Four Scraps of Bread (6 page)

I realize that it would be destructive to imprison a new generation in a memory that was nothing but painful.

The question I wrestle with is: How can I use words to pass on what cannot be communicated, in such a way that provokes in everyone an appeal to responsibility and to life?

To do so, I chose a teaching method when I was asked by some history teachers to talk about my experience of deportation in high schools and middle schools. I developed a preliminary questionnaire aimed at the students. With a group of about ten of them, we pick apart the responses without knowing who wrote
them. That helps me to adjust my questions and answers when I find myself standing in front of a large number of young people (between one hundred and fifty and three hundred).

In general they are scared to ask questions. Does that not come from us adults, who do not know how to ask them questions, or take their interests as a starting point? What is important to me is to get them asking themselves questions. It is only by starting with their questions that I can call them toward their own life. Their questions speak volumes about what they are experiencing today.

I sense that they are receptive and active. The questionnaire helps them to articulate their prejudices, their fears, the things they do not know, the things they hate. Some manage to say, “I don't know.” I congratulate them on their courage, and I explain that whoever can say “I don't know” is the on the road to knowledge. Knowing things is important, but if this is only in the head, then for me it is empty of meaning. Knowledge has an ethical dimension. It is simple to pass things on.

This is the message that I leave as a kind of pointer at the end of my presentations:

In sharing my story with you, all I want is that you find confidence in yourselves, that you are able to commit as free agents.

Stay true to yourselves. Do not abandon yourselves, thinking that you are responding to other
people's expectations of you, or through fear that you will be less liked.

I invite you to stand firm against outside influences, and to choose your own sources of information. Do not swallow everything they tell you is true. When you are witness to situations that you feel are unacceptable, humanly unfair, trust yourselves. Discern, choose, and be responsible for your choices. Transform indifference and ignorance into solidarity. For me, indifference and ignorance are the death of humanity.

To forgive is to change the way you look at yourself and at others.

Now it is up to you to imagine, to work together, to cultivate real connections with less fear, so as to rediscover hope in our humanity, and to be vigilant witnesses, today, where you are.

You are the builder of your own life, and you are responsible for what you become.”

After our meeting another questionnaire is distributed by the teachers, who then take over the task of helping the young people talk about their family memories, the story of their lives, and history.

Without their own story, history has no meaning for them.

I am amazed by the treasure they carry within them. How do we take this immense wealth that is often waiting to be uncovered and make it spring up, so they can give it in their own way to the world of tomorrow?

I am moved by the infinite beauty of the color and the light in their eyes. Should we not look differently at ourselves and at them?

Within us we have the freshness and the beauty of spring.

E
NCOUNTER

Without an outstretched hand, we have no destiny.

It is the journey through time that makes what is subconscious conscious. I have only been able to read these subconscious things as a result of what I have gone through.

The silent space around my words is waiting for a breath of inspiration.

May what I have gone through call forth the power of life in each one of us. I am trying to pass on through words and in writing what I have experienced in such a way that those who read me may recognize themselves in what is best within them. Is it not our responsibility to try to build, wherever we have become flesh and blood, a future where it will be good to live?

There is a light deep within us. It is made dull when we want to become like other people. Freedom calls us to responsibility.

In order not to absorb the evil and violence of others, I have learned to listen but not hear everything. To lower my eyes so as not to see a face disfigured by violence. To stay silent. When someone is angry they
cannot hear or see. Such rage that words cannot express may mask great suffering. Silence allows me to stay centered, to step back and not suffer such an outburst.

We are all scarred by life. We scratch at ourselves, and at others, because life has wounded us.

The sun is often hidden behind dark clouds, but we know it is there, just waiting to rise in our hearts.

T
HE
F
ACE OF
G
OD

I got to know the God of Abraham and my Jewish identity when I was fourteen. Because we were Jewish, the Hungarian government barred us from school. That was a tremendous blow which raised many questions for me. I had no time to answer; survival took up all my energy, and I buried my questions in soil that I continue to till.

For their part, the Nazis gave us answers: “Jews are less than nothing.” For twelve months I shared the fate of these “nothings.” I met Jewish believers and Jewish nonbelievers. I heard them talk about God, but it was not very clear to me what difference there was between the God of the Nazis in whose name they were exterminating us, and the God whom the Jews were imploring. While I was being seared by injustice, these Jews were dying as they prayed to a God who seemed deaf.

At that time I did not understand anything, but their fervor and their trust in this God planted a question in me despite myself.

When I was nineteen, a woman's face raised questions for me. I examined it for a long time before I approached her.

This face was presence, welcome, understanding, and decency. When she was around, the bite marks that I hid beneath a thick shell of silence were less painful.

I was very intrigued by the cross she wore around her neck: it prompted a dialogue which led me to read the Gospel and to discover Jesus. Through the face of this woman, I encountered the face of God calling me by my name.

For a long time I plodded on through highs and lows. I felt uncomfortable in the Church. Prayer in Latin was a serious obstacle for me. Then the liturgy of Holy Friday, which condemned the “treacherous Jews,” hit me hard. I wondered where was the brotherly love proclaimed by the Gospel?

All of that contradicted what I had discovered in the Gospel that I had been given. I had opened it at random and was touched and amazed when I read Matthew 25: “I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty and you gave me water, naked and you clothed me.” I said to myself, “There's someone I would like to know.” And He has not left my side since.

Thanks to the honest witnessing of all those with whom I have journeyed, all those who have opened the door to the Bible for me, thanks to the faith and the doubts of the young people I have met, the Jesus of the Gospel never stops asking me questions and bringing me discoveries each day.

My inner heaven changes, always moving toward the Name.

T
HE
S
OURCE

Before I had had the time to be an adolescent, I became an adult. Thousands of looks trying to hold on to their lives weighed upon my own. Today I live and I bear witness so that through me their memory can be kept alive.

As I till the soil of my past and my origins, I have realized that awakening to oneself is only possible by forgiving oneself. We are not gentle with ourselves. How often am I surprised at how I mistreat myself and others! How can I welcome myself, or welcome others for who they are, if I do not follow this path?

My identity as a baptized Jew is not an obstacle but a vigorous root from which the sap rises. This path of peacemaking allows me to offload an immense weight and reconnect ever so carefully to my personal story and my identity.

Our dis-ease in the present lies in the past. And when we find the Source, it gives meaning to our lives.

Without words, the sentence has no meaning. Without the Word, my life has no meaning.

Silence cultivates the inner world. These are moments of grace which give birth to beauty. Silence listens to life singing.

T
HE
G
RACE OF
F
RAGILITY

At night I escape from time. In these moments of grace I feel its silent sweetness; it is then that I give shape to words which rise up from the far depths. They become more close, more authentic, more simple.

When I was weak, I wanted to appear strong.

But when I am fragile, I recognize myself.

My life as a deportee seems so far away that, at times, I feel as if it never happened.

When I was lying in a hospital bed, I realized that the suffering, anxiety, fear, and joy that I felt were truly mine, and I agreed humbly to embrace them within myself. That day, for the first time, I experienced compassion toward myself. Meeting this bruised self liberated me from an inner slavery, and the journey toward myself began.

I rise slowly. My steps are more confident because it is toward You that I am going.

When it is You inspiring me, words wait silently to be written in a moment of grace.

J
OY

The door to knowledge began to open when I agreed to listen to myself, to hear myself, to let myself be taught by the One who always offers me his hand. Each one of us is unique and incomparable: Why do we never stop comparing what is incomparable? We have many illusions about ourselves: Why do we force ourselves to become those illusions that we can never be?

Awakening to ourselves takes place in the wisdom of time. This core within us—unique, sacred—never stops working on us, in complete freedom. It guides our moral and spiritual growth. It is from this fragile, vulnerable source, blown about by the storms of life, that we must choose to lift ourselves up.

The path toward truth is painful. Truth does not explain or justify itself: it is, or it is not. It is the only path toward ourselves, where You wait for us.

You are there in how I look at people, in my gestures, in every trembling of my being.

Your light shines forth from my suffering. Your joy in me is only joy if it calls out the joy in other people.

Y
OU

From You comes my beginning. From day to day I am born in You.

My father was Jewish and my mother was Jewish. Life cut the cord and soaked me in a bath of ashes, an ocean of tears, screams, and blood.

No one came to wash me, to lift me up, to hold me in their gaze. No one looked over when I, we were falling into the pit of hell, the inferno set ablaze by Your raging creatures, those black-winged angels.

We were thrown into the ground, into the water, into oblivion, so that no one would remember us.

The earth swallowed us and the water carried us away.

You silently watched Your people being reduced to dust.

My heart closed up like a tombstone.

I turned against You without knowing who You were, in the face of Your blindness, Your deafness, Your perverted creation.

Today I can still hear the whirlwind of groans praising You, imploring You, calling You by Your name, before being consumed by flames.

At eighty-four, You are inviting me to embrace those millions of innocents who now share in Your Glory.

I seek Your face, God of the day and of the night.

I place in front of You these thousands of burnt suns.

May I offer You these glowing embers now they are at peace.

D
EVOTEES OF
H
OPE

By exterminating the Jews, the Nazis wanted to snuff out the spark of God that was in them and take it for themselves, so that they could take the place of God. To do so they were relying on the unimaginable, on the human capacity to forget, and on the world's disbelief.

I am sure that You, my God, did not want the Holocaust, and that the suffering of each one of us is Your suffering itself.

I believe that it is the false gods that we create who are responsible for wars, all of which are fratricidal.

I know that each one of us is a witness to his own life, to the Covenant, to Love, and to reconciliation.

We should invent connections and, whatever our religions or our political opinions, together we should become devotees of Hope.

The ramparts we put between us do not protect us. They isolate us.

Love is a free gift, as light as a breath of air. It transfigures daily life into a kingdom where it is good to live.

M
Y
W
ELL

I dig my well without knowing what I am going to find down there. There are unforeseen obstacles, tangled roots, lost memories, but I continue to dig with trust. Shovelful by shovelful, I release pure, fresh waves, and I fill my lungs.

I thank You for this earth, for the trees, for the little soloists who sing of life against a broad, blue sky.

Thank you for all those people of light whom You have placed on my path to help me be what I am today.

I
N
T
IME

I give time

I count time

I take time

I waste time

I postpone time until tomorrow

I force time

I drown in time

Where am I in this whirlwind passing by?

Is thinking about life the same as living? Will life be the way we thought it would be? I have had many experiences. I have seen life without any pretentions. I have realized that life is not lived in the conditional; it is lived in the present and in the singular. To invent life is to abandon my will concerning my own life. It is letting myself be made by it.

Life has taught me to live each moment as if it were the last.