HERBERT GOLD
645
When the son of old Dr. Waynberger, who became a distinguished
cardiologist, married a young woman from one of the ancient Sephardic
families which had been among "the Pope's Jews" in Avignon, I recognized
the pride and relief of his mother and father. The line would not stop. Surely
now it would not stop.
The idea of humanity seems to be a guest thought which we entertain
because we love our parents, our children, perhaps our husbands, wives,
lovers. The German woman I met at Big Sur was tormented by the
imagination of continuity, the line backwards and forwards in time, a father
who fell away from her, leaving traces she did not dare follow. She is a
psychoanalyst who wonders if her father was a criminal, a coward, a time–
server, a man crazed by horrors, or merely a father unsustained in troubles
by the thought of his child. The miracle of biology fashioned her-she is an
intelligent and beautiful woman-and she took this profession, which is all
about continuity, while she possesses only scraps of past and she cannot
accept them. Without a past we can participate in, we're not sure we can hold
on to the idea of humanity. Our own reality is blurred. For most of us in this
part of the century, humanity is not more than a guest idea.
For a Jew, the idea persists. One of the survivors I met in Paris in
1949 had written a book in tribute to the murdered Jewish artists. I don't
remember his name, I couldn't read Yiddish, but I sat with him as we looked
at the photographs and illustrations and he translated the biographies printed
on facing pages.
There was a dedication. I wondered which of his family , which of the
artists, he would remember in this way. I asked him to translate it. He
explained, "In the camp, one of them said to me, You Jews will be
remembered. We are forgotten."
His book in memory of the murdered Jewish artists is dedicated to the
Gypsies.
