Life In a Jar - The Irenz Sendler Project by Jack Mayer

 

Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project by Jack Mayer

Over the past 15 years a great deal has been written about Irena Sendler, a non-Jewish Polish woman who managed to smuggle over 2500 children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and secure them in safe hiding places until the end of the war. Jack Mayer's book, Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project takes a new approach to the story as he examines the process that brought the incident to life.

Irena Sendler was a young Polish social worker in Warsaw when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. She joined the Zagota underground whose primary mission involved helping Jews escape from the Nazis. As a social worker Sendler was able to obtain papers that allowed her to enter the Warsaw ghetto where close to a half a million Jews were trapped without the bare essentials for survival.

Sendler brought food and medicine into the ghetto but she quickly realized that she could save more lives if she concentrated on bringing Jews OUT of the ghetto -- specifically, children. Over the course of a year Sendler and her Zagota comrades smuggled more than 2500 children from the ghetto -- sedating the youngest children and smuggling them out in toolboxes and bags while she led the older children out through the sewers that ran under Warsaw and via other underground tunnels. Sendler obtained false papers for some of the children who could then be passed off as Christians and found hiding places for other children in convents, orphanages and with sympathetic Polish families. Sendler recorded the names and hiding places of each child on pieces of tissue paper. She then stuffed these pieces of paper into glass jars and then buried them in her yard, hoping that, someday, the children could be identified and reunited with their community.

After the war Sendler was one of the first Righteous Among the Nations honored by the Israeli Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem but her story was quickly forgotten and she lived quietly in Warsaw, unrecognized by the Polish Communist government which didn't want to relate to Holocaust-era rescuers. In 1999 a group of non-Jewish schoolgirls from Uniontown Kansas identified Sendler and created a school assignment about her activities during the war. It's here that Mayer's book veers from the better-known accounts of the Irena Sendler Project because, whereas other written information has always focused on Sendler's activities, Mayer focuses on the creation and execution of the project itself.

The students, Elizabeth Cambers, Megan Stewart, Jessica Shelton and Sabrina Coons were students in a small, poor rural school. Their high school social studies teacher assigned them to research an aspect of the Holocaust. During their initial research they found a one-line piece of information about Sendler on a website and set out to investigate. For many months the girls came up against stone walls because in 1999 there was almost no information available about Sendler's activities. But surprisingly, when they tried to write to Sendler, she answered -- in the year 2000 the 90-something-year-old Sendler was still living in Warsaw and was enchanted with the girls' work. She wrote "“To my dear and beloved girls very close to my heart. I am curious if you are an exception or more young people in your country are interested in the Holocaust. I think that your work is unique and worth disseminating.”

The students wrote up the history project and then expanded it into a play called "Life in a Jar." The play was performed throughout the nation and, ultimately, in Poland. Educational visionary Lowell Milken helped the girls travel to Poland where they visited Sendler and met some of the children that she had saved.  Milken was so taken by the project that he initiated a Center with Norman Conrad, the social studies teacher who had originally inspired the girls to embark on their research. Today the Lowell Milken Center highlights the stories of "unsung heroes" worldwide as they are researched and presented by American schoolchildren. 

Mayer's book goes beyond the basics of the story of Sendler's activities and the research that identified her to focus on the respect and understanding that Sendler modeled. He also focuses on the tenaciousness of the girls, who had no personal interest in the incident, but overcame all obstacles to expose a story that has moved thousands of people throughout the world and inspired others to create similar projects.

BIO
Jack Mayer, MD, MPH
~
Jack Mayer began practicing pediatrics in 1976 in Enosburg Falls, Vermont, a small town in eastern Franklin County on the Canadian border. His was the first pediatric practice in that half of the county. He was a doctor there for ten years, often bartering medical care for eggs, firewood, and knitted afghans. From 1987 - 1991 he was a National Cancer Institute Epidemiology Fellow at Columbia University School of Public Health in New York City, researching pediatric environmental toxicology and the molecular biology of cancer. Most of his scientific writing was done during those four years. He was also a member of Columbia's General Pediatric Group Practice.

Dr. Mayer returned to Vermont in 1991 and established Rainbow Pediatrics in Middlebury, where he continues to practice primary care pediatrics. He is an Instructor in Pediatrics at the University of Vermont

This is an important book all with an interest in the period need to read.  I strongly urge all libraries acquire it.

Mel u

Knowing Women by James Lawless 2013

Knowing Women by James Lawless made me think of one very good book I read a year ago, and two poems, one I have read several times in the last few months, and one I have not read in decades.  That Knowing Women brought these three powerful works to my mind is a very high tribute to its artistic depth and high intelligence.  I will explain what I mean in a bit.  

The central character in Knowing Women is Laurence Benbo, thirty seven, a bachelor getting over a so so relationship, living in Dublin.  He is bashful and has had difficulty finding women in the past.  He likes to go for walks around Dublin, when he is not at his job as a graphic artist.  He notices an attractive woman sitting outside reading Anna Karenina.  He is intrigued by her and begins to follow her on his daily walks.  Not wanting to give away to much plot, he follows her, she is from Eastern Europe to the club where she does lap dances.  He gets to know her, she is not really a prostitute but she does begun to take gifts from Laurence and they do start a romance of sorts.  Laurence wins a big lottery prize.  Now a subplot begins involving his brother and his family.  The brother has always up until now considered the better adjusted and more successful of the two.  Something nasty happens to Laurence, caused by his brother and sister-in-law, who I did come to emphasize with.  I will leave the rest of the plot unspoiled.  There is sex, fascinating plot twists, and it does feel like Dublin is being well depicted.

The first book Knowing Women reminded me of was Occasions of Sin:  Sex and Society in Modern Ireland by Diarmaid Feriter.  Feriter depicts a culture of sexual repression, of joyless sex, late marriages and old virgins with the church and the state in everyone's bedroom.   I see Laurence Benbo as clearly emerging from  this.   His girlfriend might as well be a prostitute.  Recently I read for the first of now numerous times Patrick Kavanagh's majestic poem, "The Great Hunger".  Benbo made me think of the men in this poem who never really mature sexually or discover their sexual nature.  Men with a hunger they don't understand.  Lastly, and this reaction is probably quite off the wall, I was at once brought to mind by the hesitant character of Benbo, "The Love Song of Alfred J. Profrock" by T. S. Eliot.  

Knowing Women is observationally and psychologically acute.  It is also a lot of fun.  You knew this middle aged graphics artist with an Eastern European bisexual lap dancer girl friend was headed for trouble and I enjoyed observing his tribulations.  

I recommend this book very much and hope to read more of the work of Lawless in 2014. 

Biography

James Lawless was born in Dublin and divides his time between County Kildare and West Cork. His first novel, Peeling Oranges, a paternal quest set in the Liberties of Dublin and Franco’s Spain, was published in 2007. His prose and poetry have been broadcast and published in various magazines and anthologies in Ireland and abroad including Cyphers, The Stinging Fly, Fish, Revival, Windows’ Publications, Crannóg,Boyne Berries, Boho Press, Ragged Raven Press, The New Writer, Route, the French Literary Review, An Gael (USA), The Stony Thursday Book and he was the featured writer in the Spring 2011 issue of the ezine Minus Nine Squared. Awards include the Scintilla Welsh Open Poetry competition 2002, the Cecil Day Lewis Play Award 2005 for What Are Neighbours For? a Hennessy Award nomination and the WOW Award for fiction 2010 and a Biscuit International Prize for short stories 2011.

He has broadcast his work on RTÉ radio and performed at many literary festivals, including the West Cork Literary Festival, Fermoy Poetry Festival, Baffle, Castlecomer, Boyle, Clifden, Galway festivals, the Cultúrlann in Belfast, the Dublin Books Festival and The Kildare Readers’ Festival. His story, “Jolt”, was shortlisted for the Willesden Prize and appeared in New Short Stories 1, edited by Zadie Smith (London/ New York, Willesden Herald, 2007). A play, The Fall, was performed in the Source Arts Centre, Thurles, the same year, directed by Donal Gallagher of Asylum Productions. A second novel, For Love of Anna, a story of love, ideology and corruption, was published in 2009 as was his book on modern poetry, Clearing The Tangled Wood: Poetry as a way of seeing the world (‘a linguistic ballet, learned and lively on behalf of poetry’ — John Montague), and for which he received an arts bursary award. A third novel, The Avenue (‘A work of passion and truth’ — Declan Kiberd) was published in 2010. Clearing The Tangled Wood has been released in paperback and his fourth novel, Finding Penelope, about a woman’s growth in self-realisation and set amid the expat drug culture on the Spanish Costas, and a collection of poetry Rus in Urbe were published in 2012. His much praised new novel Knowing Women, about a vulnerable man tainted sexually, was published in March 2013.

For further information, please visit James’ Amazon author page, or find him on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. orLawless, James | Irish Writers Online or James Lawless at The National Library of Ireland  and James Lawless –Wikipedia, 

From author's web page.

The End of Everything by David Bergelson (1913) The Reading Life Yale Yiddish Project

The End of Everything by David Bergelson (1913) is considered one of the masterworks of Yiddish literature.   It centers on the lives of newly rich Russian Jews trying to preserve their cultural identity in a country in great turmoil, Tsarist Russia.  Bergelson's title is itself a chilling prophecy of what was to happen to most of the people the novel is about.  

The central character is Mirel Hurvits, a beautiful educated woman who tries to rebel against an arranged marriage while staying within the confines of her culture.  The novel goes deeply into social and marriage customs, economic realities, family life and sex roles of the period.   Mirel is more or less forced by her parents into a marriage of convenience to a man that revolts her.  We see her disintegration as the story line progresses.

This is a depressing and at times predictable storyline but it is essentially reading for anyone into Yiddish Literature or with an interest in Soviet Jews.   

From the web page of The Yale University Press

Originally published in 1913, When All Is Said and Done is one of the great novels of the twentieth century. Considered David Bergelson’s masterpiece, it was written in Yiddish and until now has been unavailable in a complete and accurate English translation. This version by acclaimed translator Joseph Sherman finally brings the novel to a wide English-speaking audience.

 

Bergelson depicts the lives of upwardly mobile, self-aware nouveaux riche Jews in the waning years of the Russian Empire. The central character, Mirel Hurvits, is an educated, beautiful woman who embodies the conflict between tradition and progress, aristocracy and enterprise. A forced marriage of convenience results in Mirel’s emotional disintegration and provokes a confrontation with the expectations of her pious family and with Jewish tradition. In a unique prose style of unsurpassable range and beauty, Bergelson reduces language to its bare essentials, punctuated by silences that heighten the sense of alienation in the story.

A Russian Yiddish novelist and a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, David Bergelson (1884–1952) was one of the thirteen defendants at the infamous trial of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee held in Moscow in May 1952.   

I have decided to participate in The Russian Literature Challenge.  I am currently rereading  War and Peace and intend to read more Russian born Yiddish writers.  I have a collection of new translations of short stories by Tolstoy and also hope to get to that in 2014.  

The challenge is being hosted by Behold the Stars.  There are various degrees of commitment.  I hope to read at least six.

If you have any suggestions for Russian Yiddish writers, including Ukrainians, please let us know.

http://beholdthestars.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/russian-literature-2014.html

Mel u

Adivi Bapiraju: ‘The Blind Girl’ 1946, five pages

Adivi Bapiraju (1895 to 1952, Andra Pradesh, India) is a leading Telugu language novelist, poet, playwright and the author of over 100 highly regarded short stories.  Telugu is spoken by about 85 million and is one of the official languages of India. 

For several years now I have been a follower of a very well done web page devoted to Indian literature, Muse India. (Museindia.com). Issue 52, November - December 2013 was largely devoted to a new to me writer, Adivi Bapiraju.  The lead article on him was fascinating and they kindly included four short stories in translation so I read them and wish to encourage my readers to afford themselves of this pleasure.  

"Blind Girl" compresses a great deal in a few pages.  As the story opens a lovely blind girl gets on a train.  She begins to sing in voice of great spiritual beauty of Lord Rama's sojourn as hermit boy.  The people in the train compartment are transfixed by the magnificence of her singing.  A "worthy Brahmin", this is a bit of caste war I take it, enters the cabin and interrupts the girl with a long series of crude jokes. 

"Exactly at that juncture a Brahman worthy boarded the train. As soon as he stepped in, he cut into the song and cracked a joke. Since spiritual bliss is superhuman, mortals cannot stand it for long, like how no one can stay under deep waters for long. The joke by the Brahman jolted the humanity in the coach all of a sudden into a sigh and self-consciousness. The girl stopped her song."

As the Brahman makes more and more crude jokes people shower him with coins.  He bids the train riders to have a long and prosperous life and leaves, probably to board another train.  The blind woman tries to resume singing but people tell her to stop, all their coins went to the joker.  A man enters the train, also a beggar.  He used to work for the railroad until he lost his hand in an accident and could no longer work.  Some years ago the blind woman, she lives in a farm house of a kind farm family, found a three year old wandering the streets and he has been with her for four years now.  

I do not wish to tell more of the plot of this story.  It is in the form of a fable.  In just a few pages, Bapiraju connects ancient texts to the state of Indian in the 1940s.  He makes a brilliant point about people's inability to stay under deep waters too long.  

"Blind Girl" may seem like a simple moral parable but it is much more than that.  I will probably post on more of Bapiraju's short stories.

Bapiraju was born to Krishnayya and Subbamma, a Niyogi Brahmin family, on October 8, 1895 in Bhimavaram City. He graduated from a high school in Bhimavaram.  Later after graduating from law school, he practiced law for a while in Bhimavaram.  However, he gave up law practice for teaching and other interests such as journalism, painting and poetry.

He was interested in writing poetry from his childhood.  He became famous with his “Narayanarao” novel which got him Andhra Viswwakala Parishattu Award. He was also interested in painting. His popular oil paintings are samudraguptudu and tikkana. He also drew pictures for Viswanadha Satyanarayana’s famous lyrics, kinnerasani patalu.

In 1922, Bapiraju participated in Non-cooperation Movement and was jailed for one year.  He wrote “tolakari” after his jail experience. Later he wrote toophan, gona gannareddy, konangi and himabindu. His radio dramas like dukkiteddulu, uhasundari, bhogiraloya etc. and stories like tulikanrityam, hampi sidhilalu, silpabala, veena etc. were very popular. He also directed several movies, e.g., meerabai, anasuya, dhruv vijayam etc.  He also several short stories and songs. Some of his writings were translated into Kannada language.

After a short stint as a lawyer, Bapiraju worked at Bandar National College as a professor from 1934 through 1939. In 1944, he worked for meejan, a Telugu daily published from Hyderabad, as an editor.  Later, he joined Vijayawada Radio as an advisor. He was a founding member of Navya Sahitya Parishattu. He also established an art foundation in Guntur to teach painting.

Bapiraju was a multifaceted personality with a range of interests that included poetry, story writing, drama, journalism, painting, sculpture, music, and dance. He carved out himself a special place in Telugu literature and art by his contributions. He died in 1952.

Source: Nooruguru Telugu Pramukhulu, by M. L. Narasimharao.

Love Begins in Winter by Simon Von Booy 2009 Frank O'Connor Prize Winner

Love Begins in Winter by Simon Von Booy won the 2009 Frank O'Connor Prize given for best short story collection of the year.  I loved this collection.  I have previously read and posted on the lead story and was unable to resist when there was a one day only special on the book on Amazon for only $1.99.   I am very drawn to beauty and I was totally in thrall to the shimmering incandescent prose of Von Booy.  There are five interconnected stories in the collection.  I don't doubt I am not the only one who would have liked the stories to be titled but in the long run I think this requires you to be more creative in your reading of the stories.  The lead or connecting character is a famous cello player, from Paris, who travels world wide giving concerts.  He is a classical music super star.  Many of the lines of the stories could stand alone as aphoristic gems about music, love, and loneliness.  There is a wonderful subplot about "the bird man of Beverly Hills".  There is a kind of romance.  There is a truly heart breaking interlude of atonement by a grieving father.  

I hope to read more of Van Booy going forward.  

Simon Van Booy was born in Great Britain and grew up in rural Wales.  He is the author ofThe Secret Lives of People in Love, Love Begins in Winter (winner of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award) and the novel, Everything Beautiful Began After.  His latest novel is The Illusion of Separateness.

He is the editor of three philosophy books, titled Why We Fight, Why We Need Love, and Why Our Decisions Don’t Matter.  His essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, and ELLE Men, (China), where he has a monthly column. He has also written for the stage, National Public Radio, and the BBC.  

Simon teaches part-time at SVA in Manhattan, and is involved in the Rutgers Early College Humanities Program for young adults living in under-served communities.  In 2013, he founded Writers for Children, an organization which helps young people build confidence in their talent, through annual writing awards.

He was a finalist for the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise, and his work has been translated into more than fifteen languages.

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter.  From the author's web page.

"The Sea" by Yoko Ogawa (2006)

I have read and posted on several works by Yoko Ogawa  (Japan, 1962) including Hotel Iris and The House Keeper and the Professor,  her most famous work.   I have also read two collections of her interrelated short stories.  A couple of years ago I acquired a decent collection of 21st century Japanese short stories, including "The Sea" by Yoko Ogawa.  

Last January I participated in January in Japan, an event hosted by Tony's Reading List.  I was glad to see it is being done for a second year.  The first featured writer was Yoko Ogawa.  "The Sea" centers on a couple who intend to marry on a visit to the woman's parents.  He intends to ask her parents permission to marry their daughter.  This is not a dramatic action filled story.  It is a story with deeply subtle reflections of the relationships in the family.  In addition to the parents there is a very elderly dysfunctional grandmother, a twenty one year old son who the fiancé refers to as her baby brother.  During the evening meal, the grandmother asks when will the daughter and her fiancé be coming home, with them right at the table.  The brother sits next to the grandmother in silence and looks out for her.  

At night the boyfriend and the brother will share the brother's bedroom.  We see them kind of straining to figure out something to talk about.  The intrigue or mystery in the story centers on a strange musical instrument the brother has fashioned out of a fish bladder that can only be played next to the sea.

"The Sea" is an interesting insightful story.  I am glad I read it.

Here is the link to January in Japan -

http://januaryjapan.blogspot.com/2014/01/j-lit-giants-8-yoko-ogawa.html

Mel u

"Ramblings on a Beach" by Kabir Bedi 1977 A Story by leading Indian Media Personality

"Ramblings on the Beach" is right out of the Wordsworthian romanticism of children play book with a dose of post colonialism thrown in.   The narrator suggests what he sees as the timidity, the reflexive submission to  authority he claims is deeply ingrained in the Indian character is a result of centuries of rule by colonial masters and their local standins.   He ties this in with a cultural tendency to teach children to submit to authority, to follow customs, to refrain from originality.  Being childish becomes a pejorative term used to impart a colonial mentality to Indians.  

The language is lush and lyrical.   I enjoyed reading this story.   I also liked his role in Octopussy.

Kabir Bedi (Punjabi: ਕਬੀਰ ਬੇਦੀ) is an Indian television and film actor. His career has spanned three continents including India, the United States and many European countries in three mediums: film, television and theatre. He is noted for his role asEmperor Shah Jahan in Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story. He is best known in Europe for playing the pirate Sandokan in the highly popular TV mini series and for his role as the villainous Gobinda in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy. He is very popular in Italy and is fluent in Italian.

Kabir Bedi is based in India and lives in Mumbai.