About a month ago when I was in San Francisco, I found out about a book talk by Anne Berest at Green Apple Books on the Park. The woman who told me about this raved about the book, and given the subject matter, Jews in Europe during the Nazi period in Germany, I decided to attend and was impressed enough by the author that I ended up buying the book.
The Postcard is a novel based on the true story of
Anne Berest’s search for the sender of a postcard to her mother’s house on
which was written the name of four relatives who had been murdered at
Auschwitz. She does eventually discover the origins of the postcard, which is a
bit, but only a bit, of a surprise. In truth, the postcard in question is what
Alfred Hitchcock called a MacGuffin, a device to keep the plot moving but not
in itself terribly important. The real subject matter is a case study of the
history of Berest’s family during the Nazi era, in France and other countries
in Europe and Palestine, and what it means to be Jewish, even if one has not
been brought up in the religion.
Once the story gets going it is fascinating. Much of it is
based on the research Anne Berest’s mother had done until the book gets into
the subsequent search for information about the postcard. Amusingly enough, at
the book talk I attended, Berest said her mother had insisted that the “bad”
words in the quotations attributed to her be removed because that is not how
she speaks. The author said this was a “lie,” because her mother uses a lot of
bad words; nevertheless, in deference to her mother, she cleaned up the
language for the novel.
The book has been a bestseller in France, and it has
recently been translated into English. It will likely not do as well here,
partly because World War II and its accompanying horrors are not felt to be as
much a part of U.S. history as it is for France. One of the issues Berest
addresses in this novel is current and past antisemitism in France. In her talk
in San Francisco, Berest said that France is a complicated country, and this
novel shows that some of the French used the German occupation to go after the
Jews, while others did what they could to protect them.
Writing the book was a way for Berest to consider her own
Jewish background. Berest, who was not brought up religiously, recounts a Seder
she went to with her boyfriend where her knowledge of this ceremony is revealed
to be paltry compared with her knowledge of the works of leftist intellectuals.
This event and the subsequent research into her family’s history forced her to
reflect on what it means to her to be Jewish and to reject the criticism of
another person at the Seder who questioned her Jewishness.
In her book talk, Berest reflected on the current world situation
briefly. She remarked that “the signals” are not good. (Her English is fine but
not completely fluent.) I think she had in mind growing antisemitic incidents
and the growth of right-wing authoritarian tendencies both in the U.S. and
Europe. In her book, some take the threat posed by the Nazis more seriously
than others. Not only does she want to remember her relatives who had perished
but also to be alert to the warnings of history.
