Shane Malone - Eureka Street

BOOKS: 2
MAX TEICHMANN
Traces of hell
Konin, A Quest, Thea Richmond, Jonathan Cape, London, 1995. ISBN 0 224 03890 7 $39.95
1 Rest My Case, Mark Verstandig, Saga Press, Melbourne, 1995. ISBN 0 646 25 103 1 RRI' $1 n.95
M A" V"m•mc '' • jew
from Cracow, or thereabouts, born
in 1912 under the Old Empire, old
enough to remember, as a six-yearold,
the collapse of that Empire in
November 1918, and the coming of
the new independent Poland. His
parents asked the Jewish maid to
take down the pictures of the Royal
Family and store them, for they
might be needed in the future. Two
days later he saw the first pogrom, as
the peasants came in to loot the
Beginning of the end Jewish shops and houses of his small
of shtetllife: a Nazi town. The Jews, and not only the
firing squad Lakes aim Jews of Habsburg Poland, had lost
at iLs first victims then protector. H1s story then takes
in Konin, a Christian us through life as a Jew in Poland
and a few.
until the War, the German occupation,
the Holocaust; via the DP camps
of Germany, a spell in France and
them emigration to Australia, where
he now lives.
Thea Richmond is an English Jew,
born and reared in England, who is a
writer of television documentaries,
and married to an English Jewess,
who is a novelist. The only thing
Richmond and Verstandig have in
common is their Jewishness and their
family histories from Poland. Richmond,
who e family name was
Ryczki, wants to return to the hometown
of Konin, and reconstruct its
past: rediscover traces of his lost
relatives and friends. He takes seven
years preparing for the journey.
Verstandig needs to do none of thishe
just has to set down his memories,
almost by free association, for
they are already there, inside, and
will never leave him. So the books
and the authors are very different.
One difference- perhaps trivial,
perhaps not-is that Richmond's
story of Konin is handsomely
produced by Jonathan Cape, whereas
Verstandig had to publish his
privately. Louis Waller, Sam Lipski
and Harry Shukman provide handsome
tributes on the back cover, but
of course after the event. And yet
Lipski is right-it is 'a major work of
sociological and historical sign ificance
... [which] transcends the academic
to become memorable
journalism and literature.' And
Lipski's comparisons with Sholem
Aleichem, the brothers Singer, and,
even, the Russians Gogo!,
Gorky and Isaac Babel are not
all that fanciful. Yet another
non-triumph for Australian
mainstream publishing, (we are
starting to generate our own
samizdat) not to mention a
non-supportive local community.
Maybe Verstandig is politically
incorrect-certainly he
comes over hard and eloquent
and calling a spade a spade. I
would like to see other examples
of his writing.
One theme common to both
books is the deplorable influence
of the Polish Catholic
Church in not simply condoning
but fomenting anti­
Semitism, and their remarkable
process of separation from what
the Germans were doing to
Poland's Jews. It was less dangerous
for the Church to speak
out than for anyone else in Poland.
For the others, dissent,
any sign of opposition to the Germans,
let alone helping or concealing
Jews, was punishable by death.
Many Polish Jews saw Marshal
Pilsudski, the founder of the Polish
Socialist Party, as a protector-rather
as Franz Josef had been for the
Habsburg Jews. But the comparison
was overdrawn. Pilsudski made
things difficult for the Jewish
34 EUREKA STREET • APRIL 1996