#Weremember: Maria Forescu

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Today is the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, another occasion to remember every of the 6 million innocent people murdered only because they were Jewish. A sad moment in the history of humanity which took place less than a century ago. The date commemorates the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, by the Russian troops.

Hopefully, there were survivors who were strong enough to share with us the stories of the horrible lack of humanity humans can be capable of. Most of the people who were sent to the camps didn't survive though and it is our duty to remember them, because our memories of them keep them alive. 

One of the many who were sent to death and didn't come back was the actress and singer Maria Forescu, whose full story is relatively less known. I first read about her during a recent visit at the German Film Museum in Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, where her activities and short details about her life, mostly undocumented, are mentioned. 

She was born in Czernowitz, nowadays Ukraine, at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1875, as Maria Füllenbaum. She changed her family name into one sounding Romanian in order to avoid the obvious anti-Semitic intolerance at the time. She attended a boarding school in Paris, studied music and singing as well as drama at the Prague Conservatory. She secured a position at the Viennese Carl Theater as an operetta singer. She was on tours all over the world, including the Theatre of the West in Berlin or the famous Metropolitan. Since 1915, she decided to leave the singing career, moved to Berlin and dedicate all her energies and talent to the film, playing in various movies famous at the time, including Zwischen Nacht und Morgen or Danton, both launched in 1931. In total, she acted in around 160 films, only few of them archived. She was married with Harry Piel, an actor himself together with whom she appeared in many movies.

In 1932, her career was shortly cut by the racial laws of the Nazis. She decided to stay in Berlin, ending up completely isolated and expelled from the main professional organisations. After a short time during which she found refuge together with other Jews in Motzstrasse in the Wilmersdorfer borough of Berlin, she was sent to death, probably Buchenwald concentration camp where she died at the end of 1943.

Wo bist Du, Motek?

For more or less clear reasons, I avoided this book for quite a long time, as I had a bad thought that in fact it is a book about fantastic Israeli life in Berlin, far away of that...and this...and that...About how beautiful and free and attractive Germany is compared to the realities back home. Nothing bad with the freedom of choosing your own country, but expat exhibitionism in this case may reach some levels close to the kitsch. So, again, I avoided the book.

But at the end of the last year I changed my mind and ordered a copy from the local library. The book is available only in the German version and it is a good and quality writing. More than a careful account of adventures in Berlin - living in this city is an adventure anyway - the book is the story of connecting with the German roots, reading old family diaries and tracing down less known personal histories. After the dark nostalgic episodes of the lecture of the family stories, the 'balagan' of the daily life and journalistic requests from Israel are welcomed encounters. From hysterical laughing to tears of regret and inter-religious passions, this book is an interesting read, outlining episodes of Jewish history in Germany. It is worth reading if interested to know the old and new Germany and its Jewish histories. 

In another time and space 'A Man Lies Dreaming'...

This is a very challenging book, unique for its approach and creativity. Every successful book should be unique for...but, some topics are much harder to be creative with than the others. 

In 'A Man Lies Dreaming', Shomer (watcher, in Hebrew) an inmate of Auschwitz is re-creating a world where the cursed German dictator is just a refugee turning into a refugee, in an England openly unfriendly towards the difference - actually this last part is not a fictional projection. 

The time of the story alternates from the adventures of detective 'Wolf' aka Adolf, hired to find the whereabouts of a Jewish girl mysteriously missing on her way from the - communist - Germany to the free England. In the good tradition of the shund - the Yiddish version of pulp noir openly despised by Sholem Aleihem who criticized the popular author Shomer for his un-literary and bad taste writings - there are a lot of sexual encounters and misadventures. During the story, 'Wolf' is having his own private 'bris' and will emigrate to Palestine with Exodus, while 'In another time and space' Shomer lies either 'dreaming' or 'sleeping'.

The entire story - with its many stories and references, from the top members of the Nazi establishment to various literary references, more or less familiar - with its absurd episodes and hard-core moments its a run against the clock for survival. This is how Shomer, who lost his children and wife at Auschwitz is able to survive the daily nightmare, so well that it will simply disappear, becoming maybe himself one of the characters of his own stories. Or this is the hope that he did so. 

In a very gentle way, this book is a praise to the world of imagination and the work of spirit, which sometimes can won even in the most disgraced places. It is not guaranteed but at least it is worth a try. It makes life more bearable, whatever the circumstances. 

Yiddish stories in the New Country

It took me an unusual amount of time to finish this book of short stories. I felt like at the end of each of it, I should take a break, breath deep, very deep, and wait the next day to start the new one. Originally published in Yiddish, this collection of stories is apparently only a small part of what Blume Lempel wrote during over 9 decades of life. Born near Czernowitz in 1907, she started writing in the 1940s, after settling in the US and escaping the Shoah. 

The richness of the English version made me regret of not being able to read the stories in the original Yiddish. There is an infinite variety of feelings and descriptions in every sample of writing, and for a while I ended up trying to imagine which was the Yiddish version for a paragraph or another. 

Blume Lempel writes about the Old Country, stories of survival with any price, even for a short time, stories of failure, nostalgia. There are stories that should be written because this is what is left after what happened. Very often, nature, with its beauty and implacable laws and wild life is the complete antithesis to the erratic human life. In the words of one of her characters: 'But what man has done to the man, this I cannot forgive'. The people she is writing about live lives ordered by caprice, struggling to escape the turmoils of the human nature. If for Adorno, 'to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric', for Blume Lempel to write without mentioning the trauma of the Shoah is impossible. Herself torn by the pain of being the only survivor of her family, she is just writing even not sure about her art of writing and the chances of publishing. This quote from the last story of this volume - The Fate of the Yiddish Writer - is her testimony: 'You did not survive simply to eat blintzes with some cream. You survived to bring back those who were annihilated. You must speak in their tongue, point with their fingers'. In the same story there is the reason why she choose Yiddish instead of English: 'My father and my mother, and sisters and brothers, my murdered people seek revenge in Yiddish. No world language is comparable to Yiddish, with its unique sights, its unmatched sense of humor'. 

Miraculously, Yiddish survived and flourishes nowadays. We survived. 

Understanding the upsherin tradition

My story starts with a very common line used I suppose by many Jewish mothers of boys, when more than a person stops me on the street to tell me how beautiful my 'daughter' is. Followed by the person's disappointment or surprise when I say that in fact he is my son. And ending up with me hurrying up to move on, not keen to share the secret of the long hair.

Although I took the tradition for granted, I recently realized myself that I rarely went too much into the deep reasons of it. And, as in the case of any tradition, it may have some aspects that are not necessarily 100% clearly traced in texts and commentaries. 

Called upsherin - from the Yiddish upsher, to sher off - or chalakah for the Oriental Jews - the Arabic word for haircut - the tradition spread from the 16th century on. It was officially mentioned in Sha'ar Hakavanot, by Rabbi Chaim Vital, a student of Rabbi Isaac Luria, ARIZaL the mystic from Safed. According to Vital and ARIZaL disciples, the holy rabbi went to Meron for the first haircut of his son, the burial site of the Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, the author of the mystical book of the Zohar. 

There are several reasons why the hair of a young boy should not be cut until the third year of life. The tradition is compared with the idea of orlah, according to which one is not allowed to eat the fruit from a tree during the first three years of life. Similarly, a child is considered as a young fruit, growing up and absorbing as a sponge all the influences of the environment. After this age, he is able to give back and start doing mitzvot. The main changes he is going through is that, from now on, he may wear kippah and tzitzit. Learning Shma is also part of the new learning schedule. A local tradition is to give to small boys plastic Hebrew alphabet frames and put some honey on the letters. Licking the honey, the little boy will think about learning as an exercise as sweet as honey. (Well, you lost me a bit on this, thus better let's go to the next paragraph...)

The sources of the comparisons with the tree are traceable in three places: 'A person is like the tree of a field' (Deut.), 'He will be like a tree planted in the water' (Jer.), and 'For as the days of the tree should be the days of my people' (Isaiah). I particularly love the comparison between a person and a tree, as it involves the idea of developing and growing up, while having the roots well fixed into the ground. Between earth and heaven, the child needs the help and support of the parents for settling in the right soil. 

In addition to the Biblical sources, there is also a superstition associated with the tradition. It is said that demons are particularly interested to steal little boys, thus, when the hair is long, they may be confused. As for now, I didn't trace the origin of this superstition..

In Israel and also abroad, there are many haircuts done on the Lag Ba'omer a relatively minor celebration that received in the last centuries deep Kabbalistic meanings, celebrating among others also the death of Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai. People hurry to go to its tomb in Meron, where huge celebrations, with barbecue and drinking and dancing are done. As there are many days when haircutting is forbidden, it is important to ask the opinion of your local Rabbi regarding the recommended time. 

The ceremony in itself - embraced equally by religious and non-religious Jews, on traditional reasons - can be either hold at a synagogue, or if in Israel, maybe at Meron or a holy place, at the tomb of a tzaddik, or just at home, with a modest celebration being organised, with thematic food motives. A wise person - usually a rabbi - is supposed to cut the first  lock, the work being continued by a barber. The religious Jews leave the side locks - peyot - intact. Another tradition is to weight the hair off and to give the same amount of money as tzedaka - charity.

As for us, it is quite early to set up a plan for our upsherin party. I am fully enjoying every moment with my son preparing the ground for a strong tree.