On our Professor's Austrian book

[Anonymous]

#752

It took me a while to complete the book. The subject itself is so fraught—I feel similarly when I must so often revisit the book we did with our friend David which is so bound up with the subject of AIDS, which killed so many of our dear friends from the 80s. It brings up an oppressive aura which permeates everything in the time one is consumed in dealing with it. Of course Prof. Perl didn’t live through the holocaust but it touched her family and informs so much of the Jewish experience worldwide. And when one travels to the countries that were on the wrong side of World War 2, and for sure the Axis WAS and IS the wrong side–one realizes quickly that firstly, it wasn’t very long ago in the greater scheme of things, and secondly, that there are still plenty of Nazis about.

The two sections I felt most strongly about were the walk that Prof. Perl took around the town with Horst. Visiting the sites of heinous crimes brings the facts home quite viscerally of the nature of the horrific mass murdering that happened while oblivious or uncaring “average people” went on about their daily business—and then to hear of the excruciating machinations that went on behind the erection of what are in the end pathetic, compromised memorials is chilling and sickening. The other part that gripped me in anticipation was the dinner with Margret’s husband’s Nazi parents. But as and after it happened, it was frustrating—- although Anna seems to have a conscience of some minimal sort, Luis does not, in fact he stands his ground, as so many “former” Nazis surely do. Both peoples’ reaction were inadequate—they were not on any level accepting that they did wrong. Not knowing the Professor well enough to know whether or not her own family members were murdered by them literally, because it would have been done with their approval, since I do not believe Anna’s protestations that she “didn’t know”—and the idea that Luis’ big gesture was wanting to take the Professor’s children for a walk up a steep mountain–well, I think not.

After Marguerite and I had lived in Belgium for 6 months in 1988, one night in Brussels our little band was attacked by Flemish skinheads—I was beaten and our guitarist Marguerite’s ex-husband was stabbed. As we were reporting the incident to the police, we saw the skinheads through the window of the station sitting at an outdoor café below! We exclaimed this fact to the cops, but they did nothing other than to suggest we had overstayed our welcome in their country, because they aligned with the assailant’s fascist views. We subsequently left. As far as Austria and Germany go, I can hardly think of a part of the world that I would like to visit less, because it is so permeated with Nazism, which is going through a rejuvenation there at this time—-and so I salute Professor Perl’s courage.

[Sondra Perl]

#756

Hi James,
Yes….fraught is the right word. Such complicated histories that can’t be put to rest.
Since you asked, my family on both sides left Russia and Poland in the early part of the 20th century — fleeing pogroms, for sure, but no one I am aware of was caught up in Hitler’s onslaught. Initially this ‘lack of direct connection’ made me feel as if I had no right to address the Holocaust or perhaps that I stand in some remove to it as I am not a descendant of the victims. But then I began to see that one can choose to take this on no matter where one stands — that it is a human question and human loss and human responsibility.

For me, being willing to meet Anna and Luis was what mattered, not what they said as a result of our meeting. Anna seemed capable of compassion and of warmth. Luis was stone-like. In the end, they were just two old people, and what mattered to me, as I wrote towards the end, was the way this history could now be carried by Margret’s daughter.

And it sounds as if you and Marguerite have also had your own harrowing experiences in Belgium.

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