Two and a half lives
The book "Two Lives," by Vikram Seth, is an interesting, but rather long, nonfiction book about his great-aunt and great-uncle. Not seemingly an attractive subject for a book, except that his great-uncle was Indian and his great-aunt was a German Jewess.
He tells their story through his eyes, so we get a lot about him in this book too. How he first met them when he came to London as a teenager to study and stayed with them in their suburban London home. The book starts with the sentence "When I was seventeen I went to live with my great-Uncle and great-Aunt in London..." He uses the form "Shanti Uncle" all the way through the book while he talks about "Aunt Henny," why this maddening inconsistency is never explained.
The essence of the book is the love story of Shanti Seth, a young Indian sent to Berlin to study dentistry in the 1930s and Hennerle Caro, the daughter of his landlady. He is introduced into her circle of friends and much of the book is spent detailing their relationships and what happened to them when the inevitable came, when Hitler took power in 1933 and the Nazi State gradually reduced Jews to stateless non-citizens, and then killed them.
One of the interesting aspects of the story is that this circle of friends consisted of Jews, half-Jews and non-Jews, and it is interesting to see how each fares. Much of the story is told through long verbatim extracts of letters exchanged between his Uncle/Aunt and their friends, those left back in Germany, some of whom were killed, some survived and those who emigrated. Reading this book one feels that the author was committed to tell their story with love, but it is told in such excruciating detail that the dramatic aspects are lost in a sea of information. One feels that a good editor was needed to greatly reduce the size of this 500 page book (the original letters could have been printed as an appendix or deposited in an archive for those really interested). An amazing piece of luck was the discovery of a sheaf of letters from/to his Aunt Henny secreted in the proverbial trunk in the attic long after her death, that revealed a lot about the relationships and feelings of this otherwise closed and secretive person.
The story is that Shanti Seth met and apparently fell in love with the tall, slender Henny, who was "engaged" to the tall half-Jewish, blond-haired Hans, who wrote her copious love letters and poems. After the Nazis came to power and Shanti had finished his dental studies he was forced to leave Berlin in 1937. He opted to go to England and took a qualifying dental exam in Edinburgh (the cheapest location) so that he could practise dentistry in the UK.
Meanwhile, a distant English relative by marriage of Hans managed to help Henny escape from Germany as their nanny in 1939, a few months before the war began. She was taken to England and there eventually got a job. Her mother and sister Lola were not so lucky, but since Lola worked for the Jewish Gemeinde, the agency tasked with providing the German Government with information about the Jews, she managed to keep themselves alive until 1943, longer than most. Eventually they were separated and transported and her mother was killed in Thereisenstadt and her sister in Birkenau.
At the same time, Shanti Seth volunteered for the British Army and became a dentist with the Army Dental Command, being posted to Ethiopia, Egypt and then Italy. From generally being behind the lines he was sent to the front during the Italian campaign and near Monte Cassino in 1944 he was hit by a shell and lost his right fore-arm. Apart from the general horror of dealing with such an injury, he felt that he had lost his ability to remain a dentist and would lose his ability to continue to practise his profession.
However, after the war and a period of rehabilitation, during which he had managed to keep in contact with Henny and sent her what were clearly love letters, he managed to obtain a post with a dental products company and prospered. Eventually he was able to re-start dental practice and with some adaptations performed almost all the necessary procedures one-handed! There is no doubt that he was a remarkable and strong-willed man.
Eventually Shanti and Henny married in 1951, although why it took them so long is unclear. Perhaps she was mourning not only her mother and sister, but for Hans who had married a Christian to save himself (mischlings who married non-Jews were to be dealt with later...). Of the circle of their friends none of the Jews except for Henny survived the war.
One unremarked aspect of this book is that of course Henny and her family were completely assimilated German Jews, there was no "Jewish content" in their lives, apart from their genes. Although the author acknowledges this, he ignores the fact that the majority of Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust were religious. He also indulges in a brief anti-Israel venting, where he, as a good liberal, of course, expresses sympathy for the poor Palestinians. For him the story of Israel begins in 1948 as a result of Jewish belief in biblical prophecy ("divinely ordained" p. 357), whereas in fact Israel was begun by completely non-religious, secular Jews seeking a safe haven long before the War of Independence was forced on them. He does not acknowledge (or perhaps know) that secular Jews had been settling in Israel since the 1880s to escape precisely the kind of death his great-Aunt's family suffered. If even a sensitive and educated author such as Vikram Seth is so blind that he cannot see that Israel was founded to ensure the survival of Jews other than his great-Aunt (who was lucky enough to survive in England), what hope is there from others less well informed.
Finally, this book is the record of an improbable but enduring marriage, of extraordinary people living ordinary lives, that continued in suburban routine until their deaths.
He tells their story through his eyes, so we get a lot about him in this book too. How he first met them when he came to London as a teenager to study and stayed with them in their suburban London home. The book starts with the sentence "When I was seventeen I went to live with my great-Uncle and great-Aunt in London..." He uses the form "Shanti Uncle" all the way through the book while he talks about "Aunt Henny," why this maddening inconsistency is never explained.
The essence of the book is the love story of Shanti Seth, a young Indian sent to Berlin to study dentistry in the 1930s and Hennerle Caro, the daughter of his landlady. He is introduced into her circle of friends and much of the book is spent detailing their relationships and what happened to them when the inevitable came, when Hitler took power in 1933 and the Nazi State gradually reduced Jews to stateless non-citizens, and then killed them.
One of the interesting aspects of the story is that this circle of friends consisted of Jews, half-Jews and non-Jews, and it is interesting to see how each fares. Much of the story is told through long verbatim extracts of letters exchanged between his Uncle/Aunt and their friends, those left back in Germany, some of whom were killed, some survived and those who emigrated. Reading this book one feels that the author was committed to tell their story with love, but it is told in such excruciating detail that the dramatic aspects are lost in a sea of information. One feels that a good editor was needed to greatly reduce the size of this 500 page book (the original letters could have been printed as an appendix or deposited in an archive for those really interested). An amazing piece of luck was the discovery of a sheaf of letters from/to his Aunt Henny secreted in the proverbial trunk in the attic long after her death, that revealed a lot about the relationships and feelings of this otherwise closed and secretive person.
The story is that Shanti Seth met and apparently fell in love with the tall, slender Henny, who was "engaged" to the tall half-Jewish, blond-haired Hans, who wrote her copious love letters and poems. After the Nazis came to power and Shanti had finished his dental studies he was forced to leave Berlin in 1937. He opted to go to England and took a qualifying dental exam in Edinburgh (the cheapest location) so that he could practise dentistry in the UK.
Meanwhile, a distant English relative by marriage of Hans managed to help Henny escape from Germany as their nanny in 1939, a few months before the war began. She was taken to England and there eventually got a job. Her mother and sister Lola were not so lucky, but since Lola worked for the Jewish Gemeinde, the agency tasked with providing the German Government with information about the Jews, she managed to keep themselves alive until 1943, longer than most. Eventually they were separated and transported and her mother was killed in Thereisenstadt and her sister in Birkenau.
At the same time, Shanti Seth volunteered for the British Army and became a dentist with the Army Dental Command, being posted to Ethiopia, Egypt and then Italy. From generally being behind the lines he was sent to the front during the Italian campaign and near Monte Cassino in 1944 he was hit by a shell and lost his right fore-arm. Apart from the general horror of dealing with such an injury, he felt that he had lost his ability to remain a dentist and would lose his ability to continue to practise his profession.
However, after the war and a period of rehabilitation, during which he had managed to keep in contact with Henny and sent her what were clearly love letters, he managed to obtain a post with a dental products company and prospered. Eventually he was able to re-start dental practice and with some adaptations performed almost all the necessary procedures one-handed! There is no doubt that he was a remarkable and strong-willed man.
Eventually Shanti and Henny married in 1951, although why it took them so long is unclear. Perhaps she was mourning not only her mother and sister, but for Hans who had married a Christian to save himself (mischlings who married non-Jews were to be dealt with later...). Of the circle of their friends none of the Jews except for Henny survived the war.
One unremarked aspect of this book is that of course Henny and her family were completely assimilated German Jews, there was no "Jewish content" in their lives, apart from their genes. Although the author acknowledges this, he ignores the fact that the majority of Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust were religious. He also indulges in a brief anti-Israel venting, where he, as a good liberal, of course, expresses sympathy for the poor Palestinians. For him the story of Israel begins in 1948 as a result of Jewish belief in biblical prophecy ("divinely ordained" p. 357), whereas in fact Israel was begun by completely non-religious, secular Jews seeking a safe haven long before the War of Independence was forced on them. He does not acknowledge (or perhaps know) that secular Jews had been settling in Israel since the 1880s to escape precisely the kind of death his great-Aunt's family suffered. If even a sensitive and educated author such as Vikram Seth is so blind that he cannot see that Israel was founded to ensure the survival of Jews other than his great-Aunt (who was lucky enough to survive in England), what hope is there from others less well informed.
Finally, this book is the record of an improbable but enduring marriage, of extraordinary people living ordinary lives, that continued in suburban routine until their deaths.
posted by Jack Cohen at 9:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home