“Father’s Last Escape”. - A Short Story by Bruno Schulz- from his collection The Street of Crocadiles - 1934- translated from Polish by Celina Weinlewska

“Father’s Last Escape”. -  A Short Story by Bruno Schulz- from his collection The Street of Crocadiles - 1934- translated from  Polish by Celina Weinlewska

He was born July 12,1892

He was murdered on November 19, 1942

Both events happened in Drohobycz, in Galacia, Austria

In 1939, after the Nazi and Soviet invasion of Poland in World War II, Drohobych was occupied by the Soviet Union. At the time, Schulz was known to have been working on a novel called The Messiah, but no trace of the manuscript survived his death. When the Germans launched their Operation Barbarossa against the Soviets in 1941, they forced Schultz into the newly formed Drohobycz Ghetto along with thousands of other dispossessed Jews, most of whom perished at the Belzec extermination camp before the end of 1942. 

A Nazi Gestapo officer, Felix Landau, however, admired Schulz's artwork and extended him protection in exchange for painting a mural in his Drohobych residence. Shortly after completing the work in 1942, Schulz was walking home through the "Aryan quarter" with a loaf of bread, when another Gestapo officer, Karl Günther,[9][10] shot him with a small pistol, killing him.[5] This murder was in revenge for Landau's having murdered Günther's own "personal Jew." Subsequently, Schulz's mural was painted over and forgotten – only to be rediscovered in 2001...from Wikepedia.

There is a wonderful Short story based on his mural work in They Were Like Family to Me by Helen Maryles Shankman

Schultz is regarded as one of The greatest 20th century writers of fiction in Polish.

I was delighted to find a very well done Reading of this story on Youtube (playing time about 12 minutes.)

https://youtu.be/j2cjLiJMS-w

Most of Schultz’s stories focus on his immediate family.  There is his eccentric in his own world father, the quiet mother, the down to Earth live in maid Adele, and Uncle Karol, a scholar of linguistics that rarely leaves his room but to eat. His work is very much involved with magic realism, surrealism and readers of this story Will jump to see the influence of Kafka, as did I.  (Schultz read Polish and German but not Yiddish. I dont know if he read Kafka or not.)

As this story opens, the family shop has been closed, the father has died and the servant girl Adele was on a ship bound for America which they heard the Germans sunk. In any case she was never heard from again.  The new servant girl sometimes makes soup from old paper clippings and clue.  It is not very appetizing.

A large crab appears at the house.  The narrator and his mother insist he is the father come back.  They never retreat from this idea.

This is a very much a darkly funny story.  It shows the extremes grief can push us into.  The insanity of the Holocaust 

There are other stories by Schultz on YouTube, I will read them one day, I hope.

Avant Bousweau - 

Consultant Upon The Legacy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire