One Generation After Read Online Free PDF

wandering souls to unite them with the original and sacred flame, the flame that links the Creator to His creation. Later, I don’t know why, I found myself treating him like a prince belonging to the distant kingdom of the Ten Lost Tribes. One day, after a certain event, he would return to his castle. Then we would learn the truth. But it would be too late. The prince would never again visit our little town.
    The event took place. Passover 1944 saw our synagogues closed, our houses of prayer and learning evacuated. A thousand burning questions troubled me, including: Where would Shmukler seek shelter? I tried in vain to get information. I questioned the other beggars, the other madmen. In the midst ofchaos, they had been too busy to worry about Shmukler, who had vanished, leaving no trace. I too had so many problems of my own I could not afford to linger on his case.
    But once again I found him. The first convoy was ready to leave the ghetto. I noticed Shmukler from afar: he was standing by himself, calm, serene, in control of his body and eyes. I don’t recall whether he carried a suitcase or a bundle. I think neither; it was a bag belonging to the old woman shuffling along beside him. There was a smile on his face and even in his eyes.
    It was as though he understood where they were taking him. He knew they were taking him home. Other victims were already waiting for him, over there, in the mysterious palace of the invisible king. He knew he would be riding a black steed, who would pull him higher and higher, until in the presence of the king he would point out the arsonists below. He would never see the town of my childhood again. That too he knew.
    So, twenty-five years later, I ask you the question: How does one commemorate his death and that of an entire community? What must one say? How many candles should one light, how many prayers should one recite, and how many times? Perhaps someone knows the answer. I don’t. I am still searching and I still do not know what one must do to keep alive the image of a town which seems more and more unreal to me each day.
    That is why I describe and embellish it so often, and often more than it deserves. I did not know it in its ugliness but at its most exalted, as it appeared to a young Jew for whom its outlines fused with those of his imagination.
    I was too young to be aware of insinuations in people’s small-talk; I listened only to their prayers. I was too innocent to understand the hunger and misery of our beggars, the dilemmas faced by our dreamers, the tragedy of our madmen. Though I am less naïve now, I cannot help but remember them as I saw them then: creatures from paradise struck down by human malediction.
    I see them still—and shall see them always—walking toward the station, heads bowed, their mouths twisted by thirst and grief. They walk and walk and never stop or rest, for the dead need no rest; they are tireless, the dead, and there can be no will powerful enough to impede their march. The Angel of Death himself is powerless, for they are stronger than he, stronger than anyone. All we can do is watch them walk and tell the story of their march, which is the story of an end, a story that has no end.
    Their endless march seems to lead toward an encounter in time rather than space. An encounter with whom? So as not to offend them, someone should be waiting for them. Who? That does not matter. What matters is where: Sighet. No other place will do.
    And that town they themselves invented they are now carrying farther and farther away, endowing it with a thousand names and a thousand faces. Look and you’ll see: it follows them, and so do I, keeping my distance, afraid to come too close. I follow their footsteps and murmur psalms, then I say
Kaddish
, once, ten times, a hundred times. How many times, I ask you, how many times should one say
Kaddish
for the death of a community buried in ashes, how many times must one repeat it forthe twenty-fifth anniversary of