Hostage by Elie Wiesel Page A

sickly widow; my friends Oïzer’l, Shmulik, Naftoli and Hayimi—their laughter, their singing, the movements of their hands as they delved into an ancient text, their warm gestures when they shared a piece of fruit with me …
    Evacuated, all of them, in leaden freight cars. Gone. Forever.
    Is it true that the count couldn’t have saved them? Or didn’t he want to?
    Were they doomed because they didn’t know how to play chess or because I played too well?
    The count housed us in the basement of a building next to his, which he owned. No one would have dared to enter without permission, or without being accompanied by the owner or his servant, Dorothea. She was an elderly woman, dark-haired and dark-eyed, silent. She had been his governess and later his secretary, carrying out the duties of a chambermaid as well. He trusted her and so did we. She took care of us as if we were members of the count’s family.
    Once or twice a week, in the evening, he came downstairs to check that everything was in order. Then he would bring me to his house and into his study, where we would play our chess games that sometimes lasted for several sittings. Sometimes he won. Often I let myself be beaten because, in spite of his warnings, something told me that it was better not to have too many victories.
    And life continued.
    Today, in my subterranean imprisonment, plunged in dark patches of eternity, I can only evoke my parents’ life in the past. As a child I already lived in my imagination on occasion: I “saw” blossoming trees or trees laden with snow; I “smelled” the odor of a horse; I “heard” the meowing of a cat; I “tasted” the butteror honey on the table; I “watched” with an almost happy feeling as the crimson clouds gently disappeared in a reddening sky.
    Did I think of God too, of His presence in history? Before the ghetto and during my parents’ first days there, I’m certain that they always led a Jewish life, conforming to the rules and customs of our religion. So did I. They observed the Sabbath and fasted on the designated fasting days. (I didn’t fast because I was still too young.) Later, in the hideaway where the count had moved us, this way of life became impossible. How can wine be blessed if there’s no wine? How can the Lord be thanked for His kindness, His mercy, His enlightenment when we were suffocating in a dark basement?
    My father, Arele, I—we all had to be cautious. My German protector—I’ll come back to this later—said this to me repeatedly, as he looked down on the chessboard, lit by candlelight.
    He said: “Without me you and your family would have been lost. That’s why I have to be extra vigilant too.”
    Sometimes, when German officers visited their comrade, my father and I were afraid of breathing too noisily.
    On the anniversary of my grandmother’s deportation—dressed like a peasant woman, she had thought she could get bread from the priest in the neighboring village, but was caught in a roundup—my father couldn’t hold back his tears.
    “It isn’t even possible to recite the Kaddish here in her memory.”
    He was seriously considering a brief return to the ghetto. “It’s easier to find a minyan there.”
    After Arele talked him out of it, he said, “These days I say to myself that perhaps the Lord was more charitable toward herby taking her away from us. She would not have lived through our misfortunes.”
    From time to time, our benefactor informed us of what was happening inside the ghetto. Hunger, overcrowding, disappearances.
    “Though I don’t believe in God,” he used to say, “a useless invention of the Jews, and in the end an evil one, I’m grateful to Him for not being born Jewish.”
    Later, my father said to me, “As for me, I’m grateful to the Lord for not being born German.”
    “As for me,” said Arele, “I’m just sorry I was born.”
    The following week, our benefactor told us, not without pride, how he had saved a Jewish