Subject: Kafka, Salinger & Holocaust
From: denis jonnes (djengltl@mbox.nc.kyushu-u.ac.jp)
Date: Thu Mar 30 2000 - 00:50:16 EST
Jason & all,
Thought your account of Auschwitz tour moving. Have read some
of Primo Levi and Eli Wiesel, but felt your post conveyed real
sense of the place and what happened there.
It also inevitably got me thinking again about JDS, Second World War,
Nazism and Holocaust. Am just wondering how much of Holocaust
can be read into or out of Salinger's writing--and Salinger's life,
including his self-silencing. We know that at end of the war
he was with an intelligence unit dealing with de-nazification
in occupied Germany (see Esme); we know, too, from Hamilton's
biography that he had been in pre-Anschluss Austria and probably
witnessed Nazi activities there--also in Poland after that in connection
with father's meat & cheese importing business.
While Salinger and Salinger family
seem not to have been observant, we know--again here courtesy of
Hamilton--that his father had been a rabbi in Cleveland and there
must have been family connections in Poland (?) (this is my
surmise)--news
about their fates eventually reaching USA.
One of the things that strikes me about Salinger is how
we have what is for most part a fiction of psychological
crisis and dysfunction, but how little he gives us about
what is at root of crisis. I have never felt for example
that 'phoniness' fully explains why Holden is as agitated as
he is about school, classmates, girls, etc. . At what point
does 'elusiveness' become a matter of 'avoidance' or 'denial'
(I don't mean this in sense of denying Holocaust)?
My feeling--obviously--is that Holocaust was another
factor contributing to the making (and perhaps also unmaking) of
Salinger as writer.
Again, thanks for the post and personal guided tour of hell.
Denis Jonnes
p.s. if anybody has further info on this--i.e. Salinger & Holocaust,
either
biography or readings--I'd be grateful for leads.
jason varsoke wrote:
>
> Charotte wrote:
> > paul,
> > thank you, thank you! i spent last night reading max brod's 'postscript to
> > the first edition (1925)' in my knopf copy of 'the trial', weeping. (my
> > husband kept pestering me as to why. men!) (sorry, guys) yes, your memory
> > serves you well: the 10 notebooks are mentioned there. amid the tears, i
> > couldn't help but think of an old man in cornish.
>
> In 1996 I was backpacking through europe. In Prague I visited the
> Kafka museam where I haggled the last English copy of Kafka's Biography
> _K_. On the 13 hr train [read slow boat to china] I took to Auschwitz I
> read most for the bio, which is pretty repetitive: Kafka had problems with
> his father, Kafka had problems as a Jew, Kafka wrote, Kafka was friends
> with Max Brod, Kafka hated his father, Kafka hated his father, Kafka hated
> his father.
> At the end of my train ride I had just skimmed a part about Kafka's
> sisters and how, though he didn't make it to WWII they did. They were in
> concentration camps.
> The museam at Auschwitz shouted a strange message into the ears of the
> visitors. The message was this, "The Holocaust REALLY happened!" To me
> this was like someone trying to convince me that George Washington was the
> first president of the US. I thought the rest of the world knew that
> anti-holocaust people were just as sane as the flat-earthers. But here
> was this entire museam proving the holocaust to me.
> Most of the exhibits were rooms of tooth brushes, prosthetics, hair,
> clothes, etc. I walked through at museam speed, strolling through the
> isles, pondering, but not to hard. Gotta keep the line moving. But I was
> caught in the luggage room.
> Amongst all the suitcases, hat boxes, and cosmetic cases was one piece
> of luggage that ran me through. On the side of a tan suitcase was a white
> outline of Chekelovakia (sp!) with a star inside with the label "Prag"
> (German spelling of Prague). Most of the suitcases had names painted on
> them. This one read, "Marie Kafka."
> I paralyized as if two hunder and twenty volts surged through my feet.
> My hair literarly stood on end. I couldn't move, just stare. It was as
> if so many degrees of seperation were made into three. He was no longer
> this great writer I adored from afar. All the world for that moment was
> Kafka, Marie and Me. I lost about 20 minutes somewhere in that stare. My
> back was clamy and soaked when I left.
> The rest of Auschwitz didn't affect me nearly the same way; nothing
> ever has. I know this measly email doesn't come close to even the shadow
> of the experience. It was as if the skeletal hand of old grimmy reached
> out of the suitcase and clutched my heart in it's cold grip. It was as if
> for a moment I understood the holocaust.
>
> A month later I finished _K_ and found that Franz Kafka's sisters
> didn't got to Auschwitz and neither was named Marie. I'm glad I didn't
> know this at the time. (Since that time I've questioned the value of
> facts as truth).
> When I was there in `96 there was also a man who gave tours from the US
> to Auschwitz. He was a survivor of Auschwitz - hid in a toilet. He gave
> tours to Americans and explained the more human side of that black place.
> I talked to him for a half hour on the bus. It's something I'll never
> forget. I don't have his contact info, but I recommend his tour to
> everyone.
>
> go about your day. Be happy you don't know a hell like Auschwitz.
>
> -jason
>
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