1 - Eureka Street

I understood Mrs Laszlo from The Scourge of the Swastilw. My father showed a special respectfor Lord Russell of Liverpool's account of the crimes tried at Nuremberg. It was in with theother war books, Enem y Coast A hea d and Boldness Be My Friend and Carve Her Name WithPride, and w e all read them. But it was The Scourge of the Swastika I went back to m ost often, Isuppose for the photographs. Mug shots of the major criminals, and bodies being bulldozed, and,m ost m emorably, naked wom en running past guards, captioned 'photograph taken from a capturedGerman soldier. ' These were Jews.Otherwise it was the Scriptures. I presumed that was the definitive book on the Jews. Thegospels were what I knew best, and I knew en ough of the scholarship of the time to understandthat the Gospel according to Matthew recorded the promises to the Jews. It recorded the prom ises,and their fulfilment- in Christ. Matthew was the set text for on e full year at school, and Iheard his account of the passion of Christ every Palm Sunday each year of m y life.Numerous phrases were known to m e, but there was one that made m e shudder, even asa boy. The Gospel that plotted, with su ch relentless precision, God's squaring off eachpromise to the Jews, had one terrible verse: 'The whole people answered Pilate and said,"His blood be upon us and upon our children ".' The force of this temptation of fa terocked m e. It was the whole people, not just the chief priests or some representativewho had assumed the fearful responsibility. It was not just on their own behalf theywere wagering such stakes. Even worse it was not just for their descendants but fo r theirchildren. Their children. They were shouting this challenge in a work that detailed allthe other contracts between God and them selves and that ticked off every one as havingbeen observed to the letter.Mrs Laszlo was their child. From the vantage point of the 1950s, there was no doubtthis last contract had also been carried out. Whether the text might ever have been thejustification or the goad I had no idea. It never crossed m y mind to ask. All I saw wasthat God had been dared and God had taken up the dare. This text was the word of God,the inspired account of the only story that really m attered. It recorded with absolutesimplicity the price tha t the Jewish people had accepted for the execution of Christ.I w ould have regarded as mad any idea that Mrs Laszlo had deserved what happenedto her. In any case no one ever suggested it to me. I lived untroubled by any contradictionin a guiltless person's wearing the mark of Cain. I was born with original sin on m yown soul. I did not know whether that was a Jewish belief too, but the Jews' own historyseem ed to me an illustration of the same doctrine. These were a people before any of them wereindividuals. The Old Testament made that clear. Jerusalem was destroyed and the entire peoplewent to Babylon, into captivity, because there was a contract between God and a people, and thepeople had broken it. Ezeki el had said it was a proverb in the land of Israel that 'thefath ers have ea ten sour grapes, and the children 's teeth are set on edge'.SHOLARSHI P HAS MOVED ON. Ezekiel says further that the Lord has no truck with the old proverb;rather, the man who has sinned is the only one who will die. David slays the killer of Sa ul forshedding the blood of the Lord's anointed, and Matthew seizes on that; death is the just fate fo rthese latter-day slayers of the Lord's anointed. Had Matthew's 'whole people' really renouncedthat right to be heard one by one? Had Matthew libelled them for his own sectarian purposes? Idon't know. If, as a schoolboy, I got some echo of what the scholars of the day were saying, thetruth is that now, as a middle-aged adult, I am further away from what is being said. I would notbe atypical, and such ignorance is not easily rectifiable. To access the story now is on e step, tobelieve it another step again. All scholarship, all history is threatened by our greater readiness toprove what is wished for. As the least, surely, of its oppressions, the Holocaust has been a terribleburden to the Christian conscience. No scholar can come up with an interpretation of the gospelthat sees anti-Semitism as anything but an aberration. Better condemn the very men who wrotethe gospels. These are the Christian straits of faith, hope, charity, and of justice and integrity.My Jewish people, when I began to meet them, were not a theological dilemma. Instead theyshared the turbulence and illogicality of m y own blood . There was one unaccountable quirkabout Mrs Laszlo. Every year sh e ga ve us her torte on the same plastic tray. It was a rectangul arkerbed obj ect, violently pink. There were stacks of identical ones in Woolworths at Double Bay.But Mrs Laszlo was forever anxious about this tray. She fretted till it was returned to her. Thenshe sent it out again the following year under her individual, and priceless, torte. As a boy, evenlater, I could never understand all that.•Gerard Windsor's most recent book is Family Lore.38EUREKA STREET • O c TOilER 1995