with blackboards, chalk, and textbooks in the new building, but the building had never been used and would never be used for musicians to rehearse in.A "Great Refectory," a spacious barracks, is being erected for the sole purpose of serving a meal, where the lunch of the guests and the surrounding Jews will eat with gusto.The SS had to figure out how to avoid even this time feeding some Jewish people.This is the only omission in Ram's Holy Book.The patrons of the cafe, of course, drink coffee and eat cakes to their heart's content only when visitors are present, or else they just go about drinking brown drinks and eating trays of cakes which they cannot actually taste. of. It was one o'clock.Why do I keep talking nonsense like this?Even the grim banter of the glorification movement was a relief to forget what Baen Riel had revealed and my anxieties about Natalie's delay in returning.She had to get up at six o'clock.Before she went to work in the mica factory, she had to go to the children's playground and kindergarten to rehearse for the visit.She and a couple of other pretty women just took on this mission.Their work was all set for them: to train the children to tell their little shows, and to pretend to be very happy.At lunch, she told me, the children had to yell, "What, are you eating sardines again?" This easy-to-see lie, which lasted a full twenty minutes, was all written out.In this respect, the Beautification Movement was producing some real benefits, as the SS increased rations for children.They wanted the guests to see some fat dolls playing, so their bellies were being filled as the Witch had done with Hansel and Gretel. I can't believe that such a showy comedy could fool anyone.But even if it succeeds, what do the Germans expect to gain from it?Jews are disappearing, many people are missing, can this horrific event be kept under wraps for long?I can't understand.This thing makes no sense.No, it's like that terribly retarded kid; the retarded kid who got caught by the empty jam jar, with red smears all over his face, hands, and clothes, and grinningly denied that he ate got jam. For that matter, what does it mean for the gas vaults of Auschwitz?I've been thinking about this for weeks, and my mind is spinning.Calling the Germans sadists, butchers, beasts, barbarians means nothing, because they are men and women just like us.I have an idea I'm going to jot down, much more certain than I feel.The root of this matter cannot be Hitler.I start with this premise.When such an event occurred, there was so little resistance among the Germans that it must have been centuries in the making. Napoleon imposed liberty and equality on the Germans.They suppressed it from the beginning.With cannon and trampling boots he invaded a patchwork of despotic states that had barely shaken off feudalism, and trampled them with fellowship of mankind.The emancipation of the Jews was part of this new enlightened humanism.This is inhumane to the Germans.But they obeyed. Alas, we Jews believed in this change, but the Germans never changed at heart.This is the creed of the conqueror.It dominates Europe, but not Germany.Their Romantic philosophers lashed out at the un-German Enlightenment, their anti-Semitic parties grew up, and Germany grew day by day into an industrial power, but it never embraced "Western" ideas. Their defeat under the German Kaiser, followed by severe inflation and economic collapse, aroused in them a terrible, hopeless rage.The Communists threatened to sow chaos and overthrow the government.The Weimar government fell apart.When Hitler rose from this witch-brewed beer like an oracle ghost in Macbeth, and then pointed at Jews in the corridors of department stores and opera houses; the obvious beneficiaries of just treatment, and the actual cause of such treatment; when this insane historical formula moves forward, as simple and false as Marxist slogans, yet more cruel and blunt than those slogans Then the German rage was vented in a sudden burst of national energy and joy, and it was brought about by the glib lunatic brandishing a murderous weapon.The lack of remorse on the part of the Germans made this weapon especially fitting in the hands of this man.I would not have known this inexplicable feature had it not been for the violence inflicted on me.Even now being a pair is still a bit of a blur. Has my study of Luther shed some light on this matter?Before Hitler, only Luther had spoken so thoroughly in a national voice and brought out the pent-up national rage, and in his case against the decadent Catholic doctrine preached monotonously in Latin.As much as I admired Luther and was his biographer, the resemblance of the two men's forceful, sarcastic speeches gave me apprehension.Luther's Protestantism was a grand theology, a loud, practical Christianity worthy of the Christ whom Luther claimed was saving from the whore of Babylon.But even this native product weighs heavily on the Germans, doesn't it? The Germans were never quite at home in Christian Europe, never quite making up their minds whether they were Jandars or Romans, saboteurs from the north or polite Westerners.He fluctuates with the changes of the historical environment, playing this role for a while, and playing that role for a while.Christian remorse and English and French liberalism are nonsense as far as the Jandar in him is concerned; the rationality and order of the Enlightenment are affectations of human nature; destruction and domination are practical needs ;Slaughter is an ancient pleasure.After centuries of Luther's restraint, the harsh German voice once again roared out of Nietzsche's mouth, reacting violently to the docile dogma of Christianity.Nietzsche very precisely blames Judaism for this whole set of generosity and remorse.He foresaw with great precision the future demise of the Christian God.What he did not foresee was that the freed Vandals, in an insane industrial vengeance, would set their hands to crucify eleven million Christs. Hey, scribble!I read again these pages, hastily written in pencil, with a heavy heart.It is not surprising that I neglected this diary; my small intellect could not cope with what I now know.Without a general theory of nationalism, how can you write on the subject?How can you write on the subject without going after the roots of socialism to show how the two movements were concentrated on Hitler; without giving the threat of the Russian Revolution its due importance? Have I really come into contact with the Germans in this long piece of random scribbling?My vile Jew, Jastrow, put on the phylactery at Theresienstadt, while he strikes all over Europe with clanging troops and roaring air force fleets; are he and I really both To follow the same human impulse to preserve the threatened self?Is that why he wants to kill me, because Jews and Judaism are a constant challenge, condemnation and hindrance to the original German spirit?Or is all this a vain conceit, the fancy of the over-weary mind of a life-enlightened man?This enlightened man wanted to find a little meaning in Auschwitz, in the beautification movement, in myself and Karl.A bridge is built over the gap between Ram, because the reality is that even if he kills me, we are still fellow citizens by Darwinian classification, if not by the will of God. Natalie is back! the next morning. Things are more serious than I thought.She was deeply involved, and came back tired but elated.These Zionist rallies had been debating ways to thwart the beautification campaign, which wanted to hint to the Red Cross guests the truth about Theresienstadt without alarming the SS.She thinks they've figured out a way.At every stop and visit, a responsible Jew uttered the same prearranged reply to any comment on the part of the Red Cross: "Oh, yes, it's all brand new. There's a lot more to come." I can see." I guess they worked out this method after a lot of debate and revision.They vote word for word.They are convinced that such verbatim repetition of answers will be perceived by the guests as a signal.The Jew will say it casually, with a meaningful look on his face, possibly out of earshot of the SS.Their hope—or rather, their fantasy—was that the guests would understand that what they were seeing was a brand-new, fabricated installation and, because of the words "there's a lot to see," would go Go outside the planned route. I listened patiently.Next, I told her that she was slipping into ghetto-specific dreams, endangering her own life and Louis's.Germans are well-trained and vigilant prison guards.Guests will be gentle and attentive senior welfare staff.The beautification campaign was a major activity of the Germans; the most obvious thing to watch out for was the very scheme of the Jews to divulge their secrets to their guests.I argued this way, but she countered that the Jews had to fight back in one way or another.Since we have no weapons, only minds, we should use our brain power. Next, I took the drastic step of revealing what had happened at Auschwitz that Baen Riel had uncovered.My intention was to startle her and make her more aware that she was in danger of being exiled.Of course she was shocked, but not dumbfounded, because the legend had indeed been circulating.But she did not receive the news as I expected.All the more reason, she said, to arouse the suspicions of the Red Cross men; besides, Ban Riel's news must have been a bit exaggerated, because Uddam had received a postcard from his wife from Auschwitz, and she My friends also just received some postcards from relatives who were deported in February. I repeated what Ben Riel had told me: the SS at Auschwitz maintained a "Theresienstadt family battalion" in case the Red Cross managed to negotiate and claim the dreaded places to visit; everyone who arrived at Auschwitz had to write some postcards, dated a few months later; and theresienstadt camp was regularly cleared of old and young, sick and the infirm, gassed them all to make room for further deportations from Theresienstadt.Udam was undoubtedly receiving letters from a woman who had been cremated. She went on to say with certainty that her group had heard through the grapevine from Prague that, according to German military intelligence, the Americans had decided to land in France on May 15.This would likely spark uprisings across Europe, leading to the swift disintegration of the Nazi Reich.All in all, the SS officer would worry about his neck, and further deportations would be unlikely. There is simply no debate in the face of such wishful thinking that has become delusional.I advised her that if she was going to take this thing on, at least send word to Ben Real to get Louis out.She would not listen to this; she would not admit that she was putting Louis in greater danger than he had been; then, growing very irritable, she went to bed. This was only a few hours ago.When she woke up, she was in a better mood, apologized to me for being cranky, and went out.She never said a word about Louis again, and neither did I. I have nothing against her newfound Zionism, only happy about it.As far as she was concerned, this seemed to be a way of asserting a threatened self, as I had found in my old religious beliefs.A little of this stubbornness was needed to survive in the ghetto, if one was not an accomplice or a black marketeer.But what if an informer got into her group?What's more, the use of puppets to swear was already in her file with the SS, and that would be her end. I have never been a Zionist myself.I remain extremely skeptical of the idea of ​​sending Jews back to the bad lands of the Middle East inhabited by unfriendly Arabs.Yes, the Zionists did foresee the catastrophe of Europe when it was no more than a cloud the size of a human hand.But then, is their dreamy solution a viable or right one?Not certainly.Before Hitler came to power, only a handful of dreamers ever went to Palestine.Even they were driven there by persecution and massacres, not because the arid holy land attracted them. I confess that I am now not quite sure of this matter, or of any of my previous views.当然，犹太民族主义是一种强有力的表明自己身份的手段，不过我把民族主义看作是现代的祸根。我就是不能相信我们可怜的犹太人竟然计划在地中海的沙滩上拥有一支陆军和一支海军，一个议会和一些部长，还有疆界、海港、航空港、大学等等。这是多么美妙和空虚的幻想啊！让娜塔丽这样幻想着，如果这可以帮助她熬过特莱西恩施塔特的这场苦难的话。她说，倘使有一个象列支敦士登那么大小的犹太国，那么所有这些恐怖事件就不会发生了，又说非得建立一个这样的国家来防止这种事再次发生。这是救世主的语言。我所担心的只是，这种新的热病般的激情会战胜她通常有的强韧的判断力，也许会使她轻率行事，结果毁了她自己和路易斯。