Book Review: The treasure of Mr. Isakowitz

I have met Jews from Sweden, but never read a book written by a Swedish author about Jews and Shoa. Danny Wattin's book offered me the occasion to correct this omission. 

Maybe the story as such - three Jewish men: grandfather, son and grandson are going to Poland from Sweden to find the whereabouts of a tresure hidden before the war by the grand-grandfather - I fell in love with the writing style. It is a memoir inspired by personal stories, rebuilding fragments of stories during the war, based on stories of relatives and the own research of the author. The style is succint, suple, easy, not-pathetic and (self)ironic. It is the writing of a new generation of post-Shoah writers, quite far away of the events to approach the stories from a non-engaged angle but equally interested as the previous generations to tell the stories and recover the old histories. 

It results an approach that it is not superficial, but different. It remains the interest for the truth and the revenge of memory, but the scale of the voice differs. I am really curious about discovering more authors from this generation and, who knows, maybe some more histories about Swedish Jews too. 

Art from the Shoah at the German History Museum

How was it possible to create, work and feel normal in a concentration camp, where misery and the sword of death was ready to cut every minute? Myself, I cannot write or do anything creative when I am not with a clear mind and clear space. Preferably beautifully adorned. The exibition at the German History Museum, organised in collaboration with Yad Vashem, offers samples of works by artists that created until the last moment, in awful conditions, sometimes trading food for any small tool that can help them work. Over 70% of them perished during Shoah, but their works were testimonies - sometimes with a legal value too, presented in international courts - of the camp life and atrocities happening there.

Alexander Bogen, who fought against the Germans as partisan, and lately settled in the state of Israel, gave me the plain answer to the question about how art was possible: drawing and fighting day and night, being creative during Shoah was a protest of the artist against what was happening. Besides graphic work, the exhibition included also some beautiful poetry where hope and desperation are part of the artistic dialogue and diary.

Besides the life in the camp, there are interesting insights about Jewish life in Europe at the time, in general. In the picture, the drawings of the Dadaist artist Marcel Janco about the attacks against religious Jews in Bucharest, Romania, 1940. A reality often denied and neglected in this country even today.

There were so many impressive works at this exhibition. From the documentation of the daily hunger, to the atemporal girls in the field by Nelly Toll or the painting Children of the ghetto made on a potato sack. Moritz Müller paints in beautiful colours and using contrasts the idyllic nature around Theresienstadt. Or the self portrait by Esther Lurie, part of a long series of such self representations in the camps. 

Noteworthy was also the high quality of the documentation, either the leaflets in German, English and Hebrew with extensive biographies or the audio guides explaining in the smallest details the history of the artwork and the particular context it was created.

An opportunity to humbly let the silence in and appreciate any moment in life while being aware that such tragedies will never happen again. 

Of Israeli life in Palo Alto: Noga Niv - Inside the Bubble

Contemporary books about the hectic Israeli expat experiences in Europe or America are not a very frequent publishing event - at least not in English, but this one succeeds to break the ice. Inside the Bubble was published in Hebrew in 2008 and comes in an English version in 2015. 

Told from the perspective of Daniella, an Israeli psychologist on the Western coast of the USA, the literary alter ego of the author, it tells the story of a couple of financially successful Israeli families living on the top of the big waves of the start-up bubble. It is hard to identify these people back in the country as they keep speaking Hebrew and their children, altough bilingual, keep a strong Israeli identity. In the country, they belong to the invisible rich people, investing in expensive penthouse they occupy for maximum two months the year, the house where they will one day return, eventually, after getting the best from the 'chutz'. In the States, they are quite easy to spot, as they do not mix very well with the local Jewish communities, except during the high holidays or some special charity events. They keep the customs and the language and the homesickness for home and the za'atar. Many of them the first generation born in Israel, their identity is made up of their common language, Army histories and the grief of their parents whose lives were dramatically torn to pieces by Shoah. 

The stories are told through the voices of the women friends, part of a group of expat women that are trying to make a life of their own while their husbands are busy making money. They are not strong women, as the stereotypical women literature expects to be, but women enjoying the discoveries of their mature years, with all the doubts and struggle involved. Human stories are never simple and I enjoyed the subtle observations and introspections of the author.  

There are stories to be told and readers to enjoy them and this book is a welcomed addition to an emerging literature. Right now, I wonder who will write a similar book about expat life in Berlin. Or maybe not.