Yes – people died of things other than “give-up-it is” – but it is true, people died of mental psychological stuff too…
They were dying whatever they might be doing: Pulled down by the weight of a rock on the slippery paths in the quarries; felled by blows or bullets in the night; executed with ceremony before the eyes of 100,000 fellow prisoners, under floodlights clouded by a snowstorm, to the strains of a funeral march, to be an example on the square where the roll was called; or hanged more obscurely in the barn they called the movie house. Others were dying of bronchial pneumonia, of dysentery, or typhus. Every day some were electrocuted on the charred wires that surrounded the enclosure. But many were dying, quite simply, of fear. Fear is the real name of despair.
I watched the stages of my own illness quite clearly. I saw organs of my body blocked up or losing control one after the other, first my lungs, then my intestines, then my ears, all my muscles, and last of all my heart, which was functioning badly and filled me with a vast, unusual sound. I knew exactly what it was, this thing I was watching: my body in the act of leaving this world, not wanting to leave it right away, not even wanting to leave it at all. I could tell by the pain my body was causing me, twisting and turning in every direction like snakes that have been cut into pieces.
Have I said that death was already there? If I have I was wrong. Sickness and pain, yes, but not death. Quite the opposite, life and that was the unbelievable thing that had taken possession of me. I had never lived so fully before.
Life had become a substance within me. It broke into my cage, pushed by a force a thousand times stronger than I . It was certainly not made of flesh and blood, not even of ideas. It came toward me like a shimmering wave, like the caress of light. I could see it beyond my eyes and my forehead and above my head. It touches me and filled me to overflowing. I let myself float upon it.
There were names which I mumbled from the depths of my astonishment. No doubt my lips did not speak them, but they had their own song: “Providence, the Guardian Angel, Jesus Christ, God.” I didn’t try to turn it over in my mind. It was not just the time for metaphysics. I drew my strength from the spring. I kept on drinking and drinking still more. I was not going to leave that celestial stream. For that matter it was not strange to me, having come to me right after my old accident when I found I was blind. Here was the same thing all over again, the Life which sustained the life in me.
The Lord took pity on the poor mortal who was so helpless before him. It is true I was unable to help myself…But there was one thing left that I could do: not refuse God’s help, the breath he was blowing upon me. That was the one battle I had to fight, hard and wonderful all at once: not to let my body be taken by the fear. For fear kills, and joy maintains life.
Slowly I came back from the dead, and when, one morning, one of my neighbors – I found out later he was an atheist and thought he was doing the right thing – shouted in ny ear that I didn’t have a chance in the world of getting through it, so I had better prepare myself, he got my answer full in the face, a burst of laughter. He didn’t understand that laugh, but he never forgot it.
On May 8, I left the hospital on my own tow feet … I had recovered… The fact was I was so happy that now Buchenwald seemed to me a place which if not welcome, was at least possible. If they didn’t give me any bread to eat, I would feed on hope.
It was the truth. I still had 11 months ahead of me in the camp. But today I have not a single evil memory of those three hundred and thirty days of extreme wretchedness. I was carried by a hand. I was covered by a wing. One doesn’t call such living emotions by their names. I hardly needed to look out for myself, and such concern would have seemed to me ridiculous. I knew it was dangerous and it was forbidden. I was free now to help the others, not always, not much, but in my own way I could help.
I cannot try to show other people how to go about holding on to life. I could turn toward them the flow of light and joy which had grown so abundant in me. From that time on they stopped stealing my bread or my soup.l It never happened again. Often my comrades would wake me up in the night and take me to comfort someone, sometimes a long way off in another block.
Almost everyone forgot I was a student. I became “the blind Frenchman.” For many I was just: the man who didn’t die.” Hundreds of people confided in me. The men were determined to talk to me. They spoke to me in French, in Russian, in German, in Polish. I did the best I could to understand them all. That is how I lived, how I survived. The rest I cannot describe.
