介绍:
CHAPTER TEN （2）
Had she talked herself into a corner at the trial for the
same reason? Because she couldn’t read the daughter’s book or the indictment, couldn’t see
the openings that would allow her to build a defense, and thus could not prepare herself
accordingly? Was that why she sent her chosen wards to Auschwitz? To silence them in case they had
noticed something? And was that why she always chose the weak ones in the first place?
Was that why? I could understand that she was ashamed at not being able to read or write, and would
rather drive me away than expose herself. I was no stranger to shame as the cause of behavior that
was deviant or defensive, secretive or misleading or hurtful. But could Hanna’s shame at being
illiterate be sufficient reason for her behavior at the trial or in the camp? To accept exposure as
a criminal for fear of being exposed as an illiterate? To commit crimes to avoid the same thing?
How often I have asked myself these same questions, both then and since. If Hanna’s motive was fear
of exposure—why opt for the horrible exposure as a criminal over the harmless exposure as an
illiterate? Or did she believe she could escape exposure altogether? Was she simply stupid? And was
she vain enough, and evil enough, to become a criminal simply to avoid exposure?
Both then and since, I have always rejected this. No, Hanna had not decided in favor of crime. She
had decided against a promotion at Siemens, and fell into a job as a guard. And no, she had not
dispatched the delicate and the weak on transports to Auschwitz because they had read to her; she
had chosen them to read to her because she wanted to make their last month bearable before their
inevitable dispatch to Auschwitz. And no, at the trial Hanna did not weigh exposure as an
illiterate against exposure as a criminal. She did not calculate and she did not maneuver. She
accepted that she would be called to account, and simply did not wish to endure further exposure.
She was not pursuing her own interests, but fighting for her own truth, her own justice. Because
she always had to dissimulate somewhat, and could never be completely candid, it was a pitiful
truth and a pitiful justice, but it was hers, and the struggle for it was her struggle.
She must have been completely exhausted. Her struggle was not limited to the trial. She was
struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she
couldn’t do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were
concealed defeats.
I was oddly moved by the discrepancy between what must have been Hanna’s actual concerns when she
left my hometown and what I had imagined and theorized at the time. I had been sure that I had
driven her away because I had betrayed and denied her, when in fact she had simply been running
away from being found out by the streetcar company. However, the fact that I had not driven her
away did not change the fact that I had betrayed her. So I was still guilty. And if I was not
guilty because one cannot be guilty of betraying a criminal, then I was guilty of having loved a criminal.
