Book Review: Grossman biography is also a narrative on Soviet history

By Murray Citron

Vasily Grossman and the

Soviet Century

By Alexandra Popoff

Yale University Press

395 pages

Early in the Soviet era, Joseph Stalin raised a glass to writers as “engineers of the human soul.” It was up to the writers to understand the obligation to the state that such praise carried, especially if they were Jewish and didn’t drink so much.

Vasily Grossman was born in 1905 in Berdichev, Ukraine, the home of one of the largest Jewish communities in eastern Europe. The family was assimilated and comparatively well-to-do. Grossman became a chemical engineer and worked for some time as an engineer in the Donbass, while also writing. In 1936 he became a full-time writer.

He was a successful novelist by the time Germany attacked Russia, in 1941. For health reasons, he was not suited for military service, but became a war correspondent. He reported from the fronts during the terrible retreats of 1941 and 1942, and from Stalingrad during the siege. His great novel, Life and Fate, which is described as a “Soviet-era War and Peace,” is set during the Battle of Stalingrad. Grossman died of stomach cancer in 1964.

Alexandra Popoff, who was born and raised in Moscow, is a former journalist with expertise in Russian literature. She now lives in Saskatoon and has published previous prize-winning books. For this biography, she was able to interview Grossman’s daughter and other relatives, and others who knew him, and was allowed to use their archives, including many letters, as well as Soviet-era state archives which have become available.

I was able to read Life and Fate, and Popoff’s biography, at the same time, so I had them in counterpoint. Grossman was witness to the violence of collectivization in the 1920s, the terror of the purges in the 1930s, and the bungling and lack of preparation for war in 1941, as well as the suffering and struggle of the people and soldiers that enabled the Soviet state to win. Popoff’s book, besides being a life story of Grossman, is a lucid narrative of those events, and of how they informed Grossman’s work. The work includes, of course, much besides Life and Fate. There are a number of other novels, short stories and reportage.

Grossman, travelling with the Soviet forces, was among the first to see Treblinka. His essay, “The Hell of Treblinka,” is in The Black Book of Russian Jewry, edited by Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg, which was suppressed by Stalin and published years later. The Black Book contains also Grossman’s report on the murder of the Jews in Berdichev, his home town, where his mother was trapped when the Germans came.

A theme in Life and Fate is antisemitism in the Soviet state. In an essay about half-way through the novel, Grossman wrote: “Antisemitism… is a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures and state systems. Tell me what you accuse the Jews of – I’ll tell you what you’re guilty of.” Popoff notes that when a shortened version of the novel was first published in the Soviet Union, in 1988, this chapter was cut.

Another theme in Life and Fate is the similarities between the totalitarian systems under fascism and Bolshevism. Timothy Snyder, in his history, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, cites Grossman as an authority. Popoff tells how the book was suppressed, and the manuscript in fact arrested, by the secret police. She also tells of Grossman writing to Nikita Khrushchev to plead for publication. He was allowed a meeting with Mikhail Suslov, the ideologist of the Politburo, who told him the novel could not be published in the Soviet Union for 200 years. He was not saying the novel was false, but that its truth threatened the regime’s existence. Part of the story Popoff tells is how a manuscript was smuggled to the west and published there. Ultimately, the book was published in Russia under Mikhail Gorbachev, long after Grossman’s death.

The event that has been called “Stalin’s last crime” came in January, 1953. Nine leading doctors, six of them Jewish, were arrested and accused of being a terrorist group controlled by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and plotting to murder the leadership of the Soviet Union, including Stalin. Bulletins appeared daily in the press denouncing the doctors. In late January, 57 prominent Jews, including Grossman, were summoned to the office of Pravda and presented with a letter denouncing the doctors. Grossman yielded to the pressure and signed it. The letter was never published. Stalin died in March, and in April his successors announced that the “Doctors’ Plot” was false.

Popoff writes, “Although the open letter was never published, Grossman did not forgive himself for acting against his conscience.” She quotes the passage in Life and Fate in which Victor Shtrum, the character whose life experiences are similar to Grossman’s, signs a similar letter. In the novel, Grossman speculates on how people can be made to do such things.

Book Review: The rollicking adventure of a young mystery-solving musician

By Rubin Friedman

The Clarinetist

By Herschel Katz

Self-published

284 pages

The Clarinetist is the first book by Herschel Katz, a former Montrealer who has lived in Jerusalem since 1984 where he is now retired after working as an urban planner for 29 years. His biographical notes also indicate he worked as a part time book reviewer several years ago and as a result of this experience, decided to try his hand at writing a story himself.

The novel he has written is a good first effort and seems to reflect some of his own interests. He is an amateur clarinetist and seems to have developed an interest in various aspects of the Holocaust. Against this background, Katz focuses on Danny Kahn, a 17-year-old Jewish teen from Montreal who is launched into an adventure in the winter of 1967, with all of these various elements playing a role.

Danny Kahn is the narrator of The Clarinetist and Katz does an excellent job of using the teen’s perspective. We are plunged into the story at a key moment when Danny his love interest. We soon discover that his father had died a number of years ago; that he lives with his mother and older brother; that he demonstrates mature judgment and behaviour and is often complimented for it; and finally, that he is a musician – a clarinetist – who has been given the chance to audition for a place in an international youth wind band to play in Israel over the summer, under the auspices of a Rubin Academy in Jerusalem.

Katz makes excellent use of Danny as the narrator, who does not give away what he already knows since the whole tale is told in the past tense.

As the tale unfolds we discover more and more about the teen narrator, his love of CSI, his fascination with detective stories and his keen ability to observe details in the appearance and behaviour of others. His mastery of music and his keen interest in the past, as well as his attention to detail are just what is required for him to figure out the mysteries he is presented with and to survive the threats to his life he meets along the way.

Except for two later chapters that do not further the main plots, the story gallops at a fast pace in the other 25, with new mysteries and dangers at almost every step. His girlfriend’s father is a lawyer for the mob who implies there was something not on the up and up about the way his father did business. He is given a tip that “the Mossad” will be present at his audition and their judgment will be part of the selection process. He is later given a mysterious key to deliver to a particular individual in Israel, by an attractive older woman. Just before he leaves he is asked by his aunt to be on the lookout for his first cousin, Charlotte.

He is accosted on the airplane by a beautiful stewardess and is given a note from someone claiming to know his father. He will soon discover that not everyone is who they claimed to be.

The 17-year-old teen has a kind of mutual attraction with a number young women, including the stewardess, who bestow kisses and hugs upon him, a few offering more, in addition to giving him clues to solving all the mysteries he is presented with. And although he resists their attractions, almost every one of them indicate that his girlfriend “is very lucky” and promises their availability for a relationship if the one with his girlfriend does not work out.

Some of them actively help him carry out everything he needs to do in order to solve the mysteries as well as save his first cousin, Charlotte, and his love interest, Naomi, from danger.

There are a number of coincidences in the novel which give Danny exactly what he needs at exactly the right time and of course some of these have already been set up by Danny having the very specific talents and interests he has previously demonstrated, including familiarity with Hebrew biblical texts.

In end, Katz has created a rollicking adventure of a stellar young man, irresistible to young women and mature beyond his years, who through mystery and danger, finally solves the mystery of his deceased father’s role in history and the issue central to his own adventure.

Contact Herschel Katz at katz1401@gmail.com for more information or to order a copy of The Clarinetist.

Book Review: A Canadian prime minister’s ‘peace’ mission to Nazi Germany

By Rubin Friedman

Four Days in Hitler’s Germany:

Mackenzie King’s Mission to Avert a

Second World War

By Robert Teigrob

University of Toronto Press

292 pages

Robert Teigrob, a professor of history at Ryerson University, has written Four Days in Hitler’s Germany: Mackenzie King’s Mission to Avert a Second World War, a book that gives a complete picture of Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King’s short visit to Nazi Germany in 1937, citing details from his diary, his own and others’ notes. For a general reader of this book with an interest in history, there is much food for thought, especially for those interested in understanding how attitudes toward Jews can influence the decisions of otherwise well- meaning and well-intentioned individuals in pursuit of “peace.” To rather sacrifice this small people, along with others, for “the greater good.”

The pursuit of peace is an essential aspect of how King saw his mission. He knew that if Germany and Britain went to war, there would be little possibility for English Canada to refuse a call for assistance, but that French Canada would be indifferent or antagonistic. This domestic issue was part of his pragmatic motivation to keep the war drums silent.

The mystic aspect of his motivation was his relation to the spirit world through his mother, through seances and through his ongoing dreams and visions, including his obsession with interpreting everything he saw or experienced as a clue reinforcing his sense of mission. He felt he had been “chosen” to help Hitler finally understand that he had “friends” who could help him achieve his “reasonable” goals, such as small adjustments to German territory, without conflict.

He seemed unaware of the content of Mein Kampf and the clear objectives Hitler had set. Earlier in the Nazi government’s rule, King had objected strongly to the oppression of “minorities,” but during his visit, it was a subject that never arose. In every meeting with high Nazi officials, he never once raised the annoying issue, likely so as not to interfere with conciliation in pursuit of his “divine” mission. In addition, he was overawed by Germany’s “economic progress” and the discipline and enthusiasm in youth programs and others, examples of which were stage-managed for outside visitors.

Other factors include King’s fear of communism. In his notes, he wrote about his perception that Hitler was somehow better than Stalin, whose penchant for purges was becoming well known, all the while ignoring the Nazi suppression of dissent including the purge of Hitler’s early “left” followers in the “Night of the Long Knives.” At that time, King had condemned Hitler’s actions in strong language. But during his meetings in 1937, he seems completely to have forgotten his earlier condemnation.

King also ignored all the racist comments about Jews and every rationale that Jews, by their nature and actions, had forced the Nazis to protect the rights of “ordinary Germans” as a form of self-defence. Otherwise, the Jews would soon dominate business, the universities and the professions, not to mention their “insidious” influence on the arts.

Teigrob records King’s own attitudes toward Jews and his efforts to prevent them from buying property around his estate at Kingsmere. This attitude of fear of Jewish control and influence was fairly widely shared among English-speaking elites in both Canada and the United States. He makes it clear that it was not only the opposition towards Jewish refugees in Quebec that influenced Canada’s restrictive policy. In the end King’s mission did not succeed – yet he strangely held on to his ideal up to the end. Nor was he quick to admit Jews after the war.

These attitudes toward Jews still persist and seem to leak over into attitudes toward Israel where Jews are seen as having unfair advantages over Palestinians and so violence against Jews in Israel is often “understood” and “justified.”

My main disagreement with Teigrob is his view that the genocide against the Jews, the Holocaust, began in one country and is not to be feared today – only sporadic acts of violence. But he ignores the reality of much of the Muslim world being taught to fear Jews and to use the same rationales for killing them as the Nazis. The fact that some of their grievances are valid only strengthens the international movement towards defining Israel and Jews as anti-human, drawing on a very ancient stereotype. It is this perception that is being spread through liberal and “progressive” circles. Perhaps the next genocide against Jews will not be driven by a single country but will it be driven by the international order to justify the liquidation of the Jewish state for “the greater good.”