Eseuri decente

To my knowledge, “Gruber’s Journey” (Calatoria lui Gruber) is the first movie ever-made which approaches the issue of the Holocaust in Romania. It is based on the real story of Curzio Malaparte passing through Romania on his way to the Eastern front as a war correspondent. In June 1941, he went to Iasi to search for a famous doctor, Josef Gruber, in order to cure his allergy. The facts that he witnessed would be described in his 1944 novel, “Kaput”.

And these facts are the pogrom of Iasi, 29 June 1941, executed by Romanian authorities in collaboration with German troops stationed in the region. The main character is obsessed with his allergy, traveling from one place to another having no sense of smell- in fact a metaphor for his spiritual numbness related to what was happening. The Iasi that he sees is the stage of a tragedy which had happened one day earlier. With minimal means and very few scenes, the massacre is suggested discretely in two or three rides with the car through the city. The most powerful hint is the short trip to the countryside, where Malaparte reaches the train cars still crowded with bodies and dying survivors, crying for help, air, water. To this, the journalist can only reply “Let’s go.”, from the safety of his car. Scenes from city life evoke interwar nostalgia, picturesque details, elegant costumes, provincial tranquility, as the director skillfully touches one of the nervous centers of contemporary perplexities: that such a large community could disappear from one day to another with no emotion, no question, not the slightest shiver of consciousness. A director, Radu Gabrea,  from an older generation than the “Romanian New Wave”, with some resemblance concerning the minimal style and the ethical engagement (“banality of evil”), but revolutionary in the subject tackled. So far, the movie has a discrete reception. Good performance from “rebel” Florin Piersic Jr., powerful acting as expected from Claudiu Bleont and Razvan Vasilescu, and a subtle and unforgettably emotional appearance of Marcel Iures.

Talking about the easy destruction of a whole community. Without questioning the fundamental resemblances between Communism and Fascism/National-Socialism, which are in fact their differences? One striking, albeit terrifying fact comes into mind: Hannah Arendt writes in Eichmann in Jerusalem and it is further testified in the Final Report of International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania that the operations of Romanian troops against the Jews were so violent, spontaneous, erratic and sadistic that even the Germans intervened. Of course, the latter did not do this out of a humanitarian instinct, but because they wanted to have a “clean”, “rational”, “disciplined” program of extermination. On the Romanian part- and perhaps on the majority of all the other European authoritarian/fascist states and movements, the attitude and repression against the Jews frequently took incredibly appalling forms, ranging from banal everyday discrimination to humiliation, rape, torture, mass executions. But still, until the case of Nazi Germany, the idea of complete extermination through an industrial, efficient method never occurred in the minds of even the worst enemies of the Jews. It can be replied that Auschwitz, the paradigmatic place of mass killing, appears gradually, that Germany did travel in fact the same road as the other fascist movements and that the gas chambers are the logical step forward from the “traditional”, late 19^th century anti-Semitism. In other words, the Nazi extermination program commences as a historical necessity.

However, even after conceding this fact and after accepting the common sense statement that murder is murder regardless of its circumstances, can the comparison lead to some meaningful directions of reflection? Again, what was specific about traditional anti-Semitism is that it was frequently associated with moral degradation of the victims. Insults were first carried out in the media, than discrimination occurred in the relation with authorities; through legislation, the Jews gradually lost their fundamental rights. Insults cried out in public usually appeared in the later forms, when pressure increased, while deportation and rounding up in ghettos ensued. These physical measures, as they reached the most radical point, execution, were frequently associated with insults, beatings, humiliation, rape. The general feeling is that the perpetrators want to touch, even if the final point is physical elimination, the spiritual side of their victims. The purpose is inner degradation, a radical transformation of the very core of each person.

In Communism, the victim went through a similar hell. The great show trials, the memories of the Gulag point to diabolical measures of human engineering, experiments of completely enslaving the conscience through terror and reeducation.  The pervasive symbol is the concentration or labor camp, designed primarily for the transformation of the human being, even if this operation claimed the majority of the lives of the inmates; those who perished did not do so before they were subjected to the same ideology of the total transformation of reality. They were de facto extermination camps, but on paper they had economic and ideological purposes. The show trials ended with murder, but only after the victim, prosecutor, lawyer, judge repeated the magic formulas in a public gesture in order to demonstrate the transcending, divine force of the Idea. Even spontaneous executions, occurring with no trial or outside the camp, were preceded by beatings, curses, humiliation of the victim and his family. The murders themselves were usually committed through shooting, beating, starvation, thirst, cold. Terrifying, but not unusual for what was known to man since his existence.

But, until Auschwitz, gas was never used, neither in the history of anti-Semitism, nor in Communism. And I believe that here there is something more than just a gradual change or macabre variation. Auschwitz itself travels a history from a secondary camp for Polish political prisoners, through a stage of being a massive work camp associated with local I.G. Farben industry, to the final stage of death factory; this history alone, together with the extreme conditions of work preceding the build-up of the gas chambers in Birkenau, would seem to further demonstrate the idea of gradual change, from an unsophisticated instrument of killing to a more efficient one.

However, I believe that the difference between leaving someone to die or beating or starving him to death, on the other hand, and directly sending him to a gas chamber, incinerating his body, using his hair as raw material for the fabrication of textiles, on the other, is substantial; and it is constituted by the attitude: the first case denotes an unconscious acknowledgement that the victim is a person- a human being composed of flesh and spirit. When he is humiliated or tortured even with the price of his life, the torturer unknowingly or not has a statement: not only that the victim deserves to die, but he must disappear with his soul being enslaved, conquered or destroyed; the ones who do survive and are subjected to these measures without being murdered are deemed to have even a bigger price, a higher value with the condition that their soul is transformed. In fact, any violence which does not end immediately with death is directed at the inner, invisible dimension of the human being, whether one considers it as soul, consciousness or brain activity. Both the “traditional” antisemitic movements and the Communists were, ironically and unknowingly, acknowledging the transcendent dimension of humanity, its duality of flesh and spirit.

And the first stages of Auschwitz were also defined by this attitude, with extreme life conditions and random terror, thus turning the inmates into living corpses. It was meant as an experiment for the power of the ideology to transform human being. But when mass extermination by gas begins, the attitude changed. The victims went off the train; they were calmly selected by doctors and escorted with a neutral, almost polite attitude towards the gas chambers. At the infamous Wansee conference in January 1942, the officials frequently mention the words “clean”, “efficient” solution; the terms are borrowed from the euthanasia program, which was destined to provide a “dignifying” end to the mentally disabled. Individuals like Eichmann take their task seriously and work with “German efficiency” to accomplish this “great mission”. Meanwhile, the commander of Auschwitz leaves a happy life with his family within 50 meters away from one of the gas chambers. He recalls in his memoirs how he was looking with petrified heart at a mother, as she was begging him, on the way to death, to spare at least her children. The valuables are taken by the soldiers, the hair is used for textiles, the bodies are cremated. Soon it becomes routine. Few were the cases of truly sadistic killers, of individuals who lose control. The SS soldiers do what they can to accumulate wealth, get drunk from time to time and try to escape after the war, shamelessly disguising themselves or reconverting into decent, honest clerks in some quiet German town, being loving fathers and husbands. Himmler even wanted to negotiate with the Allies, on one occasion requesting 1 million trucks in exchange for the Hungarian Jews. As the deal did not go through, they were sent to Auschwitz.

In short, what is so characteristic, so disheartening and chilling is the feeling that with the Nazi extermination program a new attitude fully enters the stage of history: to regard human being as not having any invisible dimension. No duality, no feeling, nothing, absolutely nothing beyond appearance. I was once with a friend in a park in Krakow. Out of nowhere, an English man, obviously drunk, sat near us and began to chat. Strange enough, he began to talk on our main topic: God. What I still remember is the weight, which you almost felt right in your heart, of the word “nothing”: “There is nothing beyond death. Nothing. There is nothing.”, he kept repeating with paralyzing determination. So the neutrality with which the victims were escorted to death is so frightening because it goes beyond the duality flesh-spirit involuntarily admitted by a moral aggression: the duality is not recongnized. They simply felt no need to humiliate the Jews for the simple fact that they did not recognize that they were anything else than walking corpses, a vermin, a plague of humanity.  The commander of Auschwitz recalls his sense of relief when the gas facilities were installed. It wasn’t just the fact that logistics and bureaucratic efforts would have been streamlined, but something infinitely deeper: the very existence of these facilities signaled a break from all traces of remorse or at least embarrassment caused by bloody methods of killing; it is a break from a consciousness which still experiences some faint shivers when the existential stance still recognized the attribute of personhood to the victim; it is, in the end, an encouragement to leap into nothingness, where everything is possible because nothing exists.

Finally, a question: who should we fear more- does who want to enslave our soul or those who do not recognize its existence?

Hannah Arendt, “Eichmann la Ierusalim. Raport asupra banalitatii raului.”

“In Romania, chiar si SS-istii erau luati prin surprindere si uneori ingroziti de ororile pogromurilor la scara larga, demodate si in acelasi timp spontane. Deseori interveneau sa-i salveze pe evrei de la macel, astfel incat omorul sa fie facut in- ceea ce ei numeau- mod civilizat.

Nu este o exagerare sa spuneam ca Romania era cea mai antisemita tara a Europei antebelice. Inca din secolul al XIX-lea, antisemitismul romanesc era un fapt bine stabilit. In 1878, marile puteri incercasera sa intervina, prin tratatul de la Berlin si sa determine guvernul roman s-i recunoasca pe locuitorii evrei drept cetateni romani- chiar daca ar fi ramas cetateni de rang secund. Nu au reusit, iar la sfarsitul Primului Razboi Mondial toti evreii romani- cu exceptia catorva sute de familii sefarde si a catorva evrei de origine germana- erau inca straini rezidenti pe teritoriul romanesc.[...]

Doi ani mai tarziu, in august 1940 (sic!), cu cateva luni inaintea intrarii Romaniei in razboi, maresalul Ion Antonescu, seful noii dictaturi a Garzii de Fier, i-a declarat apatrizi pe toti evreii romani, cu exceptia celor cateva sute de familii de evrei ce fusesera cetateni romani inaintea tratatelor de pace. In aceeasi luna, el a instituit o legislatia antievreiasca care era cea mai severa din Europa (luand in considerare si Germania). Categoriile privilegiate, veteranii de razboi si evreii care fusesera cetateni romani inainte de 1918, nu reprezentau mai mult de 10 000 de oameni, deci cel mult 1% din intregul grup etnic. Hitler insusi eea constient de faptul ca Germania risca sa fie depasita de Romania, si i-a atras atentia lui Goebbels, in august 1941, la cateva saptamani dupa ce daduse ordinul pentru Solutia Finala, ca “un om ca Antonescu procedeaza in aceasta chestiune intr-un mod mult mai radical decat am facut-o noi pana la ora actuala.”

Romania a intrat in razboi in iunie 1941, iar Legiunea Romana a devenit o forta militara demna de luat in seama, avandu-se in vedere apropiata invazie a Rusiei. Numai la Odessa, soldatii romani au fost raspunzatori de masacrul a 60 000 de oameni. Spre deosebire de guvernele altori tari balcanice, guvernul roman detinea informatii foarte exacte despre inceputul masacrarii evreilor din Est, iar soldatii romani, chiar dupa ce Garda de Fier a fost indepartata de la guvernare, s-au lansat, in vara anului 1941, intr-un program de masacrare si deportari care au “umbrit pana si rebeliunea de la Bucuresti a Garzii de Fier din luna ianuarie a aceluiasi an- un program de neegalat, din punctul de vedere al ororilor, in tot ansamblul de atrocitati semnalate (Hilberg). Stilul deportarilor romanesti consta in inghesuirea a 5000 de oameni in vagoane de marfa, lasandu-i sa moara acolo asfixiati, in timp ce trenul traversa tara zile de-a randul, fara vreun plan sau scop stabilit. O urmare preferata a acestor operatiuni de exterminare era expunerea cadavrelor in macelarii evreiesti. De asemenea, ororile din lagarele de concentrare romanesti- care fusesera infiintate si erau conduse chiar de catre romani, caci deportarea din Est nu era posibila, erau mai elaborate si mai atroce decat tot ce stim ca a avut loc in Germania. Atunci cand Eichmann si-a trimis la Bucuresti obisnuitul consilier in probleme evreiesti, pe Hauptsturmfuhrerul Gustav Richter, acesta a raportat ca Antonescu dorea acum sa trimita 110 000 de evrei in “doua paduri, de cealalta parte a raului Bug”, adica in teritoriul rusesc controlat de germani, pentru a-i lichida. Germanii au fost oripilati si toata lumea a intervenit.[...]

In consecinta, la jumatatea lunii august- moment pana in care romanii ucisesera aproape 300 000 dintre evreii lor, in general fara ajutor german-, Ministerul de Externe a incheiat o intelegere cu Antonescu, ce prevedea ca evacuarile evreilor din Romania sa fie realizata de catre unitatile germane.”[...] Acum insa, cand totul era gata, iar aceste marete concesii fusesera facute, romanii si-au schimbat brusc opinia.[...] acum, maresalul dorea sa scape de evrei intr-un “mod comod”. In paralel cu aceste masacre, se nascuse o afacere infloritoare cu vanzarile de excluderi de la deportare, in care se angajase cu placere fiecare ramura a birocratiei, nationale sau municipale.[...] Acum, se descoperise ca evreii puteau fi vanduti peste hotare pe valuta forte, asa incat romanii devenisera cei mai ferventi sustinatori ai emigrarii evreilor- o mie trei sute de dolari pe cap de evreu.[...] Pe masura ce Armata Rosie se apropia, Antonescu devenea tot mai “moderat”; acum dorea sa-i lase pe evrei sa plece chiar fara a mai plati vreo compensatie baneasca.

Aproximativ o jumatate din cei 850 000 de evrei din Romania au supravietuit, dintre care o mare parte- cateva sute de de mii- au luat drumul Israelului. Nimeni nu mai stie cati evrei au mai ramas astazi in tara.”