Everyone Has Their Reasons

Joseph Matthews

Description

On November 7, 1938, a small, slight seventeen-year-old Polish-German Jew named Herschel Grynszpan entered the German embassy in Paris and shot dead a consular official. Three days later, in supposed response, Jews across Germany were beaten, imprisoned, and killed, their homes, shops, and synagogues smashed and burned—Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.

Based on the historical record and told through his “letters” from German prisons, the novel begins in 1936, when fifteen-year-old Herschel flees Germany. Penniless and alone, he makes it to Paris where he lives hand-to-mouth, his shadow existence mixing him with the starving and the wealthy, with hustlers, radicals, and seamy sides of Paris nightlife.

In 1938, the French state rejects refugee status for Herschel and orders him out of the country. With nowhere to go, and now sought by the police, he slips underground in immigrant east Paris.

Soon after, the Nazis round up all Polish Jews in Germany—including Herschel’s family—and dump them on the Poland border. Herschel’s response is to shoot the German official, then wait calmly for the French police.

June 1940, Herschel is still in prison awaiting trial when the Nazi army nears Paris. He is evacuated south to another jail but escapes into the countryside amid the chaos of millions of French fleeing the invasion. After an incredible month alone on the road, Herschel seeks protection at a prison in the far south of France. Two weeks later the French state hands him to the Gestapo.

The Nazis plan a big show trial, inviting the world press to Berlin for the spectacle, to demonstrate through Herschel that Jews had provoked the war. Except that Herschel throws a last-minute wrench in the plans, bringing the Nazi propaganda machine to a grinding halt. Hitler himself postpones the trial and orders that no decision be made about Herschel’s fate until the Führer personally gives an order—one way or another.

Sujets

• Jewish
• Jews
• JewishGen
• Seconde Guerre mondiale
• World War II
• Orwellian
• Segunda Guerra Mundial

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629631318
• Langue: English

Extrait

Also by Joseph Matthews
Shades of Resistance
The Lawyer Who Blew Up His Desk
Afflicted Powers
(with Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, Michael Watts)
Everyone Has Their Reasons
Joseph Matthews
Copyright © 2015 by Joseph Matthews
This edition © 2015 PM Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978–1–62963–094–6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015930875
Cover by John Yates/Stealworks
Interior design by briandesign
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan. www.thomsonshore.com
For Jesse
"The personal aspect of the problem was not what your enemies were doing but what your friends were doing."
Hannah Arendt
"The terrible thing is that everyone has their reasons."
Jean Renoir (Octave, in The Rules of the Game )
15 October 1940
Honorable Maître Herr Rosenhaus,
What was it I was thinking, when I shot Herr vom Rath? Or, what was in my mind? They are not entirely the same thing, are they, Maître? It was only a few hours ago that you were here, but I am not certain now which of them you asked me.
You might have suggested that I begin with something a bit less difficult, Maître. To describe my family’s rooms in Hannover, for instance. On Burgstrasse. Where I was born. Altogether 27 years they were in Germany, my parents. Until that October. 1938. Which surely you know about.
Or to tell about my recent journey from Toulouse to Moulins, brought by the French police. And then to Berlin, in the company of the Gestapo. The very close company. To their building here. To this cell.
But I suppose you are right where else should we begin? That moment. The revolver. The shots. So, how to describe it? I have heard people say "Time stood still." A truly stupid expression, Maître. Well, not actual people in a film. Two films, I think. Many of them say the same things, films. Have you noticed that? Maybe that is why I remember. Anyway, I saw films often during my time in Paris. The two years there before I was in prison, I mean. Before the shooting. At least, as often as I could afford it, the cinema. In the afternoons, mostly, when it cost less. Not really so many films more the same films over and over. You see, I learned that there were a few cinemas where I could stay for many hours during the daytime, no one bothered to check. And safe from the police. Especially nice in winter, these film houses. Somehow always warm there. Saint Martin was the best. And on hot summer days it was cooler. How do they manage that? The Mysteries of Paris. Have you heard that expression, Maître? Although now that I think of it, it was a mystery in most of the Paris rooms where I stayed. And there were quite a few of them. But an opposite mystery there when it was cold outside, these rooms were somehow colder. And on the awful August days, from most of the rooms I would head out into the melting streets to cool off. But yes, at the cinema it was better. Cinema Saint Martin, on Rue du Faubourg Saint Martin. And two others near where I lived. Or, where I often stayed, I should say. Because to tell you I actually lived anywhere those two years in Paris would be untrue. Faubourg Saint Denis, the neighborhood is called, 10th arrondissement. Do you know Paris, Maître? Perhaps when you visit me again, we can talk of these things as well.
I am sorry, I have gone off the track of what I was saying. Or, writing. But that is one of the problems. The difference between saying and writing. As I found out. You see, when I was put in jail in Paris after the shooting, the juvenile part of the big prison at Fresnes, I was told to begin writing. A sort of journal, and biography, my life. Not just me all the boys who are sent to Fresnes must do it. At least, the ones who can read and write. And so I did. It was very difficult at first. I was not used to writing. Except now and then a note to my family in Hannover. And the languages. At school in Hannover there had been writing, of course, in German. But at home, with my parents and brother and sister, we spoke Yiddish. And then in Paris, those first years, speaking Yiddish with Uncle Abraham and Aunt Chawa while picking up French in the street. And when I began to make friends, in Yiddish or French with them also. But not German. Hardly ever speaking German, those years in Paris. Well, except with a few. And then nearly four years since I had left school to write again in German, in my journal at Fresnes, because my French by then I could speak enough to get by for everyday things, but I had no experience of writing it. So, the people at Fresnes told me the Social Counselors, or Moral Aides, something like that. I was never sure, in Paris, what these names meant. Many people who came to see me in the Paris jail, they worked for one state bureau or another, but mostly I did not understand which one exactly, or what their job was. I wonder if anyone really knew. Anyway, they told me, these people, "Write as you talk. Just let yourself talk, but on paper." So that is what I learned to do.
And it worked. I think. At least in some ways. Hundreds of pages, while I was at Fresnes. And so I do the same now, with what you ask of me. Talk to you, on paper. To prepare for trial here. As I did in France. There were lawyers for me there also, Maître. I once counted 12 that I had at one time or another. Or rather, who said they had me. I often argued with them. And them with each other. But I did finally realize that they might help me. Even understand me. Though not always both I am not certain which was more difficult for them. Or which I wanted more. But I got used to talking to them. One or two of them, anyway. And it helped my nerves, at least. Though I never did have my trial. France officials so particular, so fussy, all their rules, and procedures. But then nothing actually happens. It drove me mad. And through all of this, 20 months, I remained in prison. As you know. The longest of any minor, without trial, in a French jail. Ever. Me. Did you know that, Maître? Another thing that made me famous.
So, if I did not express it clearly enough during your visit, let me say again how relieved I am to have you helping me here. And that I am most willing to talk to you. And write. Which you said will be useful. Also, Herr Rosenhaus, to address you as Maître, since that is what I became accustomed to with the lawyers in Paris, and so makes it easier for me now. Which you have kindly permitted. Even though Maître is a French word, and Germany and France are at war, so how do you feel about France? Or, were at war. I am not certain. Perhaps you can tell me. Because there was some kind of truce, I know. Though it was all very confused, in France, people not knowing what to do. And soon after, the French police brought me from Toulouse to Moulins, and handed me to the Gestapo. Very quickly. And not unhappily, it seemed. So, is anyone certain? And as you have told me, France will send people to my trial here, the France government, to tell their side. But what does that mean? Their side of what?
My apology, Maître it seems I have lost my way again. The cinema. I was talking about films, seeing films, in Paris. And how I heard there that expression "Time stood still." To describe a moment of great danger. And fear. Also, in one film I think, about falling in love. Which I admit I know nothing about. Almost nothing.
Anyway, what total nonsense. It was not at all like that. Time standing still? That was before, my two Paris years before the shooting no documents, no home, no work. No me.
But when I fired the shots? Just the opposite time exploded. Out, but also in. Filling me. The whole room. My entire life. The past and future both. I was 17 years old. Of course, that you know.
So perhaps you are right, Maître. The place to begin that moment. But the truth is, I must tell you, it was not the ending of Herr vom Rath’s life that I felt in that moment. It was the complete unchangeable changing of my own. Yes, forever unchangeableness. My life. That is what I mean. What I felt.
The moments just before had been madness vom Rath and I shouting at each other, then the shots, and the chaos afterward, people screaming and running in the halls, vom Rath staggering, falling, the gun in my hand, all the people, in and out of his tiny bureau, and soon the police. There are many different reports about exactly what happened when I arrived at the embassy that morning, how I managed my way in, and to vom Rath’s bureau on the second floor, what people heard once I was inside. Versions. Confusions. Contradictions. But there is one thing everyone agrees that after the shooting I sat calmly where I was. Did not move. Said nothing. It was because of what I felt, Maître. In that instant. Absoluteness. Is it a word? After nothing but worry and doubt and unknowing for so long, the sudden absoluteness of it all.
It is a bit later now. I have read these words again. And I am thinking that perhaps you were asking me for something else, Maître. Something more than just that instant.
But I have done the best I can. For now. For my first time writing anything since June, since the French jail people sent me out of Paris heading south, with the Wehrmacht and the Gestapo giving chase. Weeks on the move, across France, on the loose, the countryside, the roads, the villages. And the French or rather, the humans. Ending up in Toulouse. And jail again. Then back he