The second week after they fell upon us and led me away as a Cantonist, to be brought up among the Gentiles and turned into a soldier.
Time passed, and I forgot everything, as he had foretold. They knocked it all out of my head.
I served far away, deep in Russia, among snows and terrific frosts, and never set eyes on a Jew. There may have been hidden Jews about, but I knew nothing of them, I knew nothing of Sabbath and festival, nothing of any fast. I forgot everything.
But I held fast to my name!
I did not change my coin.
The more I forgot, the more I was inclined to be quit of my torments and trials—to make an end of them by agreeing to a Christian name, but whenever the bad thought came into my head, he appeared before me, the same Shochet, and I heard his voice say to me, "Keep your name, remain a Jew!"
And I knew for certain that it was no empty dream, because every time I saw him older and older, his beard and earlocks greyer, his face paler. Only his eyes remained the same kind eyes, and his voice, which sounded like a violin, never altered.
Once they flogged me, and he stood by and wiped the cold sweat off my forehead, and stroked my face, and said softly: "Don't cry out! We ought to suffer! Remain a Jew," and I bore it without a cry, without a moan, as though they had been flogging not-me.
Once, during the last year, I had to go as a sentry to a public house behind the town. It was evening, and there was a snow-storm. The wind lifted patches of snow, and ground them to needles, rubbed them to dust, and this snow-dust and these snow-needles were whirled through the air, flew into one's face and pricked—you couldn't keep an eye open, you couldn't draw your breath! Suddenly I saw some people walking past me, not far away, and one of them said in Yiddish, "This is the first night of Passover." Whether it was a voice from God, or whether some people really passed me, to this day I don't know, but the words fell upon my heart like lead, and I had hardly reached the tavern and begun to walk up and down, when a longing came over me, a sort of heartache, that is not to be described. I wanted to recite the Haggadah, and not a word of it could I recall! Not even the Four Questions I used to ask my father. I felt it all lay somewhere deep down in my heart. I used to know so much of it, when I was only six years old. I felt, if only I could have recalled one simple word, the rest would have followed and risen out of my memory one after the other, like sleepy birds from beneath the snow. But that one first word is just what I cannot remember! Lord of the Universe, I cried fervently, one word, only one word! As it seems, I made my prayer in a happy hour, for "we were slaves" came into my head just as if it had been thrown down from Heaven. I was overjoyed! I was so full of joy that I felt it brimming over. And then the rest all came back to me, and as I paced up and down on my watch, with my musket on my shoulder, I recited and sang the Haggadah to the snowy world around. I drew it out of me, word after word, like a chain of golden links, like a string of pearls. O, but you won't understand, you couldn't understand, unless you had been taken away there, too!
The wind, meanwhile, had fallen, the snow-storm had come to an end, and there appeared a clear, twinkling sky, and a shining world of diamonds. It was silent all round, and ever so wide, and ever so white, with a sweet, peaceful, endless whiteness. And over this calm, wide, whiteness, there suddenly appeared something still whiter, and lighter, and brighter, wrapped in a robe and a prayer-scarf, the prayer-scarf over its shoulders, and over the prayer-scarf, in front, a silvery white beard; and above the beard, two shining eyes, and above them, a sparkling crown, a cap with gold and silver ornaments. And it came nearer and nearer, and went past me, but as it passed me it said: