What follows are remarks prepared for an event hosted
by the Dallas Jewish Historical Society in honor of the South African Jews of
Dallas that took place on Monday, May 2, 2016. Roger Cohen was the guest
speaker and he spoke eloquently about his book. These remarks were prepared to
be delivered in the event that he was not able to make event and are meant as
an appreciation.
I have appended some further remarks by way of
critical commentary that might be of some interest.
The Girl From Human
Street: An Appreciation
In The Girl from Human Street, Roger Cohen has
written a fascinating and unusual book. He is an accomplished and talented
writer. His descriptions are vivid and insightful full of original clever
little epigrams to encapsulate and summarize his observations.
It is easy to recommend this book to anyone looking
for an interesting and informative read, but it will be of particular interest
to those who like to read about history, especially modern Jewish history. And it is above all very appropriate to
discuss it here tonight because of its South African connection.
Roger Cohen is a well-known and respected New York
Times columnist and one-time foreign correspondent. He now calls New York
his home (for more than 25 years), but by origin he is a South African, who
grew up in England, and has strong Lithuanian roots. Human Street is in
Krugersdorp, outside of Johannesburg, and the girl from Human Street is his
mother. It is Cohen’s memory of her that hovers over the entire book as he
struggles to come to terms with her suffering and the effect that it has had on
him. And that suffering appears to him to have a lot to do with her exile from
South Africa. So the South African Jewish element features very prominently in
this book and I will pay particular attention to it.
The book is what one may describe as a
bio-documentary. It is first an historical autobiography stretching from before
the beginning of Cohen’s life until some unspecified time before the present.
It is a very intimate and detailed autobiography of his past, told through the
lives of his family members in various generations. It is probably more
detailed and intimate in its revelations than any us could or would like to
reveal about ourselves and our families. But in it South African Jews will
recognize themselves, as I did, in a strikingly familiar way. It is his
story, but it is also the story of most of us expatriate South African Jews of
his generation, particularly those of us who have come to America.
So at the inner most level it is the fascinating story
of his family for which he clearly has done an enormous amount of research. His
talent for writing is evidently a family trait. He was aided in his research by
various memoirs of family members, evidencing considerable literary polish. Through
these surviving documents and many other historical sources he is able to trace
the various strands of his remarkable family and recount their stories over the
generations. Most of us Jewish South Africans of Lithuanian origin have not
taken the time or expended the energy to find out much about the lives of our
ancestors, either in South Africa, or before that in Lithuania, nor about
Lithuania after their emigration to South Africa. What would have
happened to them had they not emigrated? Cohen has done this and his account is
path-breaking.
At another level this book is an historical
documentary of the Jews of Lithuania and of South Africa, with significant
views of the Jews of England and Israel as well – and a few glances at Italy.
In these forays into the surrounding conditions of the time, Cohen delves also
into the lives of others, not family members, and treats their stories just as
intimately and compellingly as those of his own family.
So there is a lot of stuff mixed up in the telling. It
is not a narrative that proceeds in linear fashion from beginning to end.
Rather it is collection of themes, “ghosts of memory” (as the subtitle of the
book suggests) seemingly randomly presented, but which, upon further reflection,
come together in a poignant mosaic. One may wonder, what is the motivation for
this particular mode of expression? Before moving on I want to offer a
potential explanation for this.
This is a book about identity. Who are we and what
makes us who we are? Clearly, we are more than the sum total of our
experiences, but those experiences do play a large part in shaping who we are.
This works through memory – through the remembering and imprinting of those
experiences. But events remembered do not appear in our memory in historical
order. They are more random and mixed. One remembered element connects with
another far removed in geography and in historical time. Every chapter in the
book contains a kind of network of connected memories separated by place and
time. The reader thus becomes privy to the way in which the author encounters his
memories, and thereby to the reasons for their significance to him.
----
Lithuania: Cohen
weaves his personal family history into the broader historical picture in
different places at different times. These include Lithuania at the time of the
emigration to South Africa in the 1880’s, Lithuania at the time of the Nazi
occupation and extermination of more than 250 Jewish communities, Lithuania soon
after the liberation from the Soviet Union and, finally, Lithuania in 2012, a
Lithuania trying tentatively and not completely successfully to face up to the
reality of what happened there with the submission of many and the active
participation of many others in the genocide of the Jews. One learns also that
there were indeed Lithuanians who did not stand by and who distinguished
themselves by saving Jews at great risk to themselves. But they were definitely the rare exceptions.
Most Lithuanians, then as now, simply averted their eyes from the horror.
Lithuania is a very small country that has a traumatic
history being squeezed between Russia, and later the Soviet Union, on the one
side and the Nazis on the other. After the war, when Stalin had already annexed
the country, recognition of the genocide was simply ignored and subsumed into
the heroic suffering of the Soviet resistance to the Nazis. It is an old story,
under Nazism Jews were vilified as communists (Bolsheviks). Under Communism
they were vilified as capitalist collaborators. Lithuania achieved independence
with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. Only very recently has the
Holocaust begun to feature in the Lithuanian collective consciousness and now
school children are, at last, being told about it. They are learning about how
centuries of Jewish civilization in Lithuania came to an end in a few months
during 1941.
We South African Litvaks have all heard vaguely about
the pogroms in Lithuania and that the Jews who remained behind were wiped out,
but if you are like me, you do not know much more than that. Cohen uncovers
painful but vital details about the history of the Jews in Lithuania, the
fruits of careful painstaking research including multiple visits to the towns
from which his family members came. Of the four pairs of Cohen’s
great-grandparents, three were from Lithuania, from towns in close proximity to
each other. (Actually in one case it was his grandparents that emigrated, as is
the case with many of us). Two of the towns were Šiauliai and Žagarė. Each town
has its own particular circumstances and story of how and when the Jews there
met their end. Cohen documents the story of these two towns in stark detail.
This is the reality of what our ancestors left, this is the fate they avoided,
and in doing so they gave birth to us.
What may not be realized
about the Jews in Lithuania is that their demise preceded Hitler’s final
solution of the gas chambers. Instead, the Lithuanian communities were for the
Nazi murderers a first step along the way to the discovery of a more efficient
extermination method. The famous Nazi einsatzgrupen (death squads)
specialized in mass executions the old fashioned way - with firing squads and
naked Jews lined up in front of the graves that they had been made to dig for
themselves. In this way they killed thousands upon thousands in a very short
period of time. Cohen quotes a recently erected memorial: ”In this place on
October 2, 1941, Nazi killers and their local helpers killed about 3,000 Jewish
men, women and children from the Šiauliai region.”
-----
South Africa:
Roger Cohen is descended from a remarkable set of ancestors. As mentioned,
three of the four pairs that emigrated to South Africa at the turn of the 20th
century were from Lithuania, the other couple
came from England. Three of the four men, starting with nothing and
struggling to overcome hardships and setbacks, eventually made their fortunes, becoming founders of
family dynasties in the new South African Jewish aristocracy of riches. One of
his great-grandfathers was a founder of the very well-known South African
mid-level department store the OK Bazars. His father’s side was of more modest
means, but married into wealth.
So we have graphic and familiar descriptions of the
life in South Africa for Jews starting in the hard-scrabble immigrant
generation, through the formative period, to the ultimate established
generation with their mansions in the Johannesburg suburb of Houghton –
glimmering swimming pools, lush gardens tended by ubiquitous but invisible
black gardeners, lavish meals cooked by invisible black cooks, and waited on by
formally attired black waiters, babies and children cared for by uniformed
black nannies, all very tranquil and secure.
The South Africa from which we emigrated was rich in
blessings both material and cultural. It was a great place to grow up. Our
grand-parents, or their parents, had done the hard work and we were reaping the
rewards. The Jews were part of the privileged white minority that ruled the
country with a view to hanging on to these hard earned blessings. But, of
course, there were formidable, if subliminal, tensions. A slightly older friend
of mine from that period, the historian Gideon Shimoni, refers in the title of
his Ph.D. dissertation on the Jews of South Africa to the Community of
Conscience. Whether we knew it or not, we all struggled with the moral
dilemmas of living in the midst of the police-state that enforced the Nazi-style
requirements of the policy of Apartheid.
Cohen confronts this ambivalence head on. He provides
valuable details about the founding immigrant generation – again more than most
of us are aware of. His admiration for their achievements is unstinting and
well-deserved as is his appreciation of the richness of life in established
Jewish South Africa. His South African readers will delight in the vivid
familiar scenes – the foods, visits to the Kruger National Park, the rich South
African English dialect with its sprinkling of Afrikaans and Yiddish words
thrown in. “Howzit, hey?” “Shame, ach sistoch man” “He’s a brainbox” “Let me
just go and put on my face” “I stopped at the robot.” [I embroidered here just a bit.]
Whatever the background circumstances there is no
denying that it was a period of extraordinary Jewish achievement and
creativity. And by contrast to Cohen’s experience in England, South African
Jews had no desire to assimilate. South Africa was a society of separate groups
living together in an uneasy accommodation. To be Jewish was to be a member of
one of those groups. There was nothing to be done about it. They were proud
Jews, strong Zionists and they practiced a unique form of Judaism in which the
vast majority were affiliated orthodox no matter what their degree of
observance – and by the time of our generation most were not observant. We were
cultural orthodox Jews who reveled in our various synagogue affiliations
boasting of the best cantors or choirs who reproduced the liturgical artistry
of the big-city Lithuanian communities that had so recently disappeared. It is
natural that in leaving all this behind we felt a considerable loss.
As Cohen points out, these achievement were possible
because of the acceptance of Jews into to white mainstream and, notably, because
of the absence of institutionalized anti-semitism. It is true that the white
Afrikaners, with their seething antipathy toward Britain and to English-speaking
South Africans, tended to side with Germany in WWII and identified with the
Nazis in their anti-Jewish sentiments. There is a clear incipient anti-semitic
movement in Afrikaner history. But after the war, and the gaining of political
power, the Afrikaners changed their tune completely, finding it more expedient
to coopt the Jews rather than persecute them. They were, after all, white and
they were the brethren of those heroic survivors that had founded the state of
Israel, in the promised land, out of the ashes of Auschwitz. So began decades
of cooperation between the state of Israel and the Apartheid Republic of South Africa.
“Antisemitism was deflected by racism” and Jewish
consciences were coopted. But there were notable exceptions, among which were
left-wing dissidents, orthodox Jews like the eminent Rabbi Rabinowitz of
blessed memory, and the awe-inspiring towering figure of Helen Suzman, the lone
Progressive Party member of parliament for decades, a constant thorn in the
side of the dictatorial, racist Nationalist Party. But for the majority of
South African Jews, as Cohen points out, the name of the game was not to rock
the boat. Better not to draw attention to themselves.
This was epitomized in the posture of the organization
that styled itself as the official spokesman for South African Jewry, the South
African Jewish Board of Deputies. Throughout the Apartheid period the BOD took
the position that it would not comment in any way on political matters and
thereby it avoided taking a stand for or against Apartheid and its brutal state
apparatus. For this the BOD earned the condemnation of many vocal Jews in the
midst of the quiet acceptance of the majority. Only very recently in the post-Apartheid
period has the BOD acknowledged the unconscionable deception that this
entailed. All this and more is recounted by Cohen with sympathetic cogency.
---
England:
Though professing to be an atheist, Cohen feels himself to be a Jew, and a
South African Jew at that. His parents were South African Jews even though,
following his father’s wishes, they tried to leave their Jewishness behind when
they emigrated to England. His mother could never make up for the loss of
family and culture and geography that South Africa represented and her mental
illness, and the mental illness of other family members, is a recurring theme
in the book.
Cohen and his sister spent a lot of time back in South
Africa while growing up. Still, England left its impression on him. For him
England was in many way the not-South Africa. Though nominally open, polite
English society had a way of letting Jews know that they were different and
would always be different. He refers to “an ingrained bigotry” and recounts the
anti-semitic taunts he endured while in school. Yet, for him, as for all South
African Jews, the English experience is pivotal. By an accident of history and
geography, we ended up in the English speaking section of the white population
of South Africa and we developed a strong, if ambivalent, bond with England and
with English culture. For Cohen as for all of us, the English heritage is
priceless.
---
Israel: Israel
features throughout the book as it influences the history of the family and of
Jewish communities more generally, but it features most prominently in two chapters towards the end of
the book when Cohen recounts his visits with family members living there. He is a strong and emotional supporter of
Israel in its origin as a refuge for Jews and an admirer of the modern state it
has become. It is worth quoting a brief passage.
“My family story, like that of millions of other Jews,
leads inexorably to Zionism. By the early twentieth century, no alternative
offered a plausible chance of Jewish survival and belonging. As Joseph Roth
once wrote, “If there is one nation that is justified in seeing the ‘national
question’ as essential to survival, then surely it is the Jews who are forced
to become a ‘nation’ by the nationalism of others.” Zionism was a necessary
break with past, pogrom and persecution.”
But he is worried that Zionism “sought a state on land
that was not empty. Zionist resolution on the Jewish question could only give
birth to an Arab question.” In the book and in his other writing Cohen
expresses a sincere anguish at the fact that by being forced to defend itself,
Israel has become an oppressor. Resort to military solutions has had a
brutalizing effect on both sides and he worries about this dilemma seeing a
two-state separation of irreconcilable peoples as the only solution. He is
dismissive of a one-state solution. “One state, however conceived, equals the
end of Israel as a Jewish state, the core of the Zionist idea. Jews will not
allow this to happen.”
Cohen’s sincere grappling with these issues will
resonate with his readers. And like us he is troubled by the rise in
anti-semitism among the left intelligentsia and on U.S. campuses and he is
likewise troubled by the spurious comparison between Apartheid in South Africa
and the separation of populations in Israel. As a South African Jew he knows
the difference.
---
America: Roger
Cohen now feels he is at home in New York. He finds in America an
openness that was lacking in England. America is a land of immigrants, a land
constructively fashioned out of people’s differences. We as Americans are
united in our differences. We can be whatever we are, while still being
enthusiastic Americans. What better adopted home from which to contemplate and
wrestle with the “ghosts of memory” that are the substance of this intriguing
book.
Critical appraisal – three comments
One: As noted, this book is difficult to categorize. It is part autobiography
and part historical documentary. At times it may seem like the expression of an
unconstrained stream of consciousness. Some people have told me that they found
this problematic. I suppose it depends on the reader. I think Cohen took a risk
in creating the book in this form, but it did work for me. I was not troubled
by the frequent jumps in and out of the personal to the general and back. But,
clearly, some readers will be.
Two: There is a potential inconsistency in the personal story, the story of
his mother. On the one hand Cohen wants to connect her wrenching displacement
from South Africa to her tragic mental illness. On the other hand he wants to
highlight the prevalence of mental illness in his family – more family member
have black dots in the family tree than do not. Both impulses are
understandable. Cohen wants to deal with the loss of leaving South Africa for
his mother and more generally, and, also, he wants to deal with his personal discovery
of this lurking genetic menace in his family. But it does raise the question:
was his mother’s mental illness a result of the trauma of emigration or would
she have succumbed under any circumstances simply because of her genetic makeup,
like Cohen’s Israeli cousin many years later. A possible reconciliation is to
imagine that his mother had the genetic disposition toward debilitating depression
that was triggered and exaggerated by her traumatic experiences. This is
probably how Cohen wants us to read it.
Three: Finally a word about his position on Israel. On these matters I think
Cohen, like most analysts of this subject, may be considerably off base, and, if I may, I would
like to offer a few comments on that.
To worry about the oppression of Palestinians
by Israelis as a betrayal of the core Jewish values, values intrinsic to the
founding of Israel, is certainly legitimate. The Israeli military and the
Israeli government can be and should be called to account in a way that
other governments in the region never are. There is a palpable double-standard,
and maybe that is ok insofar as we as Jews set that standard for the only
Jewish state. But to think that Israel is the ultimate cause of the poverty of
Palestine and for the suffering of the Palestinians is just wrong. Cohen, like
so many others, fails to mention that the Palestinians have been kept in refugee-dependency
not by Israel but by the UN, by the various Arab states who have used them as
pawns for their own nefarious purposes, and, perhaps most importantly, by the
mendacious, corrupt, self-serving leaders that constitute the Palestinian
Authority. It is the PA that has deprived them of the vote by refusing to hold
scheduled elections, not Israel as Cohen suggests.
If Israel is responsible at all
it is by handing over governance of the territories to the PA via the Oslo
Accords. Palestinians fared much better under Israeli rule than they do now
under the joint rule of the PA and the Israeli military. It is hard to see how
a two-state solution is possible when one of the states is ruled by a grasping
kleptocracy bent on the destruction of the other state.
In fact, the only
solution, if there is one, may indeed be a one-state setup in which Israeli
civil law is extended to all the inhabitants of the territories together with
the option to apply for Israeli citizenship. The fear that this will mean the
demise of the Jewish state, though understandable, is probably unfounded. The
population of the territories has been dramatically overstated by the Palestinian
demographers and the growth of the Palestinian population is slowing down, even
while Israeli populations growth is stable and high. Under civil law the
Palestinians will be able to develop their own voices and solutions. And while
some may elect to apply for Israeli citizenship, many will probably not. Other types
of political arrangements, like some sort of local federalism, may emerge.
Whether and under what
circumstances such a move (to extend civil law to all of Israel and the
territories) is possible is another matter. How this could be done and what the
reaction of various parties might be is the subject of Carolyn Glick’s
provocative book, The Israeli Solution. Whatever one’s opinion on this,
it seems to me that no peaceful coexistence will ever be possible until a way
is found to allow the Palestinian people at large to express their own
individual goals and desires and this implies a change in leadership and in
political system that no one seems to be talking about.
