194
PARTISAN REVIEW
free countries, that is, which the prevailing lobby obviously doesn't
intimidate in the least. The article in
Romania Literara
appears even
stranger in light of this fact. Has Romania already so overcome all the
problems of the transition that it can now devote itself
to
teaching
France, the frivolous big sister, a better way?
Garaudy's Romanian publisher, Alma Tip, also published
The Proto–
cols of the Learned Elders of Zion
and a propagandistic pamphlet by the
extreme Palestinian organization Hamas.
[n
the epilogue to the Roman–
ian version, Garaudy's contribution was put clearly: "Over fifty years
after the war the historical lie of the gas chambers comes
to
light. In
Nuremberg fully innocent people were convicted. The Sralinistic Nurem–
berg show trial had the goal of manipulating the opinion of the entire
world. The technical inspection of various structures at Auschwitz veri–
fied that they were constructed after the war, in order
to
serve the propa–
ganda purposes of the gangsters of Yalta." Present-day france is seen by
Garaudy's Romanian publisher as a "totalitarian, fascist, and racist coun–
try" that "has found itself under Zionist control for over fifty years."
Romania Literara
seemed
to
have opted-in the "subtle" style of a
tasteful intellectual debate-for the right
to
market this not entirely sub–
tle or objective book, not only in Romania, but also in pitiable france,
whose judicial system, terrorized by said lobby, has ostensibly denied its
own humanistic roots. Other Romanian publications also took part in
the dialogue. Remarkably, the cultural weekly
Revista
22
spoke out
clearly against
Romania Literara's
point of view in the Garaudy debate.
On the other hand, the high-circulation daily newspaper
Adel'Llml
dra–
matica ll y titled its protest against the French court's decision "Descartes
Condemned." From Garaudy
to
Descartes? No more and no less.
EK:
Let us go back
to
Kertesz.
NM:
I would refer
to
another statement of his. Kertesz mentions those
survivors who later killed themselves (Paul Celan, Primo Levi, Jean
Amery) and writes, "When
I
compare my fate with that of these writ–
ers, I have come to think that a Stalinist 'society' helped me survive the
last four decades.
It
confirmed for me that after Auschwitz there could
be no chance for freedom, liberation, catharsis." In the "free" West, the
survivors experience their trauma ever more frequently and intensively,
until the fatal end.
In
the East, on the other hand, life in the "prison
society," as Kertesz ca Its it, seems to have forestalled the dilemma of
"identity," and with it the irreversible last free choice-suicide.
