Jewish Week Fall Literary Guide 2015 by The Jewish Week

Fall Literary A SUPPLEMENT TO THE JEWISH WEEK NOVEMBER 20, 2015

GUIDE

THE WAR THATâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S WITH US STILL Seventy years later, new volumes and new revelations.

Roosevelt and the Jews. p. 30 Primo Levi, Reconsidered. p. 32 The Art of the Steal. p. 34 Family Secrets from the War. p. 37

The Jewish Week ■ www.thejewishweek.com ■ November 20, 2015

Fall Literary

The War That’s With Us Still

he stories from World War II and the Holocaust — first-person Shoah testimonies, works of historical research based on newly opened archives, academic texts, fictional accounts, biographies, collections of artwork, second- and thirdgeneration memoirs — never seem to end. On this 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, we salute the efforts of those who fought so valiantly, and we honor the memory of the millions who were murdered. After 70 years, there’s still much to learn and absorb; powerful new volumes continue to move and inspire readers. And so, our annual Fall Books section this week is devoted to books about various dimensions of the wartime experience. In these pages, we look to a monumental publishing project that brings new light to the work of Primo Levi (with much material appearing in

English for the first time), and to other subjects that reverberate decades later: the trail of stolen artwork and lost culture; the role of the Roosevelt administration; and the question of Jewish identity for subsequent generations, hidden and revealed, with very surprising twists. The photo at right, from the archives of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, shows French Jewish orphans decorating the grave of an American Jewish soldier in a U.S. military cemetery in France, as part of a 1948 national memorial day service for Americans who gave their lives for the liberation of France. The children stand at what appears to the lone Jewish grave in the cemetery. The photo reminds us of the lingering presence of the war, and is particularly timely this week as we think of French-Jewish connections: our hearts are turned to France.

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Children from the American Joint Distribution Committee-funded Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants (OSE) at U.S. Military Soldiers Cemetery, France 1948. J EROM E SI LB ER STEI N/COU RTESY OF TH E AM ER IC AN J EWI SH JOI NT DI STR I B UTION COM M IT TEE ARCH IVES

Where Was Roosevelt?

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It’s a question at the center of Jay Winik’s monumental survey of the last full year of the Second World War.

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once held a postcard scribbled by my Warsaw family to relatives in what was then Palestine, sent through Turkey via the Red Cross. The postcard was stamped with a swastika to show it had passed German censors. Holding it, I was scared not only for my soon-to-be murdered family, but for myself as well, as if by touching the postcard, I too was now in mortal danger. Like a black hole, for which the barriers of time and space itself provide scant relief, the terrifying dimensions of the Holocaust continue to absorb us. One positive result, perhaps, is that our obsession with not forgetting is succeeding. Only a few years ago, there was talk that our collective memory would fade with the passing of the last survivor. (My daughter once returned home from middle school complaining that being told hers was the last generation who would know a survivor placed too much of a burden upon her.) That does not seem to be happening. If anything, the Holocaust’s sheer immensity and utter incomprehensibility continues to reshape our view of the world and ourselves. As Yehuda Mir-

sky recently wrote of the Holocaust, “it is the only thing large enough to take the place of God.” One less fortunate result is that the Big Questions begat by the Holocaust — How could it have happened; Where was God; Where was Roosevelt? — often result in small answers, answers that do not necessarily do the questions justice. Nonetheless, Jews are a meaningseeking people. And so we keep trying. Jay Winik’s monumental survey of the last full year of the Second World War, “1944: FDR and the Year that Changed History” (Simon & Schuster), marks the most recent effort to answer the third question: Why didn’t America and the Allies rescue the Jews as the Final Solution unfolded? In particular, why were the tracks to Auschwitz, and Auschwitz itself, not bombed? “1944” is most successful in providing an overview of the political context in which Roosevelt’s decisions were made. It is not a pretty picture. More often than not, it was blatant anti-Semitism that precluded active measures to save the Jews. This terrible story has been told before, but Winik tells it afresh, an articulate “J’accuse!” against State Department obstructionism. American diplomats

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were less concerned that rescue ac- cohabiting uneasily together. The first tivities would not succeed than that is a study of FDR as a wartime leader they would. And then what? The last whose strategic vision often exceeded thing they wanted was for the United that of his generals. (For example, his inStates to admit hundreds of thousands sistence in opposition to Defense Departof refugee Jews to our shores. ment brass that American troops lead the By the beginning of 1944, the tide battle in North Africa.) This first book is of battle had turned. Germany’s siege inspiring to read, a study of one of our of Stalingrad had ended, Rommel greatest presidents struggling with raphad been defeated at El Alamein, and idly declining health as he leads the fight the Allies had invaded Italy and were to save Western civilization. rehearsing the Normandy Invasion. The second is about the destruction But Winik also shows how, by 1944, of the Jews, how the Jews of Kovno the Allied leaders were aware of the were gathered in the town square and scope of the ongoing massacre of Eu- savagely clubbed to death, how the ropean Jewry and did German machinedalmost nothing. gunned 18,000 peo1944 was a terrible ple in the woods in a year for the Jews, persingle day and named haps the worst. Five the occasion “Harmillion Jews were vest Festival,” how now dead and Austhe gas chambers chwitz was working worked. You read overtime to extermithese accounts, then nate Hungarian Jews. you weep, then you Every 30 minutes, go back to work. But another 2,000 were you are not the same. gassed. Aerial recon“1944” is at its naissance photos taken most compelling when in June 1944 were so Winik forgoes trydetailed you could ing to answer the big see the ramp lined Winick’s book is at its most questions and recounts with people walking compelling when he recounts stories of singular herotowards the gas cham- stories of singular heroism. ism. In 1944, Rudolf bers. And still AssisVrba, a 19-year-old tant Secretary of War Slovakian Jew, esJohn McCloy refused capes Auschwitz to cries to bomb Auswarn the Allies about chwitz. The failure to bomb resulted the imminent annihilation of Hungarian not from operational impracticality Jewry. Eduard Schulte, the scion of an but our government’s blinkered mind aristocratic German family, risks his life set. The explosive title of an 18-page by going to Switzerland to confirm the memo prepared in 1944 for Treasury reality of the Final Solution. Both are igSecretary Henry Morgenthau sums it nored. Jan Karski, a leader of the Polish up best: Report to the Secretary on the underground, uncovers the truth of the Acquiescence of This Government in Polish extermination camps. Captured the Murder of the Jews. and tortured by the Gestapo, rescued by And what of Roosevelt? Winik a Polish commando team, Karski makes depicts Roosevelt as sympathetic but a harrowing trip across occupied Europe, unwilling to commit political capital finally meeting in Washington with Suto save Hungarian Jewry. Roosevelt’s preme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, greatest political achievement may himself a Jew. Frankfurter is constituhave been overcoming this country’s tionally unable to believe him. deep-seated isolationism, albeit with Whatever Roosevelt’s reasons, in some help from Japan. He was a the end the Allies did not bomb Ausleader careful not to get too far ahead chwitz. Apathy and bigotry trumped of popular sentiment. And in 1944, life and liberty and the United NaRoosevelt’s health was deteriorat- tions was to be born in original sin. In ing and he would die the following Winik’s memorable phrasing, Roosyear. The president marshaled his evelt missed his “Emancipation Procwaning strength for his highest prior- lamation moment.” Had Roosevelt ity: winning the war. At best, rescu- moved more vigorously, Hungarian ing the Jews of Europe was a distant Jewry could have been saved. 1944’s second, and second was not nearly subtitle is a misnomer. It should have enough. Only near the war’s end read “1944: The Year FDR Declined to is Roosevelt’s War Refugee Board Change History.” n formed and equipped to bring about the rescue of several hundred thou- Barry Lichtenberg practices commersand Jews. cial and real estate litigation in Manhat“1944” consists of almost two studies tan at Lichtenberg PLLC.

The Jewish Week ■ www.thejewishweek.com ■ November 20, 2015

Fall Literary

Taking The Full Measure Of Primo Levi

New three-volume work shows him as a literary master who transcends the Holocaust genre. The Complete Works of Primo Levi, three volumes, edited by Ann Goldstein (W.W. Norton & Company)

Jerome A. Chanes Special To The Jewish Week

e thought we knew Primo Levi, the Holocaust memoirist and poet, and well-known suicide victim. But foraging through the newly published, slickly-packaged, three-volume “The Complete Works of Primo Levi,” edited by translator and editor Ann Goldstein, we discover that Primo Levi was (as is the case with all world-class writers) multi-dimensional and multi-layered; he was more than “The Periodic Table” and “Survival in Auschwitz,” which all of us seemed to be reading

in the 1990s. Much of the material in this new collection is available for the first time in English. Holocaust survivor, scientist, Jew in Fascist Italy, memoirist, poet — the narrative outlines of Levi’s story are well known. He was born in 1919 to an Italian Jewish family in Turin. Although Levi was “of the Jewish race,” he was able to graduate in 1941 in chemistry from the University of Turin, and he worked as a chemist in Italy until 1943, when he joined a partisan group. He was arrested in December 1943, and, after spending some time in a transit camp, was sent to Auschwitz. Liberated in 1945 — Levi’s survival in Auschwitz is the subject of some of his most important writing — he was reintegrated into Italy in 1946 and began writing “If This is a Man,”

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about his survival. Beginning in 1948 Levi resumed his professional work as a chemist. From the late’40s until his death, he expanded his writing career to include essays, poetry, memoirs, fiction and journalism. Levi’s work, in all genres, was critically acclaimed. He died, a suicide, in April 1987, in Turin. “The Complete Works” is a singularly valuable contribution. Not only is the collection a welcome addition to the genre imperfectly characterized as “Holocaust literature”; the collection reintroduces us to a literary master, a writer who transcends the Holocaust genre. As curator of this material, Goldstein’s method is chrono-

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logical, but the work transcends strict and literal chronology. The first volume begins with “If This is a Man,” Levi’s extraordinary memoir of Auschwitz, which was previously known as “Survival in Auschwitz”; and “The Truce,” his account of his long journey home after Auschwitz. The final volume ends with “The Drowned and the Saved,” in Goldstein’s words, “The experience of Auschwitz forty years later ... the importance of memory and of bearing witness” — in effect, Levi’s testament, the written inheritance to generations that do not know Auschwitz. In between are poetry and stories and essays, collected and translated for the first time as a unit — and, of course “The Periodic Table,” Levi’s stunning autobiography, in which each chapter is based on an element of the chemist’s periodic table. New to me (and now my favorite Primo Levi book) is “If Not Now, When?”, an adven-

ture novel about Jewish partisans in Russia and Poland during the war. Levi himself called the novel — and the book is his only work of pure invention — a “Western,” albeit one not of picaresque cowboys but of Jewish partisans, in desperate circumstances, fighting Germans. Levi’s poetry, mostly unknown to English-speaking readers, is a revelation; it is often lyrical, sometimes downright funny, almost always brutal. Consider two lines of mangled syntax from “Buna,” evoking the forced-labor factory in which Levi worked: “In your breast you have cold hunger nothing / The last courage has been broken in you.” The collection closes with a jumble of short essays and letters; two essays on how Levi’s works were received; and — most valuable — 65 pages of “Notes” on the texts, which by themselves are worth the price of admission. What inspired the novel “If Not Now, When?” (Levi’s observing a train-car-load of young

But how can it be thus? Morrison misses the point. Levi was indeed in many ways upbeat; but he was about what evil does to a person’s identity and spirit and worth. “The triumph of human worth?” To Primo Levi, as it comes out in page after page of prose, line after line of poetry, it ain’t worth much. There is a dialectic in Levi’s work — and here is where we get to the nucleus of his writing. Yes, it is the core identity (as Morrison has it) that is what grabs Primo Levi; but it is an identity hopelessly corrupted by an evil unimaginable. Don’t be gulled by the humanity of my writing, is what he seems to be telling us. Humanity is not what it’s about. And this leads us to Levi’s suicide. Toni Morrison invokes the first lines of Levi’s poem, resonant of despair, “Song of the Crow II”: “What is the number of your days? I’ve counted them: / Few and brief, and each one heavy with cares.” Primo Levi recalls for us the biblical Jacob’s response to Pharaoh’s question, “How old are you?”: “… Few and evil have the days of my life been…” (Genesis 47:9). The “few and brief” days suggests that Levi’s end is near, and that his “cares” may not be only Auschwitz. Another great, perhaps the greatest, writer of the Holocaust was the lesser-known Tadeusz Borowski, also a suicide. His masterpiece, “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” written in the first-person voice of a deputy kapo at Auschwitz, prefigured his suicide. With Borowski the reason for the suicide was clear: it was the immediacy of Auschwitz. As Levi scholar Alexander Stille notes in a 1988 New York Times story, with Levi it may have been more complicated, more nuanced. While it may be necessary to look outside of Auschwitz to explain his suicide in 1987 — he had many personal burdens — Stille notes, “He was both blessed and cursed by memory, the memory of seeing the fiercely glowing sign, Arbeit Macht Frei, for the first time.” For Primo Levi, memory took over from history. A valuable lesson for Jews — for everyone — in 2015. n Jerome Chanes is the author of four books on Jewish history and public affairs. He is a fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.

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Jews from Eastern Europe, young Zionists, bound for Israel, “taking any route they could.” Levi imagined the adventures that brought the young people to this point, and these became the subject of his only novel.) What was the poet Primo Levi all about, and what were his poetic inspirations? (Levi’s first published work, in 1946, was a poem; indeed, in much of his prose the manipulation of words and sounds is salient. “Poetry simply came naturally after Auschwitz. ... He wrote poetry in his ancient mariner moments.”) The section is a treasure trove for scholars and just plain folk alike. Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s introduction to “The Complete Works” has generated discussion: Why Toni Morrison? Morrison, whose own African-American family was oppressed, has been a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, adding her voice to the discussions surrounding the destruction of European Jewry. At the beginning of her all-toobrief essay, Morrison characterizes Levi’s work as a paean to “the triumph of human worth,” indeed of identity itself. And how, given the themes Levi explored in poetry, autobiography and fiction, can it not be thus?

The Jewish Week ■ www.thejewishweek.com ■ November 20, 2015

Fall Literary GUIDE

The Art Of The Steal

Three new books about Nazi plunder of Jewish collections raise questions about the art world’s moral blindness. The Orpheus Clock: The Search for My Families Art Treasures Stolen by the Nazis, Simon Goodman (Scribner) Hitler’s Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis and the Looting of Europe’s Treasures, by Susan Ronald (St. Martin’s Press) The Muralist: A Novel, by B. A. Shapiro (Algonquin)

Diane Cole Special To The Jewish Week

n recent years, movies like “Woman in Gold” and “The Monuments Men” have placed a spotlight on the notorious looting of Europe’s art treasures by the Nazi regime before and during World War II. Three new books provide further insight into the diabolical methods of the plunderers as they targeted well-to-do Jewish collectors whom they first swindled, and then sent to their deaths. They also tell the story of the ongoing, obstacle-ridden task of locating and returning these works to the families of their pre-war owners. And they raise questions about the purposeful moral blindness of In “The Orpheus Clock,” Simon large segments of the international art market as too Goodman pieces together the many post-war private collectors, gallery owners story of his family’s treasures, and museum curators purported to be “shocked, and how they were lost. shocked!” to discover the shady journey by which H. ZWI ETASCH-L AN DESM U SEU M WU RT TEM B ERG masterworks whose provenance they preferred not to dwell on had passed into their possession. of a vast fortune, stately counMost provocative in chronicling all these as- try mansion and a vaguely pects is “The Orpheus Clock: mentioned The Search for My Families art colArt Treasures Stolen by the lection, all Nazis” by Simon Goodman somehow lost. They also tell the (Scribner). A British-born But how had it all former music executive, been lost, and why? story of the ongoing, Goodman admits he had Understanding arrived little knowledge when he only after his father died in was growing up of the enor1994 at the age of 80. That obstacle-ridden mously wealthy Germanis when Goodman and his Jewish Gutmann banking older brother Nick inherited task of locating and dynasty from which he was the numerous boxes filled descended. Enrolled as he with legal documents, art inreturning these was in an Anglican church ventories, auction catalogues, Sunday school, he barely letters and other research paworks to the families pers recording their father’s even realized that his family had been Jewish, his nearly 50-year quest to track ancestors having converted and recover the family’s of their pre-war to Christianity well before plundered art legacy: a cache World War II. As for why he that included hundreds of art owners. had never met his father’s works by such masters as Deparents, he was told nothing gas, Renoir, Botticelli, Hals, beyond the fact that they had Holbein and Memling, along “died in the war.” Only by with numerous pieces of anpiecing together overheard bits and snippets did he tique china, silver, furniture and decorative pieces put together the fairy-tale like family background like the magnificent 16th-century gold “Orpheus

clock” of the book’s title. Until then, Goodman had known nothing about any of these treasures. But the detailed paper trail of evidence collected by his father included Nazi-era “sales receipts” of forced transfers of these very possessions and Gutmann family property in exchange for what Goodman’s grandparents Fritz and Louise naively believed would be safe passage from the Reich to promised refuge in Italy. Instead, they were sent to Theresienstadt. Fritz was savagely beaten to death; Louise was subsequently sent to Auschwitz, where she perished in the gas chambers. There was nothing Goodman could do to assuage the horror he felt at these revelations. Nor could he go back in time to ask his dead father about his guilt at having survived the Holocaust in England, where he had emigrated in the 1930s and changed the family name to “Goodman” to avoid anti-German prejudice. Still, as he went through his father’s papers, Simon Goodman gained the sense that his father was somehow speaking to him. He felt the same revulsion he believed his father must have experienced in learning the fate of Fritz and Louise. These emotions were further amplified by anger at the fact that the stolen art collection seemed to remain untraceable even after the war. It was as if the family had been robbed not just once by the Nazis, Goodman writes, but twice, the second time by unscrupulous art dealers willing to lie about the origins of the plundered works they were selling, whether to turn a profit or cover up their own Nazi ties. The more he read through his father’s papers, the more outraged Goodman became at the general indifference of a complacent art world unwilling to question the falsified ownership papers that had allowed so many looted art works to be dispersed to collections throughout the world, with no effort made to discover or consideration given their pre-war owners. And he determined to continue his father’s fight. Goodman devotes the first half of the book to his family’s Rothschild-like rise to wealth and its grim fate, trapped in Nazi Europe. The second half details — sometimes, in too much detail — his dogged detective work in tracking down and recovering dozens of paintings and other items from museums and collectors around the globe. An even greater impact can be measured in the way in which the art world now regards and deals with looted art. “We have helped change the way the often ruthless business side of the art world is conducted to effect

oodman mentions only briefly the notorious Nazi art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, but he is the focus of Susan Ronald’s biography, “Hitler’s Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, The Nazis and the Looting of Europe’s Treasures” (St. Martin’s). Gurlitt’s name became familiar only after the 2012 discovery in Munich of close to 1,300 art works of questionable provenance that his son Cornelius had stashed away. Upon further investigation by present-day German authorities, what the son called his family inheritance turned out to be approximately $1.35 billion worth of Nazi loot, plundered from museums and from Jewish families like Goodman’s. Still more digging revealed the machinations by which Hildebrand Gurlitt had accumulated this stockpile of stolen art during the war — as much by collaborating with the Nazis as by preying on Jewish artists and art dealers desperate for money to pay their way out of Europe. He had specialized in the sale of confiscated art works considered “degenerate” by Hitler to collectors outside Germany; this Nazi-approved scheme often

Susan Roland tries to place the story of Cornelius Gurlitt’s amoral opportunism within the larger story of the Third Reich.

included using galleries in neutral Switzerland to auction these works for hard currency needed by the Reich to continue the war. Remarkably, Gurlitt maintained his close ties to the Nazis despite his racial classification as a “mischling,” or crossbreed, who had a Jewish grandparent — a label that nonetheless did not stop him from swindling Jews or other “mischling.” Even more sickening, after the war, Gurlitt used his “mischling” status to con the American Monuments Men team of art experts into believing he had been a Jewish victim of the Nazis. He further persuaded them that he had lost all records of his art dealings in the bombing of his home in Dresden. As it turned out, Ronald reports, while his home had been destroyed, Gurlitt had already hidden his stockpile of looted art works, some of which he continued to sell in the murky postwar art market. Even after his death in 1956, his widow and son Cornelius apparently lived on the proceeds of secret sales of selected pieces from this cache. And only in 2012 did the full extent of Gurlitt’s deceptions become clear. Ronald attempts to place the story of Gurlitt’s amoral opportunism within the larger story of the Third Reich, but too often her breezy tone undermines the seriousness of her subject. Readers will, however, find an immense amount of historical detail about the mercenary dealings both within, and beyond, the Nazi art world.

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new government protocols and regulations concerning the harboring of looted art,” he writes. The result, he hopes, has “made it easier for other heirs of Holocaust victims to find and recover their stolen legacies, all the while keeping alive the memory of the victims of long ago.”

The Jewish Week ■ www.thejewishweek.com ■ November 20, 2015

Art Of The Steal continued from previous page

ing tale about the emerging community of New York artists in the early 1940s who would soon become famous as leaders of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Into the mix of real-life artists Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, Shapiro throws the fictional character of Alizee Benoit, a talented young French émigré artist who grows increasingly disconsolate at the fate of her Jewish family, trapped in Europe. Benoit is the muralist of the book’s title, but it falls to her

B.A. Shapiro weaves a tale about the community of Abstract Expressionists in New York in “The Muralist.” LYN N WAYN E

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Family Secrets From The War

Four new memoirs involve detective-like journeys that lead to questions of identity and faith. “Hidden Inheritance: Family Secrets, Memory, and Faith,” by Heidi B. Neumark (Abingdon) “A Guest at the Shooter’s Banquet: My Grandfather’s SS Past, My Jewish Family, A Search for the Truth,” by Ruth Gabis (Bloomsbury) “Between Gods: A Memoir” , (Harper), by Alison Pick “A Fifty Year Silence: Love, War and a Ruined House in France,” by Miranda Richmond Mouillot (Crown)

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the story of her discovery and its repercussions in “Hidden Inheritance: Family Secrets, Memory, and Faith” (Abingdon). Her late father Hans Neumark, a chemical engineer who immigrated alone to the U.S. in 1938, never said a word about his parents’ background. It was through a straightforward Internet search that Heidi Neumark’s daughter found the ship registry with the word “Hebrew” next to Hans Neumark’s name. At the time of this revelation, both Hans and his wife had passed away. The author can only guess at his reasons for staying silent. In fact, Heidi Neumark grew up wondering if her German grandparents were Nazi collaborators; she

n the shadows following World War II, many hid their family stories, layering truth between lies and subterfuge, some going undercover and others hiding in plain sight. Four new memoirs are unusual detective stories, breaking down walls of silence built over these 70 years. Each author wrestles with her own questions of identity and faith as she retraces her family journey, ruptured by the Nazis. Heidi B. Neumark is a Lutheran pastor in New York City, and for the past 32 years has worked with congregations in the South Bronx and the Upp e r We s t Side of Manhattan. Tw o y e a r s ago, she learned that her Lutheran ancestry had not been passed down from generation to generation as she had assumed: Her paternal grandfather was a Jew murdered in Theresienstadt, and her grandmother was a Jewish survivor of Theresienstadt. She tells

In “Hidden Inheritance,” Heidi Neumark, a Lutheran pastor here, discusses the discovery of her family’s Jewish past. figured that if they had been among the Righteous Christians who helped save Jews, that her father would have spoken of their bravery. Through subsequent research and travel to Germany, she found out that her Jewish family can be traced back to the 17th century,

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37 The Jewish Week ■ www.thejewishweek.com ■ November 20, 2015

Fall Literary

The Jewish Week ■ www.thejewishweek.com ■ November 20, 2015

Memoirs

continued from previous page with prominent rabbis among her ancestors, including the scholar Rabbi Jacob Emden. “Continuity and discontinuity collide with each step” she writes, as she describes walking through Wittmund, the small German town where her grandfather was born, aware that this is the first time in more than a century that a Neumark is walking along streets that “once bustled with Neumarks” — and that she is returning as a Lutheran pastor. There have not been any Jews living in the town since 1938. “Why is it so compelling to find connections between previ-

ous generations and ourselves?” she writes. “I think it may be because it makes our own lives feel less random, part of a larger design and pattern.” Throughout the book, Neumark, who has long been involved in promoting interfaith understanding and social justice, makes connections — not equations — between her family’s experience and the people she serves, like a young Mexican boy who cries for his recently deported mother, and the transgender and gay youth who live in the shelter in her church, some beaten by their parents, no longer able to go home. With seeming comfort, she embraces her newly acquired Jewish identity, still holding on to her

Lutheran faith. In another twist, in the course of writing the book, she has become the proud mother-inlaw of her daughter’s Jewish wife, and says she is hoping for Jewish grandchildren!

ven more shocking is awardwinning poet Rita Gabis’ discovery, chronicled in her history and family memoir, “A Guest at the Shooter’s Banquet: My Grandfather’s SS Past, My Jewish Family, A Search for the Truth” (Bloomsbury). She grew up going to Mass with her mother’s Lithuanian Catholic family, celebrating Jewish holidays with her father’s Eastern European Jewish side, and, if asked, she would describe herself as Jewish. Close to both sets of grandparents, she understood that her mother’s father fought the Russians during

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“A Guest at the Shooter’s Banquet” investigates what Rita Gabis’ grandfather, a Lithuanian police officer during World War II, did as part of his police service. R ITA C ASTELN UOVO the war but learned a few years ago that he had been the chief of security police under the Gestapo in a Lithuanian town, near the site of two mass murders. The question of what her grandfather did during the war haunts her, and she sets out to document his past, traveling around the world to interview eyewitnesses, survivors, members of the Resistance, experts and members of her Lithuanian family. Impressively researched and written with a poet’s eye for detail, this is a courageous work.

lison Pick, an award-winning novelist and poet, grew up in a close-knit family whose members were regulars at their Anglican church. As she describes in “Between Gods: A Memoir” (Harper), her paternal grandparents fled from the Czech Republic at the beginning of World War II. When the elder Picks learned that other family members who were reluctant to leave were murdered in Auschwitz, they began concealing their Jewishness and took up the appearance of Christianity. It was only as an adult that the author’s father learned of his parents’ Jewish identity, when he was visiting a cemetery in Prague; it took him years to ask them about it. Pick stumbled upon the story as a child one Christmas when she overheard a conversation between her aunts, and then picked up on other clues that “something wasn’t right in our family. Something was lurking, biding its time.” As an adult, she becomes increasingly drawn to Judaism, and although she knows little about it, finds it to be familiar — she had been keeping her own form of Shabbat observance without knowing it had a name. She writes, “I always assumed that I could reclaim my family’s Judaism when I wanted, like a lost suitcase at an airport security desk,” but learns that she will have to formally convert, which is complicated by the fact that her s u p portive fiancé is not Jewish. Pick suffers from depression and it seems to run in her family, through her father’s side, as if it is their “bad blood” and perhaps the result of covering up, of unexpressed grief. In this artful memoir, she writes with candor of finding her way to Judaism, reclaiming her history and discovering meaning as well as joy.

iranda Richmond Mouillot grew up in Asheville, N.C., in a home where she learned to keep her shoes at the front door, so that she could grab them if

Only as an adult did Alison Pick learn of her family’s Jewish heritage, a journey she chronicles in “Between Gods.” COU RTESY OF HAR P ERCOLLI N S

she needed to make a quick escape. Her grandmother always c a r ried a woolen bandage, cough drops and candles in her purse.

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The author was very close to her grandmother Anna, a psychiatrist in New York who had a second home in Asheville. She got to know her grandfather — who would visit Asheville, but only when Anna wasn’t around — when she spent a year in a Swiss boarding school. To try to crack the family mystery of what drove them apart, Mouillot moved to the crumbling stone house in France and spent ten years there. Through writing this intriguing and unusual memoir, she comes to understand their differing attitudes to War, and also about what Armand heard, experienced and carried away from the Nuremberg Trials. Like the other authors, Mouillot provides a collage of history, memory and secrets, searching for complicated truths. n

The Jewish Week ■ www.thejewishweek.com ■ November 20, 2015

In “A Fifty Year Silence: Love, War and a Ruined House in France” (Crown), Mouillot sets out to learn about her grandparents’ wartime experience, specifically about what happened between them that caused a rift that was never healed. Her grandparents Anna and Armand were French Jews who survived the War by escaping Nazi-occupied France for refugee camps in Switzerland. Armand went on to become an interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials, and in 1948 they bought a stone house in a small village in the South of France and set about rebuilding their lives. But in 1953 Anna, a physician, took her children and left her husband. Other than a brief encounter, the two never saw each other again. Nor did either remarry or reveal what split them apart.

The Jewish Week ■ www.thejewishweek.com ■ November 20, 2015

Rachel Rosenstein celebrates . . . . But this year, she’s got her sights set on ! Actress and playwright

Amanda Peet teams up with co-writer Andrea Troyer in this hilarious holiday drama about understanding your own identity and the gift of friends and family.

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