My earliest memory is of walking through Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan trailing an unraveled roll of toilet paper behind me. I was surrounded by a throng of ecstatic strangers shouting “Victory” at the news of Germany’s defeat. It was VE day 1945. At three years old, I didn’t know what it meant to be a Jew, but I did know enough about Nazis and Swastikas to participate fully in the festivities. The very sounds of those words, and especially of the name associated with them, “Adolph Hitler,” were as terrifying as the huffing and puffing of the big bad wolf. Like the three little pigs, we were dancing because the wolf was dead.

As I approached elementary school age, I learned more about Nazis and Jews from my parents’ explanations of what happened to the people in the photograph albums I would pore through on rainy days. A few were “deported”–whatever that meant–the rest were dispersed all over the world, or occasionally came to visit us for coffee and cake on Sunday afternoons. For some reason, they never seemed as jolly as other people’s relatives.

Going to the synagogue in the storefront next to the A and P supermarket on Sherman Avenue deepened my sense of a heritage of gloom. It was a world of old people dressed in black, with ponderous expressions, chanting exotic and mournful melodies in strange languages. They had a comforting intimacy with one another, but the togetherness always seemed like huddling. On the one hand, I felt cherished and sheltered by them, on the other alienated and repulsed.

By the time I reached grade two, I had learned some things about anti-semitism. Pictures of the survivors of Auschwitz and of the crematoria were being shown in movie newsreels. And Hitler wasn’t the only one who hated Jews. I remember Ralphie and Vinnie, my friends in our tenement apartment house, coming home after catechism and announcing with great satisfaction that my Jews had killed their Jesus. I felt some obscure connection between the concrete statue of a man wearing a crown of thorns nailed to a cross on the front of the church and the stories about torture in concentration camps, but I couldn’t make sense out it.

I also couldn’t make sense out of the fact that our relatives spoke Hitler’s German. It bothered me that Adolph was the name of my mother’s father in Brazil, and that my middle name was Rudolph. I didn’t want to hear or speak the pursed and guteral sounds of that language and neither did my parents. They addressed me and one another in the English they had learned before leaving Europe; but I cringed at the taint of their accents. No matter how bad Hitler had been, I was grateful to him for arranging that I would grow up expressing myself with the clean and odorless sounds of American. The Nazis’ nastiness provided me with the best of possible fortunes in the world–to be born in the U.S.A.

Things changed toward the end of high school. Being an American had become boring and uncool. I wore a beret, went to the Museum of Modern Art, and hung out in Greenwich Village where my friends and I listened to jazz and talked about Kafka and Freud. For my language requirement in my first year of college, I chose German. Its sound didn’t bother me any more–especially orchestrated by Beethoven and Bach–and I liked the fact that I could actually understand some of it, though I still couldn’t speak a word. There were some very cool Germans, and quite a few of them were Jews. And being Jewish was fine too, because it was cool to be an outsider and rejected by the herd. Nazis were just the German herd.

After a year of college, I went through my sophomore identity crisis. I was in a relationship with a girl I had met as a co-counselor in a summer camp for emotionally disturbed children. She was also the child of German Jewish refugees, a soulful, serious, and brilliant person whose mother had died when she was very young. We found infinite depth in one others’ eyes, but that depth kept filling with horror. We saw ourselves in the film, “Hiroshima Mon Amour”–the story of an affair between a victim of atrocities in France and a survivor of the bomb whose love was haunted by images of mass death. My images were blended from shadows of childhood and from what I was reading in my Contemporary Civilization course at Columbia. Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism made me begin to understand the scale of the Nazi crime. The intellectual effort it took to follow her dense political, economic and psychological analysis of the slaughter of millions forced me to absorb the reality of its horror in my mind, where I seemed to be able to suffer more than in my emotions or my imagination. I came to believe that the guilt was universal; not only was there no god, there was no good, there was no meaning, there was only chaos or self-deception.

I couldn’t sleep. I walked the city at night. I think I experienced some of the despair that finally drove people like Primo Levi and Bruno Bettleheim to suicide. I became obsessed with an image in a document quoted by Arendt called the Graebe Memorandum–an eyewitness’ description of a German soldier puffing on a cigarette while machine gunning rank upon rank of children at the edge of a mass grave.

The crisis passed after this relationship ended. I decided to become more healthy minded–to consciously resist the attraction of an abyss that was always close by. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this meant that I would no longer go out with Jewish girls. I fell in love with Europe when I went there the summer after my junior year–its cathedrals, footpaths and cafes. After six weeks of wandering through England, France and Switzerland, I finally made my way to Germany. With three years of language and literature courses at college, I could speak like a native, and I wanted to see the ones who had done it face to face. In one of the ancient beer-halls of Munich, where the Nazis did their first organizing, I struck up an acquaintance with a kid my own age in wire-rim spectacles and straight blond hair, a university student. His name was Eberhard Gloning. He was also staying in the youth hostel, and the next day he offered me a ride to Stuttgart, his hometown and that of my parents. His mother, father and sisters hosted me warmly for several days, while I walked around the town and countryside tracking down places in those old photo albums. There were no relatives left for me to visit, but the Glonings treated me like family. I called the darkly dressed grandmother “Oma,” just like my Oma in New York. Eating the same kind of apple pie she baked, one night at dinner I raised the subject of the Jews. It was a terrible tragedy, they said, part of the tragedy of the war and the starvation after the war. Hitler had brought about great suffering and they never liked him, but there was nothing they could have done. At that point I felt there was nothing I could do–neither condemn nor forgive. But at least, they didn’t have long teeth and I was not afraid.

Four years passed and I was in graduate school searching for a mate. At a poetry seminar in the Free University of Palo Alto I invited a girl who made smart comments to go to the pub afterwards. She looked surprised, then curious, and then agreed to get on the back of my Lambretta motorscooter. She worked with grape strikers in Delano on weekends and made costumes for the drama department. She grew up in Long Beach, but her Presbyterian family was from a small town in Missouri where they had lived for many generations. She had recently returned from a nine-months stay in Berlin and at a Stanford overseas campus located in Beutelsbach, a suburb of Stuttgart. She had gone to Germany because many of her high school friends were Jewish and she needed to confront the reality of Nazism herself. That night I knew my search was over.

If I try to understand the Holocaust, my mind gets dull; if I try to talk about it, my words sound hollow; if I try to divine its relevance to my life, I see everything and nothing. It’s much more comfortable to forget. That’s why I am here today.

****************************************************************

More material, uploaded December 26 2020:

1. Newspaper article about this event

2. Text of Henry Marx’s and Claire Marx’s talks at this event [4-page pdf]

3. Fritz Rosenfelder’s 1933 suicide letter and response from friends.

Elegy for Eric (1962-1985)

Now closer creep the shadows of the trees
The pasture’s morning mist makes squash leaves freeze.
The house without a fire’s a chilling place
Forsaken of the summer’s hot embrace.

A dullness weights the limbs, fatigues the mind
Acts fail, words trail, thoughts snap, ears seal, eyes blind
Alone sleep offers rest from fear and pain
But nightmares waken torments once again.

Bottomless and void, bereft of light
The sea has robbed us of a spirit bright
A man-child at the verge of fatherhood
Innocently searching for the good.

He dove below his depth alone for love
And left alone his loved ones here above
His friends, parents, lady and child-to-be
His boats, barn, his plans to farm the sea.

Without him we grow old before our time
But in our hearts he stays in youthful prime.
So let us gather now in deepening night
And sharing sorrow, kindle warmth and light.

The summer after the second grade (1950), we moved from Inwood to Riverdale, and my grandmother moved into our old apartment on Arden Street. The neighborhood was getting rougher: Irish and Italian blue collar families were moving up the street from Nagel Avenue, and the German-Jewish rising middle class were heading for the suburbs. My father was getting a raise, and my parents felt that I needed my own room and wide-open space to roam in. But I missed the old block terribly: the solid row of four story houses and stoops, the street that belonged more to children and dogs than to cars, the people screaming out the window, marble season in the gutter, open hydrants in the summer, mountains of snow and garbage in the winter, Abe’s candy store on the corner.

And I missed the old building: 28 Arden, a walkup with three apartments on a landing, their front doors adjoining each other. My closest friends lived right upstairs–Frankie Pershep and Ralphie Rieda. My more distant playmates lived on the top floor and in the basement. But most of all I missed the cramped three room apartment on the second floor, old 2H. Behind its sheet metal coated front door, painted to look like wood grain, was a dark, narrow entry containing a painted linen chest, a full length mirror, an umbrella stand, with a bear carved on it, a small closet and a huge door to a dumbwaiter which took the trash out every morning. The kitchen had two features which nothing in the new apartment could match: a clothes drier over the stove that could be raised or lowered with a rope and pully, and a door under the window that opened into a little cave for storing potatoes and onions. (more…)

from Court Evidence, the Marx Farm Daily Record for 1972-1973 in Lund, British Columbia

January 28 1973

Cold and rainy. Janet discovered Rebecca dead in the barn, hanging by her neck in an eight inch hole in the partition between her stall and the grain Michael Friedman was storing there. In order to get her out, Steven had to hacksaw her horns. We decided not to butcher her and buried her under boughs and ferns on the adjoining Crown land. Went to Friedmans place to get eggs and met Ken Law who brought our grocery order from the coop in Vancouver. Went to Pihls to get Vance, Letitia Tracy and Kelly Faire to help us do up eleven chickens including Ajax the rooster. Vance chopped the heads off and gutted them, Kelly carried the carcasses to Steven, Janet, Ticia and Tracy who plucked. It took two and a half hours. Afterwards we had popcorn and hot chocolate in front of the fire.

January 29 1973

Warm snow slush. J and S worked in barn, J transferring wet grain to dry place, S fixing the plumbing leak in the sink upstairs, cleaning up mess John left, including bleach bottle half full of pee. Barn is now ready for new occupancy. Made huge pot of chicken soup with Ajax. Froze ten chickens, one to Vance. Ken, Debby and Maz came for dinner. Ken stayed over.

Friday February 2

Steven has interview at Manpower and is told he should leave the area to find work elsewhereSeth and Muriel write offering $1500 loan. Eight acre parcel of our land is listed at Marriette Agencies..

Thursday February 8

Kenneth informed us of his decision to move into the cabin, as a result of a Tarot reading the night before. He brings string and teaches Steven how to Macrame. Steven stops freaking out for a while¦Potato pancakes and parsnips for dinner. Mrs. Williams called and asks both Jan and Steven to substitute at school the next day. Melvin Marguilis and gang arrive in time for a party. Lou T. called saying they definitely want to buy the eight acre parcel¦Ken agrees to take care of Jonah while Steven and Jan go to school. Nick Valerie, Kenneth, Melvin, stay over¦

Sunday February 11

Clear morning, cloudy afternoon. S. picked brush, K. went along. J modeled for Fred. Jonah went to Nancy Crowther’s with Doreen. J and S went upstairs. K. cut the end of his finger off. J and S take him to hospital. Bleeding stops when Dr. Warriner looks at the cut. S and J and K buy ice cream at Knight’s Weekly News.

Monday February 12

Steven goes to dentist and gets spark plug wires replaced on truck. Goes looking for work at construction site and with Durling the surveyor. Janet gets notice of reinstatement on UIC and a check for $58. Jeff Chernove says Kirpal Singh is the answer. David Creek says Primal therapy is the answer. J, K, and S work on plans for Valentines party and discuss jealousy.

Wednesday February 14

J and S go to town early for appointment with Dr. Ryan, the psychiatrist, then to lawyer to sign contract and close sale of land with Lou and Kent. Kenneth stays with Jonah and cooks all day for Valentines party: chicken in milk, dahl, yogurt salad. Steven makes Valentines cheesecake. People arrive and make Valentines and paint cookies: Tony and Maureen, Ron and Anne, Ian and Maggie, David, Susan and Jessica, Laurie and David Creek. S and J and K and Jonah exchanged valentines. S and K played recorders.

Friday February 16

… Jonah gets baby aspirin bottle and eats 10. J and S take him to hospital where he’s made to barf, but no aspirins are found¦Late dinner. Jonah calls Kenneth “Kennie,” the first adult outside of “Nanet” and “Daddy” that he’s named.

(more…)

I took his course in Ancient History at Columbia during my sophomore year 1960-61. It was incredibly rigorous and I loved every minute of it, especially filling in hundreds of locations of ancient sites on the base maps he had us buy, assisted with the required text of the Grosser Historischer Welt Atlas.

Deeply curious about the explicit homosexuality I read about in Plato’s Symposium in Freshman Humanities, I decided to write a research paper on this topic in other Greek classics and found that indeed the “love that could not be spoken” in 1959 was central to the exclusive culture of classical philosophers–not because I felt attracted to it but because it violated so many of the norms I’d grown up with.

The paper was returned with one of his rare high grades and with a surprising invitation to take a job as his reader for the same class during the following year, a job that involved meticulous correction of the maps and other objective parts of his tests.

I’m not sure whether it was during that junior year or during the following senior year that he also invited me to become his research assistant. Having learned about his exalted and frightening reputation (see the article below), I was immensely flattered and ended up spending several evening hours a week in his cramped apartment–every wall in it stuffed with books floor to ceiling–at  close quarters, following his instructions to find key words in the thousands of note cards he was churning out next to me, write them in the upper right corner of each card and file them in the banks of oak drawers that could be moved around in the tiny spaces left on his floor. I knew that most of the material had to do with obscure early Christian sects and texts, but had minimal understanding of what they were about.

Sometimes he would take a break for supper, which invariably was apple sauce on toast.  On one of those occasions, he invited me to join him in his bedroom, sitting on the bed which extended from one wall of books to another.  After a little bit of small talk, he asked me if I liked opera, which I did, especially up in the affordable seats near the ceiling of the old Met on dates with one of the girls I was in love with during those years.  Then he asked if I would like to join him at a performance of La Traviata on Saturday night. Suddenly I got the picture.  Why select me to be his grader and invite me into such close contact when there was no chance I’d ever have the scholarly focus required of a real protege? But I wasnt shocked or offended, just a little regretful to turn down an offer which I sensed left him more exposed than I ever thought possible.  We returned to work, but I dont think he continued scheduling me to come back.

One of the things I remember  still was his fierce determination to debunk the historicity of the  narratives of the New Testament, especially the stories of miracles.  After I returned to teach at Columbia in the late sixties, I had no contact with him, and while teaching the Gospel texts in Humanities class, found myself enthralled by their stories of a charismatic leader inspiring faith in a growing community of dissident followers.  On occasion and appropriately medicated, I saw myself playing that role. But many years later, while working on my book on Shakespeare and the Bible, I found myself drawn back to Smith’s perspective, which I detected being foreshadowed in the texts of many of the plays.