Dawn by Elie Wiesel

Author:Elie Wiesel [Wiesel, Elie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466821163
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2006-12-17T06:00:00+00:00

SUDDENLY I became aware that the room was stuffy, so stuffy that I was almost stifled.

No wonder. The room was small, far too small to receive so many visitors at one time. Ever since midnight the visitors had been pouring in. Among them were people I had known, people I had hated, admired, forgotten. As I let my eyes wander about the room I realized that all of those who had contributed to my formation, to the formation of my permanent identity, were there. Some of them were familiar, but I could not pin a label upon them; they were names without faces or faces without names. And yet I knew that at some point my life had crossed theirs.

My father was there, of course, and my mother, and the beggar. And the grizzled master. The English soldiers of the convoy we had ambushed at Gedera were there also. And around them friends and brothers and comrades, some of them out of my childhood, others that I had seen live and suffer, hope and curse at Buchenwald and Auschwitz. Alongside my father there was a boy who looked strangely like myself as I had been before the concentration camps, before the war, before everything. My father smiled at him, and the child picked up the smile and sent it to me over the multitude of heads which separated us.

Now I understood why the room was so stuffy. It was too small to hold so many people at a time. I forced a passage through the crowd until I came to the little boy and thanked him for the smile. I wanted to ask him what all these people were doing in the room, but on second thought I saw that this would be discourteous toward my father. Since he was present I should address my question to him.

“Father, why are all these people here?”

My mother stood beside him, looking very pale, and her lips tirelessly murmured: “Poor little boy, poor little boy!…”

“Father,” I repeated, “answer me. What are you all doing here?”

His large eyes, in which I had so often seen the sky open up, were looking at me, but he did not reply. I turned around and found myself face to face with the rabbi, whose beard was more grizzled than ever.

“Master,” I said, “what has brought all these people here tonight?”

Behind me I heard my mother whisper, “Poor little boy, my poor little boy.”

“Well, Master,” I repeated, “answer me, I implore you.”

But he did not answer either; indeed, he seemed not even to have heard my question, and his silence made me afraid. As I had known him before, he was always present in my hour of need. Then his silence had been reassuring. Now I tried to look into his eyes, but they were two globes of fire, two suns that burned my face. I turned away and went from one visitor to another, seeking an answer to my question, but my presence struck them dumb. Finally I came to the beggar, who stood head and shoulders above them all.

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