Upon learning that every last Jew there had been murdered by the Nazis, Agnon set about recreating Buczacz in all its vibrancy, from its heyday as a seat of Jewish learning until the day its last Jew fell dead upon the hill
27 Is it possible that a city full of Torah and life is suddenly uprooted from the world, and all its people – old and young; men, women, and children – killed, that now the city is silent, with not a soul of Israel left in it? I stood facing the candles, and my eyes shone like them, except that those candles were surrounded with flowers, and my eyes had thorns upon them. I closed my eyes so that I would not see the deaths of my brothers, the people of my town. It pains me to see my town and its slain, how they are tortured in the hands of their tormentors, the cruel and harsh deaths they suffer. And I closed my eyes for yet another reason. When I close my eyes I become, as it were, master of the world, and I see only that which I desire to see. So I closed my eyes and asked my city to rise before me, with all its inhabitants, and with all its houses of prayer. I put every man in the place where he used to sit and where he studied, along with his sons, sons-in-law, and grandsons—for in my town everyone came to prayer. The only difference was in the places. Some fixed their places for prayer in the old house of study and some in the other synagogues and houses of study, but every man had his fixed place in his own house of prayer.
28 After I had arranged all the people in the old beit midrash, with which I was more familiar than the other places in town, I turned to the other houses of prayer. As I had done with the old house of study, so I did with them. I brought up every man before me. If he had sons or sons-in-law or grandsons, I brought them into view along with him. I didn’t skip a single holy place in our town, or a single man. I did this not by the power of memory but by the power of the synagogues and the houses of study. For once the synagogues and houses of study stood before me, all their worshippers also came and stood before me. The places of prayer brought life to the people of my city in their deaths as in their lives. I too stood in the midst of the city among my people, as though the time of the resurrection of the dead had arrived. The day of the resurrection will indeed be great; I felt a taste of it that day as I stood among my brothers and townspeople who have gone to another world, and they stood about me, along with all the synagogues and houses of study in my town. And were it not difficult for me to speak, I would have asked them what Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob say, and what Moses says, about all that has happened in this generation. I stood in wonder, looking at my townspeople. They too looked at me, and there was not a trace of condemnation in their glances, that I was thus and they were thus. They just seemed covered with sadness, a great and frightening sadness, except for one old man who had a kind of smile on his lips, and seemed to say, Ariber geshprungen—that is, We have “jumped over” and left the world of sorrows. In the Conversations of Rabbi Nahman of Breslov, […] something like that can be found. He heard about a certain preacher in Lemberg who, in the hour of his death, snapped his fingers and said that he would show them a trick. At that moment he passed from the world of sorrows. And the Tzaddik enjoyed those words.
29 Bit by bit the people of my town began to disappear and go away. I didn’t try to run after them, for I knew that a man’s thoughts cannot reach the place where they were going. And even if I could reach there, why should I prevent them from going, and why should I confuse them with my thoughts? I was left alone, and I wandered back to former days when my town was alive and all those who were now dead were alive and singing the praise of God in the synagogues and the houses of prayer, and the old cantor served in the Great Synagogue, while I, a small child, saw him standing on the platform intoning “O Poor Captive,” with the old prayer book containing all the prayers and hymns open before him. He didn’t turn the pages, for the print had been wiped out by the age of the book and the tears of former cantors, and not a letter could be made out. But he, may God give light to his lot in the world to come, knew all the hymns by heart, and the praise of God together with the sorrow of Israel would rise from his lips in prayer.
30 Let me describe him. He was tall and straight-backed; his beard was white, and his eyes looked like the prayer books published in Slavita, which were printed on blue-tinged paper. His voice was sweet and his clothes were clean. Only his talit was covered with tears. He never took his talit down from his head during the prayers. But after every prayer of love or redemption he would take it down a little and look about, to see if there was yet a sign of the redemption. For forty years he was our city’s messenger before God.
32 The candles that had given light for the prayers had gone out; only their smoke remained to be seen. But the light of the memorial candles still shone, in memory of our brothers and sisters who were killed and slaughtered and drowned and burned and strangled and buried alive by the evil of our blasphemers, cursed of God, the Nazis and their helpers. I walked by the light of the candles until I came to my city, which my soul longed to see. I came to my city and entered the old beit midrash, as I used to do when I came home to visit—I would enter the old beit midrash first. I found Hayyim the Shamash standing on the platform and rolling a Torah scroll, for it was the eve of the New Moon, and he was rolling the scroll to the reading for that day. Below him, in an alcove near the window, sat Shalom the Shoemaker, his pipe in his mouth, reading the Shevet Yehudah, exactly as he did when I was a child; he used to sit there reading the Shevet Yehudah, pipe in mouth, puffing away like one who is breathing smoke. The pipe was burnt out and empty, and there wasn’t a leaf of tobacco in it, but they said that just as long as he held it in his mouth it tasted as though he were smoking. I said to him, “I hear that you now fast on the eve of the New Moon (something they didn’t do before I left for the Land of Israel; they would say the prayers for the “Small Yom Kippur” but not fast). Hayyim said to Shalom, “Answer him.” Shalom took his pipe out of his mouth and said, “So it is. Formerly we would pray and not fast, now we fast but don’t say the prayers. Why? Because we don’t have a minyan; there aren’t ten men to pray left in the city.” I said to Hayyim and Shalom, “You say there’s not a minyan left for prayer. Does this mean that those who used to pray are not left, or that those who are left don’t pray? In either case, why haven’t I seen a living soul in the whole town?” They both answered me together and said, “That was the first destruction, and this is the last destruction. After the first destruction a few Jews were left; after the last destruction not a man of Israel remained.” I said to them, “Permit me to ask you one more thing. You say that in the last destruction not a man from Israel was left in the whole city. Then how is it that you are alive?” Hayyim smiled at me the way the dead smile when they see that you think they’re alive. I picked myself up and went elsewhere.
(S. Y. Agnon, “The Sign,” in Agnon, A City in Its Fullness, ed. Alan Mintz and Jeffrey Saks [The Toby Press, 2016])
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