“The Jew Hater” - A Short Story by Helen Maryles Shankman - from They Were Like Family to Me: Stories - 2016

Website of the Author 

A Very Perceptive Review from The Jewish Book Council 

From Tablet Magazine- A Review and a Podcast of an Interview with the Author

“The Jew Hater” is the longest of the stories in They Were Like Family to Me.

“Pavel Walczak hated Jews. When the first German soldiers came knocking on the door of his isolated farmhouse, they were just thirsty. Pavel took it upon himself to point out the homesteads and businesses of his Jewish neighbors.”

Panel was once a happy man,with a wife and a young daughter that were the center of his world.  Then in 1925 they both died during the world wide Spanish Influenza  Epidemic.  His neighbors saw this took any joy in life he ever had.  He kept running his farm, his only companion a dog.  Believing what was in the  Press, as supported in time by the German rulers of Poland, he was convinced the epidemic was engineered by the world wide Jewish cabal.  The objective was to kill of Christians.  Given this and like many a miserable person he was filled with the Germanic spirit of Schadenfreude, taking joying in the misery of Jews.  He was of course paid for turning in Jews by the local SS.

One day a Jewish leader of the anti-German partisans visits him.  Panel at first thinks  he is there to kill him.  But no, he is leaving his sister’s young daughter, a girl Panel says be spotted as Jewish by her bright read hair.  Pavel asks the partisan, “How do you know I Will not turn her in  as soon as you leave ?”

The partisan tells him if she is not here when I return to retrieve her, I will burn down your born with you inside. He tells him he knows the Germans will never think a Jew Hater like him would harbour a Jewish child.

At first Pavel hates the girl, when the SS visits he has her cover her hair and pretend to be mute.  Pavel’s dog loves her.

Shankman does a wonderful job of showing us how taking care of the girl changes Pavel.  She draws on Kabbalistic traditions for a delightful segment of magic realism.

This is a very exciting detail rich story.  I will leave rest of the plot for lucky readers to discover.  The ending is so powerful many will be overcome.

So far this is second story from this collection upon which I have posted, adfitionally I have read two others.  For sure I will read the rest.  

My prediction is that this collection will be listed among classic works of Holocaust fiction.

Mel u

They Were Like Family to Me by Helen Maryles Shankman is a collection of eight interrelated short stories.  Most take place during the German occupation of a Wlodawa, a city in Poland.  The collection has received very high praise, it mixes magic realism with vivid descriptions of people and events.  The times were terrible.