Tzili (transl. from Hebrew to German by Stefan Siebers) by Aharon Appelfeld

 

A simple girl from a poor family, situated in an unnamed country - there is a mention of a grandfather in the Carpathian region, and the Danube shore but anything specific -, but in a region whose Jews were wipped out from the face of the Earth, Tzili survived the war while hiding in the forest. The survival instinct helped her and also the survival drove her on her way to Palestine after the war was over. 

The homonymous book by Czernowitz-born Aharon Appelfeld is a non-sentimental story set on the foreground of the Shoah. All her family, except her bed-ridden father disappeared and by instinct, she left the house and either hid in the fields or in the forest, by performing menial works in the houses of local Christians. No one took her for a Jewess, as she always introduced herself as the daugher of Maria, a local prostitute. 

Compared to Katerina, Tzili is more realistic and less reflective on the past. The voice of her own story, she may not have a high self-awareness and her school results were less than mediocre, but maybe this simpleton attitude saved her. She did not think too much, lived her life with a strong will of survival. She may have heard from the village what was going on with the other Jews, but she never looked back, not even to go back to check on her father. Embarking to Palestine is a wise decision because what else can expect her here. 

At the end of the war, she is 15, pregnant with a man, Mark, she encountered while in the forest, another sad soul like her, that left her too without a trace that she loves, and so she loves his family - wife and children - that disappeared. Her human relationships are limited to basic interactions and the shild we may take it as a way to take distance from the rest of the world is just a philosophical artifact of our minds thirsty for human mysteries. In fact, she is just a simple person, with no future and past, just the present.

In Tzili, emotions are created without offering to the reader an emotional writing itself. Descriptions and interactions are the way in which the story takes shape. As a way to write about those terrible times, it helps, although may render the characters empty and cruel.

I had access to the book in an excellent translation from Hebrew into German by Stefan Siebers.

Two literary descriptions of anti-semitism

Israeli-writer born in Czernowitz Aharon Appelfeld is offering a sample of the popular reaction against Jews in Ukraine. A short telling example, at the end of the second Chapter of the novel Caterina, a discussion about the "Jewish difference": "- Why are they (the Jews) like this? - You don't know they killed Jesus? - They did? - Yes". From time to time, there are episodes when, randomly, the Jews are aggressed with no reason on the street, and everything is taking place as part of non-sense diabolic program: they ought to, because it is like a rule of the place. Caterina is getting over the distance between her world and the Jewish world, by working for and with Jewish families. And, at the end of the book and of her journey, when "there are no Jews in the world", she discovers being a living memory of their world and is afraid to do not loose those few memories too. And she is telling her story. In Joseph Roth's Tarabas the violence and hate are reaching the maximum when a painting of Mary is discovered under layers of dye in the house of the Jew with the name Kristianpoller - haven't yet discovered the reason why the author called him with this name. Once discovered the painting, it becomes object of adoration, but in the same time the Jews are considered guilty for hiding the painting - holy now - because, in fact, it is assumed their aim is to hide and destroy everything Christian. And, the same Mary-go-round of permanent aggression is put into practice. Nobody keen to change this, nobody brave enough to oppose it.