All quite openly, publicly and legally

I am trying hard not to stereotype people, events or countries. But I have emotions and for now it is difficult not to make some generalisations triggered off by this special, to me, book The Hare with Amber Eyes. The thoughts and emotions are about Austria and the Austrians. 

My knowledge about the country was never deep. Now, I discovered few more things, but I still know very little about it. For many years, it has been a country of Strauss and waltzes, Sacher torte, Saltzburger Nockerl, Mozart and Vienna the town from where my engagement and wedding rings came from. It was difficult not to be sentimental about the whole Austria and loved it.

                              

                       

I knew about Anschluss and I thought, poor Austrians, they suffered so. I thought that it was some common denominator between Poland and Austria. Not really. Hardy anybody in Poland welcomed Nazis.  Many Austrians, however, did welcome them with open arms and voluntarily enlisted in Hitler army and organisations.

Was Ted, one of my Austrian colleagues from IBM, one of them? I met this older, nervy person in my first days in Australia. His behaviour was strange, but for me at that time so many things were new and seemed strange. I noticed his shaking hands and shifty gaze. It took a while before he decided to unburden himself and confess that he was flying over Poland in bomber planes dropping those bombes that destroyed Polish towns and killed Polish people. He was conscripted by force, of course, but was force really applied? This I will never know, but now I ponder over Ted’s decision and motivations. It must have been rather difficult for him to meet a Pole so many years after the horrible events. He must have been a very young person, but my compassion for him diminished with my increasing knowledge of the times and Austrian eagerness to join their oppressors.

                                                              

                                  

There were many Jews in Austria, influential, wealthy people. People of the banks and lovers of fine arts. Their homes were full of museum pieces. They appreciated beauty of their possessions and they had means to acquire them. When in March 1938Anschluss of Austria happened, there were still many Jews in Europe. They were people who could not believe in reality of anti-Jewish proclamations of Hitler. Such is the power of hope that humanity will prevail. Most of the ones who could not believe that the world will change that much finished their life in concentration camps.

All Jewish possessions in Vienna had to be taken care of. Germans are a very methodical and practical people (forgive my generalisation). In my mind, this is actually a positive characteristic, but this time it was applied in a frightening way. In Vienna after the Anschluss both Germans and Austrians approached the issue of the valuable Jewish possessions openly, publicly and legally. The registers were created methodically dividing the items according to their fiscal and museum value into groups: Hitler’s personal, German Reich, Austria and the least valuable ones for sale at public auctions at Dorotheum. It was all legal, so if any of the original owners would survive a holocaust and saw his old possessions in a home of a respectable Austrian he would know that his host is a rightful owner of say, a portrait of the Jewish grandmother of the guest. So is the Austrian state the rightful owner of many Jewish treasures. Let’s take The Woman inGold. The film told us the story about a very determined lawyer and a woman with a lot of chutzpah to recover the family heirloom from the very reluctant Austrian State to return to the rightful owner what was really taken from them by force. How many such things Austria calls their own and proudly displays in Kunsthistorishes Museum, Leopold Museum, Albertina or Museum of Applied Arts and others?

Suddenly my desire to go to Vienna and visit its museums and art galleries diminished considerably. 

Moische, you get yourself a goat

In Poland, there many Jewish jokes. I have been always against them as I take it as a sign of anti-Semitism. And here I am going to write about a typical Jewish joke which so much applies to my life right now. It goes like this: 

Moische is very unhappy with his home situation. His place is crowded beyond his capability to cope with it. There is his wife there, his in-laws, his five children, the dog and two cats, ten chickens and a little pig in a very small place. Moische is so depressed and almost hysterical about it all that he needs some help. Only the Rabbi can help.  Off he goes to see the Rabbi and cries out:

Oh, Oh, Rabbi. I can not cope with my life anymore. Please help me. In my very small house there is my wife, my in-laws, my five children, the dog and two cats, ten chickens and a little pig. I cannot live like that anymore. The children cry, my in-laws shout at each other, my wife is always angry with me, the animals smell bad and make a mess. Please, please tell me what I should do or otherwise I will have to do myself in.

The Rabbi thought deeply for a while, scratched his head and after a while announced:

                                              

Moische, you get yourself a goat.

Moische was very surprised and could not understand how getting the situation worth could get his life better. However, in Jewish communities Rabbis enjoy great respect and their verdicts are applied without much questioning.

                                                    

So, Moische gets himself a goat and squeezes it into his very crowded house. The  goat is not happy about the situation either and it bleats loudly in complaint. It makes even bigger mess around herself than other animals in the house. Moische is on a brink of a nervous breakdown. He cannot sleep a wink the whole night and wakes up with his face swollen from crying. His frustrated wife beats him up for good morning to top up his misery.  Things cannot be any worse. He runs again to the Rabbi with his new complaint.

Oh, oh Rabbi. I have never been so unhappy in my life. Please help me. In my very small house there is my wife, my in-laws, my five children, the dog and two cats, ten chickens, a little pig and now the GOAT. I cannot live like that. The children cry, my in-laws shout at each other, my wife is always angry with me and today she beat me up, the animals smell bad and make a mess and the goat is the worse off all of them. Please, please tell me what I should do or I will kill myself.

Rabbi again thought for a moment and pronounced:

Moische, you get rid of the goat.

And Moische runs home, takes the goat by its horns and gives it to the neighbour.

Returning home, the house suddenly feels like an oasis of peace. Moische takes a big breath, he feels relieved and happy. Life is good. He is very grateful to the Rabbi for his insightful advice.

Coming back from the hospital to the same situation that I was moderately satisfied with before I had to call the ambulance, I suddenly feel light, optimistic and full of plans for the future. My life is good again now that I got rid of my goat.

Sometimes Jewish wisdom is better than my stoic reading.

The Hare with Amber Eyes

I have come back home on Monday, as per my hopes rather than expectations and realised that coming back to my normal form is going to take same time. I always liked to take it slow to study, reflect, organise few things. This is what I have been doing with some pleasure. Have I reorganised my filing cabinet? No, not yet, but my fridge is in perfect condition now. I even got some fresh food into it. I am learning to be an older person not in the best of forms but I hope it will change for the better again.

The netsuke which is the subject of the book

                                           

As I mentioned in my previous post, The Hare with Amber Eyes made a big impression on me. Still does and it has inspired me to start writing something longer than my posts. A book? Maybe, but what is important to me is that I started writing and I know what I want to write about. Writing for myself, even if I may publish some of it on a blog hoping for a feedback.

I got inspired by the inscription in the book that suddenly took all my literary interests:

Even when one is no longer attached to things, it’s still something to have been attached to them; because it was always for reasons which other people didn’t  grasp…Well, now that I am a little too weary to live with other people, these old feelings, so personal and individual, that I had in the past, seem to me – it’s the mania of all collectors – very precious. I open my heart to myself like a sort of vitrine, and examine one by one all those love affairs of which the world can know nothing. And of this collection to which I ‘m now more attached than to my others, I say to myself, rather like Mazarin said of his books, but in fact without the least distress, that it will be very tiresome to have to leave it all.         

Charles Swann

Marcel Proust , Cities of the Plain

I have been reading In the Research of Lost Time for many years and even if I have not finished it yet, the last time I stopped reading it was few years ago and I was in the middle of the part seven. Even if I have not formally completed the book I have read most of it and some parts more than once. I think I will always continue reading it. It does not seem to be a book I am ever going to tick off as read and forget about it. It will always hold fascination for me.

The Hare with Amber Eyes is about a netsuke collection initially purchased by Charles Ephrussi a Jewish-French art critic, historian and collector who was an inspiration for Marcel Proust’s character of Charles Swann. The collection was passed in the family and the book tells the story of the collection and the times from middle of the XIXth century to the current times. The Ephrussi were a Russian Jewish banking and oil dynasty extremely influential and rich till the Hitler times. They lived and operated within two centres one in Paris and one in Vienna. The family were known for their connoisseurship, intellectual interests, and their huge collections of art.

Ephrussi palace at Rue Monceau, I must have passed it many times all those years ago 

                                                

Reading the first part of the book about Charles Ephrussi’s life many memories of my own time in Paris came back with a considerable force. Ephrussis lived in a palace at Rue Monceau and the Monceau park is mentioned many times in the book. This was the park I walked to quite often to stroll or sit read for a while. Even if I did not know the word then, I was doing a lot of flaneuring in Paris. They were such good times…

That is how I remember the park

Jews always created strong and mainly negative feelings among many nations. I often wondered why this particular group of people distinguishes itself in such a way that the big part of the world could not accept or even tolerate them. The book partly answers the question saying that this may be their superiority on many fronts that is the cause of envy, rejection and attacks. My thoughts are not clear yet, but I always have been on the side of Jews and ashamed of Polish anti-Semitism. I think that I need to revise this Polish guilt complex as the whole world is anti-Semitic at times.

This is a great book to read while I am recovering from my hospital experience and adjusting to the new health situation. A little bit like the old times when I was a girl who each year suffered long lasting colds staying in bed for a couple of weeks to cure a head cold usually followed by a bronchitis. I liked the recovery time as it was my time and I used it mainly for reading. I also liked the attention of my usually busy mother who spent more time with a sick daughter than the healthy one. It payed off to be sick those days. Not so much now so I better move through this stage quickly.