Tutti's Promise: Jewish fate in The Netherlands

Trying to escape the horrors awaiting for Jews in Germany, a middle-class Jewish family run to Amsterdam shortly before The Netherlands are occupied by the Nazis. In this novel based on a personal story of the Lichtenstern family, the main voice belongs to Ruth Lichtenstern aka Tutti born in 1935 in Cologne, Germany, a little girl at the time of the war.

As many of the kids growing up this time, she grew up faster, learning to cope with human cruelty, discrimination and the urge to find food and give comfort and support to the parents. They are children assuming from a very small age adults' responsibilities. For the parents the pain is even bigger, as they should see how powerless they are to save their children from the daily nightmare.

Through her, we are introduced to the daily life of Jews in the Netherlands during the war, many of them, similarly with Tutti's family, trying to run from the German horrors. Every day is a test of survival and an effort to trick with the destiny.  It is a terrible fight for survival taking place and once in a while, good people - although only a few - are appearing in the life of the characters, including from the top of the establishment. For few months, the Lichtenstern family is able to stay away from the death camps, together with other Jews, by working at the Westerbork camp, trying to sell and buy scrap metal. But this chance is short-lived and they will be transferred to Theresienstadt where they will be liberated. The family starts the journey back, but the scars of those times remain deeply inscribed in the story of everyone's life. But there is also a promise, Tutti's promise, to refuse to give up hope and aim at making the world a better place. It is a promise that the reader too could take it.

The story is well written, accompanied by a dictionary of words in German and Dutch and explaining various terms used in the book, with vivid dialogues and in an attractive way that may keep the reader interested. Documents are inserted in to the text, offering the proof of authenticity of various episodes told in the story. The book can be used in middle schools to teach about Shoah and it offers to the reader the chance to learn something about Jews in Amsterdam and Shoah in The Netherlands and Europe in general. The episodes of life at the Theresienstadt concentration camp are also relevant for documenting this period.

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Book review: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Dara Horn

My first literary encounter with Dara Horn was an unforgettable blast, although the other two novels by her I've read were a bit deceiving. However, A Guide for the Perplexed, her fourth, is one of those books which haunts you for a long time, because of the intricated web of symbols and meanings openly expressed or hidding in plain sight. It is the kind of books that stays with you many days and even weeks after you finished it because it seems that regardless how many riddles you solved already, there is still something else left somewhere unanswered. 

Computer prodigy Josie Askenazi created a complicated Internet program called Genizah where memories can be stored and therefore, you can create and preserve a complete life story. Because 'Everything is absurd until one learns to code'. However, busy to save snippets of information, we may be too distracted sometimes to live the moment as it is. When she is invited to the National Library of the post-'revolutionary' Egypt for a presentation of the program, her less brilliant sister Judith encourage her to go. In her last day of the trip she is kidnapped and brought into the Death City of Cairo, where her death is recordeded and aired, although she is still secretly kept to create a home variant of the Genizah and also a virus that can destroy the archives developed by the Egyptian police using the system. As a 2.0 Scheherazade, she is trying to lure her kidnappers and win one more day and one more day of her life by using her strongest asset: her coding wisdom. 

Meanwhile, her sister is having her short-lived moment of glory, moving on with her husband and taking up the role of mother for her daughter. A short message Josie succeeded to send to the mobile of one of her kidnappers to both her husband and sister will change, although a bit later, the entire story and she will finally escape, with her sister killed during the events.

At the same time, there are another two stories taking place in the novel: one of the author of The Guide of the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides, searching for a cure of the asthma in the ancient Egypt, and the adventures of the 19th century Jewish researcher Solomon Schechter who discovered the famous Genizah in Egypt, a deposit of old documents and holy books aimed to be stored for preventing human destruction as they bear the name of Gd. 

The net of the story is so intricated that one feels that it is no details out of place. Horn has a serious Jewish knowledge which permeates the smallest details of the novel, from the details and commentaries of The Guide of the Perplexed until the history of Jews in Egypt or the various interpretation of the story of Yossef and his brothers. I've personally found fascinated the game of the double: The two Askenazi sisters, the twin sisters that brought prof. Solomon Schechter to Egypt, Schechter's relation with his estranged brother, Maimonides' brother who died during one of his oversea trips. This dual relationship applies even to the family names: Jossie Askenazi is married with Mizrahi.

A less clear connection for me was the asthma element: Maimonides wrote a Treaty of Asthma. Jossie suffers of asthma too, and her daughter too, as well as Schechter himself. I've only found a relatively obscure psychoanalitical explanation of this long-term lung condition according to which it is caused by the supressed cry of the child for the mother. 

Another aspect that was probably missed was the fact that after the killing of Josie is announced, her death is relatively easily accepted, and there are no efforts to rescue her body or find more about her whereabouts. 

The entire discussion about memory and how the past can shape the present and the future, including by repeating episodes from the past, although in different combinations and concentrations is worth at least another books. How much we can control our life memories, with the help of technology ? How much we can control our present and future? At what extent those memories saved are accurate and not just another story our minds avid for creating realities are longing for?

A Guide for the Perplexed by Dara Horn is a fascinating Jewish novel of the kind I would love to read more and more.

Rating: 5 stars