560
PARTISAN REVIEW
the other. As a Jew, as an Israeli. Wary of revealing my identity at the uni–
versity that served as a center of
Fatah
activities, trembling in the
Metro
once
as I read the Israeli newspaper,
Ma 'a riv,
until someone called it to my atten–
tion:
"Mademoiselle,
somebody spat on your jacket."
Distance also allowed a different discourse with my parents, especially
with Mother. In the weekly letters, without the daily tension of life at
hom.e, a new bond was formed, between people who were close, who were
beginning to speak more openly with one another. Even my clothes in the
European winter, in the " retro" style, began to look like the clothes in
Mother's old pictures from Poland, like her hairdo in the photo next to the
jeep from Hanover, when she served after the war as a commander in Aliyah
B, the
Brikha,
camouflaged in an UNRRA uniform. Poland, Hanover, sud–
denly turned into places that were much closer, more present than the little
state on the shores of the Mediterranean.
On the first Holocaust Memorial Day in Paris, I decided to stay in my
apartment all day and to cut myself off from the street that lived by its own
dates (for example, Armistice Day ofWorld War I, the "Great War" that took
place at the same time of the year). I spent the day reading works on the
sources of Nazism, on the roots of anti-Semitism, on the German national–
ism ofWagner (rehearsals of whose
Parsifol
I had attended at the Paris Opera).
That summer, on a tour of Europe, an accident forced me to stay
unexpectedly in Munich for three weeks. And then the blank spot that
filled the heart of the European map for me-Germany-the blank,
untouchable spot that sucked up all the evil, also fell. Here, next to the beer
hall of "the Nazi buds," where some Israelis had taken me, in what was
obviously a sick gesture, there was also an opera, where Mozart was per–
formed, and there were wonderful museums, and parks.
The forced stay in Germany and the Yom Kippur War the following
autumn, which I spent in Paris facing the brightly lit Champs-Elysees
while my dear ones were in mortal danger, proved to me that there is no
refuge in the soothing distinctions between "then" and "now," between
"there" and "here." And I also understood that there is no racial differ–
ence, imprinted at birth between "them" and "us," nor can we hide behind
the fences of the Chosen People. And that, in every person, the murderer
and the victim potentially exist, blended into one another, constantly
demanding separation, every single day, with full awareness. I unders tood
that I could no longer hide behind the collective, ready-made definitions
of memory. That there would be no choice but to embark on the journey
that is obstinate, lonely, and full of contradictions.
Germany, France, Europe. What is in that culture, in its roots, mixed
with the gold of the baroque and the flickering brasses of symphonies; what
