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quished that sense of certa inty. The Ludwigs are housed in the so-called
"family camp" in Birkenau, whose inmates maintain a semblance of
normalcy until the Germans are ready to send them a lmost en masse to
the gas chambers. In the long closing section of the novel Lustig sets the
scene in the vestibule of death itself as the doomed Jews slowly make
their way under the stern prompting of SS men and camp Kapos toward
the profane sanctuary of mass murder. It is a bold imaginative stroke
that is virtually unique in the annals of Holocaust literature-Andre
Schwarz-Bart's
The Last of the Just
is another rare example. Few
authors or readers are wi lling to venture into this alien terrain, consid–
ering it too ghastly or too sacred to despoil with a conjectural eye or
pen. Only luck saved Lustig from this awful fate, which engu lfed his
parents and other family members. In a combination of personal shriv–
ing and artistic penance, he grants us a glimpse into the ultimate
moment of atrocity, giving us empathic access to the realm of the never–
to-be known.
To be sure, by deflating the drama of extinction and creating contra–
puntal fragments from the musings of vict im and murderer, Lustig offers
us only one likely version of this horrific event as it was experienced by
those present. And he does it with humility and a clear sense of the sus–
picion with which hi s foray into the unspeakable may be received. The
text announces its own misgivings: "Everything is maybe. Maybe Emil
Ludwig knew that everyone would die alone. Perhaps it is up to those
who put words on paper about him to breathe sou ls into them, as
though that were possible and preferable." The narrative raises but can–
not resolve the question of whether its trespass among the columns of
the doomed represents sacril ege or vision . But if the most extreme chal–
lenge of Holocaust literature is to help us to imagine the unimaginable,
Lustig has met that summons with disciplined courage and admirable
restraint. What other form of discourse can match that particular
achievement?
The "returned echoes" of this novel's title reverberate through much
of Lustig's fiction, reminders that time does not a lways dissipate the
memories of a murdered past. Over the years Northwestern University
Press has been reissuing many of Lustig's titles. The most recent,
The
Bitter Smell of Almonds: Selected Fictions,
contains the short story col–
lection
Street of Lost Brothers,
the novel
Dita Saxova,
and
Indecent
Dreams: Novellas.
Like returning echoes, bitter almonds assa il a sense
with hints of violent death, since the odor is associated with prussic
acid, the principal ingredient of the Zyklon B used in the gas chambers
of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Lustig must have enjoyed the ironic proximity
