BOOKS
A Man of
OUf
Century
THURSDAY'S CHILD HAS FAR TO GO. A MEMOIR OF THE
JOURNEYING YEARS.
By
Walter Laqueur.
C harl es Sc ribn er's So ns.
S30.00.
Walter Laqu cur's mcmo ir desc ribes th e j o urn ey from his childhood and
adolescence in 13res lau b efo re it becam e part o f th e Eastern Bloc, to
Palestin e befo re it became Israel , and to post-Wo rld W ar Two Europe
before it was integrated into NATO o r th e Europea n Community. But
the personal elements o f thi s journey, th ough prominent in the first sec–
tion of th e book , are no mo re than a bac kdrop to Laqu eur's own life.
Self-examin ation and self-revelati on arc se t aside as he relives the criti cal
slice of wo rld hi story he has obse rved since Hitl er came to power in
1933. That th e auth o r is a se lf-taught hi sto ri an , that he " acc identally"
became a j ournalist, frees th e book of the so- ca ll ed scho larship and theo–
rizing many histo rian s fe el obliged to include in their wo rks, whether in
the interest of the disc iplin e o r of their ca rcers. M ost o f all , it frees him of
parochial concern s, allowin g him to look criti ca lly at events he witn essed,
to report them as he saw th em. If " birds o f a fea ther fl ock together," then
Laqu eur has flown with the best minds o f o ur century and seen through
many of the less astute o nes - even those celebrated by th e rest of the
world, among them J ean-Paul Sartre and Hannah Arendt.
Though a m ember of th e last ge nerati o n o f J ews with consc ious
memori es o f growing up in W eimar Ge rmany, Laqu e ur tells us in hi s
preface that he "did no t want to write a requi em ." H ow ever, as he intro–
duces us to Breslau by recounting th e imp ressions o f his o nl y return visit,
in 1960, he
does
w rite a requi em : most o f the fo rmer citi ze ns had left; the
neighborh ood he grew up in had bee n razed during World W ar II ;
Breslau had becom e trul y Po lish and few peopl e any longe r spoke
German. His fo rmer J ewish classmates either had perished at Auschwitz or
had found refu ge in Britain , th e United States, o r on kibbutzes; most of
the others who did no t di e in the war had moved to small o r large towns
in the western part of Ge rmany .
By mea ns of hi s fa mil y hi sto ry, Laqu e ur di spro ves some o f the
tereotypes about German J ews: the Laqueurs were no t ri ch; th ey lived in
a small apartment; hi s fa th er "worked in town o r traveled ," and W alter
didn't have many toys . Amo ng hi s fa r-flung rel atives, who had been in
