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pointed in those whom they had trusted for so long a time." (Did these
lines not hold any obvious resonance for Polish censors?) Believing they
had "reached the lowest depths," Arras's citizens "concluded that God
Himself was mocking them . . . With every passing day, God grew less
needed for He was not present."
Three years later, when the owner of a dead horse accuses Tselus, a
Jew, of putting a curse on his animal, bedlam erupts. To spite his tormen–
tors, Tselus hangs himself in the town hall. Astonishingly, at first, "nearly
every citizen admitted complicity in his death." Jan continues:
Oh, [ shall not attempt to prove here that they loved the Jews ... or
that it was without distaste that they rubbed shoulders with Jews on
crowded market days, or that they trusted the word of a Jew. Every
citizen understood that the Jews were an alien element and that God
was sorely trying the townspeople by condemning them to live along–
side the killers ofJesus Christ. But it was precisely because they were
true Christians and submitted to the will of Heaven that their town
became a soil in which the Jewish seed could grow.
When the town's Jews ask the town council for permission to bury
Tselus, Itzak, the Jewish Elder who delivers the request, is promptly
burned at the stake . Cannibalism and infanticide ensue, and the towns–
people turn on each other and the Jews in a fit of denunciation and
killing. Soon afterwards, Jan's other role model, David, Bishop of
Utrecht, absolves the town of its guilt, but Jan himself is denounced and
almost killed for the "crime" of insufficient loyalty.
Far more profound and unsettling than
The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman,
A Mass Jar Arras
addresses - however elliptically - theological and philo–
sophical issues every bit as significant as Szczypiorski's exploration of the
mad workings of totalitarianism. What troubles his character Jan, and no
doubt the author as well, is the ecclesiastical authorities' annulment of
Arras's barbaric crimes. Should evil actions have no moral consequences?
Who pays for crimes against humanity, and how, and for how long?
When is the proper time to rebel against unquestioning acceptance of to–
talitarian authority? What is one entitled to do if one feels God is not, at
that moment, watching, or caring? Jan's demoralization parallels that of
the town of Arras, from which he flees, seeking refuge and exile in Bruge,
something the remnants of Poland's Jewry were trying to do in 1968, just
as this book was being written.
The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman
was one of the first of what has become
an avalanche of Polish books to deal with the long-suppressed "Jewish
question," a taboo topic during the years of Communism when ethnic
