Oppenheim Arts & Letters

In Stone -- _In the Memory of the Forest_

"World War II 1939-1945: Under Nazi rule, six million Polish citizens, many of them Jews, are murdered."

Between the covers of the Penguin paperback edition of Charles T. Powers' 1996 novel In the Memory of the Forest, that above might be both the only and most egregious sentence in the volume, and praise be the Gods for this excellent book, the author is innocent of having written it.

For the record, the Holocaust took about six million Polish lives, three million of them Jewish, and in demographic terms, the latter figure has represented 90 percent (or more) of Poland's Jewish community as it existed before the Holocaust.

What that diminishing sentence tells about, however, may be the delicate matter of being "balanced" or "politically correct" about a history that has left Poland a now long haunted land, and that not least so by the memories of the horrific decisions made in the blood dimmed duress promoted by both Soviet and German barbarism.  Powers' novel finds as much sustained by modern Poles in the ghosts that have lived through them by way of legacy as well as those that have dwelled within individual memory of family identity, old relationships, legends, and secrets.

For readers who percieve Russia still up to its mid-20th Century tricks, albeit by way of thugocrats; who sniff the east European air and find in it the faint sharp reminders of local anti-Semitic brutality--or, perhaps worse, a quaint but vicious second buriel in efforts to restore Jewish life as an artifact best suited to eternal confinement by way of library, museum, and scholarlyl notes--In the Memory of the Forest well illustrates a still living, still unfolding, still engaged and engaging national story.

What to do with so much ugly baggage?

As Hitchens would go on to say by way of praising Orwell and Orwell hiimself might have said through Powers to a contemporary audience: "Face it."

My friends at our local monthly "Books and Bagels" circle will ask, "Is it a Jewish book?"

My answer would and will be that it is both a fine novel in the guise of a rural detective story as well as one much about our own times in which the Polish national experience and its legacy not only may rediscover old neighbors and sometimes uncomfortable truths but has been doing so slowly, painfully, joyously, unevenly.

Credit British photographer Richard Schofield with this image of a public school wall built partially with the grave stones taken from a a Jewish cemetary (reference: Kotz and Schofield 2011).  Schofield's own web states, "I'm an Englishman currently involved in a number of projects in the former USSR that include both the taking and collecting of photographs. My photographic practice focuses primarily on the veiled peculiarities of everyday life in all its splendid forms" (http://www.richardschofieldphotography.com/).  Indeed, memory and ghosts are what "straight photography" have often been about.  (Photo republished here with the photographer's permission).

Reference

Hitchens, Christopher.  Why Orwell Matters. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

Kotz, Dovid and Richard Schofield.  "Old Stones Speak to Young Pupils: Jewish Gravestones in the Walls of a Vilnius School Yard."  Defending History.com, December 10, 2011.

Powers, Charles T.  In the Memory of the Forest.  New York: Penguin,1997.

The Polish Jews Heritage - Geneology Research Photos Translation.

Wikipedia.  "Charles T. Powers". 

Related

Cowell, Alan.  "A Poet on Deadline, a Traveler Who Left Too Soon."  The New York Times, July 4, 1997.

Gordon, Julie.  "Polish drama "In Darkness" sheds light on Holocaust.  Reuters Entertainment, September 14, 2011.

Marzynski, Marian.  Shtetl.  DVD.  PBS, Frontline.

McIntyre, Mary.  "The Ghosts of Europe: Journeys Through Central Europe's Troubled Past and Uncertain Future by Anna Porter." Book review.  Washburn Island: Memoir of A Childhood, March 4, 2011.

Oliver, Myrna.  "Charles T. Powers; Won Awards as Times Reporter."  Los Angeles Times, October 3, 1996.

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.  Image Before My Eyes: A History of Jewish Life in Poland Before the Holocaust.  DVD. 

Vasager, Jeevan and Julian Borger.  "A Jewish renaissance in Poland: There are signs that Poles are discovering their lost Jewish heritage and that antisemitism is in decline."  The Guardian, April 6, 2011.

# # #

Gerald Fitzgerald on the Refugees of 1948

Posted on Facebook (December 2011) and reprinted with permission of the author, Gerald Fitzgeral, the pseudonym of a Toronto-based contributor whose interests range from science and technology to philosophy, history and anthropology broadly conceived, including economics, civics, society and culture.

* * *

They are an invented people, but they were invented for a reason, and it is working. Their misery serves the purposes of others, and is self-reinforcing.

They are not likely to renounce the identity any time soon, so judo may be a more effective strategy. If the Arabs want to separate from the Palestinians, turn that around and cut the Arabs out of your dealings.

Offer the Palestinians two options. One is to reject Arab imperialism and return to their Hebrew roots, for if their ancestors were native to the area, they must have been Jews and Christianised Jews.

The second option is to have an Arab culture state that has a large Palestinian demographic. This would require dealing with the Hashemites and their bedouin, and next year may be an excellent time for that.

A combination of assimilation (for areas with low population density) and a form of extraterritoriality (for dense areas) would be a workable outcome for Israel. At any rate, just because the left created the Palestinians, it does not mean that it owns them.

The reality on the ground is that the only thing keeping the Palestinians obedient to their masters is the lie that they will win.

# # #

Shema Israel from Papua New Guinea

Here I would love to be filled in: who, where, when?

. . . . .

A few hours later, after Facebooking the evening away, there is an answer or two:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/149441

The videographer's web site: http://www.trumpetofsalvation.org/index.php?id=32.  In correspondence, Jacob Damkani, the videographer, notes, "that was our welcome there - they knew it before! It was absolutely amazing to see their love and interest for Israel!"

For those who may wish for a bit of convenient background on the chant: http://www.aish.com/jl/m/pb/48954656.html.

# # #

About Obama's Bandwagon Anti-Semitism

Hop on board!

We're going to teach those Jooooos a lesson in humility by embracing That Other suckled on the world's abundance of fear and hate and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Taken at face value, recent remarks by U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton go well beyond realignment with the Muslim world.  They go all the way to appeasement, capitulation, and the taking up of that old pogromatic saw, "Kill the Jews!"

Panetta, for example, after a lengthy recounting key elements in U.S. cooperation in the Israeli security relationship during his December 2 speech at the Saban Center, goes on to drop this bomblet:

"And so I’ve been working with the leaders there, Minister Barak and others, to find ways to help Israel take steps which are profoundly in its interests. 

            For example, Israel can reach out and mend fences with those who share an interest in regional stability – countries like Turkey and Egypt, as well as Jordan.  This is an important time to be able to develop and restore those key relationships in this crucial area.  This is not impossible.  If gestures are rebuked, the world will see those rebukes for what they are.  That is exactly why Israel should pursue them" (Department of Defense).

Those who have been tracking Turkey's regress under its Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan know the man and his "Justice and Development Party" have gone after opposition businesses, journalists critical of his tenure, and generals, and of generals to the effect of losing an entire class of the breed while on the cusp of cutting defense contracts with Israel, a former $2 billion annual trade partner (Inbar, 2005; a more recent article in The Guardian, listed in reference, cites the trade economies value as $3.5 billion).

Not to be too distracted by that Guardian article, but the same (from September) contains this gem: "

"Israel's ambassador and other senior diplomats in Ankara have been ordered to leave by Wednesday, and diplomatic status has been downgraded to the lowest level.

On Monday dozens of Israelis were detained at Istanbul airport in what was perceived by Israel as punitive harassment. Passengers were questioned for up to two hours and some were strip-searched" (Sherwood, 2011).

On the surface of the world according to Panetta, "Israel can reach out and mend fences with . . . Turkey . . . ."

And, rightfully, the Jews say (even righteously), "Huh?"

Hillary Clinton too has found her way to comments critical of Israel (and perhaps Orthodox Judaism).  Writing for Haaretz, Barak Ravid says, "She mentioned cases of IDF soldiers leaving during performances of female singers and the fact that females sit in the back of buses in certain places in Israel.  Clinton said that some of these phenomena reminded her of Iran."

Heck, Hillary, you could have gone to Brooklyn to see about the same thing (Didymus, 2011).

The bogey of the much promoted conspiratorial Left (socialist left) plays some with heads on this too: we (lumpen conservatives) want to believe.

However, I have another way of filtering these events, but it's chancey. 

It's this: 1) we -- Israel and the United States and most allies -- are well involved in several wars that may include unfinished business with remnant Soviet cabal, continuing large "Grand Game" competitions for oil and other resources in the Middle East and Africa, resurgent confrontations with the ghosts of the Third Reich, and Islam as the vessel of a political program guaranteed to keep hundreds of millions of minds and souls locked in medieval horrors, including the retrograde horror of medieval motivations (including our well promoted, well recognized, practically brand reliable anti-Semitism); and 2) the best way to progress is a) not to take on all the elephants (or eat them) all at once, or b) misguide everyone while drawing up plans to do that which none wish to do, which would include removing the Iranian threat, updating Arabic (black/white) concepts locked in language and Islam, and economically and socially integrating more of humanity into the west's programs of peace and prosperity.

In essence, we may be watching a double story that has political theater for a surface, a run-up to a higher intensity warfare partiallyl concealed in the wings, and the machinery of broad good intent (or evil -- it's hard to tell) grinding away beneath the floorboards.

Here are some things I know:

• F-35 jet program: Israel retains the cockpit avionics, a decisive element in blocking or cloaking combat-related signals and much else in an active battlespace;
• Israel has received "bunker-busting" bombs from the U.S., a once secret program now leaked, inked, and linked all over the place--probably a deliberate DOD/IDF signal, imho.
• U.S. and Israel military cooperation in exercises, at minimum, have stepped up (as also mentioned by Panetta in the same speech cited by critics (in reference here, Smara Greenberg's article tells a part of that story.  Suprising to me, it also includes this note: "Nevertheless, joint military exercises will not be enough to secure Israel's safety from physical and image damage within the international community, and it is important for the White House to stand for Israel publicly as well as privately, as it apparently does in the backrooms of military training bases."  How about that?  My thesis: the public story is opposite, a part of the diplomacy and timing of the institution of other plans).
• Having watched Iranian influence take off in the wake of the war in Iraq and coinciding with its nuclear program development, it appears the U.S. naval presence in the Persion Gulf is swinging upward as well (by Obama's orders).

Unless my fellow armchair and professional analysts (armchair here -- pro wannabe) have taken some marching orders via a napkin, perhaps, passed under the table, I'm taking the popular notion that the Obama Administration is about show to heart, but the show to come may be quite different than the show he's been putting on from that first slighting of Netanyahu so long, and yet so very few years, ago.

Integrity, as the English would know it, runs into trouble with every inch of a concept like "double-story", which is to say practicing deceit albeit with perhaps noble intentions. 

For Americans and Israelis (and Anglophiles and others), speaking straight -- scout's honor -- lays at the foundation of every democratic and open society, all agreeing to analogs of "Without the First Amendment, all of the others are worthless."  The explosions and smokey shadows of armed conflicts, however, encourage secrets-keeping related to practical security tactics and strategies, and government's caught in such predicaments may become more opaque than previously experienced, drawing fire both for what they project and, more generally, for becoming more remote from the common constituency and difficult to interpret as to true intentions.

Reference

Debkafile.  "Katyusha fire on Israel was Syrian warning.  Turkey ready for any scenario."  November 29, 2011.  Not called out loud in the post, this would be part of the continued Russia (old Soviet) and NATO competition in the region, for which old Soviet pals have persisted in keeping Iran, also terror, and Syria as buffers and as hand-in-the-grand-game elements, the disappearance of the Soviet government covering over the persistence of state issues and, probably, long cultivated and reinforced social relationships in business and politics.

Didymus, JohnThomas.  "Op-Ed: Sex-segregated buses in Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Communities."  Digital Journal, November 13, 2011.

Durden, Tyler.  "Russia Retaliates Against US: Puts Radar Station On Combat Alert, Prepares to Take Out European Missile Defense Systems."  Zero Hedge, November 23, 2011.

Foxman, Abraham H.  "Leon Panetta Blames the Victim."  Huff Post World, December 4, 2011.

Greenberg, Samara.  "U.S., Israel Increase Military Cooperation."  The Jewish Policy Center, August 16, 2011.

Inbar, Efraim.  "The Resilience of Israeli-Turkish Relations."  Israel Affairs, 2:4, October 2005 (pp. 591-607).

Leibler, Isi.  "Kudos to ADL's Foxman for Speaking Up."  Candidly Speaking from Jerusalem, December 9, 2011.

Moore, Simon Cameron.  "Turkey's Leaders Deny Crises as Top Generals Quit."  Reuters, July 30, 2011.

Marone, Jr. David Paul.  "the U.S. Footprint on the Arabian Peninsula: Can We Avoid A Repeat of the Pullout from Saudi Arabia?"  Thesis.  Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, December 2009. I confess to just glancing at this, but it too may help frame the middle east conflict, or the American relationship with Israel, in its broader defense and foreign policy context.

Ravid, Barak.  "Government Ministers React Sharply to Clinton's Criticism of Israeli Democracy."  Haaretz, December 7, 2011.

Shanker, Thom.  "U.S. Quietly Supplies Israel with Bunker-Busting Bombs."  The New York Times, September 23, 2011.

Shanker, Thom and Steven Lee Myers.  "U.S. Planning Troop Buildup in Gulf After Exit from Iraq."  The New York Times, October 29, 2011.

Sherwood, Harriet.  "Turkey Suspends Military Ties with Israel."  The Guardian, September 6, 2011.

Spencer, Robert.  "Panetta Blames Israel for Jihad Against It, Tells Israelis to "Mend Fences" with Jihad-Sponsoring States."  December 4, 2011.

U.S. Department of Defense.  "Remarks by Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta at the Saban Center."  News Transcript, December 2, 2011.

Zaharna, R.S.  "Bridging Cultural Differences: American Public Relations Practices & Arab Communications Patterns."  Draft, final appearing in Public Relations Review, 21 (1995), 241-255.  I thought I'd throw this in to support my sense that "the mission" (as a Bush might say it) includes a measure of cultural transformation within language, and with Arabic primary in Islam but also one among several.  For more surprising reading in contemporary linguistics, I recommend lookin up Dan Everett and reading, at minimum, Don't Sleep, There are Snakes.

Related

Oppenheim, James S.  "Obama and the Double Story."  Oppenheim Arts & Letters, May 20, 2010.