The Testament by Elie Wiesel Read Free Book Online

again, disappointed. He flung himself down on the floor, listened, and then yelled: “Hey, you Yids, come out! Show yourselves! Don’t be cowards, show your dirty faces.…”
    We could almost smell his breath. My teeth would not stop chattering, my eyes bulged, the blood throbbed in my head, and an iron fist kept pounding, pounding in mychest, preventing me from breathing, from living. I wanted to scream in terror, in pain, in anguish.… But my father stretched his arm out toward me and put a finger on my lips with a pressure as gentle and soothing as my mother’s lullabies: You must not, you must not give in, you must not moan, you must not even blink; you must merge into the night, melt away into the silence, into oblivion. And for one interminable moment, the enemy, nose to the ground, alert to the slightest sound, seeking out the smallest crack in the floor, the enemy was the sole inhabitant of heaven and earth.
    Then the pack retreated. We waited before opening our mouths. My mother, in a murmur: “Is everyone all right?”
    Everyone was all right. Masha’s future husband exclaimed, “It’s a miracle! A real miracle, Reb Gershon. They were there, right there, and God made them deaf and blind.…”
    … “And us He made mute,” said another student.
    “… Like Egypt, long ago,” my future brother-in-law went on. “Thank you, Reb Gershon, for having brought about this miracle!”
    “It’s too early to rejoice,” said my father. “They may still come back.”
    I fell asleep and awoke only after the pogrom was over. The sun, in all its glory, was shining on a spectacle of horror. The street was piled high with mutilated bodies. In their ripped-open homes men, women and children lay massacred, disemboweled, shriveled. Reb Gamliel: a cross of blood cut into his forehead. Asher the gravedigger: crucified. Manya, his wife: her throat slashed. Their eight sons and daughters: beaten to death.
    Where to begin? What to do first? Whom to help?
    The three Houses of Study that had graced our street had been desecrated and sacked. The holy scrolls, soiled and torn, littered the ground. Shimon, the beadle, lay in a pool of blood.
    With my father, my sisters and the three students, I went from house to house, from family to family. I looked, I listened, I wept with rage and bitterness. I wept at being a child, at not being able to help the victims, at not being able to strike back at the killers. An immense love welled up inside me for the Jews of my town. I wanted to bring them back to life, to console them and make them happy; I longed to have them share the miracle God had granted us.
    The funerals of the victims made a deep impression on me: a long procession of coffins covered with black cloth, carried by rabbis and scholars in mourning. The ceremony took place in the courtyard of the main synagogue in the presence of dignitaries who had come from as far away as Kharkov, Odessa and St. Petersburg. Under a gray sky, a dense throng listened to the funeral orations, then moved toward the cemetery. Three beadles, like living scarecrows, led the procession, shaking money boxes and crying out,
“Tzedaka tatzil mimavet
, charity will save you from death, charity is stronger than death.…” Everyone approached timidly to deposit a coin. My father had given me five or ten kopecks, but I couldn’t bring myself to come close. I know it’s stupid but those three tall thin men, walking ahead of the dead, of death itself, paralyzed me. I feel the terror to this day.
    As for the murderers, the looters, I hated them, I wanted to see them on their knees, whipped, chained—yes, Citizen Magistrate, I felt a profound hatred, monstrous and without pity, for the population of Barassy, and thus for Krasnograd and its people, and for the Russian people and the whole of Russia.
    Yes, Citizen Magistrate, I loved my people and I hated yours. Therefore, I, Paltiel Gershonovich Kossover, resident of Krasnograd at 28 October Street, I, a