The World of the 'Shtetl'
WIESEL, ELIE
The World of the 'Shtetl' The Samurai of Vishogrod: The Notebooks of Jacob Marateck Retold by Shimon and Anita Wincelberg Jewish Publication Society. 207 pp. $7.95. Reviewed by Elie...
...Hold up to them the example of Jacob Marateck, the strange Samurai of Vishogrod, whose notebooks, deciphered and presented with love and fervor—and talent, too—by the dramatist Shimon Wincelberg and his wife, the writer Anita Wincelberg, are offered to you in this remarkable work...
...The yelling of the assailants, the dry tears of the victims...
...Then, those of the other side: the Russian general who could never find the battlefield...
...Glasnik, the companion of the narrator, who saved him from suicide...
...You will read it with a wonderment mixed with the anguish that only the reading of certain old, simple but upsetting legends can inspire...
...He depicts them with passion and compassion...
...Aunt Tzivia, who suggested he have all his teeth pulled in order to escape military service...
...You will enjoy this itinerary and you will love its author...
...Everything happens to him...
...He is beaten by the police, tormented by his bosses, seduced by rich and insatiable mistresses, provoked by anti-Semitic officers, accused of desertion, condemned, threatened with execution...
...But meanwhile, Jewish children, tell your parents and grandparents to follow Jacob Marateck's example...
...so heartrending was the life of Jews over there...
...As you read these unbelievable tales, you are captured by their rhythm and are quickly breathless...
...And then you are won over by their human warmth...
...For between the Dnieper and the Carpathian mountains, all the little towns were very much alike...
...Humorous adventures, tragic adventures retold with humor...
...You laugh, you smile as you follow his adventures in the Army of the Tsar, who sends him to China...
...He brings them to life with a phrase, sometimes a single word: Jonah-the-postman, who was illiterate and delivered the mail in topsy-turvy fashion, but who —as a true Samurai—knew how to defend Jews against fanatics thirsting for blood...
...Reviewed by Elie Wiesel Author, "Messengers of God," "The Jews of Silence," "The Oath," "A Beggar in Jerusalem" Jewish children, sons and daughters of those who survived, read this book...
...The same poverty everywhere, but also the same laughter...
...Make them evoke the distant sunlit or burnt out landscapes of their melancholy childhood the clamorous fairs, the houses of worship, the quarrels, the adventures, the escapes...
...At the battlefront, it is he who tries to save his commandant, a fierce anti-Semite...
...Tuviah-the-coach-man, who attracted disaster...
...You see him first as a child in Vishogrod, then as a youth in Warsaw...
...Marateck curses, ridicules those who hurt him, but that's all...
...Tell your grandparents to reveal the past which is your past as well: Make them leave with you at least some scraps of a life you will never live again...
...Feibush-the-bath-house-supervisor, who had a better idea: Tear out the right eye...
...He never can bring himself to make others suffer...
...As for you, Jewish children, make your parents bear witness...
...They bring us to the end of the war in China in 1905...
...You will discover in it a world you do not know and will never again experience the world of the shtetl—that haunted and buried kingdom where your parents and their kin lived and died dreaming and making others dream...
...The father who takes leave of his son, saying to him simply: "Remain a Jew...
...Now they are gone...
...They deserve our thanks for having spoken...
...Jacob Marateck is irresistible...
...Shimon and Anita Wincelberg have given us the first 16...
...It was in the Bronx, during the Great Depression, that Marateck wrote these 28 notebooks...
...Marateck knows neither bitterness nor rancor...
...But Marateck is determined to keep us from tears, and he succeeds...
...You read these stories and at times you want to cry they are so sad, tormenting...
...The fear, the waiting for pogroms...
...In prison, in China, even at death's door...
...The name of the shtetl in this book happens to be Vishogrod, but it could just as well be Nemirov, Kikl or Sighet...
...A Jew, he meets Jews everywhere...
...Stalwart coachmen, large and starving families, workers singed by the breath of secret and imminent revolution, students absorbed by the Talmud, militants stirred by anger—yes, they were everywhere, in Poland, in Hungary, in Russia, welcoming and stirring life and truth...
...The same characters, often colorful and always pathetic, pushed around by history at the whim of rulers and the caprice of hostile regimes...
...Make them share with you, with us, their remembrance of things past...
...You suffer for him when he is exploited, you suffer with him when he decides to rebel...
...Translated from the French by Norman Jacobs...
...Persecuted, tortured, humiliated, he cannot bring himself to hate or even to seek vengeance...
...You will find the stories which it will be your turn some day to pass along...
...As Alfred de Musset said, sometimes we laugh to keep back the tears...
...In the depths of misery, even when he is at the center of the storm or in a raging battle, he remembers he is a Jew and what that means: Never imitate the executioner...
...We encounter its princes and wandering beggars only in the words of certain witnesses, and certain of their forebears...
...We await the rest impatiently...
...In telling his own story, he tells the story of a human being, a family, a community—and finally of an epoch...
...Pyotr, the anti-Semite, who thought tefillin had magical powers...
...Dig into their memories...
...The shtetl is uprooted, carried away by the storms, consumed by fire...
Vol. 59 • May 1976 • No. 11
