thinking about those who are absent? Sometimes I look at him and I feel like crying.
When I was studying theater and contemplating devoting my life to it, like Alika and by her side, my father read methe following text (ancient? By a precursor of the medieval thinker One-Eyed Paritus?). To my ears, even today, it still sounds like a premonitory echo of Paul Valéry’s beautiful words engraved on the frontispiece of the Palais de Chaillot: “For God, man is Creation’s triumph and challenge; he is both worried about him and proud of him. From the cradle to the tomb, life is a path that man alone can brighten or render arid. Life is a laboratory of ideas, dreams, experiences, and it depends entirely on man himself whether he will draw the lessons that will let him rise to the heavens or those that will hurl him into the throes of hell. Hence, life is everything but a theater where the possibility of choosing remains forever limited.”
Was my father seeking to discourage me? Make me aware of the trials awaiting me?
It matters little. I have a boundless love for my father. There is a reason: his own father was what we now call a “survivor.” He had been wealthy, and in the last year of the war he still had sufficient means to convince three former clients living in different villages to hide his wife and sons. Grandfather alone, victim of a denunciation, was arrested and deported. Miraculously, he survived and, as soon as he could, he emigrated to New York with his family. My mother, who was in America, had a sunny childhood.
And my own childhood? My earliest memories go back to when I was four years old. Before that, nothing. I’m like so many other Jewish children and adolescents in Brooklyn or Manhattan: Jewish school, high school. Sabbath meals.Holidays. Hanukkah gifts. Summer sun, winter snow. Childhood friends.
The Tragedy? A taboo, forbidden memories. Directly or indirectly, it had affected all our families. Even on my mother’s side: so many uncles, aunts, cousins, other relatives had disappeared. We understood obscurely that they were all part of our collective memory. When a man has an arm or a leg amputated, his “phantom limb” still hurts him. This can be applied to the Jewish people; as the great Yiddish poet Chaim Grade said: each of us feels pain for the limbs that are no longer. But what did I know of the concrete experience of that time? Of the denunciations? Of life in the ghetto? Of hunger and crowding? Of the “actions” prior to the deportations? Of the hunting down of children? Of the constant fear of being suddenly separated from one’s loved ones? Of the sealed trains bound for the unknown? Of unspeakable suffering? On those rare occasions when my father alluded to it, you had the impression he was recounting events described in his medieval manuscripts, or even more ancient than those. After all, we still commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the victims of the Crusades on specific dates in the calendar. But is the Tragedy, which we so inadequately call the Holocaust, similar to these dramatic episodes? Would a single day, just one day of the year, be sufficient to honor its memory?
One Saturday afternoon, my father and I found my grandfather at home, sitting at the table, his head in his hands. It was a short time after my grandmother’s death.He was lonely, in deep mourning, and I used to stop by to see him as often as possible. As soon as he saw me, he raised his head and tried to smile at me.
“The human soul, what a labyrinth. I thought I could find my way in it. No. I’ve lost my bearings. Listen to this: ‘An “entertaining” execution was organized in the old city [of Berdichev in Ukraine]: the Germans ordered the old men [Jews] to put on their tallith [prayer shawl] and their tefillin [phylacteries] and deliver a religious service in the old synagogue, praying God to forgive the errors committed against the Germans. They double-locked the synagogue
When I was studying theater and contemplating devoting my life to it, like Alika and by her side, my father read methe following text (ancient? By a precursor of the medieval thinker One-Eyed Paritus?). To my ears, even today, it still sounds like a premonitory echo of Paul Valéry’s beautiful words engraved on the frontispiece of the Palais de Chaillot: “For God, man is Creation’s triumph and challenge; he is both worried about him and proud of him. From the cradle to the tomb, life is a path that man alone can brighten or render arid. Life is a laboratory of ideas, dreams, experiences, and it depends entirely on man himself whether he will draw the lessons that will let him rise to the heavens or those that will hurl him into the throes of hell. Hence, life is everything but a theater where the possibility of choosing remains forever limited.”
Was my father seeking to discourage me? Make me aware of the trials awaiting me?
It matters little. I have a boundless love for my father. There is a reason: his own father was what we now call a “survivor.” He had been wealthy, and in the last year of the war he still had sufficient means to convince three former clients living in different villages to hide his wife and sons. Grandfather alone, victim of a denunciation, was arrested and deported. Miraculously, he survived and, as soon as he could, he emigrated to New York with his family. My mother, who was in America, had a sunny childhood.
And my own childhood? My earliest memories go back to when I was four years old. Before that, nothing. I’m like so many other Jewish children and adolescents in Brooklyn or Manhattan: Jewish school, high school. Sabbath meals.Holidays. Hanukkah gifts. Summer sun, winter snow. Childhood friends.
The Tragedy? A taboo, forbidden memories. Directly or indirectly, it had affected all our families. Even on my mother’s side: so many uncles, aunts, cousins, other relatives had disappeared. We understood obscurely that they were all part of our collective memory. When a man has an arm or a leg amputated, his “phantom limb” still hurts him. This can be applied to the Jewish people; as the great Yiddish poet Chaim Grade said: each of us feels pain for the limbs that are no longer. But what did I know of the concrete experience of that time? Of the denunciations? Of life in the ghetto? Of hunger and crowding? Of the “actions” prior to the deportations? Of the hunting down of children? Of the constant fear of being suddenly separated from one’s loved ones? Of the sealed trains bound for the unknown? Of unspeakable suffering? On those rare occasions when my father alluded to it, you had the impression he was recounting events described in his medieval manuscripts, or even more ancient than those. After all, we still commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the victims of the Crusades on specific dates in the calendar. But is the Tragedy, which we so inadequately call the Holocaust, similar to these dramatic episodes? Would a single day, just one day of the year, be sufficient to honor its memory?
One Saturday afternoon, my father and I found my grandfather at home, sitting at the table, his head in his hands. It was a short time after my grandmother’s death.He was lonely, in deep mourning, and I used to stop by to see him as often as possible. As soon as he saw me, he raised his head and tried to smile at me.
“The human soul, what a labyrinth. I thought I could find my way in it. No. I’ve lost my bearings. Listen to this: ‘An “entertaining” execution was organized in the old city [of Berdichev in Ukraine]: the Germans ordered the old men [Jews] to put on their tallith [prayer shawl] and their tefillin [phylacteries] and deliver a religious service in the old synagogue, praying God to forgive the errors committed against the Germans. They double-locked the synagogue
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