The Last of the Just

In a story that spans from twelfth-century England to twentieth-century Auschwitz, French author Andre Schwarz-Bart’s novel The Last of the Just (1959) details a lineage of “Just Men” whose righteousness and suffering, according to Jewish mysticism, justifies the existence of humanity to God. For The Last of the Just, Schwarz-Bart received the Prix Goncourt, the highest literary honor in France.

In the year 1185, more than a hundred Jewish men, women, and children are slaughtered in an anti-Semitic riot in York, England, virtually wiping out the town’s entire Jewish population. Among these townspeople is Rabbi Yom Tom Levy, who belongs to the lineage of Lamed-Vovnik, thirty-six righteous souls of every generation whose character and deeds justify the continued existence of humanity to God. The idea is that they are selected to endure the suffering of the world; without even one of them, the suffering would be too great for humankind to survive. Rather than die at the hands of the Christian mob, Yom leads the remaining survivors into a tower where he kills them and then himself, choosing to die as martyrs rather than as a result of the mob’s murderous religious “conversion.”

Throughout the generations, the Lamed-Vovnik live and die through the men of the Levy family. The latest Lamed-Vovnik is Mordecai Levy, a pious but questioning Jew living in Poland in 1933, the year Hitler rises to power. It is Mordecai’s job to activate the next just man in the Levy family tree, his grandson Ernie Levy, during the lead-up to the Holocaust and World War II. A shy and sensitive boy, Ernie is content to read inside all day. Though unprepared for the discovery that he is the next Lamed-Vovnik, he quickly embraces his destiny, physically and spiritually steeling himself for the painful tasks ahead.



Unfortunately, his faith is shaken on numerous occasions In one instance, his classmates who used to be his friends get caught up in anti-Semitic fervor, binding and torturing Ernie to such a degree that the young boy attempts to kill himself. It takes two years for his body to heal, but his mind and spirit are still damaged. As the Nazis storm through Europe, Ernie’s mental state continues to deteriorate as the Levy family flees to France. Though safe for a time, the Nazis eventually conquer France. The traumas Ernie endures as the family evades Nazi capture cause the final thread of Ernie’s sanity to break. Believing that only a dog would deserve such pain and suffering, he begins to live and act like a dog himself.

A glimmer of sunshine enters Ernie’s painful existence when he meets a physically disabled young Jewish girl named Golda and falls in love with her. Their bliss is short-lived, however, for Golda is captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. Though devastated, Ernie feels a renewed purpose in his life: to be reunited with Golda. So determined is he to find her that he travels to the gates of the camp and demands to be let inside as a prisoner. Bewildered by this request, the guards seize Ernie and inflict incomprehensible tortures upon him, demanding he confess to being a spy sent there to collect and distribute information. After a series of unimaginable torments, the guards are satisfied that he is not a spy, and they release him into the population of prisoners at the camp.

Miraculously, Ernie finds Golda and their love for one another provides them with the faintest glimmer of happiness amid the horrors of the camp. They cherish this time together until the moment they are sent on a train to Auschwitz to be exterminated. For almost the entire book, Ernie has questioned if he is really a Lamed-Vovnik. However, he finally accepts the truth of it while onboard the train packed in with other scared and starving Jewish children. Ernie comforts them with the knowledge that they will all soon be reunited with their departed parents and other loved ones in the hereafter. The train arrives at Auschwitz and the children are herded into the gas chambers. When the gas is released, Ernie tells the children to take quick deep breaths so they will die more quickly and see their parents sooner. This final passage echoes the first scene of the book involving Rabbi Yom Tom Levy, shepherding his flock to death in order to escape another murderous persecution.



According to the Los Angeles Times, The Last of the Just is a timeless classic about "how easily torn is the precious fabric of civilization, and how destructive are the consequences of dumb hatred—whether a society's henchmen are permitted to beat an Ernie Levy because he's Jewish, or because he's black or gay or Hispanic or homeless."