Follow
Jan. 30, 2021
“Today one of the partisans who came from the Diaspora got drunk, and they tied up his legs and left him in some room. Some mean kids went over to him and started to taunt and curse him, and all the little kids gathered around and enjoyed the spectacle. M. and D. used a candle to illuminate the partisan comrade and wanted to see him, and I knocked the candle down and it went out. N., the kibbutz member, was there, too, and enjoyed it and didn’t stop them.”
The setting is Kibbutz Yagur, on the slopes of Mount Carmel, southeast of Haifa; the time, the 1940s. This report appears in the personal diary of Rami Valter, 14, who was born on the kibbutz. I don’t have to exercise my imagination to envisage the boy who would become my father. He discerns vulnerability and weakness; he’s outraged by the injustice. Without engaging in a confrontation he simply snuffs out the candle so the curious will go away and leave the tormented man in peace.