NORMAN MANEA
195
You can well understand why these lines have particular meaning for
me. And why another quotation from this Hungarian writer touches me:
"Now that the walls of the prison have fallen, one again hears amidst
the racket and the ruins the caw of anti-Semitism after Auschwitz."
I
remember the evening [ spent with Kertesz some years ago in
Budapest. He told me of his disappointment and concern over the new
nationalism in the East. He saw many threatening signs around him, and
spoke with restrained bitterness. This subject instantly connected us.
EK: I
wonder if in the other political camp there isn't a counterpart to
this treatment of the Holocaust. Thus
The Black Book of Communism,
certainly no brilliant editorial or scientific achievement, met, partiCLI–
larly in france and Germany, with vehement criticism. The true prob–
lem, however, was neglected: the horror of the Gulag and all the other
acts of terror in the twentieth century that found justification in Com–
mLlIlist ideology, in its sheer, sly utopia.
NM: The Gulag on the one hand offers a new and immanent legit–
imization of democracy (as though one were still necessary), and on the
other offers the Left the chance to complete a final and clear break with
Communism. The Left's assignment now should consist of liberating
humanistic "mythology" from tyranny and the illusion of utopia and
lend substance again to rationalism and pragmatism, freedom and icon–
oclasm, and legal and social ideals.
The Communist failure means millions of victims.
It
remains decisive
for any critical analysis of the last century, the history of the Left
included. Those who for a long time have lived somewhat bored in the
democracy of postwar capitalism-giving in to its cynical competition–
seemed to prefer concentrating on the more obvious reasons for dissat–
isfaction. Does nostalgia for utopia, for the great project of universal
happiness, still exist?
I
rather think indifference is at work, the solid and
lasting indifference of the human being who loves himself more than his
neighbor and loves the neighbor more than a stranger. After all, the
Gulag took place far away and a long time ago.
EK:
But the Holocaust also initially faced indifference.
NM: Possibly therein lies the solution. The reappraisal of Communism
and the pathology of terror that resulted in the Gulag belongs first and
foremost to the East. Neither the washed-out West, nor American impe–
rialism, nor the diabolical Jewish international oligarchy, nor the
