Shane Malone - Eureka Street

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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
Bundists fro m the start; they were Russophiles, and leaning towards communism . The Polish Secret Police were always busy setting up, and often imprisoning the Left . Pilsudski's solution for the Jews, and the others wh o made up the 35 per cent non-Poles in the new State, was assimila tion . After his return to power in 1926, the Marshal started to give support to the idea, originally put forward i n V61l
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Shane Malone - Eureka Street

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