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FICTION

YOEL H OFFMAN N

7Catschen and The
Book ofJoseph'

By Yoel Hoffman
Translated from the
Hebrew by David Kriss,
Alan Treister and
Eddie Levenston.
New Directions, 161 pp., $1795.

These two novellas, Yoel Hoffman's
English-language debut, deliver a
cache of themes particular to post-
modern Israeli literature, all the while
paying homage to Yiddish folklore
and Jewish mysticism.
"The Book of Joseph" locates Joseph
Silverman and his son, Yingele, in
Berlin on the cusp of the Holocaust.
They are Hungarian Jews looking for
economic opportunity as well as relief
from the intense anti-Semitism of
their village. Joseph becomes a tailor
to German gentry, but is abandoned
by them after Kristallnacht, the 1938
,
"night of broken glass."
The coming Holocaust, forecasted
in surreal images and mystical
metaphors, is filtered through lyrical,
spiritual and historical prisms. Mr.
Hoffman writes that "He [Joseph]
inserts the needle in the trousers of
Herr Joachim and the sun sets. And
when he withdraws the needle with
his other hand, the moon rises. He
again inserts it and the moon sets, and
when he pulls it out, the sun rises.
And from among the lights in the
heavens Moses comes down from Mt.
Sinai, step by step, stitch by stitch."
After Kristallnacht, writes Mr. Hoff-

6/12
1998

80

man, "Germany remained as transpar-
ent as crystal."
The novella "Katschen" is a medita-
tion on irony. Nine-year-old Katschen,
orphaned when his mother dies and
his father is institutionalized, is passed
among elderly relatives — German
immigrants who consider themselves
in exile in Israel. Katschen does not
escape the burden of their dislocation.
He is a stranger in his own country.
Katschen is eventually deposited in
a kibbutz where an elder attempts to
change the boy's name. Katschen intu-
its this as an attempt to eradicate his
past, a prelude to a living death. He
promptly escapes to find his schizo-
phrenic father, Ernst. The two slip
away from the mental hospital and
wander around northern Israel.
Israel is as young as Katschen. Its
language is undeveloped. At the time
of independence, Hebrew offered only
a limited vocabulary and was therefore
displaced by other languages. To
emphasize this, Mr. Hoffman (at times
to annoying effect) sprinkles his narra-
tive with German and Yiddish.
"My father hears smells," Katschen
thinks to himself. At his most affect-
ing, so does Yoel Hoffman.

— Judith Bolton-Fasman

`Shadows of
a Childhood'

By Elisabeth Gille
Translated from the French by Linda
Coverdale.
The New Press, 138 pp., $23.00.

There is no dearth of eyewitness
accounts, history books or fiction
about the Holocaust. And yet there is
the unsettling feeling that it is not
enough. The Holocaust is a rupture in
history like no other. The death of
Elisabeth Gille, a French writer and
editor who lived on the edges of the
Holocaust, is a pointed reminder of
how crucial it is to understand that
rupture through the survivors them-
selves. Gille and her older sister were
hidden in a convent during the war.
"Shadows of a Childhood" is a power-
ful fictional analogue to Gille's autobi-
ography.
Gille's alter ego is five-year-old Lea
Levy. Lea continuously tries the
patience of the nuns protecting her.

She remains steadfastly attached to her
Ukraine, to highly assimilated par-
parents, who have been deported to a
ents who spoke exclusively in Ger-
concentration camp. Her fantasy over
man to their only child. That com-
their return is eventually extinguished
fortable middle-class life, however,
in one of the novel's eerier scenes. Lea
ended brutally for Mr. Appelfeld
encounters a ghostly young boy
when at the age of eight he witnessed
"whose black light turned inward as
the murder of his mother by the
though a vision of hell had seared and
Nazis. His father was deported to
reversed the lens." She asks him if he
one concentration camp, young
has seen her parents.
Aharon to another. The father died,
"Gassed," he tells her. "Poisoned
but the son escaped to the woods
like rats. Burned in an oven. Turned
where he lived a Dickensian life
into black smoke. Poof, your parents.
among thieves and prostitutes. He
Poof."
eventually made his way to Israel and
Lea's only solace is
distinguished him-
her friendship with
self as one of the
Benedicte Gaillac, a
premier Israeli writ-
student two years her
ers of his genera-
senior at the convent
tion.
school. It is an endur-
In sharp contrast
ing friendship which
to the erudite Mr.
leads to Benedicte's
Appelfeld, Erwin
parents adopting Lea
Siegelbaum's only
after the war. The
life
experience has
isabeth Glite
Gaillacs, pivotal fig-
been the Holocaust.
ures in the French
It so consumes him
resistance, attempt to
that he cannot rec-
A NOVEL OF
shield Lea from the
ognize his moral
truth about the Holo-
center, although on
WAR AND FRIENDSHIP
caust.
occasion he does
Although Gille
happen upon it. He
ends her novel darkly,
has denied himself
she does sound a note
any chance of hav-
of redemption. Lea
ing a normal life by
comes to terms with
obsessively riding
her past while taking a course in phi-
the trains in Austria for over 40 years,
losophy in which the professor exhorts
stopping in the same small towns, fre-
her to "love one's fellow man without
quenting the same bars and hotels.
either forgiving or forgetting."
He is the archetypal wandering Jew
brushing up against the archetypal
— Judith Bolton-Fasman
anti-Semites. It is no accident that the
motion of the train lulls Erwin into
ruminating too much and then points
him towards revenge.
Siegelbaum's annual journey always
By Aharon Appelfeld
begins on March 27 from the station
Translated from the Hebrew
in which he was abandoned by the
by Jeffrey M. Green.
Nazis to die in a cattle car. After three
Schocken Books, 195 pp., $21.00.
days the door was finally unbolted
"The Iron Tracks," Aharon
and he was granted his paradoxical
Appelfeld's 11th novel to be translated
freedom; one that is curtailed by
into English, is a brilliant probing of
memories of seeing his parents mur-
the psychology of Holocaust survivor
dered by a Nazi officer named
Erwin Siegelbaum. Exploring the con-
Nachtigel. The railroad tracks that
sequences of vengeance, Mr.
once led to an almost certain death
Appelfeld tells a more immediate and
now lead to irrevocable revenge.
graphic story than he has in his previ-
Erwin Siegelbaum is on a never-
ously translated fiction. And like
ending trip that takes on the dimen-
many of his protagonists, Siegelbaum
sions of a pilgrimage. His story repre-
is a permanently wounded man.
sents post-Holocaust fiction at its
Mr. Appelfeld is very familiar with
most brilliant and most vital.
those wounds. He was born in 1932
— Judith Bolton-Fasman
in Bukovina, now a part of the

SHADOWS

OF A

CHILDHOOD

40, ;0:130,

•••

`The Iron Tracks

