Defending The Indefensible

DIANA LIEBERMAN
Ste- Writer

grainy photograph, circa
1930s, of Alan Dershowitz's
Eastern European relatives
is symbolic of his latest
novel, Just Revenge (Warner Books,
$24.95). What began as a nonfiction
account of his family during the
Holocaust instead grew into a
novel that helped satisfy his need
to find out what happened to
those who killed many members
of his family. Only one boy in
the photograph survived.
"I had taken each of my chil-
dren to Europe, to the
killing fields,"
Dershowitz said in
a recent telephone
interview. "I had
a lot of informa-
tion, a lot of facts.
But, to write nonfic-
tion, every comma
has to be correct. So
I decided to create
this professor who
had lost his family."
Dershowitz, who
combines fiction
with fragments of

Alan Dershowitz takes on issues
ofHolocaust guilt and retribution
in his second work offiction.

autobiography in his 13th book, is the
opening-night speaker at the Jewish
Community Center's 48th annual
Jewish Book Fair on Saturday, Nov. 6.
His talk will expand on the issues
of the Holocaust and justice that form
the philosophical basis for Just
Revenge.
As in The Advocate's Devil,
Dershowitz's first foray into fiction,

a ft

0

sg

snowy
:err

w
A .r

gi gtRAIS.x.
.sx
El

The 1999 Jewish Book Fair
opens Saturday, Nov. 6, with a
presentation by noted defense
attorney Alan Dershowitz,

this second novel involves Cambridge-
based defense attorney Abe Ringel.
This time, Ringel is faced with
defending an old friend, Max
Menuchen, a venerable and mild-
mannered professor of religion at
Harvard University
As a young man, Menuchen had
witnessed his family's execution in the
forests of Lithuania. Fifty years later,
he realizes that the murderer, unrecog-
nized and unpunished, lives only a few
towns away from his in suburban
Boston. The professor decides to take
the law into his own hands.
Although fictional, this set of cir-
cumstances brings to mind numerous
real-life stories of Nazis and collabora-
tors who went on to live full and satis-
fying lives, with no consequences for
their actions.
"It's absolutely inexcusable,"
Dershowitz said. We can trace so many
of the perpetrators, and what happened
to them was exactly that — nothing."
Attorney Dershowitz, 61, feels
strongly about seeing justice served.
He has been characterized by Time
magazine as a "legal star" and "the top
lawyer of last resort in the counrry."
Dershowitz has been an outspoken

INDEFENSIBLE on page 12

Diana Lieberman can be reached at
(248) 354-6060, ext. 247, or by
e - mail, dlieberm@thtiewishnews.com

,

1Q/29
1999

P ♦ r

De 6a Jewish News

