Seneca and Szánto Gyuri

Although we didn't see each other much and I knew little about him, we were firm friends, like young people who meet and immediately establish a rapport. In some ways we were a lot alike, in other ways we were very different. Gyuri, George, arrived in New Zealand after the 1956 Hungarian uprising. He had ambitions to become a judge. That was in Hungary. Then history intervened. Justice in communist Hungary was somewhat elusive. To become a judge an ethical young man would have had to compromise his principles. But this is probably not why he left. He probably left because he saw this as his one opportunity to leave and try his luck in a far distant Western country. I suppose he ended up in New Zealand because the lottery that offered refugee destination in Vienna to the many thousands of people who fled Hungary suggested it. New Zealand was ready to accept young men with no qualifications apart from their willingness to work. So here was George, a young Hungarian Jewish intellectual I could talk with about literature, politics, life in general, and we played chess. Although I had lived in New Zealand for some eight years, and thought of myself as reasonably assimilated, I found in Gyuri a kindred spirit. I would have been teaching at the time and trying to complete my university degree. Gyuri found work in Tourist Hotels in various parts of the country. He had a lot of personal charm, and presented quite a dashing slight figure. Perhaps he also considered doing a part time course at university, but I am not sure about that. What he really wanted to do is to go sailing. He bought a boat, moored it in Evans Bay and lived on that. Once he took me and a girl whose name I can't now recall, on a cruise around the harbour. Gyuri, George, was popular with girls. It was memorable, because we were becalmed just outside Oriental bay, and the boat stopped completely still. We didn't have a functioning motor. After waiting for a while for some breeze, Gyuri got into the dinghy and rowed us, towed us to our destination. This is one of my vivid memories of him. Gyuri and I tried to find out place within the local Jewish community, but were not made welcome. We were too different, had too little in common at the time with other young Jewish men and women in the Jewish circles. Once we got all dressed up to go to a function and were turned away. Perhaps we didn't know that we should have booked in advance, or had to be members in some organisation we didn't even know existed. Anyway, the incident left a bad impression. Neither of us cared much about religion, but being Jewish meant a lot to us. Gyuri moved away from Wellington, still sailing and moored his boat, I think, in Auckland. New vistas, new opportunities. Then tragedy struck. Gyuri was hit on his head by the boom of his sail. He didn't appear to suffer significant injury, but he lost his hearing. He went completely deaf. The doctors could not establish what caused his deafness, there appeared to be no obvious cause. Gyuri hoped that the Mayo Clinic in America, with its state of the art facilities, might be able to help. Gyuri and I kept exchanging letters, he despairing, writing of his despair in a facetious light hearted manner, I trying to keep his spirit up, hoping that help will be just around the corner, or medical science will find a miracle cure. But the miracle never happened. Gyuri and I often talked about Seneca. This is about the only conversation I still remember. Seneca was perhaps one of the Latin authors I was studying at the time. Gyuri was captivated by Seneca's stoic philosophy. Gyuri only wanted to live on his own terms. This did not include living with total deafness. Then he got into the bath one day, and like Seneca, he cut his artery and killed himself. In his will he left instructions for his executors to send me a chess set to remember him by. I received, quite unexpectedly a beautiful marble and alabaster chess set with chess board. I still have it, though one of the pieces is slightly broken. From time to time I think of Gyuri, a lovely young man, trying to fit into the New Zealand world, an independent spirit, but out of place in the homogeneous New Zealand world of the 1950s.  

The unpredictability of history

Antwerp had a population of about 100,000 in 1550. Fifty years later this number halved. By the turn of the seventeenth century Antwerp's population was reduced to about 50,000 and it took generations to recover. First Catholics killed Calvinists, then Calvinists hit back, killed Catholics and ruined the beautiful churches and destroyed the works of art. The power of the Catholics and Spanish rule was restored, there was an uneasy truce, but people stopped killing each other. This may be a very simplified account of history, but it helps us understand what is going on in the Middle East now, and gives us some hope. In a sense history doesn't repeat itself, but there are some obvious parallels between the current war between Shia and Sunni Muslims and the wars of religion in seventeenth and seventeenth century Europe. Europe was in turmoil after Calvin and Luther questioned and undermined the established order and the hegemony of the Catholic Church. The Middle East was in turmoil after the disintegration of colonial empires. The former colonial subject people sought answers at first in socialism and sided with the Bolshevik empire, then when Bolshevism failed looked for the solution of their problems in fundamental Islam. Either way, they thought that the Jews were at the heart of their problems. Ultimately conflict riven Europe settled down to a period of comparative peace and spectacular social, cultural and economic progress. It can only be hoped that the fires that fuel the current conflict in the Middle East will burn out and self interest, common sense, and a tolerant understanding of others will prevail.

Joel Polack and the nature of historical writing

There is a painting of a man in a gabardine coat and hat, slightly hunchbacked, talking to a couple of Maoris on the beach, with potatoes and a dog in the foreground. Unfortunately, though I have a detail of the picture, I can't track the full picture down. I found it a couple of days ago, now I lost it. Such is the nature of Google searches.

Looking at this picture, I would want to know about the men, the European so obviously out of context, the Maoris, and what was going in among them. They seem to be bargaining. I know the goods Polack obtained from his brother, the auctioneer, publican and general wheeler dealer in Sydney. He wrote a very specific request spelling out the amount his brother should be prepared to pay for the goods, and complained about some goods that proved to be too expensive. The transaction would have taken place before 1837, but some time after 1831 when Polack first visited New Zealand. This picture encapsulates the rapid changes in New Zealand society and the interaction of Pakeha and Maori. The brutal Musket Wars would have been in living memory, but in this scene there is not a musket to be seen. It is a picture of peaceful trade, in a setting that, as Polack imagined, would be a wonderful place for European settlement.

I keep coming back to Polack, completing a project about him is in my bucket list. With this in mind, I read Vincent O'Malley's The Meeting Place, and more recently, some of his Beyond the Imperial Frontier. I wrote to him and expressed surprise that he didn't dwell more on Polack's account of the encounters between Maori and Europeans. He mentioned Polack in passing. In his reply, and I am grateful that he bothered to reply, Vincent O'Malley said that there are 'different approaches that can be taken to the past', one is biographical, another is encyclopedic. O'Malley takes a thematic approach. The problem with that approach is that it cherry picks incidents from a broad period, perhaps 1769, when Cook first arrived, to 1840, when some form of Imperial government was established, but somehow it does not capture the rapid changes that took place, not only within generations, but even virtually from year to year. I maintain that history is about people, who change and survive in ever altering circumstances. I am currently reading Simon Schama's Rembrandt's Eye, in which he tackles the history of the seventeenth century through the lives and paintings of Rubens and Rembrandt. The era comes alive though their daily concerns. I love Schama's story telling. I am also enamoured with David Reynolds, who writes about the shaping of the twentieth century through the eyes of some of the key protagonists, Chamberlain and Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, Carter, Sadat and Begin, Nixon, Kissinger and Brezhnev, Regan and Gorbatchev. This may be the “'great men' view of the past', now out of favour with professional historians, but it makes riveting reading.

Netanyahu, Hams and the Holocaust

Benjamin Netanyahu alleged that EU, by removing Hamas from a list of terrorist organisations 'learned nothing from the Holocaust'. I wish, I hope, he hadn't said that. Israeli politicians should not use the Holocaust as a propaganda tool. The conditions and circumstances in Europe now, despite the increased prevalence of anti-Semitism, is nothing like it was in the Europe of the 1930s, when the seeds of the Holocaust were sowed, and certainly nothing like it was in the period between 1941 and 1945, in the middle of a very brutal war. when the mass murders took place. Hamas is a corrupt, ruthless, autocratic regime, but describing it as a terrorist organisation cast doubts on the meaning of the term 'terrorist'. Whether there is some benefit in having Hamas on the list of bad guys, or a downside to removing them from that list I don't know. But using the memory of the Holocaust to influence such a political decision is harmful, and outright dishonest. The memory of the Holocaust has a profound impact on the narrative that shaped Israel, and underlies the 'Jews will never again be helpless, defenceless victims' policies pursued by governments of whatever shades on the political spectrum since well before the establishment of the state. But trotting out the Holocaust as justification for whatever politically expedient argument some politician wants to hammer home is simply shameful.

Changing beliefs

Every Thursday I start the day with listening to a shiur, a talk, by my son, Rabbi David Sedley, which he gives as an interactive course on Web Yeshiva http://www.webyeshiva.org/class.php?cid=1174 to an audience all over the world . I am very privileged. This week he talked about the Shabbatean heresy, and disputes among rabbis, disputes that divided the Jewish world. He talked about beliefs in amulets, and the Zohar as a source of answers to Jewish beliefs. Although the period that he covered today was the second half of the eighteenth century, he acknowledged that such divisions persist to the present day. For me, an adherent to a rational world view, it is hard to comprehend that there are still people who believe in the efficacies of amulets and rabbinical blessings, but the reality is that such people exist, and they fervently believe in such magic. Which made me think that beliefs and belief systems change not only over centuries, long periods of time, but also over generations. I certainly don't think of myself as a religious man, even if some others who see me in the synagogue from time to time think of me as such. I recite, read my prayers without believing that by praying for health, for prosperity, for peace, my prayers would be answered by a benevolent God. I am grateful for the good life that was granted to me, and I don't bother to consider whether this was a favour to me by a divine being. It is not a benevolent and just God that I believe in but in my strand of Zionism, the belief of the existence of Am Yisrael, the People of Israel. I faced persecution for belonging to the People of Israel, I take pride in the unique qualities and achievements of Jewish people. My belief is rooted in this. But this kind of belief changed in every generation. My religious children believe in a different set of tenets, just as my father and father-in-law had beliefs different from mine. My father, who was a non-believer, fasted every year on the anniversary of the time when he stumble as he was shot at, and was left for dead, and miraculously survived as his column of prisoners was marched across the mountain pass from the main concentration camp of Mauthausen to the sub-camp of Günzkirchen. My father-in-law, an outright atheist, asked 'who would say kaddish for me' when his only son died. Why fast? Why does saying kaddish matter to you if you don't believe in God? Each has his own set of beliefs. If faith in amulets and rabbinical blessings gives comfort so be it, as long as this faith does not preclude tolerance of others who do not share it.

Perceptions of the Sydney gunman

Man Harron Monis, a.k.a. Mohammad Hassan Manthegi and Sheik Haron, was not a terrorist, not an affiliate of ISIS or Al Quaeda or any other organisation intent on fighting a war with Australia. He was a deluded Iranian immigrant whose mental state was crying out for help, a help he never received. He was a recidivist criminal, charged with being an accessory to the murder of his former wife, charged with repeated sexual assaults, yet he was given bail, set free, allowed to wander around with his head filled with delusions of self importance and hatred. He was neither a spiritual leader, nor a Muslim cleric, even if he dressed like one. He was a loony who should have been in a loony bin, but justice systems, Australian or New Zealand, can't handle the demented. The perception was that he was a terrorist, although he was a generation older than typical terrorists. It was easier to assume that Sydney faced a terrorist attack that government propaganda implanted in the minds of people. Offices, schools went into lock-down. Jewish schools in particular, were terrified of a possible attack. It was easier to imagine that Australia, or for that matter, the whole of the Western world was threatened by a comparatively small group of Middle Eastern fighters, who gained rapid military success because the states charged with protecting their citizens were so corrupt that people sided with the bloodthirsty insurgents rather than with the troops of their own government. It was more conceivable that a shadowy group of Islamic fundamentalists would attack people in a café in central Sydney than that a seriously demented person, out on bail, would get hold of weapons and explosives, walk into the café and hold staff and customers there hostage for 18 hours, while heavily armed police surrounded the premises and apart from talking ineffectually with the mad hostage taker, did nothing to terminate the siege. In the meantime, people tasked with providing security, including the security team at the Wellington Jewish Community Centre, had a field day basking in their importance.

A simple woman of worth, Malvin Brandler

No airs and graces for Malvin. She never pretended to be anything but what and who she was, Miklos's wife, companion, partner, and helpmate, Robert's doting mother, and loyal friend of many of the Hungarian Jewish immigrants, but in particular, my mother's Zsuzsa's. Together the two of them left the Jewish building in Bezerédi Street, reported to the brick works, marched to Lichtenwörth, the Jewish women's labour camp near Wiener Neustadt. They survived together, looked out for each other, shared their blankets, and returned to Budapest, to Bezerédi Street together. In Hungary Miklos and Malvin moved in different circles from that of my parents. They lived outside Budapest, in Pesterzsébet, Miklos had his cap making workshop, they were bikies, zoomed around the country on a motorbike with a side-cart, while my parents lived in the ninth district of Budapest, focused on leaving the country and moving to New Zealand. Malvin and my mother Zsuzsa kept in touch from time to time, and when Malvin and Miklos fled from Hungary after the 1956 uprising, they decided to come to New Zealand. They were down to earth people, with their feet firmly rooted on the ground. They worked hard and frugally and built up a modestly successful cap manufacturing business. They managed to scrape together the money to buy a modest but comfortable home. Unlike many of the other Hungarian immigrants, they were active in the Jewish community, joined B'Nai Brith, Malvin joined the Council of Jewish Women, They were pillars of the Jewish community, but they were also rocks of the circle of Hungarian immigrants, who could share their worries, anxieties, dreams and frustrations with them. They could always count on Malvin's no nonsense down-to-earth advice, often expressed in  language, colourful colloquial, bordering on the crude but friendly. Gilding the lilly was not for Malvin. Their lives and dreams were shattered when their son Robert was killed in a car accident. Miklos was so traumatized that he could never mention Robert or the tragedy. Not being able to share this with her husband was very hard on Malvin. Robert was her future, her only relative. None of her family survived. When Miklos died after a few years, was he killed by grief I don't know, Malvin had no one left. But she faced life with great courage. She never complained, never gave in to despondency, she was always there for her friends, always a tower of strength. She and my mother phoned each other every morning to make sure that they were both still alive. They shouted at each other called, each other names, shared each other's lives as only very close friends can. She was part of our family, an additional grandparent for our children. When Malvin died, peacefully, in her sleep while watching Gone with the Wind on television, with her supper tray in front of her, my mother somehow lost her will to live. A little while later my mother died. The two friends shared some of their hardest days, their joys and griefs. When Malvin passed away it was time for my mother to go. It is Malvin's yah-zeit this week. I am the only one left to say kaddish for her.

The intertwining of history

The seventeenth century scholars of the Bible knew that the flood occurred 1656 years after creation, so they expected the Second Coming to come in the year 1656 C.E. or thereabouts. Jews, and particularly the Marranos, also put great faith in the coming of the Messiah, and lo and behold, the Messiah, Shabbatai Tsvi, appeared in Smyrna at the time. This expectation had not been far from the thoughts of Menassah ben Israel and coincidentally from that of Oliver Cromwell. [Margaret Gullan-Whur, Within Reason: A Life of Spinoza P. 203] Rabbi Yaakov Emden revealed his most intimate personal life to the world at large, at a time when Jean Jacques Rousseau sought enlightenment by unburdening his inner life and anxieties. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson created a mass movement of followers of a simplistic understanding of complex issues of faith at a time when Billy Graham, the evangelist, reached out to millions with his simple Southern Baptist message of Christianity. History has to be understood in its context. You can't discuss the rise of Zionism, without considering nationalism, Jabotinsky without reference to Mussolini, and for that matter, Mussolini without considering the conditions after the First World War which brought forth dictators throughout Europe, Salazar in Portugal, Franco in Spain, Metaxas in Greece, Stalin in Russia, Horthy in Hungary, Antonesdcu in Rumania, and failed politicians with dictatorial ambitions in almost every country of Europe. So what is the common context of apparently disparate events of our time? What is common to what is happening in the Middle East, ISIS, Iraq and Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, in Africa, the Congo and Central African Republic, Sudan and South Sudan, Nigeria, North and South, Zimbabwe, and the Ukraine and Russia? It will be future generations of historians who will see the unifying pattern of the conflicts of this age.

Joe Stalin, the man of steel

I just love David Reynolds, the histortian. I have read his Summits: Six Meetings That Shaped the Twentieth Century, and greatly enjoyed it because he has the wonderful ability of a real story teller to bring the people he writes about alive. You feel that you got to know Stalin, Roosevelt, Churching, Kennedy and Khrushchev, Nixon, Kissinger and Brezhnev, Carter, Sadat and Begin, and Reagan and Gorbachev. Then I watched on television his series The Long Shadow, and last night he talked about Stalin and how he confronted the German attack. Stalin was a monster. There is no question about it. He had no empathy with people, he had a sadistic streak in him, he enjoyed the suffering of others, although unlike his mate, Beria, he probably did not personally inflict such physical suffering. He was a gangster, a bank robber, but he committed his crimes for a cause. And as Reynolds presented him, he was always single-mindedly driven by the cause, the cause of bringing Russia into the twentieth century, enabling the country to catch up, economically, technologically, with the advanced countries of the West. If in the pursuit of this cause he had to sacrifice, murder, eliminate millions, that was the price he had to pay for it as he saw it. He was not a leader with charisma, like Hitler, or even Mussolini, and certainly Churchill. His skill was listening, saying little but hearing much. His role in the Party, as Reynolds described it, was that of the keeper of the index cards. But he was cunning, he could outmanoeuvre colleagues who appeared to have much more going for them, smarter, more assertive, more popular. And in the end, his supreme achievement, he could win the war and defeat with horrendous sacrifice the German invaders. When I was about fourteen, fifteen, perhaps even sixteen, I was a communist at heart, a Stalinist. Even later, in my twenties, I would have thought of myself as a socialist. I grew up in a world of lies. Nothing I believed in was true. But the opposite of my beliefs was not true either. The entire world was befogged by deception. And I am not convinced that things are much better now. How will my granddaughter, Susie, be able to choose between right and wrong if everything presented to her is untrue. Eric Hobsbawm, British Marxist historian, who died two years ago at the age of 95, never learned. He died a true believer, a Marxist, a follower of the cause. How could an intelligent, highly educated man not see what everyone else could see, not learn, like I did, that the cause he believed in is false, built on lies? Perhaps the answer is that he was born in 1917 in Egypt, in Alexandria, son of a Jewish merchant of Polish descent, from the East End of London. He grew up in Germany, and moved to England as a teenager when Hitler came to power. Truth then seemed different to him, Marxism then seemed to him to be the saviour of the world, and like many true believers, he stayed with the faith, forever unshakable. 

A few things we know about Joel Polack

Joel Polack was heartily disliked not only by his neighbours, Benjamin Turner, George Russell and John Evans, but also by the British Resident, James Busby, who was annoyed by Polack's persistent criticism and said that Polack was universally detested by the other low settlers”. The Jew, he said, wanted to play the gentleman among them. The missionary Henry Williams didn't have much time for Polack either. This person, he said, is one of those free and independent men full of threats and great boastings. William Colenso, printer, missionary, botanist and inveterate traveller, was intensely jealous of Polack, who first wrote about the Moa. He labelled Polack's discovery a fabrication, and did his best to belittle Polack and besmirch his reputation. Polack in turn had little regard for his fellow colonists. He had only two friends in the colony, he said, John Montefiore and Capt. Powditch. He didn't expect to win the popularity contest. But to understand Polack who played the 'gentleman' we need to look at his library and his collection of artefacts. Among his books there were numerous accounts of voyages in English and French, a collection of twelve Jewish books, a manuscript history of Mauritius and Madagascar, 700 papers, drawings from his own sketches, a portfolio of drawings by his grandfather, father and himself. He also had a portfolio of drawings and etchings by his grandfather, his father and himself, miniatures by his grandfather, and engravings by a number of notable artists. He had numerous charts, maps and engravings within an atlas. This was the kind of surrounding he lived among in pre-colonial New Zealand that was inhabited by Maori tribes and 1000 Europeans scattered across the land. The footnotes in his Manners and Customs of New Zealanders give an indication of the breadth of his interests and the range of his readings. He compares Maori practices to those of the Tahitians, the Malaysians, and others he encountered in his travels. He quotes from travel books by Crozet's "Aux hostilites commises par le vaisseau commande par M. de Surville", Burney's “Chronological History of Discoveries in the South Seas", he quotes Drake, Gonville, Cook, Thevenot on Tasman's voyages. He understands Maori culture and practices in terms of European literature and refers to the Old Testament frequently, but also to classical literature, Ovid, Virgil, Juvenal, Alexander Pope, Shakespeare, and notes similarities to examples from Egypt, ancient Syria, and India. No wonder that he stood out in the wild European settlement of the Bay of Islands, described as the Hell Hole of the Pacific. He was just smarter, knew more, was better educated. That he was also a successful businessman full of original ideas didn't help to endear him to his fellow settlers.

Joska, my father

My father's yahr-zeit, the anniversary of his death will be this week. He died 38 years ago at the age of almost 75. He had a good life, he would have said. A good life, but not an easy life. He was born in 1901 into an era full of promise, particularly for a Jewish boy growing up in Budapest in the twilight years of the Hapsburg Empire. His parents, Károly, a country boy from Cegléd and Matild, a country girl form Buják were building a successful delicatessen business in the rapidly developing ninth distirict, the Ferencváros. Károly was to become the president of the grocers' federation, an honour and an acknowledgement of his vision as a businessman. Budapest was a prosperous city, the fastest growing city in Europa, largely due to the enterprising spirit of Jews. Jews transformed the Hungarian economy and brought it in line with the economies of Western Europe. The promising world of the late Hapsburgs disintegrated with the First World War. Nothing was the same after that. While the followers of the Awakening Hungarians' Association (Ébredö Magyadork Egyesülete) marched along Mester Street, they threw Jews from the upper stories of buildings to their deaths. A friend of my grandparents, the police district commander, warned them to lock their doors as a precautionary measure. Károly was a sergeant in the Royal Palace Guards during the war, his close friend, General Bauer, commanded a Hungarian regiment, both Jewish, both Hungarian patriots, but that world existed no longer. Joska was 13 years old when the war broke out. He was given a piano for his Bar Mitzvah. He was a talented, musical boy. Music ran in the family, Matild had a sweet singing voice and a vast repertoire of Hungarian songs, Joska's cousin, Árpád, was a promising violinist, accepted at the Budapest Liszt Music Academy. During the war he enlisted in the gypsy orchestra of one of the Grand Dukes, and that ended his career as a classical violin virtuoso. Joska loved tinkering with the piano, not taking formal lessons, just playing whatever he felt like. He was good enough to accompany General Bauer, who enjoyed singing, in Schubert songs. Joska's parents harboured the ambition for him that once he completed his schooling at a commercial gymnasium, and gained his matriculation he would get a white collar job, a tisztviselö, an office holder, an officer, in a bank, perhaps an insurance company, a position with status and a pension on retirement. They did not want to burden him with the running of the grocery business, which involved long hours, heavy physical work, the need to be at the markets at sunrise, and being in the shop till late at night. In the event he found employment with a car franchise firm, importers of among other marques, the Spanish luxury cars, Hispano-Suiza, which they sold to landed aristocrats. Joska's job involved accompanying the drivers and delivering these machines to the country seats of their purchasers. Joska was a good looking, well spoken young man with excellent manners, just the right person for the task. Unfortunately, just as Joska got married, in 1930, in the middle of the great depression, the car company folded. The market for Hispano-Suizas collapsed, and Joska was out of a job. Getting work during the depression was almost impossible. Joska worked as an agent for film distributors, but his income did not cover the cost of the tram fares that he needed to call on his customers. He managed to get a trading licence, a requirement to set up in business, as a wholesaler. He bought goods in bulk, items such as toothpastes, soaps, toiletries, chemicals for the mixing of paints, and sold these in small lots to small corner stores, drug stores, paint suppliers. He would go around the city, take the orders, and an elderly Jewish man, Mr Pollack, would deliver the goods on a tricycle with a large box in front. This business filled a need, it got by, it provided an adequate living, if it did not make a fortune. When Joska was conscripted into the Hungarian Army, at the outbreak of the war, then transferred to an unarmed labour unit, things got difficult, but my mother managed to keep the business going. Joska adjusted well to army life, made friends, and was very fortunate to serve under decent-minded benign army officers, unlike my uncle, Anti, who served under brutal sadists. Once Joska reached the maximum military age he was released from military service, and was back home with us, until the German occupation of Hungary, when all able-bodied men were conscripted again. He served in different parts of the country, and in the end he was marched off to Austria, to the notorious concentration camp of Mauthausen and from there to the Günzkirchen sub-camp. He survived the brutality, the privations, the beatings, because he never gave in. He was determined to survive and be there for his two sons. He made himself invisible, avoided drawing attention to himself, survival was everything. When he was liberated he was just a skeleton, sick with typhus. He recovered, driven by his strong will and determination, as well as unpredictable luck. Saving, nurturing, bringing up his two sons was everything to him. He was set on moving to New Zealand because he hoped that his sons would have a better life here. He had an idealized picture of New Zealand, but for him New Zealand proved to be the paradise that he dreamed about. He worked hard to earn a living, worked overtime, but he also enjoyed his leisure, tending his garden, working as a public servant with minimal pressures and few responsibilities. He was no businessman because he was averse to risk taking, but he would have made a good salesman, were it not for his limited English. He was instantly loved by all who knew him. He was also loved by all the animals that he encountered. Animals are often excellent judges of human beings. He had a tough life, but he would have said that he had a good life. When he died he was ready to go, he had achieved all that he wanted to achieve, and enjoyed universal respect.

Joel Polack: how to tell a story

I have given some thought, a good deal of thought to how to tell the story of Joel Polack. I could start at the beginning, but about his end little is known. I could analyse and comment on his writings, but he was not that much of a writer and it is very likely that his most interesting written accounts were destroyed in the fire when his house was burned down in Kororareka. I know a lot about Polack, but there are also huge gaps that I will never be able to fill, the records just don't exist. So I consider starting with the story of the assault on Polack by his neighbour, Benjamin Evans Turner. Turner was a tough character. He was an ex-convict who had served a seven year sentence in Australia He arrived in the Bay of Islands in 1826, so by the time Polack arrived in the early 1830s he was an old hand. He married Hone Heke's sister, clearly a woman not to be trifled with. He had set up a grog shop, a lucrative enterprise in a popular port. Then along came Polack, who saw an opportunity, started a brewery, imported a skilled brewer from Australia, and expanded the range of booze available to sailors, officers and men. The missionaries resented this, but for Turner this was outright and unwelcome competition. Polack was, according to one of his contemporaries, 'an aloof individual who rather than mix with his neighbours preferred to play the gentleman on the hill. Other Europeans in the Bay of Islands, including the British Resident James Busby and the missionary, Henry Williams, detested him. But in reality, compared with the other early Europeans in the vicinity, he was a refined, educated man, with a substantial library and at home in a number of languages. He was widely travelled. He was an artist, a writer, a man of innovative ideas. No wonder that he had little in common with the escaped or emancipated convicts and desperadoes around him. He recognized that the had a “rascally bad' temper. The fact didn't help his popularity that he was a very successful businessman, starting with some money he borrowed from his brother and becoming the richest man in the district. So on the night of 10 March 1837, while Polack was asleep an intoxicated Turner banged on his door and and demanded to come in. Turner was accompanied by John Evans, a pugilist, and a man called Stewart. Polack told them to come back at a more decent hour, whereupon the intruders smashed the door down. Polack might have had wind of this planned attack, because he had his pistol ready. He told Turner to get out, and then fired his pistol which hit Turner in the mouth. Thereupon Turner and his cronies se upon Polack, bound, gagged and beat him up, dragged him to the beach, where Turner's wife, Hone Heke's sister kicked him. Polack crawled away with a dislocated knee, and was saved by the sailors of the barque Achilles which was moored in the harbour. Next day Turner, the upright gentleman that he was, plundered Polack's house. Polack plotted his revenge, complained to Busby, the British resident, who was the only representative of European law and order, but Busby washed his hands, saying that 'his instructions did not extend to disputes between Europeans'. Polack published an account of the incident, describing Turner as 'a well-known runaway convict', but this did not stop Turner from having a distinguished career in colonial New Zealand and living to a ripe old age. He died at the age of 80 in 1876

Lucky Phoenix

A 5-1 win against Melbourne City is a respectable enough achievement, but it conceals Phoenix's incredible luck that they were not two or three goals down in the first half hour of the game. The Phoenix had trouble containing City's attacks and two or three times City just narrowly missed scoring. A near miss is a miss, it doesn't count. What did count was Phoenix's opportunistic first goal. That goal changed the whole tenor of the game. It fired up the Phoenix players, enhanced their self-confidence, elevated the individual skills of players into a coordinated team effort. From that point on victory was within their grasp, while Melbourne City went to pieces, their often brilliant attacking players were left out on a limb with insufficient back-up. Similar things happened to Phoenix in the previous two games, where they conceded a goal and could not regain their composure. Football is a mind game as much as a game of physical stamina and skill. It is hard to develop the attitude that the All Blacks have mastered, that you fight until the final whistle, you don't give in, you have the self-belief that winning the game is your entitlement. Let's hope that with this emphatic win against a very good team, the roller-coaster ride of the Phoenix is over and the team will approach every game as theirs for the winning, that they have to strive for every ball, move forward, attack and make the most of every goal scoring opportunity that comes their way.

Where does the Road from the Camp go?

A response to Vincet O'Sullivan's Road from the Camp (From Us, Then)

“A row of prisoners stitched with yellow stars”

Was perhaps my father among them?

Not on a summer road, the season, the date don't fit.

It might have been late autumn, trudging towards Austria.

Not the Austria of gemütlich operettas and Sacher cakes

But Austria of the camp with the stairs of death.

No bears there, the bears like all animals for entertainment

had been devoured long before.

“Those casual days a hundred years back”

Never came back, a lost world, a dream, perhaps a nightmare.

“The story of the final show” can't be told

It was felt through the pores, the cold-numbed fingers,

The stomachs that knew no food, frozen bodies

And the autumn greyness that enveloped all.

Had there been bears they would have withdrawn their paws

They would have had more pity for these men

Then the hollow human beings who looked on.

A cultured man

I went to the Turnbull Library to a presentation of Bill Renwick's illustrated lecture, Emblems of Identity which he originally delivered in Australia as a keynote address in 1978  at the 23rd congress of the International Society for Education through Art. I had known Bill for the best part of 60 years and thought of him as a very good close friend. Yet I realized that I didn't really know him until after his death, after I heard his eulogies and learned about his early life and his family background. I knew that he had a very broad vision of education, which he did his best to foster as Director of Education, I knew that he shared my love of music, I knew that he was widely read, I knew him as a historian, He was someone I could have great conversations with. I knew that he was an inspired teacher because I knew some people whom he had taught, but I didn't know his long life journey from a deprived impoverished background, growing up in a simple home with no books, no music, no art, facing the hardships of the great depression. I didn't know that it was the excellent education that he received at Seddon Memorial Technical College that encouraged him to train as a teacher, then on to lifelong learning, training teachers, teaching at the university, and ultimately moving into educational administration and policy making. It said a lot about New Zealand of the 1940s and 1950s, the New Zealand that my father fell in love with sight unseen, that a boy, coming from a poor, working class background with only his great capacity for learning, could have the opportunity to realize his potential. Bill was a polymath, at home with history, art, music, educational theory, and probably a great many other things, as well as a tramper, a naturalist, an aspect of his life I didn't share. This lecture showed the breadth of his interests. It was about art, about history, about people at home in the land, but it was also about an understanding of what made people tick, what the common grounds were and what were the areas of difference. Bill had the ability to see not only the details but more important, the whole picture. He shared this quality with another Bill, another senior public servant I knew, but Bill Renwick had an attribute not shared by many. He was a cultured man. His manners were gentle. He was soft spoken. He was a good listener. He took a genuine interest in others, and this made him a good conversationalist. As an outstanding scholar and administrator, he could have been justified in giving the impression that he was superior to other lesser mortals, but this he never did. He was humble as befits a cultured man who is aware not only of all the things that he knew and had accomplished, but all the things that were still out there to learn, to explore and to understand. He was really the best kind of New Zealander that my father, coming from in some ways a slightly more privileged background admired and respected on New Zealand.                                                                                                                                                                    

Human rights?

The majority of the schools who come to the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand come to learn about Human Rights In the context of the Holocaust, a popular topic for year 10 students. Yet I am not sure what we can teach them about Human Rights. We have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights displayed on the wall, but this is beyond the comprehension of most of the students. This was promulgated as a response to the events of the Holocaust which Western jurists and law makers in general needed as judicial instrument to call to account perpetrators of unspeakable crime, But the concept of Human Rights evolved during the eighteenth century, when philosophers looked at the nature of society, the idea of the state as distinct from a kingdom or an empire, held together by a network of loyalties to the divinely ordained ruler. The feudal political structure of intertwined loyalties, rights and obligations had been disintegrating for some time, and was gradually replaced by the idea of the nation state and citizenship. Citizenship involves obligations such as paying taxes, serving in the armed forces, obeying the laws of the state, but it also involves the right to have a say in the governmental process, and the right to be protected and safeguarded against discrimination. There were three different references in one of last week's newspapers to Human Rights violation, all involved murder, violence, perhaps imprisonments, but their links to human rights violations were not clear. So I am not prepared to talk of Jewish children being forbidden from sitting on park benches or going to swimming pools as issues of human rights violations, because this would trivialize the issues underlying the Holocaust, nor treat the mass murder of people on an industrial scale as anything but a heinous crime because saying that killing someone deprives him of his human rights is simply bizarre. The definition of Human Rights is part of the fundamental principles that modern liberal enlightened Western civilization is based on and I am reluctant to deal in vague simplifications. The accurate, precise use of language is important for the understanding of the process that was the Holocaust.

Profound sadness

I am reading Don DeLillo's Falling Man, a novel about the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Centre. I don't enjoy it, I am afraid. I find it confusing, the sense of the tragedy trivialized by personal issues I am not engaged by it, But somehow, reading it, I thought of Emil Holtzl, an old friend of the family. Jancsi (Johnny) and Rozsi (Rose) Deutsch shared their villa in Mathasfold with Emil. Emil was Rozsi's partner. He was not her husband. He was also Jancsi's friend. Their beautiful villa was not far from my grandparents' summer house, and we used to visit them. I have a memory of sitting on their terrace on a hot summer afternoon, the adults playing cards, we children having a lemonade, or more likely our drink of choice, a raspberry syrup. Although it was afternoon, the hosts were wearing pyjamas, silk pyjamas. This to me seemed like ultimate decadence. The Deutschs' had a menswear store, the finest menswear store in Budapest, and one of the best in the whole of Europe. Their distinguished customers included the Prince of Wales when he visited Budapest in the 1930s. The shop was located in the Vaci Street, one of the most elegant shopping street anywhere. It spoke of the elegance, the refinement, the special culture, the love of fine things that defined the Hungarian capital in the years between the war, years when gathering dark clouds were obscured by unfounded hope and optimism. My father could see the threats that most people ignored and he wanted to get away, leave the beautiful life behind for a less worrying peaceful existence. Preparing for emigration, both my father and my mother tried to acquire skills they could use wherever they moved. They were not good at reading the signs. My father trained as a pastry cook and learned to make exquisite mouth-watering pastry in preparation for moving to New Zealand where a sultana scone or a lemington was the acme of offerings in pastry shops; my mother learned bespoke shirt making, creating the shirts the Pince of Wales would have been proud to wear, a skill no one would have appreciated in a country where men wore mass manufactured ill fitting suits and shirts. She was trained in the Deutsch exclusive menswear salon. Jancsi, Rozsi and Emil were family friends. They must also have had some very influential friends, because when Jews were rounded up, confined to the ghetto or marched off to concentration camps the three of them stayed behind and sheltered somewhere in Budapest. One day, during a bombing raid the building they were in was hit by a bomb. The building collapsed. Jancsi, Rozsi and Emil were in the air raid shelter when the wall collapsed, burying Jancsi and Rozsi, and killing them. Emil somehow survived. Physically he survived, but mentally he never got over the tragedy. He mourned Rozsi day and night, wherever he went. He would walk into a room and spread gloom. In a city where everybody had someone to mourn, where tragedy stalked all, Emil stood out as the most profound mourner. The survivors sought to make a new life, get over their grief, but Emil haunted them like a ghost of those who perished. I don't imagine that anyone but I remembers Jancsi, Rozsi, Emil, and their lovely place in Matyasfold, or their exclusive store. That world  disappeared for ever. Only EmIl, the profoundly sad mourner stayed with me in my memory.

The Treaty Of Waitangi and how to misunderstand history

Did Maori agree to cede sovereignty over New Zealand when they signed the treaty? This was the question debated by 'experts' and their report has just been published. But is this a meaningful question? The Treaty was cobbled together in a hurry. It was drafted by James Busby, better remembered as a wine grower than a constitutional expert and the British Resident, an inefficient representative of the British Government, It was translated into Maori by Henry Williams and his son, Edward. over one evening. In 1939 the British Government decided to take action over the unruly settlements of its subjects in New Zealand. But by then The New Zealand Company of Edward Gibbon Wakefield had despatched a ship on a land buying expedition. Treaty or no Treaty the land was in effect getting colonized. There was a groundswell of opinion in Britain that the country was overpopulated and the surplus population had to be dumped somewhere for the benefit of the people surplus to requirements as well as the mother country, who would benefit from the trade in produce from the newly colonized lands whose inhabitants then would be able to purchase the excess of manufactured goods. The disastrous experiment in settling South Australia in this fashion did not deter the New Zealand Company from trying again in New Zealand. So the Treaty of Waitangi had to be forced through in haste to forestall other attempts at colonization. How could the Maori signatories to the Treaty possibly understand the concept underlying the Treaty? The concept of nationhood, the idea of sovereignty over a whole nation, let alone an empire was totally outside the experience of the Maori. Maori was a tribal society, in which differences, conflicts, were resolved though Utu, marriages, alliances, but none of the tribes would have even considered accepting the chief of another tribe to rule over them. The concept of Rangitara was understood, but the concept of Tino Rangitaranga, highest chieftainship was an alien concept drafted on Maori tradition. There was no question about it, the Treaty of Waitangi was designed to rob Maori of their land. But by and large, both sides benefited from it. The Maori could not stop the process of colonization, whatever some of their leaders thought. The British government created a pseudo-legal form of accommodation. Tribal wars with murderous, genocidal outcomes were largely, but not completely eliminated. The excesses of European land speculators were curbed. Maori were, by and large integrated into a dominant European civilization and did not suffer the disastrous fate of the Australian Aborigines or the people of South America and even Africa. But couching the story of Maori land appropriation in a cloud of legalistic mumbo jumbo distorts history and only benefits the historians working on researching claims under the Treaty, lawyers negotiating Treaty settlements, politicians, and some of the more powerful Maori interests. Let's be honest about it, the discussion about the Treaty of Waitangi is a distortion of history.

Thoughts about Himmler and Eichmann

I wrote about teaching about the Holocaust in my previous blog. Today I read an article in Tablet about the newly discovered papers of Himmler and interviews with Eichmann. Should I even take an interest in these? Both of these men, to me sitting on the other side of the cultural divide, were embodiments of evil. I know a good deal about both. Do I need to waste my time learning more about them? The day has only 24 hours. Yet you could not find a better confirmation of the Nazi denial of humanitarian values that my last blog discussed then these two. Himmler talks of the 'moral right, an obligation, to take the people who want to kill us, and to kill them.' But really he is not talking about people who want to kill him personally, or kill his soldiers, or kill citizens of his country. He is talking of phantom killers, the emaciated, helpless victims of his persecution, whom he sees as such threat that refined, educated moral person that he is, he still feels morally obliged to murder them. They are different. They are a danger to what he believes, that 'order creates the nation, the culture, and order creates the state'. Not that his victims were disorderly. He just didn't consider them to be part of the orderly fabric of his nation. He thinks of himself and his SS officers who carried out the genocide of the Jews as fundamentally upstanding people. 'Most of you will know' he said in his speech to his troops in Posen in 1943, 'what it means when a hundred corpses lie side by side,  whether there are five hundred or one thousand, and endure that, and apart from a few exceptions, remain decent.' This makes them tough, even if their achievements are not glorified in history. What sort of strange mentality, what warped values, drives a man like that?  Yet Eichmann, living in Argentina, met regularly with a group of Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, and talked about  how Nazism, suitably cleansed of tainted leaders, could become a revitalised political force. They were true believers, but perhaps even in their wildest dreams they could not imagine the resurgence of anti-semitism and Nazi ideology in Europe some fifty years after Eichmann's capture. Or perhaps they could, as Gudrun Himmler, Heinrich Himmler's daughter, now 85 years old, for whom her father is still a hero, probably still does.

The relevance of learning about the Holocaust

What will be the relevance of learning about the Holocaust for the next generation, and in particular, the next generation in New Zealand? There are almost no Holocaust survivors left, and in a few years there will be none. Seeing DVDs of old people in distant lands talking about their terrible experiences will hardly be the sort of thing young people will be interested in. There is a real danger that Holocaust studies will be absorbed by programmes on Genocides, Human Rights, or God forbid, Tolerance. Whoever wants to be tolerated? Tolerance implies that the people tolerated are in some ways inferior, but due to the magnanimity of  societies that are tolerant, such inferiority is not rubbed in. There are Genocides and Genocides, all different in their way, all terrible, all with victims and perpetrators, but the Holocaust is significantly different from genocides. Human Rights is a basket that can accommodate numerous platitudes and at the end there are no lessons to be learned. It is not about Jews being forbidden to go to the swimming pools or sit on park benches, and certainly not about mass murder. To learn something about the Holocaust and to understand its significance and relevance to our time, you have to think of it as a rift within Western civilization. It was a denial, a destruction of the values and principles of humanism that evolved over many generations since the seventeenth century, and that underpinned  the basis of European values. Europeans who first encountered the Maori people found cannibalism abhorrent, Maori people on the other hand found flogging and hanging, European practices, cruel beyond all understanding. Maori saw kingship and aristocracy in simple tribal terms, something quite different form the British and European perceptions. Slavery as the Maori understood it was quite different from slavery as practiced in the American South, the Carribbean and Latin America. The wanton cruelty of ISIS or Boku Haram make perfectly good sense for people steeped in a primitive interpretation of the Koran, Stalinist crimes made sense in terms of his attempts to build a new dictatorship of the proletariat, and similarly racial purity, the annihilation of Jews as a priority above fighting and winning the war made sense for all whose thinking was confined by Nazi ideology. The question that those of us who teach about the Holocaust need to address is what are the humanist values that are worth cherishing, values that we need to share and make a stand for. The Danube flows right though Hungary, and it divides the chauvinistic, intolerant patriotism of the Szeged school of politicians from the more universal, tolerant, broad embracing aristocratic school of Vienna and the West. Granted that this is a simplification, but there is an underlying truth in it. So if we talk about human rights we have to talk about the humanist view of human rights and citizenship. If we talk about racial harmony, about inequality, about humane treatment of minorities, of enemies, of victims, we have to turn back to the values of humanitarianism. We have to acknowledge that in an imperfect world such humanitarian values were always breached. The signatories of the American Constitution did not consider that the rights accorded to American people applied to African slaves, the humane treatment of the enemy in our time does not apply to torture of suspected terrorists and other enemies of the state. Teaching the Holocaust we should set out to foster a consciousness that embraces the liberal humanist ideals that permeated Western culture and was destroyed by Nazism.

Fighting ISIS

ISIS has, it is reported, 30,000 fighters. The Iraqi army has 271,500 armed personnel according to Wikipedia, and 528,500 reserve personnel, It has a budget of $6.055 billion. The army is, or was trained by the Vinell Corporation, a privater military company, a subsidiary of the Noprthrop Gumman Corporation. A small insurgent group like ISIS should not be a threat to such a well endowed large army. What difference can New Zealand's modest and reluctant contribution make to the unequal fight against ISIS?

The world free of great problems though the eyes of the Dominion

The Dominion doesn't devote a lot of space to world events, but the little space given over to these was dominated by the staggering news that a young Arab man who attacked Israeli soldiers was shot by the soldiers, and died in an Israeli hospital where they tried to care for him. The lesson to Arabs in general should have been not to attack Israeli soldiers because they don't take kindly to people who assaile them with stones and knives. But this is not quite how the Dominion presented the report. It was about Israeli oppressions, poor Arabs victimized. And of course, being the lead article on the World page, it suggested that this was the greatest problem in an otherwise happy world. No bloodshed in Africa, or in Syria and Iraq, Donetsk and the Ukraine are at peace, all is well in South or East Asia, no trouble in the Americas. If only the Israelis would sit down and have a civilized chat with stone throwing or knife wielding Arabs, not to mention those who drive their cars into people waiting for trains and buses, the whole world would attain blissful peace.

Kristallnacht Memorial Concert - Music as memorial

I am very grateful to the students and staff of the New Zealand School of Music for participating in the concert I organized to commemorate Kristallnacht, which occurred 76 years ago, on November 9, 1938. The concert started with Bloch's Nigun, beautifully played by James Jin. Bloch was a  Jewish assimilated composer, with his roots going back many generations in Alsace and Switzerland. He encountered Chassidic Jewish worship in passing in Geneva, but more impressively in New York when he moved there. This was music of the Galician Jews, intense, infused with ecstasy, the music of a world destroyed by the Nazis. Daniela-Rosa Cepeda sang three of Georg Tintner's songs, youthful works which reflect the era they were written in, the Second Viennese School, with intervals very difficult to pitch, which Daniela-Rosa managed outstandingly well. Tintner had to flee Vienna in the aftermath of Kristallnacht. Pasquale Orchard sang two much mellower gentle songs by Richard Fuchs, who was also a victim of Kristallnacht, and like Tinter, found refuge in New Zealand. Lawrence Scherr's Elegy and Vision for solo cello, played by Inbal Megiddo, is a moving personal piece, written in memory of Scherr's dead brother, Edwin, named after his aunt who died in Auschwitz. The climax of the programme was Ellwood Derr's I Never Saw another Butterfly for soprano, saxophone and piano. It is a setting of poems written by children in Theresienstadt. With the dramatic use of voice, sung by Katherine McIndoe, clever effects on the saxophone, played by Reuben Chin and powerful piano accompaniment by Heather Easting this piece evoked tears. The audience was so moved, a great credit to the performers, that at the end of the piece people were stunned and for a few seconds they could not even applaud. Music means something different to each of us, as does the memory of Kristallnacht. For Paul Seideman who was in the audience, a child survivor of Theresienstadt and Auschwitz the concert recalled loss, survival and a destroyed life, for Jim Baltax it was his parents' first meeting on Kristallnacht in Vienna and their subsequent escape. Donald Maurice remembered playing Boris Pigovat's Holocaust Requiem in Germany where the orchestral musicians were uncomfortable with the subject of the piece because it raised questions they would rather have not faced. All the credit for this amazing memorable concert belongs to the musicians, my modest part was to just making the concert happen, but I am proud of my role in this.

The spying business

I am somewhat puzzled by John Key's announcement that there are 40 would be Jihadists in New Zealand that the government has to keep an eye on. Surely it is the job of the GCSB, the Government Security Bureau, to keep an eye on any mischief makers that may be around, and they don't need the government to alert any who they are spying on. So what is John Key playing at? What is he hoping to achieve? Who is he trying to fool? Over the last few days I watched the wonderful BBC Worricker Trilogy. I don't remember when I enjoyed television so much. Although it is a sophisticated slow moving spy story, it makes some very important points about spying. Can spys be trusted? Whose interests do spies pursue? In this story it is clear that spies cannot, as a rule be trusted, unless they are ethical human beings who are engaged in by and large nefarious underhand work. The story has contemporary relevance. At issue is the use of torture to obtain information, something that the British Secret Service claim not to condone, yet it came to light that rogue elements within the service, with the approval; of the Prime Minister, are cooperating with Americans in the use of private security firms like Blackwater, now renamed Academi in getting just such information. And the reason for this is that these security firms are not accountable to anyone, make obscene profits, part of which is used for a kick-back to fund the Prime Ministers lifestyle as an international peace negotiator after his retirement from politics. The parallels between Tony Blair's history and the collusion of the British Intelligence Service with American corporations is fairly obvious. The other underlying theme of the series is that Johnny Worricker, the main protagonist of the story, is a Cambridge educated smartly turned out member of the social elite, with a charming, modest, self-deprecating half smile. A man, born to rule, a member of the middle upper crust is a man to be trusted, the implied social upstart, the Prime Minister has a dubious character and may be untrustworthy. Trust the old rulers, don't trust the pushy ambitious young bounders..

Joel Polack, trader, artist, adventurer

Joel Polack was born in London in 1807, son of Solomon Polack, a well known miniature portrait painter and engraver, The family came from The Hague, Holland, Solomon Polack himself was the son of a portrait painter, From Holland the family moved to Ireland then to London. The name suggests that the Polacks were originally from Poland, possibly moved to Holland in the wake of the Jewish persecution in the seventeenth century. They were part of a constantly shifting Jewish diaspora, footloose, making the most of opportunities wherever they went. Joel Polack received a broad education, possibly some of it on the continent. He could read, and presumably speak French, he was at home with Jewish texts, and like his father, he was a competent painter, painting miniatures by the time he was sixteen. One of his pictures is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was clearly a restless and adventurous spirit, because still a teenager, he joined the Commissariat and Ordinance section of the War Office serving in South Africa and Mauritius for four years. His skills as a draftsman and painter would have been useful. Perhaps the conviction of his older brother, Abraham  or 'Grand larceny' in 1820 had something to do with his wish to get away. Abraham was convicted of the theft of a watch form a woman of dubious repute and was transported to Australia for a term of seven years. The circumstances were somewhat odd, and there is an implication that there might have been more to the case than appeared on the surface, that Abraham Polack was set up, possibly because of his Radical connections or sympathies. They were tough economic times, the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester occurred the year before, the Radical War in Scotland had happened just recently, there was unrest in Ireland. Abraham Polack claimed that he was in Gibraltar when the alleged theft took place, although this was disputed and perhaps disproved, it is quite possible that there were political motives behind the accusation. Joel Polack might have thought that leaving a radicalized England behind and seeking his fortune in other, less divided parts of the world had appeal. After four years in Africa he left to travel in America, and ultimately sailed to Australia to join his brother, Abraham, who by then was a prosperous businessman, publican and auctioneer. Joel,soon after landing in Australia, requested a grant of land in N.S.W. amounting to 2560 acres but he didn't stay around to hear the outcome of his application. In 1827, aged 20, he accepted the position of Painter and Designer for His Majesty, the King of Madagascar and sailed back to Africa. The King however died the following year and Joel Polack went back to Sydney.There the Polacks were part of the small but successful Sydney Jewish merchant community, and Joel could see business opportunities for an independent adventurous young man.

The Meeting Place - Maori and European

When I wrote about New Zealand Jewish Writers in Jewish Lives in New Zealand Joel Polack, the Jewish trader who arrived in Aotearoa in 1831 dominated the chapter. He was not the greatest, but by far the most interesting of the writers. Ever since, I harboured the plan to write something more substantial about him. I believe that I know more about him than anyone else does and I have looked at material about pre-colonial New Zealand that other historians ignored. For example the commodities Polack asked his brother to buy for him sheds a light on the changing nature of trade in New Zealand. Setting up a brewery was a big step in an environment where the drinking culture was dominated by grog and grog sellers. Polack had interesting things to say about the Maori people and their adaptability. He had his own vision of New Zealand as a place for European settlement. He was perhaps the best read person living in the Bay of Islands at the time judging form the list of books he listed that were destroyed when his house was set alight. He had an interesting relationship with Maori, stripped at one time and having had to call on Henry Williams to settle a dispute, yet doing deals with Hone Heke. He resisted the temptation to go native and marry a Maori girl, but Colenso claimed that Polack was attacked and beaten up for his affair with a Maori girl. Despite the opportunities to marry a well born Maori girl, he tried to find a Jewish wife and bring her over a from Hobart. He was interested in the very issue of the meeting place between two cultures and had a good opinion of the Maori people. I have a lot of material gathered on my computer, some of it no longer accessible because of the incompatibility between my old computer and the new Windows 8, and I keep coming back to Polack. But as the Ethics of the Father says:

• "It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it" (2:21)

For my birthday I was given Vincent O'Malley's The Meeting Place. It is interesting reading. He has read very widely, but I couldn't help feeling that his book is an argument, with other historians, tracing the perception of the intereaction of Maori and Pakeha form the Fatal Impact school of thinking to the contemporary Treaty of Waitangi school of Maori as a vibrant culture that survived an encounter that was not as fatal as some thought. In fact, there are parallels between the survival of the Jewish people and their resilience and that of the Maori. This is a theme that is worth exploring further. The centres of Jewish culture were destroyed, completely annihilated. Yiddish as a literary language, Yiddish literature, Jewish theatre, authentic Jewish music have become only subjects of academic study, as probably the vibrant pre-European Maori culture, traditional oratory, traditional music, dance, became only bastardised shows for the entertainment of tourists. Yet these cultures both proved to be resilient and a new culture emerged from the ashes of the old that was destroyed. The Meeting Place is an interesting book for historians with a real interest in pre-colonial New Zealand, but the stories of people are missing that would have brought the history alive, women like Charlotte Badger, Jane Kendall, Betty Guard, and men like George Bruce, Barnet Burns, and indeed, Joel Polack and his nemesis, Benjamin Turner and many other interesting characters among the first settlers.

The Phoenix - everyone can have an opinion

It was not a good night for Phoenix in Melbourne. It was a good game, both teams played well, you couldn't really fault either side, and it was a darned better game than some of the Premier league and Bundesliga games that I caught this week, but the side that could capitalize on goal scoring opportunities won. There is, however, hope for the future for Phoenix fans. Ther midfield worked well. The forwards didn't quite jell. The ball didn't always go to the player it was meant for, or the player was not in the right position to take it. The Victory had some very good players, including New Zealand's contribution, Kosta Barbarouses. The only way the Phoenix will improve is by playing against teams that stretch them and challenge them. More luck next week, perhaps.

The individual and the government

Chris Bishop is a new list member of Parliament. He contested the Hutt Central seat for the National Party, he is a former debating champion and a Young Nat. He is proud to be a libertarian, and is a firm believer that the interest of the individual should take precedence over the interest of the community, the state, the government.  May be I misunderstood the article about him in the Hutt News. Perhaps by individuals he didn't mean corporates. For example, the government built state of the art power stations using renewable energy, These were built using tax payer funds over the years and thus belonged to the people, the state, the country. For purely ideological reasons the government flogged some of these power generators off. There was no suggestion that private enterprise would make the rivers flow faster, the sun shine brighter, so that these power generators would function more efficiently. The only ones who profitted from these sales, and they profited very handsomely, are corporate investment funds, and perhaps a few large private investors. These power generating companies have returned good profits for the shareholders, mainly international investors, not the local pa and ma investors as the launch was sold in. These profits were made at the expense of the poor succers, the users of electricity, the manufactures who generate the wealth of the country and so on. Sure some individuals benefitted, but the vast majority, who make up the cpountry, who voted for the government were ripped off and will continue to be riupped off until a government takes over that is prepared to regulate profits for the good of the majority of the people.

Violins of Hope

My son bought me for my birthday the book: Violins of Hope: Violins of the Holocaust - Instruments of Hope and Liberation in Mankind's Darkest Hour, by James A. Grymes. Violins and Holocaust, my son thought, that's me. It is a riveting and sad book with not much hope, more like despair. It starts with the story of Amnon Weinstein, a luthier, violin repairer, who makes it his business to preserve not only violins with links to the Holocaust, but also their stories. Then there is the story of the great Polish violinist, Bronislaw Huberman, who gave up two years of his life and concert career to create the Palestine Philharmonic and use that as a vehicle to save musicians under Nazi threat together with their families, 1000 lives. But he did more than that. He imagined that Jews can preserve their European cultural heritage in the muddy, primitive settlement that Tel Aviv was at the time by creating a world class orchestra.. His impossible dream was like Weitzman's dream to create a world class university in Rehovot. The old Zionist dream of creating a new Jew, a peasant, a worker of the land, was at odds with Huberman's image of the Jew as a fiddler or Weitzman's image of a Jew as a scholar and scientist. Then there is the story of Erich Weininger. a butcher by trade but also a skilled violinist, who fled from Austria after a spell in Dachau and Buchenwald, entered Palestine illegally, where British guards of the internment camp were as brutal as the Nazis he fled, then was deported to Mauritius, until he could return to Palestine after the war. His father, denounced by a family friend, was killed by the Nazis for covering up the yellow star on his coat. Then a chapter is devoted to the orchestras and musicians in Auschwitz. More fortunate, Ernst Glaser was the leader of the Oslo Philharmonic and celebrated violin soloist in Norway. He was driven from his post and was lucky to escape to Sweden. Feivel Wininger from Romania witnessed some of the most horrific treatment of Jews in Transnistria, a strip of land between the river Dniester and Moldova, where some of the earliest and most brutal atrocities of the Holocaust took place. Feivel survived and could provide for his family because he played the violin. But one day, a former judge gave him a very valuable Amati violin because he had no further use for it, he was about to kill himself. Fellow Jews robbed Feivel of this violin. He, like Erich Weininger ended up in Israel after the war. Finally there is the story of Motele Schlein, a 12 year old boy from a small village near the Russian Polish border, a skilled young violinist, who witnessed the murder of his parents and his whole family, escaped and joined Uncle Misha's (Moshe Gildenman's) partisans. Using his skills as a violinist, he played for the German officers in their club. Seeing an opportunity, he obtained explosives and blew up the premises, killing the German officers. He was a feisty little boy, insisted on fighting the Germans, revenge the murder of his parents, and was killed in battle. Because the stories are about individuals and their fates, centred around their violins, the book is especially heart rending. The tragedy of Motele is particularly unforgettable and moving. And you think not only of the small handful who survived, but also about the vast number who didn't.

The Phoenix, loyalty and "us"

When I was young and at an impressionable age football meant a lot to me. The Hungarian football team with its bandy-legged fat little captain, Puskas, was the best in the world and I jogged my heart out around Palmerston North to be fit and perhaps one day move from the school's third, i.e. bottom eleven to the next grade, and perhaps one day even make the first eleven. I never quite made it, I left school early, played for a university team until one day I couldn't find the ground we were to play at and called it quits. But the drama of football stayed with me all these years, even if only at a low, subconscious level. With the establishment of Phoenix, the local AFL franchise  I had a team to be passionate about. I follow their game every week on television, read every article about its players, It is as if I know each of them personally (I saw Paul Ifill once, very smartly dressed, good looking, coming towards me) I agonize when they pass the ball to the opposing team, are too easily dispossessed, I scream when they miss a clear shot on goal. When they win it makes me feel better for the rest of the week. My image is not that of a man who cares about such ephemeral matters as football, football in a place where only Poms and Europeans care about the game. I wear glasses, play chess, listen to classical music, why does football matter to me. To understand that I think of the deep roots of the game in my genes; I remember clearly listening with my father to the broadcast of the Hungarian - Austrian game with the hardly intelligible, rapid, overexcited commentary by Pluhar, the celebrated radio commentator. My father played, as a boy and young man for an amateur youth team of Ferencvaros when Ferencvaros and MTK were the top teams in Hungary, and he witnessed in 1911 the ticker tape parade though the main streets of the ninth district with players carried on the shoulders of supporters when Ferencvaros beat I Woking F.C, in England, at the time one of the best English teams. Schlosser, the greatest goal scorer was remembered in our household. So football is something I feel in my guts. Once I even paid good money and went to a game, but going on my own is not the same as sitting at home in front of the television and letting my hair down.

There is a lot I don't know about Central Africa

There is a lot I don't know, and one of the good things about writing my almost daily blog is that it makes me learn things, so that in the end I know a little more. I knew almost nothing about the Central African Republic until I read Jon Lee Anderson's challenging and interesting article in the New Yorker (October 20, 2014). I didn't know that the Central African Republic with its land area larger than France and a bit of Europe thrown in and with the population of New Zealand it is one of the richest lands in terms of natural resources, forests, gold, uranium, oil. Yet its people are among the poorest and things are not getting better. Blame the French who ruled the land and stole its riches from the time the European powers carved up the map of Africa until independence in the 1960s. But although the French left behind a viable and potentially prosperous country when they ceded power, things went from bad to worse since independence, so that it is now a virtually failed state. Until recently Christians, Muslims and animists lived in reasonable harmony. Muslims made up 15% of the population. Then they formed an Islamist militia, the Seleka, and started murdering their Christian neighbours. The Christians in response formed their own militia, the antibalaka, who slaughtered Muslims indiscriminately. It was not a genocide, Muslims and Christians were not different races. It was a religious war. Most of us being ignorant of large chunks of Africa dismiss such carnage as Africa, what would you expect from these primitive people. But if an African would look at European history, where in my lifetime German protestants and German Catholics, and even German atheists who only believed in the German folk and their glorious Wagnerian roots murdered German Jews, perhaps he would view Europeans as a primitive people despite their flash technology. And would think of Europe of the twentieth century with its ruthless dictators and unbridled carnage as failed states, that failed with the beginning of the First World War, which grew from small skirmishes into a wholesale conflagration just as Africa spawned failed states after the end of the colonial era, and continues to destroy states to the present day as a result of the colonial heritage. States fail because neighbours kill neighbours, because a multicity of ethnic groups vie for supremacy. They kill each other for religion, for ideology, for perceived grievances, but kill each other they do. Militant factions split, with a group always more extreme than the next, so that bringing them together to make peace is an impossibly challenging task. If their priority would be to get richer, live a better life, make the world a better place for their children they would desist from fighting, but irrational hartred is a greater motivator than self interest.

Sixty years ago

In 1954 I had a job at what was then called Whitcombe & Tombs, later. after joining Coulls Summerville and Wilkie to become Whitcoulls, a nationwide chain of much maligned bookshops. After starting in the New Zealand Books and Bibles department working with experienced bookmen, I was promoted, or demoted, but certainly moved up, to the upper floor, to the education department. It was not a bad job, I spent a lot of my time looking up books for customers in Whitakers, the giant catalogue of published books, not to be confused with Joe Whitaker, the profoundly deaf but very knowledgeable head of the department. Spending so much time following up the queries of customers and generally looking after customers was considered by some a great waste of time, but in the relaxed atmosphere of old Whitcombe & Tombs nobody cared. Many of these customers were school teachers, intelligent, stimulating, likeable people, and it reignited my ambition to be a teacher. What profession could be better than moulding young minds. I enrolled at Teachers' College, and as I looked back on it, I was, amazingly, accepted. How anyone could imagine that I would ever make a successful teacher, I don't know; an insecure young man still sorting out his identity, grappling with a language that was by then very familiar as a literary vehicle, but not quite as a medium of everyday colloquial communication. But accepted I was, and I was paid for being there. Teachers' College then was an institution that is now probably beyond the imagination of most, Its main objective was to turn simple semi-educated country people, mainly young women, into educated thinking well-rounded human beings, who then could become stimulating teachers, in many cases in schools that stifled their creativity. Having a few oddballs like me around was part of their education. The mid-1950s were interesting times. Stalin had just died, he was replaced by men who colluded with him but were not comfortable with his heritage. Khrushchev revealed the atrocities of Stalin's time, and with that undermined the faith of old time communists and fellow travellers. In New Zealand students cared about world affairs, strummed their guitars and sang ballads about the working man, wrote biting satires for the annual university extrav, shows that would fill the Opera House, and drank prodigious amounts of of beer. We watched sad, dark Italian, French and Russian movies, and I wrote stories for the Teachers' College student magazine, stories that are now mercifully lost. Idealism was in the air, we wanted to make the world a better place. We sneered at people who wanted to make money. We assumed that we would all live comfortable lives, didn't care about having more than we needed. We went tramping in the bush, some also went hunting, we had a wonderful world at our doorstep and didn't want more. I thought of all this having had a friend from those days over for coffee. It is not that those were happier time, a better world, it is just that it is was a time that is now hard to recapture. The world moved on, become noisier, more competitive, and the hope for a better world in the future is gone.

Who will come to the aid of Israel

In today's news we read about an Arab driving his car into a small crowd waiting at the train station, injuring seven and killing a three months old baby. The murderer was hailed  as a hero and a martyr. Arabs were throwing stones at the light train. There is concern that this may be the beginning of a new intifada. If this happens more Arabs will be killed, more will be considered martyrs, the world will condemn Israel for its necessarily heavy-handed response.  Suppose the entire Middle East gets taken over by an Islamic fundamentalist movement and the conquest of Israel becomes its aim. Suppose it has access not only to a vast motivated army but also to the latest weaponry stolen from Arab regimes armed by the Americans and the Russians; who will then speak up for Israel and who will come to its aid.
Today I talked to a group of senior students from Hastings Girls High School and I mentioned that after the war I could not understand why the Jews did not resist, reported to where they were told to report, lined up when they were told to line up, marched to the bank of the Danube to be shot, and because I could not understand this I became a Zionist and think of myself still as a Zionist to this day. The girls did no know what I meant by Zionist and Zionism. With all the Israel bashing over the last few months in the media, with Zionist being depicted as aggressors, brutal occupiers, as distinct from Jews who are perceived as good law abiding citizens, I was delighted that the girls did not have this image of the Zionist. May be they will grasp that it is not OK to kill Jews, or even to throw stones at them, threaten them, endanger them when they hitchhike, threaten their young children with abduction. It is OK to talk with the Jews, to try to arrive at some resolution to the war the Arabs waged for close to ninety years, it is OK to try to improve the lives of Arabs along with the lives of Jews. It is not OK to hail murderers as martyrs and make the lives of more Arabs miserable.

Timaru, Allan Hubbard, the Volkswagen and the New Zealand psyche

Whenever I have the time I spend as much as an hour reading the newspaper. You might wonder what is there that takes so long to read. The real news items are either not covered or are touched on in brief uninformative paragraphs, while the pages are full of inconsequential stories that border on the personal and intrusive. But tucked away, somewhere in the back pages, there are articles that may have significance beyond the daily gossip. There was an article about the trial of the directors of South Canterbury Fince Co, at which all but one of the directors were acquitted. I find the South Canterbury Finance Co, and its principal director, Allan Hubbard, interesting. The collapse of SCF cost the New Zealand tax payer NZ$1.58 billion, because the funds of SCF were guaranteed by the Crown Guarantee Scheme. That is a lot of money, just under the total spent on Defence, just over 10% of the total spent on Education or Health. Timaru is quite a pleasant country town, with an attractive beach and majestic mountains in the background, but it is hardly the financial hub of the country, yet by the time of its collapse SCF was one of the largest finance companies of the country, and Allan Hubbard, its elderly crumpled chief, driving an old Volkswagen and living in a modest bungalow was thought of as a smart finacial guru. He managed to fool not only 35000 investors, experienced financial advisors, but also Treasury, who never wondered what a small time country accountant is doing footing it with the experienced financiers of this world. There is something in the New Zealand mentality, the No. 8 fencing wire attitude, that there is nothing an ordinary hardworking bloke can't fix with a little ingenuity, that hepled to perpetuate this illusion and gigantic fraud. There was the belief about that good old grandfatherly Allan Hubbard from a small country town that saw no change, no innovation for a generation or more can be trusted more than the flash city boys in their smart suits and resplendent offices. Cheating people who should have known better proved to be so simple that even good old Hubbard could devise such a scheme. You own a number of different companies. One of them is losing money, so you sell it off to one of the other companies just before the annual balance date, so that the losses don't show up in the balance sheet, and the day after the the report of a successful profitable year, the loss making company is sold back again to the original business that owned it before. It is a simple money go round, that even a simple reader of the finacial pages should have seen though, but the experts at the Treasury, and the savvy stockbrokers didn't ask the fundamental questions they should have, how did grandad, working from a modest Timaru office managed to accumulate NZ$1.55 billion of loans and debentures. What was in the water in Timaru that made people there so much smarter?

Kristallnacht Memorial Concert

Over the last few weeks I have worked on organizing a Kristallnacht Memorial Concert. To have a concert to commemorate Kristallnacht, not speeches, came out of the Recovering Forbidden Voices conference arranged by the NZ School of Music and the Victoria University History and Languages departments. For four days we listened to a wide range of music suppressed at the time. Some of this music was so moving, and performed so brilliantly by students of the School of Music, that I thought that these should be heard again by a different, and wider audience. The concert will mirror recent Jewish history, from Bloch's image of the Jewish schtetl and Mendelssohn's tribute to emancipation, to music by composers who escaped or survived Kristallnacht and ended up in New Zealand, Georg Tintner and Richard Fuchs, a moving memorial music for solo cello by Laurence Scherr, and the heartbreaking song cycle of setting of poems by children from Theresienstadt, I Never Saw another Butterfly, by Ellwood Derr. Details of this concert are on the Holocaust Centre of NZ website: http://holocaustcentre.org.nz/

Among the big boys, New Zealand on the Security Council

After lobbying for ten years, New Zealand was elected to the Security Council by a clear majority. It is not obvious how New Zealand will benefit from this, but I hope that the Security Council will greatly benefit from the presence of New Zealand. There are times when a moderate voice at a divided meeting has a significant influence. The world is no longer divided into two political blocks. The interests of the great powers often overlap, even when they can't agree on a common agenda. Islamic fundamentalism is as much a threat to Russia in Chechnya, to China in Xinjiang, Uygor Autonomous Region as it is to Western interests in the Middle East, not to mention large parts of Africa. New Zealand, a small insignificant nation in terms of global power blocks, is a trading nation, doing business with China as well as America, India, the Arab world as well as Europe and Russia. New Zealand has no history of staking out extreme positions in world politics. And the rest of the world can learn from the way New Zealand is handling its race relations, its benign tolerant acceptance of a diversity of people who settled here. Despite the increasing division between the rich and the poor, irrespective of which party is in government, extreme poverty is unacceptable. The conservative government of John Key considers child poverty as the greatest challenge it faces in its next term in office, not economic growth, wealth generation or GDP. New Zealand is a country with a warm heart. This is something that the others sitting around the table at the Security Council could well learn from.