Of course, there is one thing that I do not forget: death. I think of it all the time, so to say. Am I afraid? Less than I was during my anxiety crises in the faraway past, but yes, I am certainly not indifferent to the sounds of its steady and approaching steps. I know there may be worse to come and that’s what often keeps me awake around three in the morning: trying to remember names or just those terribly simple, ordinary words that seem to have gone …
Back to the past: you cannot help examining your life, wondering whether on given moments you made the right decision or expressed your true thoughts firmly enough; you ask yourself if, by your own standards, you really fulfilled at least part of what you intended to accomplish. I could go on; it’s unnecessary.
As for the present, its flashes are in fact intractable: not only do past and future constantly prey on it but, whether you want it or not, a constant stream of information reaches you with its ever repeated sources of worry and its too frequent news of some tragedy. How could I, for example, get out of my mind that Jews in Israel burned a Palestinian toddler alive?
Saving some moments from that constant flow is the most you can hope for. There must be endless individual methods for isolating and protecting that precious gift: a sliver of peacefulness. In the past, I tried to empty my mind of all thought; it doesn’t work anymore. My method has become more down-to-earth: a double dose of humor when possible, otherwise a double dose of Zoloft …
You can also fall back on more traditional ways, those you have used throughout your adult life (on top of the above): a great book, some music, and a glass of whiskey. As far as whiskey goes, my taste is very simple, I prefer mild Irish whiskey, let’s say Jameson, to all the Scottish single malts — and to add insult to injury, with a lot of ice. The books? I just read the excellent Patrick Modiano’s Pedigree. I would love to say more about it (particularly as I have recently started and abandoned several highly praised and very mediocre productions), but it wouldn’t fit here.
At this penultimate stage, I realize that I have said very little about the music I love (apart from mentioning some religious music, Parsifal, and Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs). It’s a shame, as music was always very present in my life; alas, I cannot simply take the plane from L.A. to hear our daughter Michal, for example in the Shostakovich piano concerto she just performed or in the concerts of her chamber music ensemble. Shall I admit my love for Mozart, Chopin, and for chamber music from Beethoven to Brahms? As in many other things, I am hopelessly old-fashioned and conventional, but it’s what I love.
Strangely enough, I remember that my uncle Willy, who also lived in Nirah and who apart from being a good chemist was a very good violinist, once told me that King Boris of Bulgaria (poisoned by the Nazis) had asked that Anton Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony be performed at his funeral. Over the years, I discovered the reason for this odd request: the performance could easily have lasted until the resurrection of the dead.
Add to these strategies for grasping the present something Orna and I chose without being fully aware of the importance it would take: Bonnie, our chocolate Labrador puppy. We cherish that innocent, trusting, loving little being (not so little anymore). You can get her to obey any demand if you promise her a “treat,” but if your explanations are too elaborate her green eyes will stare at you and she will incline her head first to the left, then to the right, to try and understand what is expected now of the “very good girl.”
Mainly, as a young dog, she loves to play. While I was writing this, she dashed across the living room with one of Orna’s slippers in her jaws; she immensely enjoys being chased around and, needless to say, is much faster than both of us. Yet after a while, she will be tired, fall asleep, faintly snore, and suddenly twitch as she dreams.
SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER is an award-winning Israeli historian and currently a professor of history at UCLA. He was born in Prague to a family of German-speaking Jews, grew up in France, and experienced the German Occupation of 1940–1944. His historical works have garnered much praise and recognition, including the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945.
Also by
Saul Friedländer
WHEN MEMORY COMES
The companion volume to
Where Memory Leads
A classic of Holocaust literature, the eloquent, acclaimed memoir of childhood by a Pulitzer-winning historian, now reissued with an introduction by Claire Messud
Four months before Hitler came to power, Saul Friedländer was born in Prague to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1939, seven-year-old Saul and his family were forced to flee to France, where they lived through the German Occupation, until his parents’ ill-fated attempt to flee to Switzerland. They were able to hide their son in a Roman Catholic seminary before being sent to Auschwitz, where they were killed. After an imposed religious conversion, young Saul began training for the priesthood. The birth of Israel prompted his discovery of his Jewish past and his true identity.
Friedländer brings his story movingly to life, shifting between his Israeli present and his European past with grace and restraint. His keen eye spares nothing, not even himself, as he explores the ways in which the loss of his parents, his conversion to Catholicism, and his deep-seated Jewish roots combined to shape him into the man he is today. Friedländer’s retrospective view of his journey of grief and self-discovery provides readers with a rare experience: a memoir of feeling with intellectual backbone, in equal measure tender and insightful.
www.otherpress.com
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