My Holocaust

by Tova Reich

  He looked at the two Jews in front of him. He could hardly believe it—Honey Pincus, Monty’s ex—and after all he had done for her, arranging for a private din Torah grievance hearing in his own suite at the Four Seasons hotel after she was released from the hospital due to injuries from so-called spouse abuse, a hearing over which he had presided himself as the impartial arbitrator in order to avoid, for the sake of the children, a public airing of all that domestic schmutz. He could still picture her bruised face and both of her swollen eyes and her arm in a sling as she had sat in a wheelchair then, just as he was sitting now. “Honey,” Maurice now said with unconcealed disappointment, “is this the thank-you what I get?” She turned toward her black boss as if requesting permission to speak. Divorce seemed to suit her, Maurice could not but notice. She looked fit, trim, dressed in black jeans and a sleeveless black shirt, her gray hair barbered in a crew cut, small silver hoops studding the lobes of her ears—no discernible scars, so far as Maurice could tell, from her suicide exhibitionism with the gas a couple of years ago. “I’m not your Honey,” was all she said finally.

  “Not mine Honey?” Maurice responded. “And maybe also your partner in crime over there”—and he pointed to the other Jew, the one with the flamboyant feather pluming from his hippie headband—“is not mine Schmaltz, Eliot Schmaltz, the son from mine dear friend and fellow partisan fighter, the distinguished proctologist and medical mogul, Dr. Adolf Schmaltz, M.D.?”

  “I’m not Eliot Schmaltz,” the answer came, in this case without a prior request for permission from the leader.

  “Not Eliot Schmaltz? So what kind of Schmaltz are you?”

  The feathered friend regarded Maurice with a mixture of pity and contempt. “In the tradition of my people, the Hopi peaceful nation,” he explained with a sigh, “I take the name of the greatest natural wonder wherever I happen to find myself. Thus, while I am in Washington, D.C., as a warrior for United Holocausts, I answer only to the name Foggy Bottom.”

  “And your big chief kick-in-the-pants over there,” Maurice inquired, “the one, you should excuse me, mit his flyer open—does he also have a special Washington title, may I ask?”

  The leader answered for himself. “Wherever I go, I am known as Pushkin Jones,” he said. “We’ve had the pleasure at Auschwitz.” And he cordially extended the hand he had just used to zip up. Of course, Maurice refused to take it. Maurice did not shake hands with terrorists.

  Unfazed, Pushkin Jones exposed his glistening teeth in a grin. “Brother Maurice,” he declared, “we of the United Holocausts rainbow coalition of all Holocausts, personal and global, have come here today to offer ourselves as your allies in your noble battle, and, I might add, the noble battle of your esteemed director, Sister Bunny”—he indicated the place where Bunny was still wrapped up in her therapy session, with the phone now clamped between shoulder and jaw in order to free both hands to search in a panic through her tote bag for the DustBuster’s portable recharger—“against the travesty and disgrace of Holocaust denial. I am referring now to the denial of all Holocausts other than the Jewish Holocaust. We shall combat this kind of Holocaust denial unto death. I am speaking of the denial of the African-American Holocaust, for example, which I have the distinct honor and privilege of representing today, claiming our forty-acres-and-a-mule just reparations for the depredations of slavery. I am speaking, to cite yet other examples, of the denial of the Holocausts of my two chiefs of staff—Sister Honey’s Women’s Holocaust reflecting the confluence of fascism and misogyny, both dead-ending in violence, and the Native American Holocaust of Brother Foggy Bottom here, and, by extension, the Holocausts of all aboriginal and indigenous peoples everywhere brutally uprooted by conquerors and colonialists and imperialists from their native soils since time immemorial, with special recognition due the Palestinian Holocaust, a direct side effect of the monopoly by the marketers of memory of your Jewish Holocaust.”

  Oho, Maurice was thinking, two chiefs of staff—this must be a very important guy, and obviously with an intelligence quotient, you had to hand it to him, he talked very good, Maurice acknowledged to himself, a very cool rapper, a very sophisticated cucumber but a genuine anti-Semite through and through, the real McGoy. Maurice would need to conserve every neuron for this crisis, he would have to gather every remaining ounce of his strength to survive this one. This was a command performance, and he was the resistance star.

  “This of course does not mean we exclude other Holocausts,” Jones elaborated. “The Children’s Holocaust, the Gay and Lesbian Holocaust, the Christian Holocaust, the Muslim Holocaust, the Tibetan Holocaust, and so on and so forth, all are gathered up equally under our great Holocaust tent.” His eyes swept across the Hall of Witness, from the weird threesome with the baby carriage in front of the Save the Children exhibition to Fisher’s Buddhists, now seated on the floor by the staircase engaged in joint meditation practice. This was when it dawned on Maurice for the first time, with a kind of staggering internal jolt, that they had been in cahoots all along, they were all in this together. “Nor should we neglect to make mention of the other Holocausts not in our line of vision at the moment who have rallied to our support both inside and outside of this building,” Jones added. “The Holocausts, past, present, and future, of nations too numerous to list, from Cambodia to Chechnya, from Russia to Rwanda, from Kosovo to Kurdistan, from Armenia to East Timor, plus Ecological and Environmental Holocausts, the impending Nuclear Holocaust, the Herbal Holocaust targeting marijuana and other fruits and vegetables, the Endangered Species Holocausts of plants and animals from bluegrass to baby seals, from bladderpods to lesser long-nosed bats, plus the personal and private Holocausts of our brothers and sisters everywhere on this earth, from Brother Kwame in the Oppenheimer diamond mines of South Africa to Sister Katya in the brothels of Tel Aviv, from Brother Unborn Fetus tossed in a Dumpster in Los Angeles County to Sister Granny set adrift on an iceberg to starve to death in the Eskimo sea, and on and on in an ancient and endless cycle of sorrow and woe. We are all survivors—cancer survivors, AIDS survivors, sexual abuse survivors, alcoholism survivors, mental illness survivors, circumcision survivors, menstruation survivors, propaganda survivors, et cetera et cetera. Move over, Brother Maurice, the neighborhood is changing, you are not alone, and you are not unique. No longer can you sit there on the ground like a tribe of Jeremiahs girded in sackcloth, covered in ashes, crying out in lamentation, Behold and see, if there be any pain like unto my pain! Your monopoly has been busted, Brother Maurice, your Holy-cause is history. We reject the hierarchy and caste system of Holocausts. All Holocausts are equal in the eye of God. No one Holocaust is superior to another, no one Holocaust is deserving of special treatment or recognition. All Holocausts are unique.”

  Maurice’s brain had grown numb. He had tuned out before the full litany of Holocausts and the rhetoric had been exhausted, at the point at which Jones had implied that other terrorists, not visible at the moment to the naked eye, were present in the museum, not only outside the building but also, most ominously, within it. They could be anywhere, Maurice reflected with a shudder, on any of the three floors of the permanent exhibition, lurking in the Gypsy wagon or in the Auschwitz barrack or in the Danish rescue boat, they could be hiding in one of the theaters on the concourse level or in the archives on the top floor. They had scoped out the territory thoroughly, they slinked around like phantoms, as slick and ungraspable as the jellied calf-bone ptscha that his mother used to boil, as cold and heartless as ice, they knew the location of every urinal and piece of art and did not discriminate between them, they set off the fire alarm flawlessly, flushing and voiding the entire building of everyone but themselves within five minutes flat. Maurice was now fully alert to how formidable his enemies were. Sitting in that wheelchair facing Jones and his henchmen, who were lined up like a firing squad in front of him, he prayed in his heart that his dogged will to survive and to prevail, which had carried him through so brilliantly over the years, would not des
ert him now.

  “Brother Pusher,” Maurice began, attempting to inject a diplomatic polish into his voice, “I hear you, I feel your pain, I know where you’re coming from, believe me. I myself started a very successful business from mine own, Holocaust Connections, Inc., mit a similar idea—sharing the moral capital from the Holocaust. But between you and me, you’re barking up the wrong fire hydrant this time. The Jewish Holocaust is bigger from both of us. It’s the super Holocaust, the state-sponsored systematic extermination from the Jewish people for the ‘crime’ of existing by the most advanced and civilized nation on earth—that’s the scientific definition. There was nothing like it before or after and there never will be. Nothing can compete. You should quit while you’re still ahead, you got a lost cause. Believe me, I understand how you feel. Everybody likes to think their Holocaust is the best, everybody likes to think their Holocaust is unique, but face it, the Jewish Holocaust is the most unique. So let me give you a little piece of advice from an old man who has seen a thing or two in his time, okay? Give up this crazy, childish narishkeit what you’re doing, and come express yourself constructively by joining me in mine business. I’ll make you a senior vice president mit complete control from the African-American Holocaust portfolio. What do you say, Pushka? Is it a deal?”

  “That’s a very fine offer, Brother Messer, I’m truly honored, but I’m afraid it’s an offer I shall have to refuse. I have a dream, Brother. My dream is that all Holocausts are one and united from sea to shining sea in brotherhood and sisterhood, from the red hills of Georgia to the desert states of Mongolia, and I can never give up my dream. But you can rest assured that we at United Holocausts shall always be mindful of our debt to the pioneering work of the Jewish people in the creative and conceptual uses of victimhood and survivorship and Holocausts, a stellar achievement, truly—memorials and museums across the globe as a reward for your persecution, reparations and restitution, and finally, the greatest prize of all, a country of your own. You are the model that all of our equally special and equally unique and equally equal Holocausts aspire to and strive to emulate. And we shall overcome, Brother, trust me. Today we begin with the museum. Tomorrow we redraw the map of the world. Our eye is on the prize.”

  The man was deranged, a megalomaniac, Maurice now realized. How much longer was he obliged to go on eating this dreck? There would be no payoff, Maurice recognized, from continuing to swallow this crap, twisting himself into contortions to avoid giving offense. This was where he drew the line. The time had come to quit making nice. “Listen to me, Pushy,” Maurice said. “I have just one word for you. That word is never! We will never give in to your terrorist demands. When it comes to genocides, we are the genocide mit the capital G, and you are nothing but a lightweight genocide, a Holocaust pisher, Pushy. And you will never get away mit this. This is the major leagues you’re playing in now, mine friend. You are now dealing mit the greatest Shoah on earth mixed up mit the greatest power on earth, the government from the United States of America and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Before you can say the name from your greatest hero in the area in which your people happen to excel, the department from at’letics—I’m talking Jackie Robinson here—the marines will come marching into this occupied territory and carry you out mit your whole gang of hooligans in body bags. Trust me! They will be showing up any minute—and boy are you going to be sorry!”

  But even as he pronounced these brave words with such ardor and conviction, Maurice seemed to shrivel in his wheelchair in front of the eyes of Pushkin Jones and his two enforcers, Honey Pincus and Eliot Foggy Bottom Schmaltz, as the realization overwhelmed him that it had been a long while now since the masses had poured out of the museum in a panic. It had been a lifetime, or so it seemed, since these outlaws had seized control and unleashed their terror, and yet no one had come to his aid and to the aid of the six million. In spite of the terrible lessons of the Holocaust, Maurice had heard no voice of conscience being raised, no one had spoken out, no one had lifted a finger to save him.

  “Yo, Sister Honey,” Pushkin Jones now barked, barely glancing at Monty’s liberated ex as he addressed her, “get the old man a drink of water. You know where our fountains are.”

  Yes, Maurice thought in despair, they knew where their fountains were, they knew where everything was, the air, the fire, the water, the source of all life. Jones directed his gaze back to the chairman slumping in his wheelchair. “You are wondering whence cometh your help, eh Brother Messer? Well, as soon as your director, Sister Bunny, gets off the horn with her mental health provider, if there’s any jazz left in it, perhaps you may borrow it to communicate with your spokespersons on the outside, your son Brother Norman and your chief of staff Brother Monty. I’ll tell you something, Brother Messer. There’s not very much that your two guys can see eye to eye on. According to the briefings I’m receiving”—and here he tapped the radio plug in his ear—“the two brothers are squabbling with each other like Jeroboam and Rehoboam over the kingship, now that you have been incapacitated and are out of the picture. But there is one thing, Brother Messer, that the two of them have very wisely and prudently agreed upon—namely, that it would be most unseemly, it would look very bad indeed, if your federal storm troopers come breaking into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum of all places, this noble monument to your six million or however many Jews slaughtered by the Hitlerites, and turn this place into another Waco Holocaust. Because, Brother Messer, you should know that if every single one of our demands is not met, all of our people inside this museum, not excepting the children”—he pointed by way of illustration to Rumi and Rumi, now entwined in sleep with their thumbs in each other’s mouth as once they might have slept in the womb they had shared—“literally, every child and woman and man of us, every last sister and brother, is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. Trust me.”

  Incapacitated? Out of the picture? Was that how they were spinning him right out of the playing field? Maurice shook his head. Well, we shall just see about that. Clearly, they had forgotten whom they were dealing with—the Honorable Maurice Messer, Maurice the Knife. He could scarcely believe it—such betrayal, such ingratitude. His own son Norman and his cherished protégé Monty already battling each other over the succession—and the body not yet cold. Maybe, Maurice speculated, maybe someone had caught a glimpse of the body in the wheelchair. Good, he decided, he would remain in the wheelchair, let them think he was weak, “incapacitated, out of the picture,” in the words of this psychopath and suicide artist Jones—an invalid, invalidated. Then, at the right moment, he would stun them by rising up like a mythical superhero from the comic books that his Norman used to keep in a wet pile next to the toilet bowl, and pow!—he would destroy them all. Swelling with indignation, Maurice flung out his hand and slapped away the plastic cup being held out to him by that sick-in-the-head Honey, sending it flying across the Hall of Witness, the water splashing into the face of this former punching bag of that traitor Monty. “Never!” Maurice cried. “I will never give in to your demands! I will never negotiate mit terrorists! I will never sell out the six million! You will have to carry me out feet first, mit mine nose pointing straight up to God Almighty in His heavens above!”

  With one decisive motion, Maurice swiveled his wheelchair and rolled off in the direction of his favorite spot in the museum—the alcove containing his beloved Founders’ Wall. He wanted in this his hour of need to commune with the spirits of his major donors. Bringing his wheelchair to a stop in this sacred space, Maurice felt immediately restored, renewed. This wall was his supreme creation. It was the monument to his greatest achievements, inscribed like a Rosetta stone with the chronicle of his triumphs, which only he could truly decipher. For a long time he gazed at the names on the wall, the roster of his precious donors of one million dollars or more, and was suffused with emotion as he recalled the details of each and every individual deal—how to reach this one on his private island he had retched nonstop over the side of a boat in the
Bermuda Triangle, how at the second meeting in the San Francisco penthouse to extract the gift of a lifetime in the estate planning of that one, the prospect had appeared wearing a surgical mask because, as his feygele assistant nonchalantly explained, Maurice had a habit of standing too close and spitting too wildly from excitement in the climactic moments of a fund-raising pitch, and so on and so forth down the roll of his princely benefactors. Those happy days were gone, alas, they had been his finest hour, he was like a retired general returning to the shrine to his historic victories.