曾營救數(shù)百猶太兒童的老人

曾營救數(shù)百猶太兒童的老人

LONDON — An old man went to Prague this week. He had spent much of his life keeping quiet about his deeds. They spoke for themselves. Now he said, “In a way perhaps I shouldn’t have lived so long to give everybody the opportunity to exaggerate everything in the way they are doing today.”

倫敦——本周(指上周——編注)，一位老人去了布拉格。在人生的很長一段時間里，他一直對自己的事跡緘口不言。那些事不言自明。如今，他開口了，“在某種程度上，我或許不該活這么大歲數(shù)，致使人人都有機會像現(xiàn)在這樣過分夸大所有的一切。”

At the age of 105, Sir Nicholas Winton is still inclined toward self-effacement. He did what any normal human being would, only at a time when most of Europe had gone mad. A London stockbroker, born into a family of German Jewish immigrants who had changed their name from Wertheim and converted to Christianity, he rescued 669 children, most of them Jews, from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939. They came to Britain in eight transports. The ninth was canceled when Hitler invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. The 250 children destined for it journeyed instead into the inferno of the Holocaust.

105歲高齡的尼可拉斯·溫頓(Nicholas Winton)爵士依然保持著謙遜的態(tài)度。他做了任何正常人都會做的事情，只不過是在大半個歐洲都陷入瘋狂之際。當時的溫頓是倫敦的一名股票經(jīng)紀人。他出生于一個德裔猶太移民家庭，其家人把姓氏從韋特海姆(Wertheim)改成了溫頓，并皈依了基督教。1939年，他從納粹占領(lǐng)下的捷克斯洛伐克救出了多為猶太裔的669個孩子，分八批送到了英國。1939年9月1日，希特勒入侵波蘭，第九批未能成行。原本要被送走的250個孩子，踏進了大屠殺的煉獄。

Winton, through family connections, knew enough of the Third Reich to see the naïveté of British officialdom still inclined to dismiss Hitler as a buffoon and talk of another war as fanciful. He raised money; he procured visas; he found foster families. His day job was at the Stock Exchange. The rest of his time he devoted to saving the doomed. There were enough bystanders. He wanted to help. Now he has outlived many of those he saved and long enough to know that thousands of their descendants owe their lives to him.

溫頓因為家庭的關(guān)系而對第三帝國有足夠的了解，因此知道英國官場把希特勒當成跳梁小丑來看待、把又一場戰(zhàn)爭當成幻想來討論是多么天真。他籌措了資金，弄到了簽證，還找到了愿意收養(yǎng)孩子的家庭。白天，他在證券交易所上班;其余的時間，他都用來拯救即將遭受厄運的孩子。袖手旁觀的人太多了，但他伸出了援手。如今，大部分獲救者都已辭世，而他活得足夠長久，有機會得知被救者的數(shù)千名后代因為他給予了他們生命而心懷感激。

Back in Prague, 75 years on, Winton received the Order of the White Lion, the highest honor of the Czech Republic. The Czech Air Force sent a plane. He was serenaded at Prague Castle, in the presence of a handful of his octogenarian “children.” The only problem, he said, was that countries refused to accept unaccompanied children; only England would. One hundred years, he said, is “a heck of a long time.” The things he said were understated. At 105, one does not change one’s manner.

75年后重返布拉格，溫頓獲頒捷克共和國最高榮譽勛章——白獅勛章(Order of the White Lion)。捷克空軍派了架飛機負責接送。在布拉格城堡，當著他的幾個年逾八旬的“孩子”，有人為他獻歌。他說，當時唯一的問題是，很多國家都拒絕接收無人陪伴的孩子，只有英國愿意。他又說，100年是段“相當漫長的時光”。談起往事他總是輕描淡寫。雖然活到了105歲，他的脾氣秉性并無改變。

Only in 1988 did Winton’s wartime work begin to be known. His wife found a scrapbook chronicling his deeds. He appeared on a BBC television show whose host, Esther Rantzen, asked those in the audience who owed their lives to him to stand. Many did. Honors accrued. Now there are statues of him in London and Prague. “I didn’t really keep it secret,” he once said. “I just didn’t talk about it.”

直到1988年，溫頓在戰(zhàn)爭時期的所做所為才被公之于眾。他妻子發(fā)現(xiàn)了一本剪貼簿，上邊記載了他的事跡。他出現(xiàn)在了BBC的一檔電視節(jié)目上，主持人埃絲特·蘭森(Esther Rantzen)要求被他救過一命的觀眾站出來。許多人都站了出來。隨后，榮譽接踵而至。如今，在倫敦和布拉格都有他的雕像。“其實我以前并非要保守秘密，”有一回他說，“我只是沒有談?wù)撍选?rdquo;

Such discretion is riveting to our exhibitionist age. To live today is to self-promote or perish. Social media tugs the private into the public sphere with an almost irresistible force. Be followed, be friended — or be forgotten. This imperative creates a great deal of tension and unhappiness. Most people, much of the time, have a need to be quiet and still, and feel disinclined to raise their voice. Yet they sense that if they do not, they risk being seen as losers. Device anxiety, that restless tug to the little screen, is a reflection of a spreading inability to live without 140-character public affirmation. When the device is dead, so are you.

在我們這個自我表現(xiàn)至上的時代，這樣的謹言慎行實在讓人著迷?，F(xiàn)如今，活著就要自我推銷，要么等于死了。社交媒體以幾近不可阻擋之勢將私生活拽進公共領(lǐng)域。被關(guān)注，被加為好友——要不就被遺忘。這種迫切性制造了大量的緊張與不快。其實，多數(shù)人在大部分時間里，需要靜如止水，不愿大呼小叫。問題是，如果他們不發(fā)聲，就可能會被視為失敗者。設(shè)備焦慮，那種被釘?shù)叫⌒∑聊簧系脑陝痈?，反映了人們越來越無力在140個字符的公共認同之外活著。當設(shè)備不動了，人也就死了。

What gets forgotten, in the cacophony, is how new this state of affairs is. Winton’s disinclination to talk was not unusual. Silence was the reflex of the postwar generation. What was done was done because it was the right thing to do and therefore unworthy of note. Certainly among Jews silence was the norm. Survivors scarcely spoke of their torment. They did not tell their children. They repressed their memories. Perhaps discretion seemed the safer course; certainly it seemed the more dignified. Perhaps the very trauma brought wordlessness. The Cold War was not conducive to truth-telling. Anguish was better suffered in silence than passed along (although of course it filtered to the next generation anyway.)

在喧囂之中，我們忘記了這樣的狀態(tài)是多么晚近才出現(xiàn)的。溫頓不愿多說并不反常。沉默是二戰(zhàn)后那代人的本能反應(yīng)。之所以做了這件事情是因為它是正確的，因而也不值一提。在猶太人當中，沉默絕對是常態(tài)。幸存者鮮有提及自己遭受的苦難。他們不會對后代說，而是壓抑自己的記憶。也許，謹言慎行顯得是更安全的做法，也必然顯得更莊重。亦或是，創(chuàng)傷本身帶來了無言。冷戰(zhàn)時期并不鼓勵說出真相。痛苦最好是在沉默中忍受，而不是傳遞下去(盡管它還是必然會滲透到下一代)。

But there was something else, something really unsayable. Survival itself was somehow shameful, unbearable. By what right, after all, had one lived when those 250 children had not? Menachem Begin, the former Israeli prime minister whose parents and brother were killed by the Nazis, put this sentiment well: “Against the eyes of every son of the nation appear and reappear the carriages of death. ... The Black Nights when the sound of an infernal screeching of wheels and the sighs of the condemned press in from afar and interrupt one’s slumber; to remind one of what happened to mother, father, brothers, to a son, a daughter, a People. In these inescapable moments every Jew in the country feels unwell because he is well. He asks himself: Is there not something treasonous in his existence.”

然而，這里面還有些別的東西，真真切切不可言說的東西。幸存本身就多少令人羞恥、難以承受。畢竟，到底有什么理由你活著，而那250個孩子卻沒有?以色列前總理梅納赫姆·貝京(Menachem Begin)的雙親與哥哥死于納粹手中。他很好地描述了這種情緒：“就在猶太民族每個子孫的眼前，死神的戰(zhàn)車不斷出現(xiàn)……黑夜里，煉獄的車輪吱吱作響，不幸的人們發(fā)出陣陣嘆息，這些聲音從遠處迫近，打斷了安眠，提醒著你，母親、父親、兄弟、兒女、民族，究竟遭受了什么。在這些無可逃避的時刻，這個國家里的每個猶太人都會因為自己安然無事而感到不適。他捫心自問：自己活下來難道不是種背叛嗎?”