EDITH KURZWEIL
S33
number of imposters. But they do not do so in the allusive, insightful
way of a Primo Levi, Aharon Applefeld, or Norman Manea, who were
in the camps . Descendants' novels tend to be more explicit, and less
ironic-dealing with "me" and the Holocaust, or "imagining" their
families' suffering. Some of the second-hand experiences are most effec–
tive. The best among them, it seems to me, are Art Spiegelman's
Maus I
and
Maus
II.
He neither sentimentalizes nor overdramatizes. Although I
am somewhat suspicious of comic books, these truly serious ones, in
their double-edged manner, convey the dilemmas of his parents, together
with his own disbelief, defenses, and purposeful distancing that later gen–
erations get only from books and movies. The third generation tends to
be too removed to have Spiegelman's insights.
Marion A. Kaplan's
Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in
Nazi Germany
(1998) is a valuable addition, because she begins by
describing how from 1933 on, Jews who had been at home in Germany
for many generations continued to be identified with German culture,
and were living "normal" lives under mounting danger-though con–
stantly kept off-guard. By interviewing hundreds of individuals and
perusing published and unpublished records, Kaplan learned how they
coped with the increasing tyranny that penetrated into their homes, how
"through indoctrination, bribery, and coercion, the Nazi government
turned anti-Semitic prejudice into a mass movement." She found that
women managed better than their husbands-whom the Nazis perse–
cuted more directly. Women saw to it that children attended school,
even as their classmates became ever more anti-Semitic; they bought
groceries, while ignoring the signs reading "Jews Unwelcome," and they
prepared for emigration, while hoping that Hitler would soon be voted
out of power. Kaplan details the incremental tightening of the noose
which, after November 9, 193
8-Kristallnacht-made
brutality the
order of the day.
None of that is new. But by focusing on the nitty-gritty of Jewish
lives in the Third Reich-as it became more and more impossible to
run a business, to cook, to shop, to maintain friendships with non–
Jews-Kaplan conveys the essence of this reality along with the moral
issues, without moralizing. And she demonstrates why the perennial
question, "Why didn't you leave earlier?"-which I too have been
asked repeatedly, and which is a central point in Peter Gay's
My Ger–
man Question
(1998)-is incompatible with the step-by-step dehu–
manization and state-induced brutality that Germans (and Austrians)
perpetrated on their former neighbors and friends.
In
Briefe aus Wien:
Judisches Leben vor der Deportation (Letters from Vienna: Jewish Life
