The 50th Gate

These notes were typed from my handwriting by a kind member of the office staff; you will find many words which don’t make sense (not typos actually) because the kind typist couldn’t read my writing; if you look carefully at the page in 50th Gate to which it refers, and at the context here, you being an intelligent being, will be able to work out what it’s supposed to say. I don’t have time to go through it now and correct them all. You’ll also find a lot of apostrophes missing – well indeed you WON’T find them where they’re needed. Again due to the typing. Put them in where they’re needed.

  • These are notes I took in desperation because my class was NOT doing so – they are not definitive, simply the kind of notes I would think any student of a text would want to have as a memory-jogger because there’s so much information in this book. By the way, it’s NOT a novel – don’t call it one! It’s non-fiction; holocaust/survivor literature; biography or chronicle – NEVER A NOVEL!!
  • The film ‘Everything is Illuminated’ (excellent related text for this study, the jog sheet of which is on the site/ jog) is abbreviated to ILL (sometimes will appear as I’ll – go figure)
  • I differentiate between/among Baker’s different writing styles (narrative voice also) e.g. the journalistic style employed to chronicle the project: the word journalistic is often abbreviated to J; he assumes a persona in ‘Hinda’s chapter’ (Ch 42) etc [By the way, anyone who refers to the book’s chapters as ‘gates’ needs help. They’re chapters. Note the symbolism but don’t try to become it, it sounds really stupid!]

SOME THOUGHTS:

  • Pg 97 Baker’s mother – all happy families are alike. Baker is essentially discovering the pain of his family and the ways in which his parent’s suffering/experiences have shaped the family.
  • The epigram/dedication ‘to’ his parents and ‘for’ his children – lest they look in an encyclopedia and see facts only.
  • Acknowledgments – a rundown of the process and dedication to his parents. Speaks of the journey of the gates he has gone through etc. and the path beyond memory (whatever he means by that).
  • Starts with an invitation to the reader “come and see”, and the (apparent) oxymorons/antitheses “murdered prayer”, “death of memory” and the uncertainty of ‘it opens the blessing or the curse’ all suggest the apprehension and uncertainty of baker’s (or anyone’s) search of this type.
  • See Notes and Sources, where Baker informs us of his intentions (in retrospect) and acknowledges his shock at seeing his own family name in actual records, forced ‘re-assessment’ of my entire project.
  • Himmler’s desire for this ‘history’ to be left ‘a page of glory never to be written’ – funnily Baker seems to be determined to write his parents “page”, previously unwritten.
  • Baker acknowledges the arbitrary nature of such searches (of history then?) on pg 322 “one discovers a document by chance or by asking a librarian – different box. Baker also acknowledges that “some specific [titles] – shape [the] narrative” – just as our history and our ID is shaped by both “general conditions” and specific experiences.
  • He finishes the acknowledgment of “duty” to begin, (the Rabbi’s official exhortation) and contrasts it against his parents’ (more personal) exasperation “enough already”
  • Note in chapters – Baker sets the pre-recorded testimonies, voice-over like against the “now” of his journal style.
  • Compare the “search” for the truth as in 50th gate and illustrated – it’s really the same only that “ILL” represents the search more “abstractly”.

THE NOTES:

 

Ch. 1

Journalistic narrative – In Poland. Characters father. Food Imagery pg2 “devours”, “?”. Pg 2-3 Recall on his father’s “little ways”.

Pg 5 Here in this town in Poland, we are 4 Jews.

Polish narrative punctuated by the “we have always known him” style characterization of his father. Pg 5 (bottom) “…I imagine that the hand pushing open the gates belongs to a boy” as Baker acknowledges the gap between this “now” and his parents “then”. Ends ch. with iconic image ‘fields of pastures, first signs of Spring’.

 

Ch. 2

His Mother, dancing. Journalistic. narrative – pres tense basis (some mixed tenses will occur in the journal/chronicle, as the writer recalls and looks ahead, of course); “it was the bit about processing a village that we found most different to swallow, “too fairytale-ish”.

B’grd on Baker’s grandfather, Leo Krochnal and “the count” and b’grd on Krochnal the grandfather who read the history and seemed to belong to the “gothic jumble” of the name, the old, tarnished aura etc. Dementia. Note Baker’s memories of him “ghaggy saliva” etc pg 9. The Ukrainian peasant women. Krochnal fields pg 10.

 

Ch. 3 Journal style TREBLINKA links present site to past events pg11 “upon which the contents of the cattle trucks were unloaded”

Where once stood there is grass etc.  Pre-tense. He begins his search. Parents not with him. Pg 12 father. “It won’t bring my mother, Hinda, back.

 

Note the very “mundane” (?) casualness of ‘My parents have not accompanied me to Treblinka today’.

Pg 13. The Tombstone seems to be a place of burial only “What will come out – only memory”

Idea of “returning” – ‘No-one who was there returns’

But Baker knows of one, and he recalls his visit to this man, a survivor pg 13. Also pg 13 his mother says, “Her children are her revenge” (ct. Bakers He remembers, therefore I am p128)

Then back to the Treblinka ‘now’ pg 14 “more feet”. ‘They stand as a group’, their little ceremony. Unfinished sentence of the poem – the train must have arrived – to Treblinka.

Note the very personal end to the ch. and ref to Hinda.

 

Ch. 4 Italics Mother works out age/dates pg 17 what do you expect me to remember? Images, glasses etc. memories of home – Friday night – grated potatoes etc.

Pg 18 what would you remember before you were 8? I wish I could forget what I remember. Can you see my legs?

 

Ch. 5 Legs. Listening with eyes closed. Past tense. Links to immediate past. Father’s accusations of his boredom “While I tell you about Auschwitz” (p19)

This contains strong links between past and present.

His mothers Shmattes – rags of memories – the narrative of her life “found here in her bedroom cupboards”, “a guided tour of her past” – the pleasant, more recent past the boys ban materials etc.

“So now, behind the camera” pg 20/21 – his mother wage[ing] a personal war against the memorable signs of age”.

Ruins and “medals” as Baker sums up his mothers idiosyncrasies etc

“Then’ pg21 – the key to everything – “the life she gave her story”

Baker recalls “the times – she lay in her bed. “Mummy’s asleep” etc.

Pg 22 Baker “not knowing how to bring comfort to a mother so haunted” She wept.

Pg 22 – his mothers misery intrude[s] on [Bakers/brothers] cheerful stories.

Pg 23 Mother links her nerves to her fathers – heredity

“To minimise myself against the secret thing that long” (in the middle of her story). Ends dark in the cupboard. Different from her bedroom cupboards.

Baker orders her – tell the beginning first.

Baker the historian – dispassionate (?) getting what he wants – he needs the story.

 

Ch. 6 Journalistic style father. It began in Wierzbnik

Alternate, Bakers narrative with his fathers

Pg 24 for him it began on pg 25 – for me it began in Melbourne.

“Captured in a photograph”

The ritual of the first ablation. Yiddish lullaby pg 25 – and the circumcision – the thought of pain triggers and early memory – spilt hot tea, food pg 26 – It seems right that his memory should begin in his stomach – forbidden bite – all knowledge – father, forbidden food – heart specialist.

Pg 27 memory in the “oven”/house memory of his father and the history of baker’s “family tree [he has] constructed from archives”.

“Death unknown”

Pg 28 Unknown members of the family tree, Bakers, butchers etc. Note the alteration of H + M 28 and 29.

 

Pg 29 – memory prompted by food as Baker’s father remembers his grandfather.

Pg 30 Wierzbnik in 1820 and Yossl’s memories of his father pg 31 “that’s where I first learnt how to drive a horse, which helped me survive later in Auschwitz”

Pg 31 Hinda and Lerbinsh married

Facs. Doc wedding cest.

Pg 32 Narrative journal. “I first appear in a red album”

Pg 33”the present pains my father”

Ch. ends with Wierzbnik Bakiermaszyns.

 

Ch. 7 Journal style. Father. Archive information from Baker. Father’s lack of interest “I’m, votching Sale of the Century” Contrast – father’s disparagement of “facts” and being a master of trivia – suggests that his father’s mechanism for blocking his past is to concern himself with others “facts”. [compare with ILLUMINATED: Grandfather’s “blindness” to its own real past, but his ‘concern’ with the Jewish clients searching for their past]

Pg. 37 Yossl’s use of ‘present tense’ (and note Baker’s use of met language here!) – suggests (subconsciously) the events and people are still “with him” (once he “gets going” “he’s there and then”)

Pg 37 – sociability – intimacy and friendship were tools of survival.

Pg.38 Yossl becomes “Lerb’s son” (antononasra or periphrasis) rather than [Baker’s] father – this is history being puzzled out or pierced together, and Yossl’s part in it is relative to others, not mark Baker. Baker punctuates as usual with the more recent “back-story” – here the wrestling “his Jewish world was a shell which protected him”

Jewish rivalry and ‘wrestling’

Pg. 40 Mother reads the Polish and translates together.

Pg. 40 Mother’s claim to have recited Polish poetry as a child.

Link to present – Mother accuses Yossl – What kind of Shtetl did you come from? Bribes etc.

‘I hate to deflate you’. The accusations are of her place!

“No way” They argue about what her father did or didn’t do.

Her embarrassment that her father was on the Judenrat. Fecks, fecks pg 43

 

Genia Krochnal (nee)

 

Ch. 8 His mother. Journal style. They discover/relate her family. Leo & Rarsl

Pg. 44 Her speech as she attempts to find the way is the ‘now’ is typical of any return to a [changed] site.

Pg. 45 “I laid here. In a hole”. Short sentences indicate the urgency of memory – translated sentences, repetition, inverted word order – all gasps and apprehension.

Punctuated with italics from mother. Overall confusion but lots of memories. Continues like this to the end of ch. and links to start of next with “Ruth”, she said “Run”.

 

Ch. 9 Running metaphor. Running as an act of liberation? Pretense, although a past event

Pg. 51 The power of memory and different attitudes to the persons and events of history.

How did they survive – luck or courage? They disagree on this.

Pg. 52. Baker recollects discarding his diary – mothers prying eyes – obvious link in readers mind between that and Baker’s ‘now’ investigation – prying, delivering, questioning, and needling them for information. At the end of ch. his pain – the black eye – and his own hate for running (if his parents pain and the idiosyncrasies it has resulted in). 

 

Ch. 10 Comment Choo-choo – Kornel Krzeczunowicz mother’s italics – short.

 

Ch. 11 Search of Jewish cemetery. Journal style father. Wierzbnik town. Italics, father’s testimony.

Pg. 57 “It is an empty and drastic landscape of death”. Note diction – rusted, ruined Contrast between this cemetery and the Melbourne one – highly ordered; his father referring to the tombstones by name.

Pg. 58 (cf. Dylan Thomas’ Method!) Baker attempts to re-build his fathers village life.

Note the nasty Jnxta-position between “ice cream, local cinema, soccer team and screams from the mass grave” and it ‘It was March 27’

*      And Baker gives a pres-tense a/c of the events.

Polish man pg. 58 then 59 ‘reaches out for us’ – Baker’s receive on these pages somehow equates with Jonathan Sefrans ‘journey’ in ‘illustrated’ – but the money they pay for ‘the story’ is virtually requested. Note that Baker doesn’t comment on this rather tacky episode.

Note also the ‘discordant prayers’ (pg 60) reaching out from the middle earth (ct The soldier)

 

Ch 12 The sages taught, My parents taught

 

Ch. 13 Baker’s father was sick when war broke out. “If it says I was sick then I must have been”, “Stories of betrayal” to do the Kielce – 4 July 1946 – 42 Jews massacred by Poles.

Pg. 62 note diction – informer/confront/command/thrust etc.

Pg. 63 “pogrnists, so they “Jews” carried their bitter memories with them to other pasts of the world. Father’s testimony

Pg. 64 Documents pt. up the reality “Yrd” and formality “mosaic”

Yossl’s bad boy entries pg 65

Pg. 65 – Baker’s truancy and the effect on his parents. The report cards. Pg. 67 “History – unsatisfactory” Father and son compare notes – history report cards! Note mark’s memory of his teacher – abusing him for perceived arrogance.

Pg. 68 – Baker remembers having mother help him on a project on Holocaust. “I never associated his [Jewish/ghetto] fear with my parents’ captivity – suggests the power of personal experience and the brain to “compartmentalize” information – to box things up into convenient “topic loads”. Pg. 68 Marta and Vienta of Ch 42. Pg. 69 Running, running motif. Father remembers running to another town. “seemed pointless running from bombs but”. My mother’s survival was random. Nothing makes sense of her miraculous fate” Ct, the argument (Find The Spot!!!) between the parents “luck” vs “courage”.

“What might have been” pg. 71 and spoiled dreams.

Pg. 72 and I sing to them – end chapter.

 

Ch 14 good or bad Judenrat – Journalist i.e.; style. Father appears on list 1940.

Pg. 75 Mother – History shmistory. Where will the past get you in life – IRONY.

Pg. 75 The bar mitzvah – tribe – circumvention of directives – “see they were good”

Pg 76 facs.doc and restricts on movement. Link to past “My childhood house, ghetto, Caulfield” Mezuzahs, “today I live, some cloistered neighbourhood”

“What would you do” of Bert Stranos – What do you think? (whether this can help again) This chap – many facs.doc. Exchange of letters Judenrat and Joint committee Warsaw pg. 79. Pg. 83 “We pursue the next item”, “anesthetic impression” – Sept 1939

Pg. 84 Imagining: They probably would have chosen you (to Johnny) – I’d have looked after you” Grandfathers name appears Leib B. Pg. 85 – Yossl’s prayer – like whisper. “Leib B”. “I realize how deeply buried is his pain”. Baker’s book is all about “Surfacing the pain”

Pg. 85 “See – we didn’t go like sheep to the slaughter” Link to Melbourne (bottom of page) and end of chp “far from Melbourne”

 

Ch 15 Yossl, Halres??? 88-89. Yossl tells of his father pg. 89 “Soon after we got a letter…Buchenwald”. The then.

Then journalistic – “now”. Description Leib arrest 12 August 1940. Labels Jew/Pole/Polish Jew etc.

Pg. 91 HINDA

Pg. 92 Further – documents and expl. of Leib’s experience

Pg. 93/94 The Buchenwald Song

Pg. 94 ch. end Parddy & Hinda…

 

 

Ch. 16 Baker has minutiae of Leib’s experience

Pg. 96 Snobbery – ‘an uncharacteristic reaction for a person who disdains snobbery’

Pg. 97 – Genia’s mothers ‘love’ of Russian list.

Pg. 98 – “What do you know of pain?” “She lists our privileges”

Pg. 99 Imagining – B imagines himself as a ghetto fighter – the “Hollywood” version of where a “heroic legacy” is ensured and the horror house of Nazi memorabilia

Ch. ends with list of Leib's clothes. Not heroic and not much of a legacy. (Cf. with TOL the shot of the shoe on the last, in the flames, and the boxes labelled (mundane) in Ev. Is Illusion) Juxtaposition: “What colour underwear?” – minutiae. “What kind of face?”

 

Ch. 17 Present tense narrative of Leib’s experience pg. 103 switches to past tense/ informative/re-count of conditions. Populations, squads, robs explained and ‘operations’.

Pg. 104 – “Camp life also produced its own liturgy. Group (Jewish) confession pg. 104

Pg. 104 – Leib’s explanation (links to the camp prayers, confessions etc – gives a religious “slant” to the procedures. Note the re-writing of those ‘stories’ in the Jews forced participation in group proclamation. Egg: “the Germans have unmasked vs

Pg. 106 Ch end “The sweet promise of freedom laws – somewhere in the distance”

 

Ch 18. Halres Mothers testimony of the Aktron in Betszowce when she was 5 or 6 and the reasons for her claustrophobia. Ch ends with the by-now iconic phrase “Juden raus”. Miller/Miller

 

Ch 19. Note the patchwork effect when you go through chapter ends and next chapter starts. Here pg. 109 “I was white as chalk” (ct. Documentaries like “The last Dangs” by James Moll where 5 survivors stories/testimonies is pieced together to tell the same story – an idea of Collective memory/experience definitely emerges) But the speaker here is an ex SS Commander Hermann Muller – his testimony in Stuttgart. Note then, NO ITALICS. Baker suggests discrepancy between Mullers testimony and that of “a witness”. Mullers state after the incident ct. that of his victims – he is “the man who forced my mother and her family from their tiny hiding hole” pg. 110. An ordinary German.

Pg. 111 Italics – B’s mother.

41 Aktions death toll in Tasnopol area 40,000

 

Ch. 20 We have [Leib’s] ash.

Italics – Bakers father speaks

The journalistic style – candle on the Yortsert pg. 112

Link to present – going to Shul for memorial service; candles from Yom Kippur (Atonement)

-       Eternal flame now electric

Pg. 114 Jews do not remember with anaphora and the ‘sense’ of B’s mother-in-law and her frozen soup esl taunia.

Pg. 115 “I turn to the archives to fill the blank spaces in my father’s prayers”. Present tense narrative pg. 115 TAK TAK Leib’s experience is modeled and imagined (vice versa) by B to the end of ch. with the rpt aural motif ‘tak tak’ the precision – the very mundane-ness of the typewriter keeping the lists/records is in its very simplicity, horrifying and note the weaves present and past here “It is 5 minutes to 7”

 

Ch 21 Present tense narrative of Aktion 27th Oct 1942 Wierzbnik

Pg. 122 ‘Shina Israel’ – ct. ch. 42 Hinda marching motif (aural agin) “Left, Right!”

 

Ch 22 This relates loosely to ch 42, Hinda’s chapter. Italics Fathers testimony. Then bakers Journal Style

Pg. 124 ”It gnawed at me, the feeling that my father’s narrative had surrendered to forgetfulness. Pg. 125 – Yossl’s age

Pg. 126 “Born in…”  Changes with circumstances. We reshape our story (our history) when it suits us.

  • Youthful body – headed for life
  • 1928 – hands him release papers
  • 1929 – child’s visa

 

Pg127 – the advancing of age ‘time doing it charmed dance around his body’

Pg 125 Sacred and Profane

Pg. 127 – his fathers heart surgery – golem (from Kabbalah – a being of mystery brought into being/conjured by incantations)

Pg. 128 – external signs of Yossl’s snobbery amlets. “he remembers, therefore I am” (Descartes, I THINK THEREFORE I AM)

The character of HURT – physical and emotional. “I was gripped by a sense of his inexorable mortality” – When the rememberers die, so does the memory.

Pg. 129 Ceremony in Israel is recalled and the connection to Buba laya of ‘Lolly’ fame. Ch. ends with Italics – “sure you can see me?” “And I was his memory” (pg 130 mid) ct. his mothers ‘her children were her revenge’

 

 

Ch 23 pg. 131 Where have the millions of Jews gone? facs doc. German report pub 1943 on the German-Govt areas of Poland

 

Ch. 24 In Jerusalem. Past tense narration. He called his mother pg 133. “It was not the facts that were held under suspicion but her credibility as a survivor” due to lack of physical evidence.

Her Kretching and the attainment of a label, is desirable but she hasn’t got one – although her suffering seemed to be rooted in the present, not the past. She can’t pin her identity on an institution and say ‘see – me too’. The names concerned in her story are foreign, un-used not like pg. 134. Treblinka, Auschwitz, Budenwald.

Pg. 134 – “this feeling of emptiness, gnawed away at my stomach” His lack of connection and understanding on he grew up resulted in this “unwarranted” and frightening emptiness. Pg 136 Mothers story now.

Pg. 137 [Yossl] told these stories in a matter of fact tone? “He would observe these [TV] made-up characters in Auschwitz, communicating in John Wayne accents, as if they and not his own life, endowed his past with authenticity”

Pg. 137 Yossl’s Yizkor book – memories, witness from people of the region etc.

“But who will remember for my mother?” ‘books’, ‘tonnes’, ‘albums’, ‘collections’, ‘but none of them recognize my mothers town” – here and there. ‘Mere snippets hardly accounting to a dignified remembrance”

“Am I usurping her memory?” Note the mix of tenses here – started in past but here at 138 he reverts to present.

Pg. 139 ‘Among 1380 people, one family survived’ Note Italics, but its ‘handwritten in Russian, dated 9 march 1945’ but doesn’t mention the daughter (i.e.: Genia)

 

Ch 25. Present tense journal style as Yossl recalls work with the barrel of ran iron

Pg. 142 the Great Furnace and Yossl’s work

-       You had to be strong to survive (now it’s luck/courage and strength) ‘The pride of a slave who has pleased his cruel master’

Pg. 143 ‘The worst days of my life’. “In starochowice there was still truth to the notoriously deceptive slogan. Arber Mach Free. So they tow the work place

Pg. 145 ‘A pt in the distance has caught [his] eye’

ITALICS pg. 145 ‘I never went near that hill again’

B: until now. Pres tense Journal style. “Julegl” pg. 147. Stories I had heard many times. Here at the site, his hands point, wearing each object into a prisoner narrative. Link between the here-and-now (the site) and the ‘then’ (the story/memory)

 

Pg: 147/148 Ch. end. Through the fog and mist he hugs scared memories to his chest, whispering bitter memories. Questions asked as to the value of the exercise “Why had we brought him

Questions asked as to the value of the exercise ‘Why had we brought him here?’ – reflects pg. 319 ‘forced reassessment of the project.

 

Ch. 26 Italics – facsimile.doc ‘Proceedings and examination records’

Questions his mother about the shootings her parents witnessed. B’s You’re right! Mothers sarcastic retort.

Pg. 151 ‘A massacre of weeping lambs’ ‘Don’t interrogate me. I’m your mother not your prisoner’ and ‘you think because you’ve read a few pieces of paper that you suddenly understand everything. Understanding comes from experience, not ‘learning’.

(ct pg. 139) pg. 152 ‘Away 1380 people one family survived’

This discussion (and this section is largely dialogue) between B and his mother is punctuated by facs.doc e.g.: p153

Ch. end: signed: The Peoples Investigator. Note the inclusion of the poem Pg. 153 and his mothers irate finishing of it pg. 155.

Pg. 154 Mother accuses him again of not understanding – but do you know how it feels.

 

Ch. 27 testimony of Kurt Gerstein. Note that Baker has cut this too, for his purpose. So we have yet another narrative voice (it’s B’s version of Gerstein’s, but basically in his words, and he Arnishes.  This was the only answer I could offer (pg. 159)

 

Ch. 28 Journal style. Dad at Auschwitz. Mix of father and Bakers journal/record of the prompts he gives and the italics ‘this was Auschwitz – recount

Raining – Yossl hides under Genra’s red umbrella.

Pg. 163. ‘Nothing to see. You sure there is Birkenman?’

Pg. 165. Italics again. Genra.  “Maybe you just don’t remember”

Pg. 166. Yossl asks why he should (be made to) remember this – ‘let’s go home’ as soon as records are found.

Pg. 167. Our guided tour Burkina “Central Sauna” is set to begin.

Pg. 168 Ship off next Ship (the hair showing, link to present – his hair is of concern! B: describes his father’s comb-over-gone-wrong-in-the-wind.

Pg. 169 Crematoria

Pg. 170 the effects of this ‘tour’ become evident as Yossl becomes agitated, swearing etc

Rain pg. 173 – the same toilet from which he witnessed his friends being led to the shower block.

 

Ch. 29 Our sages, My parents. This is the religious history idea. Yard Vischem archives, Jerusalem. Theme park of memory.

Pg. 176 His parents prefer Tel Aviv (not so much ‘The Holocaust Connection’

Pg 177. You’re too serious about the ‘Holocaust’ my mother tells me. See middle of page: I was searching for her story.

Pg. 178. Written by a man – not one of the dead – not even a native of my mother’s birthplace etc.

Is this doc. and intervention of B’s or legit?

Pg. 179 – B’s mother ‘forgetting for a moment that [the man] survived to write his memoirs’ “Motif” Come. Come pg. 179 – idea of commands (from the soldier – here) the magic word – life at least.

Pg. 181. “so I can inhabit their place and time for a single moment” end chapter.

 

Ch. 31 Yossl’s reaction to ‘the Ukrainians’ – which they’ll think he wants to ‘take back the house’. Note the perspective in this journalistic style chap. Present tense – as if the surroundings e.g.: the funeral procession, is ‘aimed’ at the Bakers and his mothers testimony about her experiences Nov. 1942 – decapitated people after the Aktion etc. ROHATYN. Her testimony patched into B’s journal of their visit to Bolszowce.

Genia tells (pg. 185) how her Mother Raisl had returned to the town ‘with a bandaged head” and tried to take Genra out of the Ghetto, but they had to return.

Pg. 186 – No real explanation of why Rarsl couldn’t stay with genra.

Yossl: [brought here] “So I can have more nightmares” pg. 187 – After the war Genra returned to Bolsz with her parents. They head back to the Polish border, cross and then toward Warsaw. Tonight Yossl won’t sleep. Not safe (The upsetting experience).

 

Ch. 32 Again starts mid-conversation “prove it” – everlasting shame B. crosses the border! And she does – recites the Lord’s prayer in Polish and she loves to recite Hebrew poetry e.g.: “To a bird”

Contrasts the mother who observes the Sabbath etc with one who was is. “Jesus’ little helper” with the Lords prayer. ‘My mother (praying) this is not my mother’ of Alzheimer’s etc. This is not the person I know – because the ‘shared’ experience, the memories and personal history that B knows is hers, is suddenly different. Then large slabs of her re-collections about her time hiding. Pg. 192 Pitch black. Motif night 100% black only dark to pg. 193 also. The enigma pg. 193 as to why these people helped her – the ‘he had to’ (her father Leo Krochnal.

 

Ch. 33 Kogut, helped Leib, Yossl’s father – the idea of ‘collective memory’ – he has melded many men, apparently, into this one entity called Kogut (ct Dylan Thomas’ story – the August bank holidays. Journalistic/testimony pg. 196 Benjamin Kogut married to Malka. Pg197 the transfer of numbers and ‘for every alternative there is an alternative’ Pg. 198 “Imagine the alternative lives Leib B. might have occupied” present tense account of Leib’s (possible) experience.

Pg. 199. It is 16 June 1944. The 1st version So B models the story focus, “a reunion of the 3 male members of the B family in Auschwitz III (Yossl and Barnch with their father Leib) pg. 200 the other alternative.

 

Ch. 34 Starts with the song ‘Oh my Papa’ (a lovely song – you should listen to it on the net)

Pg. 203 Lullaby “her eyes would stare blankly” The pain of her “other pain” that her father ‘didn’t care for her’ and Pg. 204 the Israeli relative noting the performance of this book for the future (and it’s power to hurt as well as to remind/memoralise Miriam/MITSI – B learns of his mothers side of the family – tells of rarsl as a nice dresser, dancer etc. After the war she worked alone selling top Soviet soldiers etc – interspersed.

Pg. 206 – after her mother’s death – testimony. Poor childhood, she was ‘in every way a survivor’

Pg. 207 Mitsi begs B not to delve into “one more story” Rarsl wanted to respond to cremation with creation; to avenge the death of Mattis – Sylvia the Phoenix from Ashes. But there was another baby. “She” = the peasant woman “him” = Leo That’s how Genra was saved Pg. 208 – Sylvia had said “maybe ‘they’ swapped us”

“Such stories like you would never believe”.

-       Irony that their family’s stories are the strongest.

 

Ch. 35 Journal style – what his mother’s rescuers remember in the ‘now’.

  • Attic
  • Under the bed

Elzbreta (the peasant woman?) more then 50 years after she’d fed B’s mother – her search for children whose fate, was kept hidden” and she hugs the photo of B’s young [mother] “This is my heart” pg 211 and B’s raid on [his] mothers memory”.  But he needs the name of the village.  Bottom 211 – ct. Illuminated in the “imagined” landscape that magically contains the truth or the answer. B: I imagined it as a magical list. Follows his search and complication of lists etc

 

To find the place

Pg 213. Clues, culling, records etc. “Then memory visited her as a stranger from an – other world” at the synagogue etc

“P” – the secrecy lives on.

Pg 215. Mother’s testimony

Pg 216 B. returns to Poland on his own finds Elzbrieta. Power of ‘as if’ – but not ‘really’ Pg. 217 the certainties 1. House on hill. 2. The unnamed little girl – Genra 3. The older son of Elzb taught her to pray the Lords prayer. Pg. 218 The story is told differently – where’s the cellar, the little girl with her father etc.

Pg. 219 – they recall, my mother recalls, and ‘the many characters who walk in and out of Elsa’s story’

Pg. 221 Elsa’s son encourages her to tell B according to Elba, the baby had nothing to do with Genra and her father. Notice in all of this B. does not refer at all to Leo Krochnal by name, as if to reinforce or even imitate the uncertainty or ‘darkness’ of those times, and of his mothers position in the situation. Note his insertion into this scenario the account of his mothers ‘eruption’. Ch end – he’s wondering “where” the little Jewish girl they remember went, as his mother insists it is not her!

 

Ch. 36 Buchenwald Journal his father on site looking for Block 29 / barrack

Pg. 225 ‘My father speaks in present tense as if time has not passed! Punctuated by testimony. Pg. 226 I found my father in a photograph – hidden wearing striped pyjamas and a matching cap, and other ‘images which yielded clues’

The Buchenwald Boys , the Kinderyorn. Joe baker becomes Yossl Bekiermaszyn – Mother more melancholy for her (pg. 228) not only time lost but time that never was. Links back to B’s childhood.

Pg. 230 It is April 1945 – The Boys first lesson in history. My father – yesterdays tattooed prisoner, commissioned to remember (pg 231) (bottom) “Each fragment of memory, boxed”

Pg 232 “Don’t turn me into a memory” (mother) SHAME TREBLINKA

 

Ch. 37 Journal. Father, the survivor. Name included on the list. The search through the survivor register. Facs doc pg. 235 and the hand-written signature

Pg. 237 ‘for my mother, there are no release forms’ Finds Leo Krochnal’s life (p 239) “Maybe I am someone else”

Pg. 240 ‘Maybe your father reconstructed his life because he could not live with his real one. (ct. Grandfather is illuminated) Pg 240. Nowhere, Nowhere – slit wrists

 

Ch. 38 His parents never met their tormentors. Dreams – Vale of tears etc

 

Ch 39. Mother’s testimony – recitation of “to a bird”  and her testimony is punctuated by the poem.

Pg 244. Genra remembers Rarsl with a sack of ice on her head – she dies. Comparison of experiencing Hitler and the death of her mother. Pg. 245 B’s mother’s ‘head snuggled against her mothers tombstone’ and B sees ‘the same frightened child’ etc

Pg 246 treasured photo – intermediary period. All family stuff here. Pg 247 B’s question about the photographer – Doesn’t he know that in 2 months [her] smile will be erased. Retrospect. Search and recount of the Krochnal family.

Pg. 248 ‘Today all we have is one of the Rarsl’s shoes (ct. Illuminated and the amber talisman) ‘It fits me’ – family fits. B sometimes touches the shoe – a material, physical reminder. (ct Irene’s Diamonds) Pg. 249 Mother’s testimony and the mountains of shoes in Auschwitz Ch. end – destiny.

 

Ch. 40 Journal. B’s mother now understands the breakdown and B’s sickness as an 11 month old baby.

Pg. 252 The boys names – apostolic! “I would be Hinda or Yentale”

1958 – Changed the name to baker, pg. 253

Pg. 253 – life – Yossl signed the B’s birth certificate as he’d signed the release forms in Buchenwald. Pg. 254 – expl. Why B has taken Raphael – put the history back into the name. Breakdown Sept 1960 mark’s luck – cough etc. Pg. 255 – and that’s when the tablets began. The fluffy horsie – passed on to B’s son – memory and memento and ‘saving’ – the child in the oxygen tent / link to past again – the motherless child etc.

 

Ch. 41 Bureau of missing relatives.

Pg. 257 Illumination ‘I need to know’ Search for Benjamin Kogut. Pg. 258 the rhetorical up’s and swap positions. Kogut’s help to Leib.

Pg. 259 B is 9 years too late (Bottom) “My thoughts had never paused to consider the fate of Ws (K’s) wife” – the historian is interested in what he needs to, or what concerns him.

Pg. 260 The significance of witness – the connection between these people, even if metaphysical, and its power/significance to Baker.

“Again I find myself peering into memory’s black hole, and then the realization” Malka watched Hinda die.

 

Ch. 42 HINDA. Note the link to the previous chapter. Already done in detail.

 

Ch. 43 The poem. A child is born

 

Ch. 44 Journal. ‘My father is lost in Wierzbnik’ to remember and his mother with the red umbrella again. Yad vashem. Interspersed testimony.

Pg. 279 “My mother survived somewhere in the blackness” Stone/Rock. ‘No-one calls out Genra!’ – there’s no-one to recall her – no shared experience.

Pg. 278 ‘breathing words and letters whose shapes will be entombed inside the rock’s petrified memory.

Pg. 280 Time after and time before was experienced differently. They are the Buchenwald Boys – not Auschwitz or Treblinka – where ID is marked by death (in a list?) or tattooed numbers. Pg. 281 B remembers trying to learn piano accordion – waved quickly.

Pg. 282 – My fathers journey back into life (ct illuminated – grandfather has made no such journey – still trapped in the blackness of the death he didn’t die.

Pg’s 283/4 The story of the B Boys going to Switzerland. 284 – list of things Yossl did in Switzerland. Mummy and periphrasis – was reborn in the American occupied Zone – not in camp grounds, but with her Aunt and Uncle.

Pg. 286 ‘maybe if….’. But their memorial is a long way from their ‘now’ (or is it?) in Jerusalem’s ‘Valley of destroyed communities’ – separate.

 

Ch. 45 Arrahan – ‘Drew a thin and miraculous thread between my parent’s lives.

Eccentric ultra Orthodox penitent. Questions re: Jews being punished by God etc.. His view of events and of history (and memory?) is very different from B’s – theocentric to say the least. “This is the way God made the world”

Pg. 290 B: How easy it is to get things wrong. Can’t answer Q’s about the Wierzbnik Judenrat etc – because he fled, to a village in the Ukraine – to a Kfar/village called BOLSZOWCE! B: tears! 4 months of hiding – slept with other refugees, Krochnal? No. He remembers anaphora/rpt and he returned to Wierzbnik and was enslaved with B’s father.

Pg. 292 Avr: Every prayer opens another gate. 6 million prayers.  Religious discussion. Bushes burn in a field with no trace of ash. Ch. end to look beyond – through – towards the 50th gate where light hovers inside the darkness.

 

Ch. 46 Lists of the dead. Survivor syndrome. List of symptoms. This contains strong links between past and present.

 

Ch. 47 In the end, the beginning pg. 302 June 1946. Photo, only 4 months till Rarsl’s death.  Historian cap on, B can know this – those in the photo did not. Leo Krochnal’s itemized list of family members. B traces his journey.

Pg. 305, The Krochnal crelds . B’s mother – Mine! Mine!

Pg. 306 Yevgenia Krochnal’s rapport straight as ‘Wheee!” Ch. end with the ‘gift’ of the report.

 

Ch. 48 Journal style again. B’s lock of hair. He remembers Golden head as a lullaby. She says it is all she has “memories”. Nothing more. B requests to be allowed to ‘take them’. No! The hair you can have. The rest is mine.

 

Ch. 49 Back to the dancing and testimony (Journal style) pg. 310, 7 Jews – less than the norm (the number needed to hold a religious service) Not celebrate – commemorate. They commemorate by celebrating the overall festive atmosphere – as Jews trade memories and poker cards. Punctuated with his parents testimony – this time patched into the ‘journal’ together.

Pg. 312 and 313. Wraps up – Buchenwald in Melbourne and what do I (B) remember?

Pg. 313 lists and the Buchenwald Ball and the dances. Ends with someone’s testimony lionment ‘You had a grandmother, you had hereditary the circular nature of the thing.

 

Ch. 50 The end, where it all (and we)  began!!