Legends of Our Time by Elie Wiesel

prefers to let me act, decide for him. I know what he is feeling: a mixture of fear, resignation, and also relief. He too has returned to the world of barbed wire: as in the past, he prefers anything whatsoever to the unknown. Here, in the bus, he knows what places him in jeopardy and that reassures him: he knows my face, my voice. To provoke a break would be to choose a danger the nature of which escapes him. In the camp, we settled into a situation this way and for as long as possible did anything to keep from changing it. We dreaded disturbances, surprises. Thus, with me, the accused knows where he stands: I speak to him without hate, almost without anger. In the street, the throng might not be so understanding. The country is bursting with former deportees who refuse to reason.
    “Look at me. Do you remember me?”
    He does not answer. Impassive, unyielding, he continues to look into the emptiness above the heads of the passengers, but I know his eyes and mine are seeing the same emaciated, exhausted bodies, the same lighted yard, the same scaffold.
    “I was in your barracks. I used to tremble before you. You were the ally of evil, of hunger, of cruelty. I used to curse you.”
    He still does not flinch. The law of the camp: make yourself invisible behind your own death mask. I whisper:“My father was also in your barracks. But he didn’t curse you.”
    Outside, the traffic starts to move, the driver picks up speed. Soon he will shout, “Last stop, everybody off!” I have passed my stop, no matter. The appointment no longer seems important. What am I going to do with my prisoner? Hand him over to the police? “Collaboration” is a crime punishable by law. Let someone else finish the interrogation. I shall appear as a witness for the prosecution. I have already attended several trials of this kind: a former Kapo, a former member of the
Judenrat
, a former ghetto policeman—all accused of having survived by choosing cowardice.
    PROSECUTION: “You have rejected your people, betrayed your brothers, given aid to the enemy.”
    DEFENSE: “We didn’t know, we couldn’t foresee what would happen. We thought we were doing the right thing, especially at the beginning; we hoped to alleviate the suffering of the community, especially during the first weeks. But then it was too late, we no longer had a choice, we couldn’t simply go back and declare ourselves victim among victims.”
    PROSECUTION: “In the Ghetto of Krilov, the Germans named a certain Ephraim to the post of president of the Jewish council. One day they demanded he submit a list of thirty persons for slave labor. He presented it to them with the same name written thirty times: his own. But you, to save your skin, you sold your soul.”
    DEFENSE: “Neither was worth very much. In the end, suffering shrinks them and obliterates them, not together but separately: there is a split on every level. Body and mind, heart and soul, take different directions; in this way, people die a dozen deaths even before resigning themselves or accepting a bargain with the devil, which is also a way of dying. I beg of you, therefore: do not judge the dead.”
    PROSECUTION: “You are forgetting the others, the innocent,those who refused the bargain. Not to condemn the cowards is to wrong those whom they abandoned and sometimes sacrificed.”
    DEFENSE: “To judge without understanding is a power, not a virtue. You must understand that the accused, more alone and therefore more unhappy than the others, are also victims; more than the others, they need your indulgence, your generosity.”
    I often left the courtroom depressed, disheartened, wavering between pity and shame. The prosecutor told the truth, so did the defense. Whether for the prosecution or for the defense, all witnesses were right. The verdict sounded just and yet a flagrant injustice emerged from these confused and painful trials; one had the impression that no one had told the truth, that the truth lay somewhere