Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson (a novel) published in 1947, published in English in 2010, translated by Damion Searles

"... [T]his is entirely attributable to Keilson's artistry, knowing the small details, having a sense of the house where Nico is being hidden, knowing the main characters well … all this makes the fear, anxiety and distress of the situation these 'normal' people find themselves in palpable." from a review in the Globe and Mail by Andre Alexis 9/3/2010

Hans Keilson, a German Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, has written a novella that draws on many of the experiences of his life: He fled to Amsterdam and hid, and he worked with the Resistance. This work gives readers an opportunity to immerse themselves in occupied Holland and to experience the occupation from the perspective of a Christian couple cooperating with the Resistance and from the perspective of a Jew in hiding.

In this novella, first published in the same year as Anne Frank’s diary, Keilson creates a young Christian couple who’ve agreed to take in a stranger – a single Jewish man in his 60’s. In the first chapter we learn that after many months the hidden Jew has died of natural causes. The rest of the novel is mostly made up of scenes from the past – from his being introduced to the couple, to his settling in, to the nervousness on everybody’s part.

Several chapters deal with the dilemma of how to get rid of the dead body without the couple being suspected of having housed a Jew or without their being caught red-handed with the body of a Jew.  This focus reinforces in the novel an absurdist element created by a political reality that has the world turned upside down. Here a young couple have put their lives in jeopardy to extend hospitality to someone in need. The person who is in need has committed no vile act for which he is being hunted. His sole crime – he was born a Jew.

As we read, we become aware of the many potential problems that can and do arise – issues that the young couple had not thought to anticipate. How safe is it, for example, for the Jew they call Nico, to come downstairs? Can they trust anyone with their secret? Which family members? Any family members? What about venders who come regularly, like the milk man? What to do about the woman who comes to clean twice a week? Caution is intensified by fear.  His being hidden in their home becomes a focus of their day-to-day lives. We can imagine this situation occurring all over this small country and wherever in Europe Christians offered to hide Jews.

The young couple starts off talking amongst themselves about the stranger’s being a Jew. It is clear that Jews are strangers. They are curious about what it means to be Jewish since the stranger explains that he’s given up Jewish ritual practice.  But through the months of forced closeness they become connected and their common humanity transcends their difference. He had put his life in their hands. They mourn his death. They will be forever changed.

People
Hans Keilson (author)

Places
Holland

To read the obituary for Hans Keilson published in the New York Times, click here.
To read the obituary for a Dutch Christian who helped and hid many Jews, click here.

Flory: A miraculous story of survival by Flory A. Van Beek 2008; a version was originally published as Flory: Survival in the Valley of Death in 1998

 "The book paints a vivid portrait of life for the Jews in the Netherlands under Nazi occupation." from a review by Dennis McLellan in the L.A. Times, 2/28/1999

This interesting memoir, written by a Jewish Holocaust survivor from the Netherlands who was in hiding during the war, gives us an inside look at the situation of Dutch Jews immediately before and during World War II. Flory Van Beek was in her teens when the war broke out. She and her future husband, a German Jew living in Holland, tried to flee Holland by booking passage to Chile on the Simon Bolivar but on the second day out, on November 18, 1939, the ship hit German mines and exploded. She and Felix, badly wounded, recovered in England for many months, but because Felix was a German national, he was not allowed to stay, so they returned to Holland and went into hiding.

Because the author’s family had lived in the Netherlands for many generations, it is clear she felt very attached to her country and her fellow countrymen. She talks at length about the Dutch character and their general resistance to the Germans. The partisans went on many dangerous missions to find safe housing for homeless Jews, to make inquiries, to pass information along, to forge false identity papers and food coupons. Van Beek and her husband’s fear is palpable while being hidden away and equipped with false papers. Because they were worried about having been detected, they had to move more than once. There were many close calls when they thought they would be caught for sure.

It’s very interesting and unsettling to experience the progress of the war through the eyes of the author, her family and their protectors because we now have the larger picture. Despite the Nazi rules against owning radios, the partisans hid crystal radio sets in their attics and they gathered around to listen to the BBC and follow in an atlas the Allies’ progress. When America entered the war they were sure it would be over soon. But as it dragged on for years, the tension became unbearable and they were often in despair.  When the Germans finally did surrender, the author describes the jubilation in the streets, but then came the hard task of taking stock and seeing who had made it through the war and who hadn’t. She makes the point that out of approximately 140,000 Dutch Jews, only about 6,000 survived.

Throughout this whole period the author clipped articles and her husband kept a diary that stretched into three volumes.Their collection, buried during the war, came with them to America, but she couldn't bear to look at it for many years. In 1984 when she did start reading it, the material helped her to write this book. The the collection is now part of the archives of the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.

Last names are confusing in this memoir. It is clear that Flory’s maiden name was Cohen. From a document included, it’s clear that her mother’s maiden name was van Beek. She dedicates this book to her Cohen brothers and sister and to her mother-in-law Jette Aufhauser. It’s likely that to avoid having the German last name of Aufhauser, or the Jewish last name of Cohen, Felix and Flory at some point (probably during the war, when they got married) adopted her mother’s maiden name of van Beek.

To read an obituary of Flory van Beek who died in 2010, click here.
To read "400 Years of Dutch Jewry" on the website of the Jewish Historical Museum in the Netherlands, click here.


People
Saam Cohen – author’s father’s oldest brother; married Sophie
    Lenie – daughter of Saam
? Cohen – married Aleida van Beek
    Jes (Ies) Cohen – son of Aleida; married to Elisabeth
    Ben Cohen – son of Aleida
    Elisabeth Cohen – daughter of Aleida; married to Abraham Coster
    Flory Cohen – daughter of Aleida; Felix Aufhauser (see note above); author
        Ralph van Beek (see note above)

Aleida van Beek – married ? Cohen (see above)
Sien van Beek – sister of Aleida; married Ephraim de Haas
    Jacob, Maurits and Simon de Haas; sons of Sien and Ephraim
Flora van Beek – sister of Aleida; married Jules Frank

Felix (Aufhauser) van Beek – married to Flory Cohen (see above)
Hugo Aufhauser – brother of Felix
Sam Aufhauser – brother of Felix
Theo Aufhauser – brother of Felix
Nellie Aufhauser – sister of Felix; married Kurt
    Eric – son of Nellie and Kurt

Isse and Sierien van Zuiden – uncle and aunt of author; exact relationship unclear

Below are relatives of the author whose relationship to her is not clear:
Carolina Salzer- Erle
Bernhard Salzer
Trude Hofman-Blum
Gunther Hoffmann
Hertha Mannheimer

Places
Amersfoort, Holland
Amsterdam, Holland
Rotterdam, Holland
Blijdorp, Holland
Newport Beach, California
New York City, NY

The Assault by Harry Mulisch first published in 1982 in Dutch; published in English in 1985 – fiction

"For a book to have deeply serious intentions, as this one does, is, of course, no guarantee of artistic success. But Mr. Mulisch also brings exceptional skill and imagination to his task." from a review by John Gross in the New York Times on May 31, 1985

Harry Mulisch (1927-2010), considered an important Dutch post-World War II writer, was the son of a Jewish mother and Austrian father. Mulisch’s father worked for a bank that catalogued property stolen from the Netherlands' Jewish community and after the war he was sentenced to three years in prison. Mulisch’s father maintained that he collaborated with the Nazis in an effort to save his family. His wife and son survived the war. The author’s maternal grandmother, however, was killed.

It is easy to see how the novel, The Assault, grew out of Mulisch’s complicated history, though the characters and the plot are not autobiographical.  The novel starts with a short prologue that sets the scene in a home in Haarlem and then recounts moments both during and after the war as seen through the eyes and experiences of the son Anton who was twelve in January of 1945. The novel is divided into five “episodes,” each pegged to a year in Anton’s life: 1945, 1952, 1956, 1966, and 1981.

This is not a specifically Jewish story. Anton and his family are not Jewish. They get into trouble because they unwittingly get caught up in the repercussions after “the assault” - the murder committed by members of the Resistance of a Chief Inspector of Police. Anton never sees his brother or parents again. We see that throughout his life he tries to leave the past behind, but in each of the episodes because of various encounters, he is forced to look back into his past and puzzle over details he thought he had forgotten that have been deeply submerged.

It's clear that a major theme in this novel is that victims of war are scarred for life. Memory and its accompanying pain lie buried waiting to be summoned by a chance encounter or remark. For the above reasons this novel is an important contribution to a corpus of work, both non-fiction and fiction, having to do with the trauma of war on survivors and the children of survivors.

The Assault was made into a movie in the Netherlands that won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1986.

To read the obituary for Harry Mulisch published in the New York Times, click here.

Family
Alice Schwarz – author’s mother
    Harry Mulisch – her son; author

Place
The Netherlands

An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941-1943 and Letters From Westerbork by Etty Hillesum, published in one volume in English 1996

"[B]y knowing and feeling so deeply and fully, an unknown young woman became one of the most exceptional and truest witnesses of the devastation through which she lived and of the suffering humankind whose fate she chose to join." Eva Hoffman from the preface to the 1996 one-volume edition of Etty Hillesum's diaries and letters

Etty Hillesum, a Dutch citizen and an assimilated Jew, was born in 1914 and died in Auschwitz three months after she arrived there from the Westerbork transit camp in 1943.  These bare facts are movingly fleshed out in the volumes of Etty’s diaries that she kept from 1941-1943 when she lived in Amsterdam and in letters she wrote to her friends in Amsterdam from the Westerbork transit camp.

In the Introduction J.G. Gaarlandt, who saw to the publication of the diaries and the letters in 1981, stated that Etty started the diary at the same time she became involved with Julius Spier, a German Jewish refugee who had trained with Jung. The diary was a place where Etty could reflect on her effort to be more conscious of her psycho-social development.

The backdrop to the diaries was obviously the war and the German occupation of Holland. But early in the diary Etty made a point to turn inward and focus on issues of body and soul. An intellectual who was studying Russian and tutoring students studying Russian, she had read widely in many philosophical, religious and literary texts – from St. Augustine’s Confessions to the Gospel of Matthew to Psalms to the poet Rilke and the novelists Tolstoy and Dosteovsky. She contemplated the meaning in these texts as she sought to live a spiritual life, a less selfish life, one devoted to others. She wrote a lot about what "God" meant; she spoke directly to God; she prayed for strength; she refused to hate.

The contents of the diary entries shifted in the later entries. Etty could not help but be preoccupied with the terrifying world outside her room in Amsterdam and spent some time planning for when she would be in a labor camp. It is heartbreaking to read about her plan to go to the dentist soon so that she would be in good physical shape to withstand the hardships of labor. And she also thought about what books she would bring with her.

In an act of defiance, despite the increasingly horrifying situation of Holland’s Jewish population, she continued to see beauty all around her – both in human nature and in her natural surroundings. She refused to go into hiding, despite the urging of her friends, choosing to volunteer to go on the first transport from Amsterdam to Westerbork where she worked for the Jewish Council and spent much of her time in the camp’s hospital. Having the privilege of postponing deportation because she was a worker made her very uncomfortable, but she used it to help keep her parents off of the weekly deportation lists. She wanted no dispensation for herself. Eventually, despite her position, she and her parents and a brother were deported. The last written communication from her was a postcard she threw from the train to Auschwitz.  Addressed to a friend, it was found by a Dutch farmer and mailed.

Her letters to her friends read like journalism: she reported in detail about the physical conditions in the camp as well as the tension and despair amongst inmates. She was very consciously bearing witness: she asked a friend to whom she entrusted the diaries to get them published.

Note: The combined volume that was published in 1996 that is widely circulated is an abridged edition of Etty Hillesum's diaries and letters.. The volume of the complete diaries and letters of Etty Hillesum, a more scholarly volume,  was commissioned by the Etty Hillesum Foundation at the University of Ghent and was published in 2002 as a joint venture with Novalis at St. Paul University.

The 1996 volume has a Preface by Eva Hoffman (author of Lost in Translation, subject of an earlier post) which focuses on the personality of Etty that emerges from her diaries and letters. An Introduction  by J.G. Gaarlandt focuses more on background material on the family and the war in the Netherlands. This volume also includes very helpful footnotes and photos.

To read a short biography of Etty Hillesum and to see family photos, go to the site of the Etty Hillesum Foundation, by clicking here.

To read an article about the leaders of the Jewish Council at Westerbork and the choices they made, click here.

People
Louis Hillesum – married to Rebecca Bernstein; author’s parents
    Jaap – their son
    Esther (Etty) – their daughter; author
    Mischa – their son

Friends and Acquaintances
Julius Spier – engaged to Hertha Levie
    Ruth Busse-Spier – Julius’ daughter by his 1st marriage
    Wolfgang – his son by his 1st marriage
Werner and Leisl Levie
    Miriam and Renate – their daughters
Sam de Wolff
    Leo de Wolff – his son
Joseph Isadoor (Jopie) Vleeschhouwer – married to Cato Cahen
Joseph and Hedwig Mahler
Werner Sterzenbach – married to Alice Sterzenbach-David
Max Witmondt
Paul Cronheim
Eduard Spier
Herbert Kruskal
Max Osias Kormann – married to Rosa Laufer
    Gerd – his son
Herman Boasson
Milli Ortmann
Grete Wendelsgelst – Milli Ortmann’s sister
Philip Mechanicus
Friedrich Weinreb
Renate Laqueur – married to Paul Goldschmidt
Julius Simon
Leo Krijn
Max Ehrlich
Clara (Chaya) Goldstein
Willy Rosen
David Cohen
Abraham Asscher
Simon van Gelder
Joseph Spier

Places
Amsterdam
Westerbork

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl -The Definitive Edition, 1995

"Like most of Anne Frank's readers, I had viewed her book as the innocent and spontaneous outpourings of a teenager. But now, rereading it as an adult, I quickly became convinced that I was in the presence of a consciously crafted work of literature." Francine Prose in Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife

For anyone who has only read the edition originally edited by Anne’s Frank's father in 1947, it is time to read this definitive edition, which, according to the book's foreward, adds about 30% more material to the originally published edition.  It also contains more material from a reworked version of her diary that Anne was preparing with the hopes of getting it circulated – inspired to do so by a Dutch official in exile who on the radio stated that he’d like to make diaries and letters written during the war available to the public after the war.

Anne Frank’s diary is a rarity – it’s the voice of a Jewish adolescent speaking from the grave. Anne had serious aspirations to be a writer, so the blank diary was an apt gift to her from her parents for her 13th birthday in June of 1942. She made her first entry right after her birthday when she was still living with her family at their home in Amsterdam, but a month later, in July of 1942, the family went into hiding in an annex connected to her father’s office. The rest of the entries, a little over two years’ worth, Anne writes when she is in hiding; they stop abruptly when Anne and her family and the others hiding with them were discovered and sent on a transport to Westerbork where they were then transported to Auschwitz. They were then split up, and all were either gassed or died from hunger or disease except for Anne’s father, who returned after the war and claimed the diary.

Anne was already a gifted writer as can be seen in her diary entries. She creates vivid portraits of the “characters” who, along with her, were at one and the same time condemned to be cooped up in hiding, and were very lucky to have a place to hide. She dramatizes skillfully, recreating dialogue to help a scene come alive. She describes in vivid detail how they tried to live as “normally” as possible. They prepared meals together. They celebrated every birthday, they played chess, and circulated books. And she bares her soul, so that we feel we know her intimately.

Through her artfulness we can see and hear their petty squabbles, feel the tension, the anxiety, the despair, the camaraderie and the rivalries that took place over the two years they all lived in hiding. We find their hope tragic because we know, as they didn’t, that they were sent to their deaths.

We stare at Anne Frank's very familiar picture on the cover and on pages of photos. We owe an incredible debt to Miep Gies, the non-Jewish worker who risked her own life to bring food and library books to the annex and who found Anne’s diary after the residents of the annex were arrested. She saved it, with the hope that survivors would return.

This definitive edition has a foreward that explains this particular version of the diary and an afterword that details what is known about the fates of the eight people who hid in the annex. It also includes pages of photos.

To see a preview of the Virtual Anne Frank House which will be on-line on 4/28/2010, click here. 

People
Michael Frank – Anne’s paternal grandfather
Alice Stern – his wife, Anne’s paternal grandmother
            Otto Frank – Anne’s father
            Edith Hollander Frank – his wife; Anne’s mother
                        Margot –Anne’s sister
                        Anne – the author of the diary
            Elfriede Makovits Geiringer - Otto Frank's second wife

The Van Pels family (called van Daan in diary)
Hermann
Auguste – his wife
            Peter – their son

Fritz Pfeffer – eighth person in annex; called Albert Dussel in diary

Places
Amsterdam
Frankfurt am Main