Hautzig: The Endless Steppe

 

The Endless Steppe

Esther Hautzig

Published 1968

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And I think that someplace inside of me there was something else -- some little pleasurable pride that the little rich girl of Vilna had endured poverty just as well as anyone else. 

The Endless Steppe is a true story, a memoir about young Esther Hautzig and her immediate family living in exile on the steppes of Siberia during WWII. During the war, life was comfy and privileged in Poland until Esther and her family were arrested by the Soviet government, accused of being "capitalists," -- what a crime! It took two months by crowded cattle car to arrive in Siberia, where they were assigned to hard labor camps and had little access to food or clothing to sustain themselves through winter.

However, thanks to the intervention of Britain, Esther's family was released from their initial assignments and permitted to live in a village where they shared a home with other poor villagers. Esther's parents found menial work in order to survive, and Esther was allowed to go to school. 

For the next five years, Esther grew up assimilating to the Russian language, the culture, and Soviet  nationalism. She made friends and even had a crush. Life was typical for this young teenager; all she desired was to be liked by others and to make friendships. Absolute poverty and near starvation could not suppress her coming-of-age experience. Even a lack of school books and supplies did not prevent her from studying, learning, and excelling.

When Esther's father was ordered to the front lines of Russia, Esther, her mother, and grandmother had to be extra resourceful to find food. Esther did her part and learned how to sew to make clothes for others in exchange for milk and potatoes. She also collected food that fell from passing trains, which she did apprehensively because she believed it was theft. 

At the end of the war, Esther's father returned to Poland, and he wrote to his wife to come home. Esther protested because she felt connected to the steppe -- she had fallen in love with it.

I had come to love the steppe, the huge space, and the solitude. Living in the crowded little huts, the steepe had become the place where a person could think her thoughts, sort out her feelings, and do her dreaming. 

But obviously, she must return to Poland. Unfortunately, someone else was living in their home now, and all of their belongings were gone, including the photo albums that Esther had wanted to take when they were arrested. It was a "crushing blow," Esther remembers, that nothing of their past remained.

And then came the most terrible news of all. It came from survivors of the concentration camps,...all the members of my father's family -- not one of them had survived the German massacre of the Jews. Of my mother's family...My mother's brother, sister, her mother, her aunts and uncles, my beloved cousins, all were dead. 

Here they discovered that their own deportation to Siberia had saved their lives. "Hunger, cold, and misery were nothing; life had been granted" to them. They thanked God. 

* * *

I am thankful to have found this little gem because it is a history I knew nothing about. Esther was just a sweet girl full of love for family with an encouraging and joyful spirit. Under such hardship, she rose to the occasion, demonstrating resourcefulness, perseverance, and courage. 

It was only after an American presidential candidate had encouraged Esther to write about her personal experiences that she did so. She wrote this autobiographical story as if she were that young girl reliving her days in Siberia again, though over twenty years had passed. Now, gratefully, we have her story forever.

Esther (Rudomin) Hautzig

1930 - 2009

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway

Published 1964

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I have a tendency to put too much on my plate. For example, currently there are six or more books on my nightstand that I am supposed to be reading. The one(s) I enjoy the most are picked up more often than the others. That is how I know I enjoyed A Moveable Feast because I went to it more often. 

As it is, I have not had much time to read these last few weeks because my father ended up in the hospital for a few nights with pneumonia and now that he is home, he is very weak. I have not been getting much sleep and have not been in the mood to read. But when I was, I read A Moveable Feast.

The book is a memoir from a compilation of journals covering American author Ernest Hemingway's time in Paris, France, and other neighboring countries of Europe, during the 1920s. It was posthumously published in 1964. I thought the title had something to do with the frequent mention of food and hunger, but it represents a holy day or feast that has not been set, a term that a friend recalled was used by Hemingway. (I had to look that up because I had not read it in the book.)

The chapters are individual of each other and usually cover a random topic or event; they do not read like journal entries. 

Freely, Hemingway gives the reader a picturesque window into his simple existence as a starving writer. He also shares the conversations and opinions from his social circles with people like Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many others. To some degree he shares his private relationship with his first wife, Hadley, and later their son, who were with him in Paris, but he does not include details about what broke up the marriage, describing it only as "the murderous summer" and "the bulldozing of three people's hearts to destroy one happiness." 

Many chapters mark his relationship with Gertrude Stein, an American socialite living in Paris who often held gatherings of artists and authors in her home. She was quite bossy and opinionated, an unconscionable woman! Stein called Hemingway's young generation (that served in WWI) the Lost Generation because they had lost respect for everything and drank themselves to death.

Speaking of drinking, there was quite a lot of that going on. Especially F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, although he tried to keep himself sober so he could write. But I must say that my favorite chapters covered the adventures of Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Wow! What madness and chaos! I will not spoil it if you have not read A Moveable Feast. This will remain a memorable section of the book. After all, these are real people, and they are flawed and imperfect and sometimes troubled and complicated. 

Hemingway and son, "Bumby"

Hemingway describes writing, his writing process, and what he does to prevent himself from thinking about his work when he is not writing. He also does a lot of reading with all this time on his hands in Paris, which allows him to live two lives. After reading Tolstoy, he explains

To have come on all this new world of writing with time to read in a city like Paris, where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a  great treasure given to you.

 A Moveable Feast is an indelible snapshot of Hemingway's earlier experiences and how he processed them privately; about attitudes and ideas pertinent to a particular time period and within a specific circle of people. 

More importantly, Hemingway is the prolific writer of even simple mundane activities like frequenting a cafe or observing strangers in daily life or truthfully describing his own weakness. If we had to read dull lecture notes, and Hemingway was the author, they would be absolutely pleasurable. His writing style is appealing, satisfying, and stirring. His clear account of the world around him is calming and peaceful. His words are a delight to read.

* * *

Helga's Diary by Helga Weiss

Helga's Diary: A Young Girl's Account of Life in a Concentration Camp

Helga Weiss

Published 2013

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Why bother reading another Holocaust story? 

To answer that, Francine Prose noted in her introduction of Helga's Diary that more than a century later it still seems amazing that such a thing could have happened: 

that millions of innocent men, women, and children could have been murdered by the Nazi's remarkably efficient killing system, in broad daylight and with the full knowledge of so many.  The further these horrors recede into history, the fewer the living witnesses who remain to provide us with firsthand accounts, the more important it is for those amazing stories to continue to be told. 

Helga was a young Jewish girl in Prague, who began a diary at age ten. It was 1938, before the Nazi occupation. Helga recorded her observations and experiences of the Nazi treatment --  the increasing  demoralization, humiliation, and absolute seclusion from society; the growing prohibitions of public use, like theaters, parks, schools, and travel; and later the physical mark of the yellow star. She saw her neighbors, friends, and family taken away when called up for transport, which they suspected would mean a work camp. 

As is typical of young children, Helga adapted to the changes in her new world, and seemed to only want order and sanity. She remained cheerfully optimistic throughout much of her experiences, including suppressing any feelings of anguish or sadness. 

The Guardian: artwork of Helga Weiss

At the end of December 1941, Helga and her parents were selected for transport and ended up at Terezin. Here the Jews recreated and maintained as close to normal life as possible by working, keeping house, cooking, playing, and doing school. Their lives were made more difficult, almost impossible, and yet they still rose to the occasion to confront every challenge and excelled. 

Helga's writings in her diary demonstrated the spirit to overcome obstacles, even tolerate things like bed bugs and fleas, and at times hunger. At one point she said:

They want to destroy us but we won't give in.

By October 1944, Helga and her mother were selected for transport out of Terezin, to Auschwitz. She gave her diary to an uncle, along with her drawings, in which he hid behind a brick wall. The remainder of her entries were from memory, written down after she was liberated. 

She recalled the miserable long trip to Auschwitz, the hunger, the sleeplessness, the cold. She described how freezing was worse than starving, and I remembered that Frederick Douglass said the same: he could stand being hungry, but being cold was unbearable. 

At Auschwitz, Helga and her mother lied about their ages so that they would remain together, not too young or too old, which could mean instant gas chamber. It worked. They were given very little to wear and very little to eat. Their work was tedious and dangerous, but again, they rose to the occasion. Often times they stood for hours and hours in insufferable temperatures for roll call, and sometimes it was just to wear them down mentally. 

As it became obvious that the Allies were closing in on Germany, the prisoners were removed to Freiberg and then Mauthausen. They had been on one transport for sixteen days. Then the Nazis forced them on foot. Helga wrote:

I can't go on. I'll lie down here - let them shoot me. If they'd only let us rest a moment, an instant, just to catch our breath. Or allow us a drink. If we'd been allowed to drink from the pump at the train station, we'd be able to go on. They drive us on at a mad pace. A drop of water, a single swallow. . . I can't go on. 

May 1945, something was happening. In the middle of distributing soup, Helga heard voices. The people dispersed. She dropped her soup bowl and ran outside. "A white flag flutters! A flag of peace!"

Mauthusen has capitulated, peace has come to us. My legs break into a run all by themselves. Muddied, in my bare stockings just the way I'd run out, I arrive back at our space. Mom stands up- where has she found the strength all of a sudden? I hang myself around her neck and, between kisses, I spill out, jubilantly, the word we've dreamed of for years. The word we indulged ourselves with in the most secret corner of our being and feared to pronounce aloud. That sacred word, which contains so many beautiful unbelievable  things: liberty, freedom. The end of tyranny, misery, slavery, hunger. 

We survived the war. PEACE IS HERE. 

Helga and her mother returned to Prague, only to suffer under the Communist regime of the U.S.S.R. She never saw her father again. He probably died in the gas chamber immediately after arriving at Auschwitz. Helga went on to study at the Academy of Fine Arts and became an artist. 

At the end of the diary, there is an interview with Helga. She was asked what contribution her diary [brought] to the stories of the Holocaust, and she said that her diary is truthful. It is "half-childish, accessible and expressive, and it will help people to understand those times." 

What I take away most is this passage: toward the very end of the war, as she sees the demise of the people in the camp, what she describes as "Death herself walking past." And, yet, even in her own demise she longs to reach them, to encourage them. 

You want to entice a smile on to these people's faces? Fool! Weeks, maybe months without food and drink. Yes, that's the last system. Physical and spiritual torture became commonplace and then -- the mortality rate wasn't high enough -- the sickbed, at the whim of lice and the typhus bacilli, what have these -- people? -- gone through?

Yes, they were once people. Healthy, strong, with their own will and thoughts, with feelings, interests, and love. Love for life, for good things, for beauty, with faith in a better tomorrow. What's left are phantoms, bodies, skeletons without souls. 

* * *

For me, I still need to read these Holocaust stories. They deserve to be read. I wish not to believe that man can be this evil, but -- yes, he can. There was a time when I did not think the Holocaust could ever happen again, but in the last two years, I have changed my mind. Man is still willing to practice segregation, prejudice, humiliation, separation, public shaming, class and group warfare, and just plain evil in order to gain power and control -- including my own government. Man does not seem to want to learn from history; but some, in fact, are desirous to capitalize on the very devilish systems of centralized power, control of the masses, suppression of truth, and elimination of powerless groups. Today's global power grabs are no different than the Nazis or the Romans. Man is all the same; he just finds new creative and technological ways to accomplish his evil.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books 

Azar Nafisi

Published 2003

Iranian Memoir

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I LOVE THIS STORY!!!  Where do I begin?  

This true story is a unique and intimate memoir by a woman, Azar Nafisi, who lived in Iran during the Islamic Revolution (1978-81), the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), and thereafter.  It is her own personal journey of life in Iran as a university professor of literature (between 1979-87), and later as a friend to seven young female students who met weekly to read and discuss Western literature in the privacy of her home (1995-97), and finally to her difficult decision to leave Iran and emigrate to the United States (1997).  

Reading Lolita in Tehran is broken up into four sections that represent different ideas or themes.  It is not in chronological order. 

"LOLITA"

Nafisi begins a private book club with "her girls," seven young serious women whom she deliberately chose to discuss great works of literature with, at her home.  The setting is sometimes somber as the women use literature to make sense of life in the Islamic Republic.  Nafisi told her students that "these great works of imagination could help [them] in [their] present trapped situation as women."  At the end of this section, Nafisi uses Invitation to a Beheading by Nabokov to express their existence with the Islamic Republic:

The only way to leave the circle, to stop dancing with the jailer, is to find a way to preserve one's individuality, the unique quality that evades descriptions but differentiates one human being from the other.  [The State] invaded all private spaces and tried to shape every gesture, to force us to become one of them, and that in itself was another form of execution.

"GATSBY"

Backtrack to the Revolutionary period.  Teaching literature at the University of Tehran, Nafisi explained to her students that "great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home.  The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed to be immutable." 

During this time, she rejected Islam as a political entity.  She said the veil "had now become an instrument of power, turning the women who wore them into political signs and symbols."  She said, "The Islamic Revolution . . . did more damage to Islam by using it as an instrument of oppression than any alien ever could have done."

It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else's shoes and understand the other's different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless.  Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed.  But if you understand their different dimensions you cannot easily murder them . . .

The students of Nafisi's university class put the novel, The Great Gatsby, on trial.  Some students claimed they had to read Gatsby to understand that adultery was immoral, but Nafisi contradicted: 

A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.

She also discovered that Iran's fate was that of Gatsby's.  "[Gatsby] wanted to fulfill his dream by repeating the past and . . . he discovered the past was dead, the present a sham, and there was no future.  Was this not similar to our revolution, which had come in the name of our collective past and had wrecked our lives in the name of a dream?"

Nafisi called The Great Gatsby the quintessential American novel.  "We in ancient countries have our past - we obsess over the past.  They, the Americans, have a dream: they feel nostalgia about the promise of the future."  The ability to dream had been extinguished from the Iranian people.

During the Revolution, women became the punching bag or pawn of the new Iranian theocratic leadership, even though men felt the iron fist of government, too. No longer were women able to choose to wear the veil or not (as some did choose to wear it for religious symbolism), but now they must also wear a black robe to cover themselves entirely.  It was like a cloak of invisibility; all individual creativity was stolen from the people, though women mainly felt the brunt of that MAN-MADE statute.

Iran was being purged of everything Westernized - because the West invented immorality [insert SarcMark] - so you can imagine how challenging it was for Nafisi to continue teaching Western literature to her students.  She saw no other way to think about and teach fiction than through Western literature, and she never compromised her ideas.  Eventually, Iran began closing the universities.

"JAMES"

Iran was now involved in a war with Iraq, which lasted eight years; their enemies: fellow Muslims.  

This is when Nafisi is expelled for refusing to obey the mandatory veil law.  To Nafisi, the Ayatollah "decided to impose his dream on a country and a people to re-create [women] in his own myopic vision.  So he had formulated an ideal of me as a Muslim woman, as a Muslim woman teacher, and wanted me to look, act, and in short, live according to that ideal."  It was not the veil that she rejected, "it was the transformation being imposed upon [her] that made [her] look in the mirror and hate the stranger [she] had become."  

The Ayatollah was more concerned with perception than truth.  (This reminds me of Matthew 23, when Jesus rebuked the Pharisees who only cared about what their morality looked like in public, but inside they were hypocrites.  They only cared about the "outside of the cup.")  

During her time away from teaching, she wrote and focused on her family; but there seemed a great disappointment and void in her life.  When universities were permitted to open their doors again, searching for professors, she returned to teach literature at a different university, which was quite a fascinating experience; but she later resigned and eventually started her private book club.

"AUSTEN"

Finally, return to the period after "Lolita."  This  last section is all for the women of Iran.  Nafisi compiled the themes of discussions "her girls" had about marriage, being in love, and desiring freedom.  Unfortunately, after the Revolution, Sharia law had replaced existing law.  A man was permitted to have up to four wives and temporary wives on the side (because . . . convenience).  He could beat his wife, and it would be her fault.  Mothers had no rights to their children.  This is what Nafisi's "girls" had to consider.  No wonder they all wanted to leave Iran.  But through the works of Jane Austen, they could pretend. That is what life in Iran had been reduced to.

It is during this regretful time that Nafisi decided to leave "her girls," her home, Iran, and go to America.  

NOW FOR MY POLITICAL OPINION: This is only a small portion of the story.  Nafisi's journey is profound and individualized.  When I read some negative reviews on Goodreads, I realized that some readers will never connect or understand how deeply personal this story is.  I am grateful I was able to appreciate it; I know what it means to use literature to define seasons of your life, be they full of joy or disappointment.  I will read this book over and over again.  

This story caused me to think about the recent political protests in America.  Feminist Leftists and political Muslims are marching in union and using one another to push their agendas; though one day this union will come crashing down because both actually contradict each other.  In the meantime, non-Muslim women treat religious headscarves like trendy beanies, chant "Allah Akbar" for political slogans, or bow down during the Muslim call to prayer (like Eloi in the Time Machine being summoned underground).  If nothing else, this should offend Muslims, but for now it is deliberately expedient. 

Nonetheless, ignorant American women should read this book. 

They need someone who lived under political Islam to expose them to what it feels like when their individuality, livelihood, sanity, hope, future, imagination, creativity, liberty, spirit, and life are snuffed out (by men, no less).  Not suggesting that Nafisi was preaching against Islam - she was not - I am saying that there is enough evidence to prove political Islam is disguised as a religion and does not have a favorable history toward women.  Some Americans are dangerously oblivious about this, and they need to have their eyes opened.  Stories like Nafisi's may help.