INTRODUCTION
1. On the history of the camp, see my article based on the available documentary material on this special camp, reprinted in the appendix to the present book.
CHAPTER 1. A PROLOGUE THAT COULD ALSO BE AN EPILOGUE
1. ‘The Churches in the Third Reich and the “Jewish Question” in the Light of the Secret Nazi Reports on German “Public Opinion”’ (Congrès de Varsovie, 25 Juin–1er Juillet 1978, section IV: Les Églises chrétiennes dans l’Europe dominée par le IIIe Reich), Bibliothèque de la Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 70 (1984), pp. 490–505.
CHAPTER 2. BETWEEN THERESIENSTADT AND AUSCHWITZ
1. The Selected Poetry of Dan Pagis, trans. Stephen Mitchell (Berkeley, 1989), p. 29.
2. See Appendix.
3. A term used in Zionist youth movements for which no exact translation exists; from the Hebrew root for ‘way’ or ‘path’, hence a guide, instructor and informal educator rolled into one; plural: madrichim (Translator’s note).
4. Imre was his nickname in the youth block; his real name was Emmerich Acs. He was born 28.09.1912, deported to Auschwitz from Theresienstadt on 06.09.1943 and died in the gas chamber on 08.03.1944. See Miroslav Kárný et al. (eds.), Terezínská pamětní kniha: Židovské oběti nacistických deportací z Čech a Moravy (The Theresienstadt Memorial Book: Jewish Victims of the Nazi Deportations from Bohemia and Moravia) (Prague, 1995), vol. 2, p. 1209.
CHAPTER 8. LANDSCAPES OF A PRIVATE MYTHOLOGY
1. The Gate of Mercy, known also as the Golden Gate, is one of the major portals in the Old City wall. Built in the Byzantine period, it was sealed from both the inside and the outside during the construction of the Ottoman wall in the sixteenth century. According to Jewish and Christian legends, it is through this gate that the Messiah will enter Jerusalem.
2. According to Muslim legend, the Jewish Messiah who will enter Jerusalem through this gate is from the priestly family (Kohanim) and hence will be prevented from entering by the presence of graves, which cause ritual impurity. It is for this reason, the legend says, that a Muslim cemetery – which continues to function to this day – was established outside the gate.
CHAPTER 11. DREAM: JEWISH PRAGUE AND THE GREAT DEATH
1. In 1942 the Nazi regime established in Prague the Central Jewish Museum, with the goal of preserving a memory of an exterminated race, by collecting notable objects of Jewish ceremonial art from the liquidated Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia. This had to be done by the last still remaining Jews in Prague at that time. See Hana Volavková, A Story of the Jewish Museum in Prague (Prague, 1968).
CHAPTER 13. GOD’S GRIEVING
1. During the waiting period for the second Gulf War, in expectation of a gas and nuclear attack on Israel (October 2002– March 2003).
2. ‘I have placed My rainbow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. There will never again be a flood to destroy the earth’ (Genesis 9: 11–13).
3. ‘You vowed that You would not bring a flood, and now, if You do not bring a flood of water into the world but a flood of fire and brimstone, You will not be keeping Your vow. And if You renege on the vow, heaven forbid.’ From Midrash Sechel Tov, by Menachem Ben Salomo, an Italian (or Provençal) rabbi of the twelfth century; published by Salomon Buber (of Lvov) (Berlin, 1900); on Genesis 18, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
4. Ecclesiastes 1: 9.
5. The origin of the Hebrew phrase haba aleinu letova stems from Jewish liturgical language. It means ‘may it be for our good’ or ‘may it be for a blessing on us’. In the context of this text, it may express a sense of sarcasm and resignation (Translator’s note).
6. Job 2: 10.
7. Transcription of the dream image I recorded in the diary that was lost. The entry was made shortly after the fearful days and weeks of expectation here in May 1967 of a war that would be launched from all directions. It was also incorporated at the time in a letter to my father, in Prague – cryptic, implicit and concrete – in a drawing of the ‘map of the imprints of the Great Death’ as a shiny black aerial photograph, with only the lethal radiation pervading everything, as a ‘sign of life’. Perhaps this was the very letter that my father took with him before he escaped in that storm when the tanks thundered through the streets of Prague. Could it now be among his papers in the Yad Vashem Archives?
8. Diary entry, 22 January 2001, ch. 12 above.
9. Based on the notes I made on the day after the dream, on 12 August 2002.
10. In Dan Pagis’s letter from his sabbatical in San Diego to me in Jerusalem, 28 January 1976: ‘The subject-matter in Gerschon’s poems is painfully difficult for me: it is a subject I fled from for twenty-five years and more. Not until a few years ago did it overtake me (vanquish me, if you will) in my writing. Nevertheless, I was caught up in Gerschon’s poems and at one time I tried to translate two or three of them – I have been familiar with all the ones you sent me for some time. I tried, and I despaired. I cannot convey the allusion to bone marrow in Mark within des . . . Markgrafen Gomorras. No duke, earl, Margrave and so forth is understood from the outset by the Hebrew reader to the point where this reader can grasp its metamorphosis in the poem.’ Indeed, this poem was not included in the bilingual German– Hebrew selection of Gerschon’s poetry (see following note) and remains part of his literary estate, of which I am the executor.
11. Gerschon: ‘und ich fragte / bin ich der Hüter meines Bruders / KAIN’ (‘and I asked / am I my brother / CAIN’s keeper; Gerschon Ben-David, In den Wind Werfen: Versuche um Metabarbarisches. Gedichte, Straelener Manuskripte (Straelen, 1995), pp. 12–13. Cf. Genesis 4: 9). Dan’s poem reads:
Autobiography
I died with the first blow and was buried
among the rocks of the field.
The raven taught my parents
what to do with me.
If my family is famous,
not a little of the credit goes to me.
My brother invented murder,
my parents invented grief,
I invented silence.
Afterwards the well-known events took place.
Our inventions were perfected. One thing led to another,
orders were given. There were those who murdered in their own way,
grieved in their own way.
I won’t mention names
out of consideration for the reader,
since at first the details horrify
though finally they’re a bore:
you can die once, twice, even seven times,
but you can’t die a thousand times.
I can.
My underground cells reach everywhere.
When Cain began to multiply on the face of the earth,
I began to multiply in the belly of the earth,
and my strength has long been greater than his.
His legions desert him and go over to me,
and even this is only half a revenge.
The Selected Poetry of Dan Pagis, trans. Stephen Mitchell (Berkeley, 1989), pp. 5–6.
12. What I say here runs counter to Resh Lakish’s assertion, ‘Job never existed and was just a parable’ (Babylonian Talmud, I15a); and counter to Maimonides in Guide for the Perplexed (part III, c. 22); but resonates with Dan Pagis’s grieving ‘Homily’: ‘From the start, the forces were unequal: Satan a grand seigneur in heaven, Job mere flesh and blood. And anyway, the contest was unfair. Job, who had lost all his wealth and had been bereaved of his sons and daughters and stricken with loathsome boils, wasn’t even aware that it was a contest. Because he complained too much, the referee silenced him. So, having accepted this decision, in silence, he defeated his opponent without even realizing it. Therefore his wealth was restored, he was given sons and daughters – new ones, of course – and his grief for the first children was taken away. We might imagine that this retribution was the most terrible thing of all. We might imagine that the most terrible thing was Job’s ignorance: not understanding whom he had defeated, or even that he had won. But in fact, the most terrible thing of all is that Job never existed and was just a parable [my italics]’, ibid., p. 11.
13. Job 2: 7.
APPENDIX
1. First published in Yisrael Gutman and Avital Saf (eds.), The Nazi Con-centration Camps: Structure and Aims, the Image of the Prisoner, the Jews in the Camps (Jerusalem, 1984), pp. 315–33. The published version, with a detailed scholarly apparatus omitted here, is accessible on the internet: http://lekket.com/data/articles/004-000-018_000.pdf.