Passing and other Paradoxes of Holocaust Survival. . - Reviews - Escape through the Balkans: The Autobiography of Irene Grunbaum - My Father's Testament: Memoir of a Jewish Teenager, 1938-1945 - book review

Judaism, Fall, 2001 by Brett Ashley Kaplan

Escape through the Balkans: The Autobiography of Irene Grunbaum. By IRENE GRUNBAUM. Translated and edited by Katherine Morris. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

My Father's Testament: Memoir of a Jewish Teenager, 1938-1945. By EDWARD GASTFRIEND. Edited by Bjorn Krondorfer. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000.

Irene Grunbaum's Escape through the Balkans and Edward Gastfriend's My Father's Testament both offer fascinating testimonies of surviving the Holocaust, one in Serbia and Albania, and the other in Poland. Escape through the Balkans will interest scholars of the little-studied areas of Jewish life in the Balkans and the complex roles of gender in Holocaust survival testimony. My Father's Testament will interest scholars concerned with both the complex process of how one comes to bear testimony and the often conflicted relationship between father and son in times of crisis.

These two testimonies took interesting paths to find their way into print. Irene Grunbaum's unpublished manuscript, written between 1949-50, was discovered by Katherine Morris in the context of Morris's research on survivors in Brazil. Morris translated the manuscript from German, edited it, and included chapter headings, useful historical footnotes, and an introduction. Unlike Grunbaum, Gastfriend did not record his testimony shortly after the war; in fact, despite his long record of active engagement in the Jewish community of Holocaust survivors in Philadelphia, it was not until the 1990s that he could publicly relate his personal experience of the Shoah. Gastfriend developed an uncommon connection with his editor, Bjorn Krondorfer, whose non-Jewish German father had been in training at the same concentration camp where Gastfriend had been incarcerated. While Gastfriend had not spoken publicly about the war, yet had shared his experience with his family, Krondorfer's father had barely spoken privately abou t the war years. In an afterword Bjorn Krondorfer describes the way in which his interaction with the author of this testimony enabled him to convince his reticent father to embark on a joumey to the camp, Blechhammer, where Korndorfer's father and Gastfriend had spent part of the war. This extratextual story of revelation and reconciliation with a difficult past is marked in the text by an overwhelming sense of forgiveness mixed in with the perhaps more natural rage and anger that many survivors feel. Thus, the complex layering of intra- and extra-textual events enriches Gastfriend's already rewarding effort. Escape through the Balkans, while seemingly less complex, actually conveys an equally rich series of reflections on strategies for surviving the worst.

In simple, straightforward narrative prose Irene Grunbaum recounts the events of her escape through the Balkans into Brazil. Grunbaum, a German Jew, had been living in Belgrade when, on April 6, 1941, the Germans launched their offensive against Yugoslavia. She escaped by moving to Skopje, then Tetovo, then Tirana, then Gavaia, then Rome and eventually Rio de Janeiro.

Her first husband, Bobby Eskanazi, was deported from Skopje and murdered in one of the camps in the East. As Grunbaum traces her path through Macedonia, into Albania, Italy, and finally Brazil, her tale is marked by a dizzying and incredible array of characters who offer her momentary and dangerous places to hide. As the narrative progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent that as a woman whose husband has been deported to the concentration camps, a Jewish woman alone in foreign countries, she is subject to the double challenge of finding safe abode among antisemites and potential rapists. At one particularly gripping moment she persuades a guide, Nail, who takes her into Albania, that Allah would not approve of his raping her:

"Do you believe in God, Nail?" I questioned. "Of course," he answered, surprised that I would ask. "I'm a Muslim and I follow what Allah has commanded." "You see even I believe in God, Nail," I retorted, "and I know that he sent you to me as my rescuer. Because you see, Nail, I don't have a father or a brother, and my natural protector, my husband, is far away. How shall I, weak and useless woman that I am, finish such a difficult journey alone? My protectors are now God the Almighty and you, Nail. Don't you feel certain that God has chosen you to protect me?" (34).

This scene captures the way Grunbaum uses a combination of something like "feminine wiles" with clever manipulation of religious mores to protect herself. As is also the case with Gastfriend, Grunbaum's knowledge of the non-Jewish customs of the country enables her to understand Muslim culture just enough to know how to persuade. Indeed, because Grunbaum's prewar acquaintances included Muslims and Christians, she was able to mimic the customs of whichever group happened to be protecting her at the time. In later chapters, Grunbaum is keenly aware of the role of gender in her manipulation of friend and foe. At one point a doctor tries to blackmail her into becoming his mistress by threatening to turn her in to the Gestapo if she does not succumb to his self-proclaimed charms. In one of the negotiations between them Grunbaum remembers that she "tried again with the helpless-little-woman, honest-batting-of-the-eye-technique" (104). When this tactic failed she explains that "I spoke softly and meekly, playing the part of the shy young woman who has made up her mind to pursue bittersweet sins" (109). This awareness of the role of gender in survival mirrors her general education in worldly matters gleaned through her dealings with the black market and the host of characters to whom she had not been exposed as a respectable married woman. That is, in the earlier sections of the text she portrays herself as more naive and less aware of the manipulative capabilities she deploys.