AND THEN, one day all foreign Jews were expelled from Sighet.
And Moishe the Beadle was a foreigner.
Crammed into cattle cars by the Hungarian police, they cried
silently. Standing on the station platform, we too were crying.
The train disappeared over the horizon; all that was left was thick,
dirty smoke.
Behind me, someone said, sighing, "What do you expect?
That's war... "
The deportees were quickly forgotten. A few days after they
left, it was rumored that they were in Galicia, working, and even
that they were content with their fate.
Days went by. Then weeks and months. Life was normal
again. A calm, reassuring wind blew through our homes. The
shopkeepers were doing good business, the students lived among
their books, and the children played in the streets.
One day, as I was about to enter the synagogue, I saw Moishe
the Beadle sitting on a bench near the entrance.
He told me what had happened to him and his companions.
The train with the deportees had crossed the Hungarian border
and, once in Polish territory, had been taken over by the Gestapo.
The train had stopped. The Jews were ordered to get off and onto
waiting trucks. The trucks headed toward a forest. There every-
body was ordered to get out. They were forced to dig huge
trenches. When they had finished their work, the men from the
Gestapo began theirs. Without passion or haste, they shot their pris-
oners, who were forced to approach the trench one by one and offer
their necks. Infants were tossed into the air and used as targets for
the machine guns. This took place in the Galician forest, near Kolo-
may. How had he, Moishe the Beadle, been able to escape? By a
miracle. He was wounded in the leg and left for dead...
Day after day, night after night, he went from one Jewish
house to the next, telling his story and that of Malka, the young
girl who lay dying for three days, and that of Tobie, the tailor who
begged to die before his sons were killed.
Moishe was not the same. The joy in his eyes was gone. He no
longer sang. He no longer mentioned either God or Kabbalah. He
spoke only of what he had seen. But people not only refused to
believe his tales, they refused to listen. Some even insinuated
that he only wanted their pity, that he was imagining things. Oth-
ers flatly said that he had gone mad.
As for Moishe, he wept and pleaded:
"Jews, listen to me! That's all I ask of you. No money. No pity.
Just listen to me!" he kept shouting in synagogue, between the
prayer at dusk and the evening prayer.
Even I did not believe him. I often sat with him, after ser-
vices, and listened to his tales, trying to understand his grief. But
all I felt was pity.
"They think I'm mad," he whispered, and tears, like drops of
wax, flowed from his eyes.
Once, I asked him the question: "Why do you want people to
believe you so much? In your place I would not care whether they
believed me or not... "
He closed his eyes, as if to escape time.
"You don't understand," he said in despair. "You cannot under-
stand. I was saved miraculously. I succeeded in coming back. Where
did I get my strength? I wanted to return to Sighet to describe to
you my death so that you might ready yourselves while there is still
time. Life? I no longer care to live. I am alone. But I wanted to
come back to warn you. Only no one is listening to me ..."
This was toward the end of 1942.
Thereafter, life seemed normal once again. London radio,
which we listened to every evening, announced encouraging
news: the daily bombings of Germany and Stalingrad, the prepa-
ration of the Second Front. And so we, the Jews of Sighet, waited
for better days that surely were soon to come.
I continued to devote myself to my studies, Talmud during
the day and Kabbalah at night. My father took care of his business
and the community. My grandfather came to spend Rosh Ha-
shanah with us so as to attend the services of the celebrated
Rebbe of Borsche. My mother was beginning to think it was high
time to find an appropriate match for Hilda.
Thus passed the year 1943.