Thanks For The Memory
Gold, Herb
THANKS FOR THE MEMORY HERB GOLD Jews and Israel, having been in, are now going out of style. Fickleness about causes and peoples is to be expected, alas. These fads—more drastic than Hula-Hoops,...
...During our 20 years of sociability, I have seen her give energy and money to a succession of worthy causes: young playwrights, blacks, the environment, health foods...
...You're just back from Israel, Herb...
...A few years ago, a friend at a large dinner party remarked, as her contribution to conversation with the person at her right, "Herb, have you heard...
...no asparagus on my fork...
...merely a pleasure in discovery, and the sincere hope that I might share her joy...
...What film, Herb...
...There was no ill-will or spite in her announcement about the murder of the six million...
...It happened that I had heard of a showing of the French film, "Night and Fog," a documentary of the concentration camps...
...This woman is university-educated, energetic and devoted to the arts...
...It turns out the so-called Holy Coast of the Jews in World War II is a propaganda...
...Now I don't blame individual loyal Jewish persons like you, but...
...Oh, goodie," she said...
...I was talking to a professor from L. A. the other day, he's a real expert and he made a study, he told me a lot of books prove...
...The driftings of social life have arranged things so that I have seen little of her husband and her during the past year...
...I saw a dear Swiss-French film, 'Claire's Knee' or something, is that the one...
...so many of them descended from European Jews, Herb, if they were supposed to be all killed by the Nazis, but I didn't stop to realize...
...She looked into my face with her intense pale blue eyes...
...Tell me, what's the real situation...
...We don't need to rehearse this story now: the living skeletons staring at the camera or stacked like cordwood, the dying, the trembling heaped bodies...
...She looked at me and a light of greeting came into her face...
...Don't you remember that film we saw together...
...She is the wife of an old friend...
...She was puzzled...
...I don't remember that film...
...Normally I am impatient, impolitic and abrupt...
...She was still crying...
...My fork, carrying asparagus, paused as she chattered on...
...She looked at me with friendly, interested, cool, blank confusion...
...Say, have you heard about how all that propaganda about the murdering of Jews during the war is just that—Zionist propaganda...
...His work has appeared in moment several times, the most recent being "Memoir of the Wedding" (July-August 1981...
...Who directed it, who was the metteur-en-sceneV "You don't remember, Charlotte...
...The Zionists made it all up, you see, in order to get people upset and then they could...
...When it was over, tears were running down her cheeks, and she hunched her shoulders, pulling her coat around her face as we hurried to my automobile...
...I wondered why so many of my friends are Jews, Herb, Herbert Gold is the author of many novels, including Family: A Novel in the Form of a Memoir...
...I hear...
...These fads—more drastic than Hula-Hoops, disco or Rubik's Cube—could be called inhuman if they were not so characteristic of the human species...
...We did it very formally, with no undue portentousness: a little supper and cappucino before the movie...
...I realize it's not the greatest dinner conversation for you, being a loyal Jewish person and all, Herb, but when you consider what a raw deal the Arabs are getting as a result of faked photographs and exaggerations and blackmail, Herb...
...the shovels and tractors pushing flesh...
...Nuit et Bruillard.' We saw it together...
...I took her home directly...
...Just because I'm a married woman is no reason I can't have a night out with an old friend...
...That means 'Evening Mist' in French, doesn't it...
...the captured German footage and photographs...
...During the film she was silent...
...She looked into my eyes with absolute honesty...
...In this case, perhaps because of the occasion and because I had known the lady so long, I merely mumbled that I preferred to discuss this subject when we could speak privately...
...A few months ago, at a dinner sponsored by the English-Speaking Union, I happened to sit near Charlotte...
...Herb...
...I telephoned my friend—call her Charlotte—and said, "We have a date...
...1 mean, whatever's right, but if I went to a movie with you, Herb, surely I would remember, wouldn't I...
...This time I was less cautious...
...I go to a lot of screenings, Herb, but I try to keep my mind clear and only remember the good ones...
...I burst out, "Charlotte...
Vol. 8 • March 1983 • No. 3
