18
Sunday,
August 23, 1970
1968-69
Quite unexpectedly, Miki Wilner found himself
with a free day in Tel Aviv.
The previous day was too
fraught with action for him to have given much thought to how he would spend the
next day. And the night had been restless, like those nights in Renates bed in
Bad Harzburg, with some of the same characters on the stage of his dreams:
Tzvi, Hanna, Nili, Hemme. But this time Brigitte was there too. Each time she
appeared, her long blond hair flowing around her, he felt soothed from the
agitation of the other, frenetic scenes. At each such waking he felt grateful
to fate for having placed her in his life.
He finally woke up too hungry
for any further sleep. His facial skin, where he had been wearing the false
beard, was itchy. His bladder was full. It was time to get up.
On his way to the bathroom he
looked out the window overlooking Hayarkon Street. It already seemed to be too
warm to do much walking in Tel Aviv.
What should he do with
himself?
The only thing he had to do,
besides satisfy his bodily needs, was to reconfirm his flight.
Seeing Nili again, even if it
could be arranged without having made a date beforehand, was out of the
question. An attempt to contact her, after their farewell, might be
misinterpreted as a change of heart, on his part, about her pass at him.
Over the years he had become
quite skilled at deflecting the unwanted attention of other women. Not that it
happened very often, nor did it take a great deal of effort on his part. He
found that, unlike men, who tend to be persistent in their pursuit, women were
likely to give up at the first sign of rejection, even something as simple as
an ostentatious display of a wedding ring. Or at least with him. There were and
always had been, to be sure, men who were so desirable because of fame,
looks, money, power, or any combination thereof that they were pursued by
women, or at least certain kinds of women, regardless of obstacles. But Miki
was not one of them.
On some occasions when he was
away from Brigitte, though, he would come across a woman who was attracted to
him and was not discouraged by his being married, and then the deflection
presented more of a challenge. Nili seemed to be one of those women. In fact, it
sometimes seemed to him that, to some women, his being Brigitte Wilners
husband gave him an extra edge of attraction, as though the woman were
thinking, if a sexy film star like her is happy with him then he must be
special. And then he would wonder: if I were to meet Brigitte as a film star,
rather than having been with her since we were in high school, would she be
interested in me? He had toyed with asking Brigitte the question, but he knew
her too well to expect an answer that was not an evasion.
* * *
They were almost settled in their house, but not quite
yet, when they had their first visitor. It was on a Sunday morning, and it was
Max Schwab, on the verge of leaving on a business trip to New York on behalf of
The Long Seventh Day and in urgent need of talking with Miki about its
American publication.
The previous day, the Export
Union of German Film had announced that Germelshausen was to be the West
German entry for the Academy Award for best foreign-language film. Though the
films release had been over a year before, its date fell within the recently
concluded German film year, which, like the academic year, runs from the first
of October to the end of September. Brigitte decided that that she would go to
Hollywood for the ceremony even if the film did not make the short list of five
films from which the winner would be chosen.
The choice of Germelshausen
may have been motivated by the connection with Brigadoon, which would be
used in the advertising in America. Miki, who had been following the international
performance of German films ever since the Cannes festival that he attended
with Brigitte, told her that despite the connection with a popular American
musical such a nomination was unlikely, since American tastes seemed to have
changed in the decade that had elapsed since West German films were nominated
in four consecutive years (though none won the award). Brigitte said that she
didnt care; she wanted to go anyway, and Miki would be with her, in a suit and
bowtie!
Max congratulated Brigitte on
the films selection and both Wilners on their house, but the moment Brigitte
moved away he got down to business.
In America, he told Miki, an
integral part of book publishing is what they call a book tour, in which
an author visits bookstores, talks about his books, reads excerpts from it,
autographs copies, and answers questions. The actual date of publication would
therefore depend on when Miki would be available for such a tour. Miki said
that he was going to be in Los Angeles in April, anyway, to accompany Brigitte
to the Oscars, and that he could stay behind for the tour after she went back
to Germany.
Too bad she cant go on tour
with you, Max remarked. It would give the tour a touch of glamour.
Am I not glamorous
enough? Miki rejoined, and they laughed, but Max, who was a busy man,
immediately got back to business.
A tour that began in Los
Angeles and ended in New York, the two cities with the largest Jewish
communities in the USA, would be perfect. Exactly when in April would Miki be
in Los Angeles? That was something that Miki remembered: the Oscars ceremony
would be on the fourteenth, the day before the Bergen-Belsen liberation
anniversary.
Thats perfect! Max
exclaimed. The Americans have another concept, tie-in, and if the first
bookstore appearance is on the fifteenth, then they could publicize your being
a Bergen-Belsen survivor, and if Brigitte could be with you at that first
appearance, it would be even better. She doesnt have to fly back that same
day, does she?
No, we are going to fly back
together the following Friday, the eighteenth.
Good, Max said resolutely. You will cancel your flight, and
during that week you will appear in bookstores around Los Angeles. Its a very big
city, very spread out, so that you will need to be in different areas in order
to reach as many people as possible. Let me see
the first bookstore should
probably be a famous one thats in Hollywood for the Oscars tie-in
called Pickwick Books. It belongs to a Jewish family, the Epsteins. In fact,
they now have branches, so the first part of your tour can be simply in various
Pickwick bookstores; that will be simpler to arrange. And then, when Brigitte
flies back to Hamburg, you can fly to San Francisco, then Chicago, and your
tour will go from there until you end up in New York.
Is Montreal usually included
in such a tour? Miki asked.
Montreal? Why?
My aunt lives there, and I would like to visit her, as long as I
am in North America.
Well, it has a pretty big
Jewish community, and they also speak English, Max said. But the Canadians
get their books from British, not American, publishers. Its the spelling, you
know. Of course, you can always go to Montreal on your own after the tour is over.
Of course, Miki said.
Anyway, the publication date
is usually about a month before the beginning of the tour, to allow for reviews
to come out. That means the middle of March. Good. I will telephone New York in
a few hours, when its morning there.
* * *
After a bountiful breakfast, Miki decided to read the book
to the finish. He had nothing better to do.
Turner began to interrogate
the embassy staff, one by one, about their relations with Harting, assuming
from the outset that the missing man was a Soviet spy. His harsh interrogation
techniques, lacking any finesse, startled Miki. He even mocked the Welsh accent
of one of the embassy employees. He was certainly no Sherlock Holmes, that
Turner!
Turner then became involved
with some higher-ups, most notably Rawley Bradfield, the embassys Head of
Chancery (whatever that meant) with a beautiful wife named Hazel, and
Ludwig Siebkron, a high official of the Federal Interior Ministry, who seemed
to be close to Karfeld. A former associate of Hartings, a corrupt ex-Communist
named Praschko, also made an appearance.
As the plot grew more
complicated, the novel came to a conclusion that Miki felt to be a letdown.
Somehow Turner managed to deduce, with no clues provided by the author about
the reasoning that led to the deduction, that the missing Harting was not a
Communist spy but a part-Jewish Nazi-hater who had dug up evidence of Karfelds
unsavory past (he was a chemist who during the war had managed a research
facility that had poisoned thirty-one half-Jews); that Harting had been the
lover of Hazel Bradfield; and that Bradfield had been conspiring with Karfeld.
At the end there was a riot
during which a group of socialists was attacked by Karfelds mob. And this was
supposed to take place, according to Le Carrés imagining of the future, at a
time when in reality Willy Brandt was the Chancellor!
It was about four oclock
when he closed the books covers. He thought he might write an article about it
when he got home, perhaps gently poking fun at John Le Carré as a prophet.
Since he would need the book for reference, he stowed it in his suitcase.
He was beginning to feel
hungry. He had eaten breakfast late enough for it to qualify as a brunch
and so he could skip the midday meal, but he would need an early dinner. But he
was also feeling sleepy. A nap of between half an hour and an hour would be
nice. Then he could go out in search of a restaurant.
* * *
Maxs idea of the Bergen-Belsen tie-in for the book
proved to be brilliant. There turned out to be a sizable community of survivors
of the camp in Los Angeles, and it seemed that most of them came to hear Miki
in the various Pickwick bookstores in which he appeared. Some of them
remembered or pretended to remember Miki as a boy, and they all bought the book,
many of them several copies. The local Jewish paper, the Bnai Brith Messenger, had reviewed the book unfavorably, since it
was critical of Israeli policy, but the people who came to hear him vowed that
they would write letters to the editor to castigate him for the review.
In San Francisco, no tie-in seemed to be necessary, and his
reception was friendly from the outset. As soon as he arrived at his hotel he
was interviewed by a television reporter for an educational station called
KQED, with the interview videotaped for later broadcast on the stations news
program. Early in the course of the interview, the reporter said, You are a
Holocaust survivor, arent you? Miki protested that he could not be a
Holocaust survivor, since the prefix holo- means total or complete and
therefore a holocaust cannot have survivors. It seemed, though, that the
reporter did not get his point. The interchange involving the word was deleted
from the portion of the interview that was broadcast, and the reporters
voiceover introducing Michael Wilner, the pronunciation of his name fully
anglicized, referred to him as a Holocaust survivor without qualification. Miki
had to resign himself to the American designation of his wartime experience as
the Holocaust.
Most of the newscast was devoted to a local event: in Berkeley, the
university town across the bay, where a group of young people had taken over a
vacant lot belonging to the University of California and were building a
community park there, to be called The Peoples Park. Residents of
Berkeley and university administrators were interviewed, and it seemed to Miki
that sooner or later there would be a confrontation.
In Chicago he was met at the airport by a fiftyish woman named Lois,
who worked for the company that organized the tour and who served as his
hostess there.
After the first reading, Lois introduced him to a much younger woman, a
reporter who was going to interview him for the Chicago Sun-Times.
Hi, she said as she reached her hand out to him. Im
Sandy Bordoni. Im not here to write about your book, but about you. May I ask
you some personal questions, Mr. Wilner? Or may I call you Michael?
You may call me Miki,
just like Mickey Mouse, but I spell it m-i-k-i.
Thats cute. Anyway,
whats it like to be married to a glamorous movie star like your wife?
I dont know; I havent
been married to any other glamorous movie star. But being married to my wife,
who happens to be a glamorous movie star, is wonderful.
Thats a cool answer. How
long have you been married?
Since 1956. And we have
been together since 1952.
Wow! So you got together,
like, real young! And youre still young! And youve stayed together all
through the swinging sixties, if you know what I mean?
I am not sure.
Well, like, swinging
He
did not know what she meant, and she recognized the fact by saying, Ill
come to that. Anyway, she continued, whats your secret?
I dont think that we
have a secret. And also we have no secrets from each other.
Thats good. Now, youre
apart a lot, arent you? Like, when shes on location, or youre on tour?
Not really so much. She
does most of her work in Hamburg, where we live, and this is my first tour. But
I have done some traveling on my own, recently, to Israel, which is the basis
of my book.
Well, when youre apart
for more than just a few days, this is my personal question, and its cool if
you dont want to answer it. Do you have an open marriage?
What?
Thats the new term for
swinging. It means having other partners, or relationships, or whatever.
Do you mean sex partners?
Yeah.
Of course not, he
said, trying not to sound indignant. What kind of marriage would that be?
Well, its not like its
never been done before, only not openly. At least women couldnt do it openly.
But since the pill, its a new age.
Ive heard about it: the
sexual revolution. I suppose I am not a revolutionary. Sandys expression
took on a look of disappointment, though he couldnt tell if it was personal or
journalistic. Do you have any other
personal questions? he asked with a smile.
Oh, sure. Being married
to a movie star, I mean an actress, what kind of movies do you like?
I prefer good ones to bad
ones.
Sandy laughed nervously.
I mean, what kind of movies, I mean, like zhahnruh? It took Miki a
while to realize that the woman was saying genre. You know,
romance, drama, comedy
Yes. I like all zhahnruhs,
except
what do you call it
science fiction. I like fantasy, but not when it
tries to be scientific.
In New York, on the other
hand, the reporters who questioned him seemed to be all Jews, and the paramount
question was: How can a Jew like you, a Holocaust survivor, live in Germany
as a citizen?
He no longer argued about the
use of the word Holocaust, but went straight to the point. In the city
where I live, he would reply, the mayor is a Jew, and since we are a
city-state, he is also like the governor of the state. The producer of one of
my wifes films is a Jew. The director of the theater where my wife sometimes
works is Jewish. He remembered that American Jews did not like the word Jewess.
So, you see, I dont feel alone or out of place.
From his Chicago hotel he had
called Fela to let her know that he was in North America and would like to
visit her. It would not be a good time, she told him. She confessed that in the
preceding year she had been married, after a whirlwind courtship, to a
charming, elegant French Jew, but it quickly emerged that he was only
pretending to be a Jew and that he had married her only for her money, which he
quickly began to spend on himself and, it later turned out, on his mistress in
France. Fela, as soon as the detective she had hired convinced her of the
truth, immediately threw him out, but now she was getting conflicting legal
advice on whether to get a divorce or an annulment, and she was not in a state
to receive guests, not even family.
Miki expressed his deepest
sympathy for Felas predicament, but could not help thinking that the story
might make a good screenplay, of course with a juicy part for Brigitte as the
mistress. Should he tell her of his idea? It didnt seem in good taste to use
his aunts misfortune as the basis for a story, but didnt fiction writers do
that all the time? It would be best, however, to wait till Fela had recovered
from her predicament.
* * *
In the evening he decided to go to the cinema. He would
try to see an Israeli film that would be unlikely to come to Germany. He did
not think that doing that would necessarily betray him as someone who knows
Hebrew, since Hebrew-language films were invariably equipped with English and
French subtitles.
He saw in the Jerusalem
Post that there was a new film by Menahem Golan.
The year before, he and Brigitte had seen and enjoyed his Tevye
and His Seven Daughters, based on the book by Sholom Aleichem, in Hamburg
in a German version, since the film had been coproduced with a German company.
The new film was Hapritza Hagdola, The Great Breakout.
As he approached the cinema and
looked at the marquee, he could not help thinking that if the title were
pronounced in the Yiddish-based Ashkenazi way as practiced by the Haredim,
it would sound Haprietze Hagdoile and would mean the great whore; prietze
was, as Hanna had reported at the dinner, the word that was shouted in
their neighborhoods at women who dared to show more skin than faces and hands.
The films action took place
in a fortress-like military prison is an Arab country that seemed to judge by
the topography to be Syria. It began with a visit by a United Nations convoy
that was received by the prison commander, Major Haikal, portrayed as a
stereotypical villain by an Israeli actor whom Miki had already seen in a
similar role in a film about the Six-Day War.
Among the prisoners were five
Israeli captives who, it turned out, were brutally mistreated under Haikals
supervision. One of them, named Eli, was played by Yoram Gaon, the actor-singer
whom Miki had a few months earlier seen on television singing Ballad for a
Medic. This Eli managed, quite improbably, not only to escape the prison
but somehow to make it to Israel, where he found an army buddy by now
discharged named Beno, himself a former captive in the same prison, and got
Beno to organize a commando team that would go 50 kilometers into Syrian
territory and liberate their buddies.
The film then became a
Hollywood-style action movie, with gunfire, explosions and falling bodies. It
even had a stock character of such films when their locale is outside America: the
roving American reporter who gets involved in the action.
But this reporter was really
a Mossad agent in disguise, and his function was to plant false information in
preparation for the surprise attack.
The resemblance to what Miki
had just been through was overwhelming. He wondered if Tzvi had found
inspiration in this film. Or, conversely, if Tzvi or someone like him had
served as a consultant to Golan.
The general idea seemed to be
derived from British films about commando operations behind German lines during
the Second World War. But the British at least had actors who were native
German-speakers Paul Henried, Fritz Valk, Anton Walbrook and who could play
German officers convincingly. Golans film felt more like a second-rate product
of Hollywood, in which such qualities as a credible screenplay, good acting and
competent editing are sacrificed to high-speed action. By those standards, the
film, which was drawing sellout audiences, was successful. Perhaps Menahem
Golan had a future in Hollywood!
These thoughts were still on
his mind as he walked back, in the warm, humid night, from the cinema to the
hotel. On his way he passed a bar with muffled noises emanating through its
closed doors, loud talk, boisterous laughter, and music that might be by the
Israeli rock band called The Churchills. He remembered having had a drink
perhaps more than one , in that place the previous year, in the company of
Hanoch Levin and some of his friends. The recollection of something funny that
had happened there began to hover around his mind, but he could not get a hold
of it. Perhaps it will come back tomorrow, he told himself.
* * *
It was already May when he returned to Hamburg from
America. In his stack of mail there was a book sent by the Countess, with a
note reading This may interest you. It was titled People in the Ghetto,
but it was specifically about the Warsaw ghetto. It consisted mainly of
photographs, most of which Miki had already seen, with commentary by the
editor, Günther Deschner. But what stood out on the cover were the lines With
a foreword by Jean Améry.
He wrote his article about it
in one typing session, and sent it directly to the Countess.
Goring a Sacred Cow
During the past few years I have had two occasions to comment in these
pages on the writing of Jean Améry. The first occasion was a respectful review
of his essay Torture. The second occasion was a perhaps
not-so-respectful response to his book Beyond Guilt and Atonement, which
I read when my uncle, a contemporary of Améry and like him an Auschwitz
survivor, was agonizing in Israel. That response unleashed a storm of criticism
in West German literary circles, as though I had dared to gore a sacred cow,
for in the wake of the books publication Jean Améry seems to have quickly
attained the status of a sacred cow in these circles. The reproach I read most
often was that my reaction was the result of envy of his literary success.
I chose not to respond to these criticisms in writing. The time
that I spent with my dying uncle in Israel was also a time when my interest
began to shift from events in the West, especially Germany, to the ongoing
crisis if I am permitted such an oxymoron -- in and around Israel. As a
fortuitous fruit of this shift of interest I have been rewarded with a literary
success of my own, both critical and commercial, and so if I venture once again
to write some critical comments about Jean Améry, at least those who attacked
me before will be short one weapon.
What provokes me this time is the publication of an album of
photographs from the Warsaw ghetto, published by Bertelsmann, and edited with
commentary by Günther Deschner.
There is also a foreword in the form of an essay titled In the
Waiting Room of Death. By whom? By Jean Améry, presumably in his capacity as
West Germanys newly anointed official Jew-as-victim.
Does Jean Améry know anything about the Warsaw ghetto? Can he read
the Hebrew on the gravestones that are shown in one of the photographs, or the
Polish and Yiddish on the signs in some others? He has already informed us that
he cannot.
He tells us right at the outset that he was not, himself, in the
ghetto. But he thinks that two years of concentration camp, of which one year
in Auschwitz that may, that must be sufficient for understanding the ghetto,
since he has had experiences that should not fundamentally differ from those
of ghetto inmates. He writes of the Ghetto Jews total loneliness, ignoring
the books section that describes ghetto society, with its political and
self-help organizations, its ongoing religious life, and the cafés and
nightclubs for the ghetto elite, or another section devoted to art and
culture that illustrates theatrical performances
He goes on to give an authoritative-sounding description, based no
doubt on himself, of the state of mind of the ghetto Jew. This is something
that can be read like any other overbroad generalization -- of the Jew in
general, of the German, of the Frenchman namely, with what in English is
called a grain of salt.
But Améry goes seriously astray when he attacks his bêtes noires,
Martin Buber and Hannah Arendt, who, unlike him, really understand what it is
to be a Jew and did not need to learn it from Sartre. He refers to what he
calls a ridiculous argument by Buber about Judaism being not a teaching of
death but one of life, an argument repeated by Hannah Arendt in her Eichmann
book, which Améry calls remarkably devoid of understanding.
Améry goes on to write, If I am not mistaken and have not
interpreted my personal concentration-camp experiences altogether wrongly, then
it was by no means the Jewish teaching of life that paradoxically let the
masses of Jews to go to their death without resistance.
After the shock of reading without resistance in a book about the
Warsaw ghetto (in which the resistance is well described) dies down (and, to be
fair, Améry does devote a few lines to the revolt), one has to tell him that he
is quite mistaken and has indeed interpreted his concentration-camp experience
altogether wrongly. The total loneliness of which he writes, and which is
typical of the concentration camp, is not a defining characteristic of the
ghetto, and in this regard the Nazi ghetto was not so different from the
historical ghetto as he argues at great length. It was still, first of all, a
community.
But Améry was never a member of a Jewish community, except, as he
has told us in other writings, briefly and reluctantly, after arriving almost
penniless in Antwerp in 1939, when he not without shame was forced to accept
the communitys charity.
Simply put, Améry does not understand the essence of Jewish
survival throughout history: that in every calamity, some must live in order to
carry on the flame, even if most die or abandon Judaism. He might have
invoked Masada, had he had a smattering of Jewish history. But we know Masada
as an aberration, however heroic; had all of Israel followed the Masada example
or, more significantly, had Flavius Josephus not, most unheroically, gone
over to the enemy there would be no memory of Masada, nor any Jews to
remember it.
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