The Counterfeit Countess:' The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust by Elizabeth B. White and Joanna Silwa -2023-

"The astonishing story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg—a Jewish mathematician who saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading as a Polish aristocrat—drawing on Mehlberg’s own unpublished memoir.World War II and the Holocaust have given rise to many stories of resistance and rescue, but The Counterfeit Countess is unique. It tells the remarkable, unknown story of “Countess Janina Suchodolska,” a Jewish woman who rescued more than 10,000 Poles imprisoned by Poland’s Nazi occupiers. Mehlberg operated in Lublin, Poland, headquarters of Aktion Reinhard, the SS operation that murdered 1.7 million Jews in occupied Poland. Using the identity papers of a Polish aristocrat, she worked as a welfare official while also serving in the Polish resistance. With guile, cajolery, and steely persistence, the “Countess” persuaded SS officials to release thousands of Poles from the Majdanek concentration camp. She won permission to deliver food and medicine—even decorated Christmas trees—for thousands more of the camp’s prisoners. At the same time, she personally smuggled supplies and messages to resistance fighters imprisoned at Majdanek, where 63,000 Jews were murdered in gas chambers and shooting pits. Incredibly, she eluded detection, and ultimately survived the war and emigrated to the US. Drawing on the manuscript of Mehlberg’s own unpublished memoir, supplemented with prodigious research, Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa, professional historians and Holocaust experts, have uncovered the full story of this remarkable woman. They interweave Mehlberg’s sometimes harrowing personal testimony with broader historical narrative. Like The Light of Days, Schindler’s List, and Irena’s Children, The Counterfeit Countess is an unforgettable account of inspiring courage in the face of unspeakable cruelty." From the publisher 

 

This is a very valuable addition to Holocaust History, especially as it relates to Poland.  Sometimes in thinking on the Holocaust one loses sight of the many people who Risked or lost their lives to help others.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this period.

Romance of a Horse Thief by Joseph Opatoshu (1912, 67 pages)

One of the stars of the movie version was the author's son David Opatoshu, a very successful Broadway and motion picture actor.  This is sometimes shown on the Turner Classic Channel. 

Ruth Wisse in her introduction to Romance of a Horsethief described it as one of the first attempts to portray a criminal underworld in Yiddish literature. The central character of the story is a horsethief.   It can be seen as a corrective reaction to the perhaps overly romantic  works of Sholem Aleichem and others who depict the world of Fiddler on the Roof.   

One of the standard features of literatute devoted to criminals is an attempt to portray people and society in a very realistic fashion.  Some equate realisism with literature that stresses only the negative aspects of human nature but Opatoshu avoids that.  His villain has been a professional horsethief all his adult life.   He steals horses in Poland and takes them to Germany and vice-versa. There are two thieves in this story. Shloyme is in many ways a decent man.  He is a devout Jew, a good father who wants to find decent spouses for his children.  Zanvl, a much younger man, says a thief has no need for prayers or the rituals of the temple.  He is single and he attracts women drawn to the excitement of a "bad boy".   He has a lot of raw energy.   He and Rachael fall in love but Rachael cannot accept the life of the wife of a professional criminal and ends up marrying a Rabbi, as her father wants.  

The real villain of the story is a middeman, a former thief now considered a respectable businessman, who brokers the stolen horses.   

There is a lot of action and excitement in the story. The characters are not perfect. The village is controlled by a Cossack chief in exhile from his homeland.  He tolerates the widespread horse thiefery until his own prize horses are stolen.  I am glad to have read The Romance of the Horse Thief and hope to see the movie one day.

       1886 to 1954 born Poland, died New York City 

Joseph Opatoshu

(Yosef Opatovski)

O. was born on 1 January 1887 in Mlawa, Plotsk Gubernia, Poland. His father was a lumber merchant (the family lead yikhusfor the [tusfut] holiday, a Jew, a scholar, one of the first meschilimin Poland, he wrote songs in Hebrew. From age ten to twelve he attended the trade folkshul in Mlawa, learning with his father. At age fourteen he entered into a trade school in Warsaw. At the end of 1905 he went away to Paris, then went to the politechnium in Nancy, but after several months he returned to Mlawa. He began to write, and he became acquainted with Peretz. In March 1907 he immigrated to America, where he worked for several weeks in a factory, carrying [fanander] English newspapers, and he became a Hebrew teacher, completing in 1914 his studies as a civil engineer, occupied, however for only a short time with a profession and he dedicated himself to literature. In "Tsukunft" in 1920 he published programs for a drama "Beym toytn bet", in "Tsukunft", March 1922 he published a one-acter "In salon", and when in 1922 A. visited Poland, he collaborated with the material for a three-act drama "Heynt blut", which was staged on 25 October 1922 in the Central Theatre in Warsaw (Director: Zigmund Turkow). In the same hear through "amateurs" there was staged in Poland a dramatization of A.'s "Roman fun a ferd-gnb".

In December 1928 he was in Warsaw through the society "Forbert-film" under the direction of Jonas Turkow, who produced a film from A.'s novel "Di poylishe velder" with the participation of  Yiddish and well-known Polish actors. The same novel was dramatized by Jacob Vaksman and staged in 1928 in Lublin. There are five novellas in the collection from which this comes.  Here is the publisher's (Wayne State University Press) description. The five short novellas which comprise this anthology were written between 1890 and World War I. All share a common setting—the Eastern European Jewish town or shtetl, and all deal in different ways with a single topic—the Jewish confrontation with modernity. The authors of these novellas are among the greatest masters of Yiddish prose. In their work, today's reader will discover a literary tradition of considerable scope, energy, and variety and will come face to face with an exceptionally memorable cast of characters and with a human community now irrevocably lost. In her general introduction, Professor Wisse traces the development of modern Yiddish literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and describes the many shifts that took place between the Yiddish writers and the world about which they wrote. She also furnishes a brief introduction for each novella, giving the historical and biographical background and offering a critical interpretation of the work. Published by: Wayne State University Press I think anyone with a serious interest in Eastern European literature would love this book. Mel u

Mottke The Thief by Sholem Asch - 1935 - Translated from Yiddish by Wilma and Edwin Muir

A  biography of Sholem Asch from 

The Yivo Encyclopedia of Eastern Jews 

1880 - Born in Poland

1910 - moves to U.S.A, becomes a citizen

A financially fortuitous marriage allowed him to devote all his energied to his writings.  

1957 - died London, though he spent much time in Israel.

Prior to today I have posted upon three very powerful short stories by Sholem Asch.  Kola Street, perhaps his most famous story, is set in Warsaw.

“Kola Street” is an unflinching look at the violence and social conflicts within Jewish society in Warsaw in the days between the world wars.  The story begins with an account of the Kola Street Jews, the roughest elements of Jewish society and their relationship to upper class Jews.  The narrator tells us that the rich may scorn the common people of Kola Street but whenever gentile thugs come to attack them they call for the help of Kola Street residents.  When -ever funds are needed to support scholarships for the study of the Torah, the rich ask Kola Street for help.  

“Jew's Eyes", set in Buchenwald tells a story of chilling cruelty inflicted on a Jewish child with beautiful eyes.  

"The Jewish Soldier”, published first in 1914 in The Forward in New York City, would have sent Asch to Siberia if published in Poland of Russia.  A powerful anti-war story, it tells The story of a young Polish Jew drafted into the Russian Army to fight the Germans.  

Mottke The Thief is the first novel I have read by Asch. A very interesting work, it tells The story of a man born into a poor shtetl family in 

Poland who becomes Warsaw's leading pump and brothel owner.  Much of his money is made by selling girls to brothel operators in Argentina.  The girls are told they will become rich mistresses of "black princes" and are eager to go.  We are told only that a horrendous life awaits them.

Mottke's mother in a fit of jealous rage threw acid in the face of her husband, partially blinding him, shortly before he was born.  He was a cobbler but now could only work a little.  His mother stayed constantly pregnant which allowed her to work as a wet nurse for a wealthy family, supporting the family from this.

Mottke's father abuses him terrible.  His mother finds the money to send him to Torah school.  He is abused by the master and his wife and is falsely accused of robbing them.  His parents and almost everybody else says he will end up a thief.  

At age 14, he begins to spy on women as they bath.  He ends up raping his cousin and another girl and decides to head for Warsaw, a magic place in his mind.  In a very interesting and a bit weird to me interlude he joins a troupe of "tumblers", clearly meant to be a Gypsy tribe.  The members of the group, who put on shows as they travel the country in a caravan, are thieves, the women near prostitutes.  Mottke ends up falling in love with a young woman in the group, Mary.  She will play an important part in his future.

Compressing a lot, the description of prostitution in Warsaw was very interesting.  Asch shows us pimps competing for girls, girls bring beaten for poor earnings.  For 1935, it is sexually open.  

The novel is advertised as taking us beyond the stereotype of Yiddish literature to depict the role of Jews in the criminal life of Warsaw.  We see how poverty drives girls, often orphaned young, to become prostitutes.  

Mottke comes to a sad end.

This book kept my attention throughout.  

I found it ironic to see Roma people depicted in a fashion in accord with the ideology that justified sending them to concentration camps by a Yiddish writer in 1935. 

After his death, endowed by his widow, his residence in Tel Aviv became a museum, still open.

The museum website has a lot of good data

http://moby.org.il/en/visitor-information/

For sure it is worth your time should you visit Tel Aviv.

Mel u

Oleander Bousweau

Mel u

Hershelle: A Jewish Love Story by Jacob Dinezon - 1891 - translated from Yiddish by Jane Peppler - 2016

Jewish Storyteller Press

1851 - New Zhanger, Lithuania

1891- Publishes  Hershelle:A Jewish Love Story

1919 - Warsaw

I first began reading Yiddish literature in translation in December of 2012.  Yale University Press inspired my interest with a gift of The Yale Yiddish Library Collection. The alleged theme of my blog is literary works about people who lead reading centered lives and I quickly came to see how central reading was to Yiddish culture.  

I think my favorite work of Yiddish literature is the deeply hilarious profoundly revealing The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl by Sholem Aleichem, on whose work the movie The Fiddler on the Roof is based.  In the stories of pogroms by I. L. Peretz a terrible history was brought to life with incredible depth and feeling.  Dinezon was friends with them both.

Thanks to the selfless dedication and strongly focused work of Scott Davis, Jacob Dinezon (I urge all to read the very informative webpage on Dinezon I link to at the start of this post for background information on Dinezon and his relationships with other now much better known writers) Dinezon will soon become a canon status Yiddish writer.

Hershelle: A Jewish Love Story is the third novel by Jacob Dinezon I have had the pleasure of reading.  I also read and posted on a few of shid shorter fictions, all published in new translations from the Jewish Story Teller Press.

Hershelle is a student at a yeshiva, a traditional Jewish seminary.  He is considered a brilliant young man, a fine young scholar.  His family is poor.

Poorer students often ate one of their evening meals at the home of one of the richer families of the community, called a charity meal.  This helps the student and the school.  Unintentionally it was often, especially in times of transition like Poland in 1890, a way different social elements of society could interact.  

Here is how Dinezon masterfully sets the events in motion:

The widow is unhappy with every boy that comes for a charity meal.  She keeps rejecting all the boys,  all big eaters, until she is finally happy with one of them, Hershelle. 

“Finally, God saw her misery and sent her a boy of the exact sort she wanted: a quiet child, not much of an eater, but one who was so refined and shy that she often came to him and asked him to eat a bit more. This boy was Hershele. Because the head of the yeshiva needed a favor from Brayndl, he convinced Hershele to accept her paltry Wednesday meal. He then arranged for Hershele—who certainly deserved it for his clever head, zeal, and quietness—to take his Thursday meal with Borekh the butcher. Borekh was known to provide the best charity meal in the whole village. But over time, Hershele came to enjoy Brayndl’s Wednesdays more than Borekh’s Thursdays. Her house was always clean, rich, and bright—it was a pleasure to sit there even without anything to eat. Borekh’s house was always dirty and full of shouting and tumult. And though Hershele quickly became tired of eating, Borekh’s wife hurled more of everything onto his plate. He could barely finish one piece of meat before she laid on another. He sweated, lost his strength to eat, and tried to slow down to catch his breath, but Borekh shouted in his butcher’s voice: “As long as you have a soul in you, keep at it! If you eat as you should, you’ll also learn as you should. Eat like a big fellow and that will give you the strength to be a big fellow before the Torah, which I know can sap your strength!” While eating at Brayndl’s, Hershele felt more refined, but at Borekh’s he became coarser, stuffing himself with meat, kishke, and tripe, and listening to coarse words, curses, and abuse—words he was embarrassed to even think about. Borekh found only one defect in his yeshiva student: “If only he had the strength to eat as he should. He’s a great boy. He can explain the law or a complicated story from the holy Torah. If he’d just eat like a proper person!” Brayndl, on the other hand, found this a fine trait in Hershele. “He’s a refined child, very genteel,” she’d say, “quiet as a mouse, eats like a bird. No matter how much one gives him, he thinks it’s too much. God grant that he’ll eat up what I don’t begrudge giving him—I know I’m getting a mitzvah through this.”

Of course a problem develops. The young and beautiful daughter of the widow and Hershelle fall in love.  In a culture where marriages were largely arranged, such a match was socially unacceptable.  The widow has engaged a marriage broker who does all they can to make Hershelle look like a horrible potential husband.  However, the butcher wants Hershelle and his dsughter to marry.  He turns against Hershelle, who he feels is insulting him and his dsughter.  Now nobody likes Hershelle.  The Widows sees him as a fortune hunter way below her daughter and the butcher is outraged by his rejection of his daughter.

From this conflict a lot of exciting turns of events are generated.  Hershelle gets in trouble.  The ending Is very powerful.

Hershelle: A Jewish Love story gives us a look at life in a Polish sthetl.  There is humour and pain in this story.

I highly recommend all three of the Jacob Dinezon novels.

I would suggest you read them in publication order, The Dark Young Man, Hershelle, and Yosele.

JANE PEPPLER - Translator

Jane Peppler graduated from Yale University with a degree in Russian language and literature. She began singing Yiddish songs in 1983 and directed the Triangle Jewish Chorale in North Carolina for fourteen years. Peppler studies with Yiddish professor and textbook author, Sheva Zucker, and has attended two intensive summer Yiddish courses at the Medem Bibliotheque in Paris.

In addition to translating Yiddish stories by Sholem Aleichem, Ayzik Meyer Dik, and Mendele Moykher Sforim, Peppler has completed English translations of Jacob Dinezon’s Yosele (www.jewishstorytellerpress.com/yosele.html), Alter, and Hershele.

In 2014, Peppler published Yiddish Songs from Warsaw 1929-1934: The Itsik Zhelonek Collection. She has also produced and performed on several albums of Yiddish music, including “I Can’t Complain (But Sometimes I Still Do),” “Cabaret Warsaw: Yiddish and Polish Hits of the 1920s-1930s,” and the three volume set, “Yiddish Songs from Warsaw.”

Mel u

Dance of the Demons by Esther Singer Kreitman - 1936, translated from Yiddish by her son Maurice Carr 1954 - introduction by Ilan Stavans

Dance of the Demons by Esther Singer Kreitman - 1936, translated from Yiddish by her son Maurice Carr 1954 - introduction by Ilan Stavans, this edition was published in 2016.  

Esther Singer Kreitman, from a very distinguished Rabbinical family, was the older sister of Issac Baseuis Singer and Israel Joshua Singer.  Issac won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1978.  Israel wrote a truly great novel The Brothers Ashkenazi chronicling Jewish life in Lodz, Poland.  Growing up the brothers received an extensive traditional education and as was normal, Esther was just expected to marry and have children.

March 31, 1891 -Bilgoraj, Poland

1912 - unhappily pushed into an arranged marriage to a diamond cutter, she joins her husband's family in Antwerp, Belgium

1914 - driven by the events of World War One, she and her husband move permanently to London

1936 - Publishes The Dance of Demons

June 13, 1954 - passes away in London

In Dance of Demons (originally titled in translation as Deborah) Kreitman marvelously takes us into the world of Jewish Warsaw and Polish Shtetls in the years prior to World War One.  The novels of her famous brothers focus on the lives of men, women are found as mothers, sisters, daughters, wives (normally in an arranged marriage), servants, cooks, and sometimes mistresses but not as central characters.  Dance of Demons turns that around.  We follow the development of Deborah.

She comes from a well known Rabbinical family.  Her father is a highly regarded Torah scholar and her brother attends a top academy.  Deborah receives little formal training but she develops a love for secular literature from books she found hidden in the kitchen.

Her parents were eager to arrange a marriage for her.  Enter a stock Yiddish character, the marriage broker.  Deborah is matched with a diamond cutter from Antwerp, Beligium.  Her parents sees this as a great match.  In spite of Deborah's strongly expressed distaste for the idea of the marriage, she is forced into the match.  It turns out to be a disaster on all levels, soon the diamond business in Antwerp collapses and her husband has little work.

In a very interesting segment, prior to the marriage and just before the war, Deborah becomes infatuated with a Polish Marxist.  The unrest and poverty of Warsaw is very well developed.  We see even among Marxists women have a secondary role.  

There is a lot in this novel.  I recommend it both for heritage readers as well anyone who enjoys a good novel

I purchased this on sale for $2.95, it is back up to $10.95.

Dance of the Demons was the inspiration for the Barbara Streisand movie Yentl

Dance of the Demons is a  major work of feminist Yiddish literature.

Ambrosia Bouswesu

The Brothers Ashkenazi by I. J. Singer - published in Yiddish, 1937, translated by Joseph Singer, 1980

The Brothers Ashkenazi by Israel  Joshua Singer -1937 - translated 1980 by Joseph Singer, the author’s son.

1893 Bitgoraj, Poland

1919 to 1921 resides in Soviet Union

1936 - Moves to New York City

1937 - publishes in Yiddish The Brothers Ashkenazi, translated that same year into English, it was on The New York Times Best Seller list along with Gone With the Wind.

1944 - New York City

A few days ago I began to wonder why there are no books written in Yiddish on any “greatest novels” lists I have seen. For sure The Brothers Ashkenazi belongs on such a list as does The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl by Sholem Aleichem. The most likely reason is that none of The many list makers have ever read not just these works but any Yiddish literature at all. There were never taught at the schools the list makers attended.  Some of this must be attributed to simple prejudice, some to a Western European bias (I don’t  recall ever seeing a Japanese or Indian novel on a list either).  To this, maybe I will return to this topic later in the year) all i can say more is the pity.

Singer vividly captures ebb and flow of life in Poland’s second city, Lódz, focusing on Jewish Society as seen by events in the lives of two brothers.

We see the city go through numerous transformations, from sort of a giant shtetl where everyone knows each others business and tradition decides fates to a dynamic western industrial and trade powerhouse.  Singer does just a wonderful job showing on Lódz  were impacted by huge spocial transformations brought on my the Russian Revolution.  In a brilliant comic interlude we see how people gradually develop the courage to mock the Czar.  We see World War One sent many residents into Army never to return while others became rich from the war.  

There just is so much in this novel, there are terrible pograms, workers strikes, 

Police repression.  At one point The Cossacks are brought in by White Russian forces to bring order.

One of the brothers has a compulsion  to grow rich through his huge garment factory.  The factory, with thousands of workers, is a snake pit of corruption.  Everybody steals what they can.  I was a bit shocked to learn factory manager kept the owner supplied with rather young girls.  There is much more in this fascinating book.

Irving Howe, a recognized authority on Yiddish society and literature is of great help:

“Singer is dealing here with one of the great themes of the nineteenth-century European novel, a theme especially exciting to Yiddish readers of, say, forty or fifty years ago—the rise of capitalism in its “heroic” or adventuresome phase and the accompanying entry of the Jews onto the stage of historical action, whether through the accumulation of capital which obsesses Max Ashkenazi or through the gathering of rebto leave a mark move along parallel lines. From a traditional Jewish point of view, both styles of conduct must seem equally disturbing and ominous.ellion which forms the goal of his socialist antagonists. If the objectives of these two contending forces are at polar opposites, Singer brilliantly shows how their outpourings of energy, their hungers to to leave a mark move along parallel lines. From a traditional Jewish point of view, both styles of conduct must seem equally disturbing and omnimous”.

ISRAEL JOSHUA SINGER, the older brother of Nobel Prize–winner Isaac Bashevis Singer, was born in 1893 in Bilgoraji, Poland, the second of four children of a rabbi. At the age of two, he moved with his family to Leoncin, the scene of his memoir, Of a World That Is No More. In 1916 he contributed to Yiddish newspapers in Warsaw and then in Kiev, and in the latter city his short story “Pearls” was published, which brought him immediate recognition. In 1921 I. J. Singer was hired as a correspondent for the Jewish Daily Forward. This association lasted until the author’s death, and his articles were compiled in 

the book, New Russia. In 1927 he wrote his first novel, Steel and Iron, which was followed, five years later, by Yoshe Kalb. I. J. Singer came to the United States in 1934. He died in New York on February 10, 1944.

This is the only one of his novels in print as a Kindle.

Mel u

Ambrosia Bousweau