THE TOWN BEYOND THE WALL (La Ville de la chance)

Novel by Elie Wiesel, 1962

In The Town beyond the Wall (1964; La Ville de la chance, 1962), Elie Wiesel argues that the Communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe have not learned the lessons of the Holocaust in regard to human rights. He describes mistreatment of the mentally ill and of devout Jews in postwar Hungary.

He begins by portraying the sometimes deferential treatment of the mentally ill in the Hasidic milieu of prewar Hungary in the city of Szerencseváros: "Mad Moishe came often to dine with Michael's family; Michael's father was his intimate friend. The young boy had never quite understood what really linked those two men, of whom one believed only in the power of reason while the other resisted all clarity. Michael saw them chatting often: Moishe spoke and Michael's father listened, now amused, now serious."

Wiesel's portrayal of the humane treatment of a mentally ill person is an important cornerstone of his human rights ethic. Michael's father explains why he sees humanity in the personage of the impaired Moishe: "He is far-seeing. He sees worlds that remain inaccessible to us. His madness is only a wall, erected to protect us—us: to see what Moishe's bloodshot eyes see would be dangerous."

Michael's Hasidic father believes in the social integration of the mentally ill and views them as valuable members of the larger community. Thereby the degree of suffering inflicted upon the impaired person can be rectified.

Wiesel juxtaposes this approach with that of the postwar Communist Hungarian police, who deliberately attempt to instill mental illness in suspected enemies as a form of torture: " … they drive the prisoner crazy. They lock him up in a cell called 'the temple' and keep him standing face-to-the-wall for hours, for days. They call it 'the prayer."'

The Holocaust survivor Michael finds himself to be a victim of this very procedure when he makes an unlawful but harmless tourist journey to his hometown of Szerencseváros by smuggling himself past the border guards: "'Why don't you open that ugly face of yours and tell us what we want to know?' the officer continued in a bored monotone. ' We have time, but not you, my boy. You're going mad slowly. You're already showing the first signs. Pretty soon you'll start to talk and shout. You'll spill everything."' This indictment of Communist cruelty from the pen of a Holocaust survivor came just two years after the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962).

Michael receives unexpected assistance in maintaining his mental balance while in detention from fellow Jew and inmate Menachem, who urges Michael to use his religion as a system of support to survive the ordeal: "'Don't blaspheme,' he chanted. 'All is not madness. God is not madness. What do we know of God or madness? … Trust your intelligence to God; he will restore it to you intact, if not purer, more profound."' Through the figure of Menachem, Wiesel voices the point of view that religion is a pillar of strength and a mainstay of support which cannot be taken from the person who believes in it, even in the darkest crisis.

During his sojourn in the Hungarian prison, Michael learns that Menachem is a victim of Communist religious persecution:

Menachem told him about his own crime against the state: he had organized clandestine classes in religion. At that time anti-Semitism was not only tolerated but encouraged in all countries behind the Iron Curtain. They arrested rabbis and students; they deported them to work camps so they would not "contaminate" the minds of the young. He, Menachem, was neither a rabbi nor a teacher of religion. He was not even very pious… The change occurred one afternoon when his little boy came home from school and asked him, "Is it true that Jews are the cancer of history? That they live off the past? That they invented God just to humble man and stop progress?" Menachem went white beneath his beard. After several months of activity he was arrested.

Wiesel is very forthright in this novel about the fact that while he works to keep the memory of the Holocaust, he does not intend to turn a blind eye to Communist persecution of Jews. He posits a oneness between forms of oppression coming from different ideological camps and vows to conquer all of them.

—Peter R. Erspamer