Gigi Fenster: Feverish

Gigi Fenster gave up a career as a lawyer to write. She enrolled in a creative writing course, completed a Masters, then a PhD programme, but ran out of inspiration. The stories wouldn't come. She was not a Gigi Grisham who could turn out pot boilers about crooked lawyers. She never expected to make enough money to recoup the cost of her writing courses. She read. The bibliography at the back of her book would put off most creative writing students who think that creative writing is about letting your imagination roam. Gigi's imagination was in the doldrums. She was preoccupied with her family, her children, her psychiatrist father, her friends with their own problems. This was what she knew, this is what she decided to write about. She thought that if she could induce a fever that would kick her imagination into gear, so she explored the history of medicine and what people knew about fever. If illness was all in the mind, she explored the history of psychiatry. Above all, she looked at her own history, the grandfather who moved from his shtetl somewhere in darkest Eastern Europe to Vienna to study medicine and shared his lecture theatre with Sigmund Freud and Julius von Wagner-Jauregg, two pioneering psychiatrists, whose treatments were at the opposite end of the spectrum, empathy and understanding versus ruthless and painful coercion. Somehow the same issue cropped up in Pat Barker's Regeneration, which I have read recently, far too belatedly. In that, one doctor tried to rehabilitate his psychologically damaged patients with care and sympathy, while another tortured his patients until they preferred the trenches and front battle lines to the psychological treatment. Reading Feverish is like being part of a random conversation. I kept thinking, I know what you are talking about, I know someone like that, I've been there, done that. It is described as a 'memoir', but it lacks the structure of a memoir, this happened, then that happened. It is a collection of incidents, imagined conversations, reflections about books, and in particular, Wuthering Heights. There is more to it than the chatty style would indicate. Listen to Kim Hill's interview with Gigi Fenster.

Barak Obama, Lyndon Johnson and me

I am afraid that through an oversight I didn't get my invitation to the dinner with Barack Obama. Perhaps this was just as well, because I couldn't have gone anyway, I had the children visiting and I had to mind my charming, brilliant grandson, George, and spoil him for the rest of his life by exposing him to some Mozart. He stood, watched and was transfixed. But although I missed my chance to meet Barack Obama, the occasion made me think of my encounter with Lyndon Johnson on 19 October 1966. Apart from feeding the hungry, that is, the hungry former President and his 1000 best mates in New Zealand, Barack Obama's visit had no special purpose. John Key and Obama can play golf in Hawaii any day of the week. President Johnson on the other hand, the good second-hand car salesman that he was, came here with the purpose of persuading the New Zealand public, as well as the government to go along with a war in Vietnam that nobody really wanted.  He drove down Willis Street, and I, with many others, stood on the balcony of the old Empire Building. He drove past in his large open car and waved to the crowd, and to me personally.  He was a larger than life personality, a huge, tall man with an infectious charm. Nothing wrong with Barack Obama's charm, I have a great respect for him, both as a politician and as an ethical human being, Lyndon Johnson on the other hand, was someone I was suspicious of. I was not prepared to buy the product he was peddling. I had more time for Ho Chi Minh, the son of a Confucian scholar who didn't find it beneath his dignity to work as a cook's aid in France while a student there, and became the revolutionary leader of Viet Nam, or General Giap, who defeated the French colonial forces  in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu with his peasant army. Yet there is a lot to be said for used car salesmen. President Johnson achieved more, and left a more lasting legacy in his one term in office, then President Obama did over two terms. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 which he pushed through by wheeling and dealing, against against vigorous entrenched opposition, his War on Poverty, his educational reforms, his Voting Rights Act of 1965, which stopped the exclusion of coloured voters from voting, were all watersheds in shaping the United States of today. It was his inability to extricate the U.S form its involvement in the Vietnam war that defeated him. By comparison, Barack Obama had an easy ride, and is remembered more fondly. I am sorry that he had to eat his dinner without my company, but I relish the memory of my encounter with Lyndon Johnson.

All This by Chance

Vincent O'Sullivan gave me a copy of his new novel, All This by Chance and very kindly inscribed it for me. Vincent and I go back to the 1960s when I worked for the New Zealand office of the Oxford University Press and Vincent was an up and coming young scholar. Oxford published a successful anthology of New Zealand Short Stories in the World's Classics series in 1953. That was edited by Dan Davin, a prolific New Zealand writer, then Assistant Secretary to the Delegated of the Oxford University Press, a mouthful of a title, but in fact, in charge of the Clarendon Press and academic publishing.  Ten years on Davin suggested that that it was time for a second collection of New Zealand short stories. A lot had happened to New Zealand writing in the intervening years. Davin suggested that we approach Ian Gordon, the respected professor of English at Victoria University, a scholar with international reputation, who wrote about early Scottish literature as well as about Katherine Mansfield and New Zealand writers in general. Ian Gordon said that he was too busy to take this task on, but there is a young man who had just joined his staff, Vincent O'Sullivan who would do justice to this project. Vincent would visit our show room and editorial cubyhole in the now demolished Empire Building in Willis Street and I suppose we must have chatted about this and that. It was only many years later that Vincent told me that he found me then a forbidding presence. 

     And this leads me to his new novel, All This by Chance. It is a rich, complex books, with vivid narrative and set pieces, but the theme I related to was, near the beginning of the book, that we can't see ourselves as others see us. Stephen, the young pharmacist from Auckland in London on his OE, meets Eva, a young woman, brought up by a kindly Quaker couple in England. Stephen thinks that he left a dull uninteresting place behind, while Eva thinks of Stephen's New Zealand as a vibrant, exciting world. 

      Perhaps people who knew me when I was at school, university, Teachers' College, when I was young, thought of me as a European, at home in a rich European culture, someone who knew a lot about a culture New Zealanders who grew up here only struggled to grasp, while I thought that my New Zealand contemporaries knew a lot I didn't know, could shoot pigs and goats, fix things with No 8 fencing wire, pour concrete, and yes, some of them read widely and knew more about European literature and art than I ever hoped to learn. However, they might have sensed the difference between applying yourself to serious study and accumulating knowledge about culture, and growing up with this culture, breathing it living it, no matter how superficially. The books around my home were by Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, Arthur Koestler. I was ignorant of the popular music of the time, but could whistle entire Haydn or Beethoven symphonies. 

     In Vincent O'Sullivan's book, a damaged survivor of the Holocaust, a forgotten aunt of Eva, joins the household and her silent presence impacted on the children and even the grandchildren. Similarly my wife's Judy's aunt. Lisa, damaged by her Holocaust experiences, lived with her family, I knew any number of people who were damaged by the Holocaust. I also knew people made of asbestos like my parents, whom no fire could touch, because having survived the Holocaust, they were impervious to whatever threats others imagined. But my children, like those in the novel, grew up with stories of danger, of betrayal, of starvation, and of people disappearing, and these impacted on their view of the world.

Cause beyond ourselves

My grandmother, Grosz Jozsa, nee Weinberger, died in May 1945, a few weeks after her daughter, my mother, returned from death, from the Lichtenwört concentration camp. She had lived to shepherd her grandchildren, my brother and I, through the the last months of the war, with the accelerated murder of Jews. She sheltered us in the Budapest ghetto, helped us to survive the siege and bombardment of the city, saw to it that her husband, my grandfather and my handicapped aunt, Margitka came through alive and undamaged. Her task was done. She could let go. She died of typhus, she died because her mission in this world was complete.

My grandfather was bereft. Jozsa, known as Pepi, the girl from the inn in Ráckeve whom he married, was the rock of his life. She had enabled him to live a life of great esteem, enjoy respect which was a key to his success. She kept diverse parts of the extended family,the cousins, nieces and nephews and distant relatives, together in her home that exuded an air of orderly, middle class comfort with large heavy furniture, reflecting stability and a measure of prosperity. With Jozsa gone, it was up to her daughters, my mother and her sister Márta to look after him.

Grandfather Gyula, a boy from the country, from the town of Gyönk, was the son of Solomon, a wine wholesaler, remembered for his strength. He had wrestled a wild bull that went on a rampage in the market, an incident noted in one of the books of Báro Eötvös Jozsef, and was the son of Charne, who my mother was named after, daughter of an old Nográd district family renowned for their beautiful daughters. He was educated at the Reformatus Gimnazium, one of the elite schools in Budapest. As a young man he worked for the Tallow Marketing Board, and then struck out for himself using the business experience and the contacts he gained. At one time he was in advertising, producing scribble pads with advertisements printed on them, later, again making use of his contacts in the tallow and oil industry, he acquired the agencies for some of the world's leading manufacturers and producers, among them Mitsubishi, who marketed whale oil, and Uni-Lever, with a wide range of products. He was the go-between between these large international conglomerates and manufactures in Hungary, some on a modest scale, of soaps, cosmetics, and various chemical products. He would travel around Budapest, driven by his regular taxi driver, Mr. Diamand and call on his clients;. He never wanted to own his own car and drive himself. Grosz bácsi, uncle Grosz, was a well known and respected personality in the trade.

After the war he worked on re-establishing his business and clientele. He was in his seventies by then, but this was his life. These were his friends, the people he knew. With the communist takeover, with businesses nationalized, his customers disappeared. Life made him redundant. He found fulfilment in his involvement with the Páva Street Synagogue. He was elected to the Board, he was one of the gabbais, sitting in the front to the left of the Ark. His friends were his fellow Board members, Rochlitz, the retired pharmacist, Kunstaedter, men his age, Weisz Karcsi, a generation younger. They worked to keep the synagogue going. Rabbi Farkas, the founding rabbi of the synagogue, appointed in 1928, was shot into the Danube in 1944, Rabbi Rosenblum, the second minister, who later took over, moved to Israel. Cantor Tennenbaum, the portly hussar who had served in the Austro-Hungarian cavalry was killed in the Holocaust, the shammes, Lézer, the fixer, the jack of all trades, shochet, mohel, baal koreh, debt collector who knew everyone, moved to Canada. It befell to my grandfather, Grosz Gyula, and his cohort of old men to keep the congregation going. They had to negotiate for funds with the Budapest Jewish Organisation, they had to arrange aliyot and make sure that no one's feelings were trampled on, make sure that the services were conducted in an orderly fashion. They arranged functions for the Holidays, arranged events for charity, cultural events, guest speakers. My grandfather was kept busy and found purpose in his life.

We, my mother, who of his daughters was the most like his wife Jozsa, my brother and I, his only grandchildren, abandoned him. He appreciated that we left for possibly a better future, untainted by the memories of a world that had betrayed us. He would write us postcards in minuscule handwriting but complained that his eyes were failing. We would write back to him. People would stop him in the street and ask him how are the children, and he would produce our letters, proud of the good marks we got in school and proud of our loving words. My aunt Marta, the younger daughter in Budapest, cared for him. He died at the age of 87. He was honoured by his community, and remembered in the many messages of condolence and obituaries. He had made the most of his days. He lived in dignity.

The Pava Street Synagogue was redeveloped and turned into a Holocaust Memorial Centre. Its impressive exhibition tracing the story of the Hungarian Holocaust is closed for the present. The congregation meets in one of the small side rooms, it is still active.

It's been a while

I wrote my last of my 276 blogs in June last year, 2017. A lot happened in my life since then, we moved house, moved into a comfortable small villa in a retirement village, Judy, my wife, had a major spinal operation, which at the time I thought was touch and go, but it was successful, though she still has a long way to go before she recovers her enjoyment of life. I gave up blogging, because I thought 'Who cares?' it is a piece of self indulgence, but i read something today that I thought is worth sharing with whoever reads my blogs.
I am reading Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, a profound, thought provoking book, and in it he quotes Josiah Royce's The Philosophy of Loyalty. Royce wanted to why simply existing - why being merely housed, fed and safe and alive -seems empty and meaningless to us.  ... The answer, he believed, is that we all seek a cause beyond ourselves. Royce called this dedication to a cause beyond oneself loyalty. He regarded it as the opposite of individualism. The individualist puts his self-interest first, seeing his own pain, pleasure and existence as his greatest concern. For and individualist, loyalty to causes that have nothing to do with self-interest is strange. ...
In fact human beings need loyalty. It does not necessarily produce happiness, and can even be painful, but we all require devotion to something more than ourselves for our lives to be endurable. Without it we only have our desires to guide us, and they are fleeting, capricious, and insatiable. ...
The only way death is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater.
Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, pp125-127

A talk I gave at the Holocaust Centre of NZ on May 21, 2017

The Holocaust in Hungary and Romania

Holocaust between East and West

Holocaust in Romania and Hungary

After the peace treaties at the end of the First World War there were winners and losers. Hungary was one of the losers, It lost two-third of its territory and a third of its Hungarian speaking people. Romania was one of the winners, gaining large areas at the expense of Hungary and Russia.

The aim of the Hungarian government in the 1930s was to reclaim these lost territories, while the aim of Romanian government was to retain them. It was these aspirations that prompted their alliance with Nazi Germany.

Winners and losers

Peace treaties at the end of W W 1 changed borders and created new states.

Hungary lost 2/3 of its land and 1/3 of its people

Romania was greatly enlarged.

Hungarian foreign policy was driven by its aim to regain lost land, while Romania's aimed to retain territories.

Alliance with Germany was seen as the best way of achieving these aims

Murder of stateless Jews from Hungary

Until 1944 Hungary protected its Hungarian Jewish citizens, but in 1941, Jews who were not Hungarian citizens were exiled to Kamenets Podolsk across the Ukrainian border. 17,000 were murdered there in one of the first massacres

The Germans occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944. By then it was clear to all but the most single minded Nazi that Germany was losing the war. The Soviet army was moving through Belarus towards Germany, British and American troops were working their way north in Italy. The Germans could no longer count on the loyalty of Hungary. One of the signs of its disloyalty was that Hungary refused to address the 'Jewish question'. Not only did Hungary refused to hand over Hungarian Jews to Germany to be murdered, it provided shelter to Jews fleeing from Slovakia, Poland, and other parts of Nazi occupied Europe.

On March 19, 1944 Germany occupied Hungary, and immediately introduced measures for the isolation and deportation of Jews.

By March 1944 the Hungarian Jewish community of about 650,000 was the only large Jewish community left alive in Europe. To address this issue, Adolf Eichmann arrived with the first occupying troops with his specialist experts on transporting and liquidating Jews, and the persecution, isolation and ghettoisation started immediately.

When Hungary was occupied by the Germans (March 19, 1944), a large number of Jews were arrested and sent to the SS-run Kistarcsa camp administered by the Hungarian police. From there they were deported to Auschwitz

Working from East to West, town by town, Hungarian gendarmes under Germans supervision cleared the Hungarian countryside of Jews. Clare Galambos, living in Szombathely, one of the most western cities, close to the Austrian border was on one of the last trains. 437,000 were deported on 145 trains Four trains a day with about 3000 on each, 12000 people arrived in Auschwitz every day. Of the 437,000 about 320,000, children, old people, the lame and the sick, were killed immediately on arrival. The rest, like Clare Galambos, were selected for slave labour.

Budapest however, with 200,000 Jews, 20% of the city's population, presented a special logistic challenge. The Jews of Budapest were to be deported in the middle of July 1944, but on July 7, Horthy, the Regent, the head of the Hungarian government ordered a halt to the deportations.

Between July and October the Hungarian government sought to follow the Romanian example and pull out of its alliance with Germany and change sides. The Germans arrested Horthy, the head of the government, and his son, and installed the extreme nationalist antisemitic government of Szalasi and his Arrow Cross party. This lead to uncontrolled mayhem and the random murder of thousands of Jews.

With the overthrow of the Hungarian government in October by the Arrow Cross antisemitic regime, deportations resumed.

Deportation were resumed on foot. Trains were no longer available. The death camps in Poland had already been destroyed or captured by Soviet troops, so the the Hungarian Jews were deported mainly to Austria. These included my father who ended up in the notorious Mauthausen camp and its sub-camp Günzkirchen, and my mother who was in Lichtenwörth, a women's camp close to the Austrian Hungarian border, a sub-camp of Mauthausen. In November the Jews remaining in Budapest were confined in the newly established ghetto. My brother and I survived there in the care of our grandparents

During the Szalasi's Arrow Cross regime, gangs perpetrated a reign of arbitrary terror against the Jews of Budapest. Hundreds of Jews, both men and women, were violently murdered.

Memorial on the Danube river bank commemorating those who were shot into the river by Arrow Cross murder squads

Jews of Romania

Your chance of survival depended on where you lived. Large proportion of the Jews of Bessarabia and Moldova were killed, but the Jews of the Banat and the Regat [Old Kingdom] had a better chance of survival.

Whereas Jews in Hungary had been aligned with the liberal Hungarian nationalist movement since at least the Revolution of 1848 and were granted full Hungarian citizenship rights in 1868, Jews of Romania were not granted citizenship until after the First World War, and then only reluctantly, mandated as part of the Peace Treaty settlements. Antisemitism was deeply ingrained in Romanian politics, closely linked, as in other parts of Europe, to anti-liberal forces, and acceptance of Jews was a significant divisive issue. The incorporation after the First World War in Romania of territories with large Jewish communities that were formerly part of Russia, added to the perception that Jews were an alien element in Romanian society.

There was widespread opposition to the granting of equal rights to Jews. There were a number of pogroms in the 1920s, demand for the exclusion of Jews from universities and the professions. After the Nazis assumed power in Germany, violent antisemitism became an integral part of the political movements of both the right wing regime of Ion Antonescu and the extreme fascist organisation of the Iron Guard. Starting in October 1941 as part of their conflict with the government of King Carol II, the Iron Guard began a massive antisemitic campaign torturing and beating Jews and looting their shops. Coinciding with the failed coup in which the Iron Guard tried to overthrow the government the attack on Jews culminated in the pogrom in Bucharest in which 125 Jew were killed in the most brutal manner, their corpses hung from meat hooks in the slaughterhouse.

In the northern provinces that were annexed from Russia by Romania, Jews were largely unassimilated Eastern Europeans. In some towns and cities, Dorohoi, Botosani, Jasi and some smaller towns, Jews formed a majority. Many were poor, though there was also an elite, essential for the economy of the province.

Deportation to Transnistria

After Romania occupied the Soviet territories of Bessarabia and Bukovina between 45,000 and 60,00 Jews were killed by their Romanian neighbours and 150,000 were deported to Transnistria, a district east of the Dniester river that came under Romanian occupation. Many were shot, others died of exposure, disease and starvation. Killings took place before the arrival of occupying armies. Members of the German Einsatsgruppen D were shocked by the primitive brutality of the Romanian slaughter.

Deportation of the Jews of Bessarabia and Bukovina was completed by the middle of 1942. However in Transylvania, the Banat and the Regat, the Old Kingdom of Rpmania, most Jews remained in place despite German pressure to deport the remaining Jews to Polish camps. Ion Antonescu, the head of the Romanian government, began to have doubts about the final German victory. Why should he give up his Jews when the Hungarian government refused to do so. Deportations ceased, the Jews of the Regat and the Banat survived, and some who had been deported to Transnistria were able to return. Antonescu stopped the murder of Jews when he understood that this was contrary to national interest.

In the end, 50% of the Jews of Romania, 300,000 of the 600,00 survived, compared with 30 % of the Jews of Hungary, 200,000 of the 650,000 who lived there before the Holocaust.

Romanian soldiers rounding up the Bessarabian Jews, summer 1941