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A son's voyage of discoveryWhat do we really know about our parents' life before we were born? That depends largely, I guess, on how much of an interest we show – and on how much they are willing to reveal. Because in the life of every person there are instances and times they rather wish to forget, and not revive time and again by discussion, even if only among their nearest and dearest.
Such, in the lives of author Martin Goldsmith's parents, were the years from 1933 through 1941; so much so, in fact, that Goldsmith likens that time to the massive ash tree in the house of Germanic warlord Hunding, the setting of the first scene of Richard Wagner's opera "Die Walküre:" Something looming large, yet never openly acknowledged. Because before George Gunther Goldsmith, furniture and home decorating salesman of Cleveland, Ohio, and his wife Rosemary, a violinist with the St. Louis Symphony and the Cleveland Orchestra, became American citizens in 1947, they had lived a whole other life – the hunted life of Jews in Adolf Hitler's Germany. And only years after his mother's death, on a trip to his father's home town of Oldenburg, did Goldsmith catch the first glimpses of what was hidden behind that massive ash tree, and George Goldsmith began to talk about the events which his, the Goldschmidt family had witnessed there; as well as the early life of Rosemarie née Gumpert in Düsseldorf, the couple's first meeting in Frankfurt, and their later life in Berlin until their lucky escape to the United States. Beginning with this visit, Martin Goldsmith retraced his family's path to the early years of the 20th century, when his paternal grandfather Alex Goldschmidt took residence in Oldenburg, and his maternal grandfather Julian Gumpert settled in Düsseldorf.
How intensely personal this voyage into the past must have been becomes clear in the account of Goldsmith's visit to Oldenburg prison, as a participant in a march retracing the path taken by the Jews – among them the author's grandfather – driven through the streets of Oldenburg in 1938 by Nazi thugs, to later be shipped off (at least temporarily) to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. But although he writes about his very own family, and now in full knowledge of their fate, Goldsmith's narrative is in no way sentimental. With a journalist's detachment he talks about Günther and Rosemarie, Alex, Julian and their wives and other children; turning a nonfiction account whose outcome is clear from the very start into a heartstopping tale few would be able to believe if presented with it under colors other than that of the plain historic truth.
Prominently featured in Goldsmith's account is the Jewish Culture Association, or Jüdischer Kulturbund; as of 1933 the German Jews' only permitted artistic organization, in whose orchestra Günther and Rosemarie had met and which had formed the center of their life until they finally left the country. One of the most controversial institutions of Nazi Germany, it reunited what was left of the country's Jewish musicians, artists, writers and composers – providing a modicum of shelter in an increasingly hostile environment, but also a convenient tool in the Nazi propaganda machine. Were the members of the Kulturbund instrumentalized to deceive public opinion, at home and abroad, about the true intentions of Hitler's government? By giving their Jewish audience a sense of comfort and "belonging," did they also prevent some of them from rescuing themselves when there still would have been time? The surviving members of the "Kubu" and their families, interviewed by Goldsmith, come down on both sides of the issue; and the fate of the survivors is probably as symptomatic as that of the many who ultimately did perish in Nazi concentration camps – chiefly among those the Kulturbund's charismatic founder Dr. Singer, who not only let himself deceive into returning to Germany after already having reached the safe shores of the U.S. but saw a mark of distinction even in his deportation to the "model" concentration camp of Theresienstadt.
Yet, for Günther and Rosemarie the years with the Kulturbund were dominated, above all, by the musical companionship they experienced. What does seem to have haunted them most for the rest of their lives, however, was their very escape to America, while their remaining family members were stuck in Europe and, one way or another, died in Hitler's concentration camps – and the feeling that with a little effort they just might have saved at least some of them. The letters of Alex Goldschmidt and his younger son Helmut, written to Günther from captivity in France after their own unsuccessful attempt to flee to Cuba, are among the most chilling testimonials contained in this book; and the decision to translate and include them conceivably cannot have been an easy one for Goldsmith. Indeed, it apparently was the knowledge of his family's fate that, all talent and love of music aside, eventually compelled George Goldsmith to forever retire the flute which, in his life as Günther Goldschmidt, had been the only item of true importance besides his beloved wife Rosemarie; thus punishing himself in a way no outsider could have done. Yet, the couple's gift for music lives on in their son, who in his own way has brought many hours of joy to radio listeners all over the U.S.
Martin Goldsmith's "Inextinguishable Symphony" – named for Danish composer Carl Nielsen's Fourth Symphony, which sets music, as a parable for life itself, against war, terror and destruction – is as much a personal journey of discovery as a journalist's account of historic facts; seeking to understand rather than to judge. It deals with a time in which morality was thoroughly upset by a profoundly immoral regime, which cannot possibly have remained without effect on anybody who witnessed those events. In applying our own values to those facts, I think we would all do well in being careful to, likewise, make a thorough effort to understand before we judge. Goldsmith's insightful account is a great place to begin such a process.
Martin Goldsmith's interview on NPR's "Morning Edition": Part 1 and Part 2
Martin Goldsmith's interview on NPR's "Weekend Edition"
Martin Goldsmith's interview on Minnesota Public Radio
(All audio files accessible with Real Player.)
Martin Goldsmith's page at XM Satellite Radio
NPR's "Performance Today" page
Themis-Athena's select annotated bibliography of nonfiction books and memoirs
A compelling (if biased) account reflecting unique insights.You may have heard that "Twilight in the Forbidden City" is the book that Bernardo Bertolucci's movie "The Last Emperor" is "based" on. If at all, however, this is true only with regard to the first part of the movie (the book was published in 1934, just as Pu-Yi had ascended the throne of "Manchukuo"), and actually, the book should not be read or understood in this limited sense at all. Primarily, this is the personal account of a British diplomat and scholar of the Chinese history, society and culture who, at some point in his career, was appointed to the (for a westerner: virtually unprecedented) position of tutor to China's last monarch. True, those who have seen Bertolucci's movie will recognize individual events described in this book, such as the emperor's birthday and wedding ceremonies (Bertolucci obviously used Johnston's description of the birthday rituals as a model for the spectacular coronation ceremonies at the beginning of the movie – as Johnston had not yet been made tutor at that point, he could not give an eyewitness account of that event), and Johnston's constant battle with the corrupt and reactionary palace eunuchs, as best exemplified by the fight over the emperor's glasses (without which Pu-Yi arguably would have lost eyesight before long).
But Johnston's book is not merely a biography of the emperor. Rather, it is an account of the last period of the Manchu empire, and of the Chinese society in the second half of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century. In addition to the author's personal impressions gained inside and outside the imperial palace, up to and including Pu-Yi's dramatic flight from the Forbidden City in 1924, which ultimately ended in the Japanese legation, the book also renders Johnston's view of the role of the major foreign powers at the time (Japan, Russia, the U.S., Germany and, of course, his native England), and the emperor's predecessors and their politics, such as the powerful empress dowager Tzu-Hsi (named "the Venerable Buddha"), the reform attempts of the unfortunate emperor Kuang-Hsü (which earned him, at the age of 28, lifelong humiliation, imprisonment and ultimately death in a tiny and windowless building within the imperial palaces), the Boxer Movement, and the brief and likewise unlucky interlude of the reign of Pu-Yi's father (Kuang-Hsü's brother), Prince Chun.
Johnston was a monarchist and fiercely loyal to Pu-Yi personally, so don't expect him to treat any of the popular movements which ultimately brought the monarchy to an end with much sympathy or at least, objectivity. He probably also underestimated the dangers to China (and the Manchu dynasty) growing out of the emperor's re-installment as ruler of "Manchukuo" at the behest of the Japanese. In fact, the very title of this book is designed to reflect its author's hope that, like the "Rising Sun" symbolized by the Japanese emperor, the Chinese monarchy would soon rise and shine again. Equating the 12 years between the establishment of the Chinese republic in 1912 and the emperor's expulsion from the Forbidden City in 1924 to a "twilight" period and the 10 years following it to the night, Johnston dedicates the book to Pu-Yi "in the earnest hope that, after the passing of the twilight and the long night, the dawn of a new and happier day for himself, and also for his people on both sides of the Great Wall, is now breaking." In the book's introduction, he again emphasizes that "there is a twilight of the dawn as well as a twilight of the evening" and that the dark period witnessed by China might "be followed in due time by another twilight which will brighten into a new day of radiant sunshine."
This, of course, is not the only prediction where history has proven Reginald F. Johnston wrong. His analysis of the role of some of the key players of the time, for example that of the empress dowager Tzu-Hsi, is likewise not undisputed; and he himself has not remained without criticism, either (even at the time of its publication, a major purpose of the book was to defend his actions and view of the facts). The book must therefore be read with a grain of salt. But few westerners of his time had a knowledge of China equaling his, let alone his opportunities to observe and gain insights within the imperial palace. That, in itself, makes his account a compelling read.
Themis-Athena's select annotated bibliography of nonfiction books and memoirs
Themis-Athena's select "East Meets West" bibliography
A British African Amazon.Taken to Kenya at age three, in 1905, Beryl Markham was raised on a farm by her father and a much-hated governess – her mother soon re-abandoned pioneer life for England. And while other girls were groomed to be ladies of society, she learned to ride and train horses, played with the Nandi boys living on her father's land and went hunting with their fathers. Barely 19, she became a professional racehorse trainer; at age 24 (1926) her mare Wise Child won the prestigious St. Leger, beating the odds and the favorite, Wrack, likewise initially trained by Beryl but taken from her weeks earlier by an owner distrusting her experience. After marrying and divorcing again wealthy Mansfield Markham, whose last name she kept, she met pioneer aviator Tom Black (later pilot to the Prince of Wales), who awakened her interest in flying and soon became her instructor. Having obtained her B license – "a flyer's Magna Carta" – Markham operated a taxi and cargo service out of Nairobi and worked as a scout for professional hunters like author Karen Blixen's (Isak Dinesen's) (ex-)husband Baron Br&oring;r Blixen. After her return to England, in 1936 she became the first pilot to successfully cross the Atlantic from east to west, against the headwinds. (She didn't reach New York, as planned – technical difficulties forced her plane into a Nova Scotia bog – but her achievement created substantial headlines regardless.) After being lured to Hollywood by a film project involving her flight, and marrying and divorcing again the man who later claimed this book's authorship, writer Raoul Schumacher, Markham ultimately returned to Kenya and to racehorse training. No less than six of her horses won Kenya's East African Derby, making her a local celebrity of considerable note. She died in 1986.
"West With the Night" is a memoir of Markham's life in Kenya until her mid-1930s departure to England. In language rivaling Blixen's in poetry and Hemingway's in power and skill, it chronicles her unconventional upbringing, early 20th century colonial society, a racehorse trainer's anxieties and ambitions, a flyer's freedom and solitude, and those people who meant most to her: her father, her Nandi friends, Tom Black, and some persons also known to readers of Blixen's memoirs: Lord and Lady Delamere, Baron Blixen, and Denys Finch-Hatton, for whose attentions she competed with Blixen (who herself isn't mentioned at all, as Markham isn't mentioned, either, in "Out of Africa").
"There are as many Africas as there are books about Africa," we are introduced to the continent she considered "home:" "Being ... all things to all authors, it follows, I suppose, that Africa must be all things to all readers. ... It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations." And the people Markham most respected matched this environment in hardiness as much as in diversity and depth: Baron Blixen, "six feet of amiable Swede," whose "appreciation of the melodramatic [was] non-existent," and who was "never significantly silent" and "the toughest, most durable White Hunter ever ... to shoot a charging buffalo between the eyes while debating whether his sundown drink will be gin or whisky." Denys Finch-Hatton, "a great man who never achieved arrogance," whose charm was "of intellect and strength," who "would have greeted doomsday with a wink," could "tread upon inferior men with his tongue," and was "a keystone" in an arch of lives which fell at his premature death, "leaving its lesser stones heaped [and] for a while without design." And Tom Black, Beryl's messenger from Destiny, who taught her that "when you fly ... you feel that everything you see belongs to you [and you're] closer to ... something you've sensed you might be capable of, but never had the courage to imagine," but who summed up the effect of Kenya's growing attraction to amateur hunters (aided not least by his own services) with the simple words "lion, rifles – and stupidity."
Perhaps Markham's most poignant accounts are those of her interactions with the Nandi. For unlike Karen Blixen, who came to Africa as an adult and never entirely abandoned a white colonialist's attitude, Markham's upbringing enabled her to innately understand their world: "He thought war was made of spears and shields and courage, and he brought them all," we learn about young warrior Arab Maina: "But [in World War I] they gave him a gun, so he left the spear and the shield behind and took the courage, and went where they sent him. [When he was killed,] some said it was because he had forsaken his spear." And when her childhood friend Kibii returns to become her servant, now a warrior himself and renamed Arab Ruta, she realizes that what a child doesn't know "of race and colour and class, he learns soon enough as he grows to see each man flipped inexorably into some predestined groove," and while Ruta will still be her friend, "the handclasp will be shorter ... and though the path is for a while the same, he will walk behind me now, when once, in the simplicity of our nonage, we walked together."
Like most memoirs – most notably Hemingway's "Moveable Feast" and Blixen"s "Out of Africa" – "West With the Night" is a selective account; and as in those works, the omissions only enhance its power. Hemingway's much-quoted lavish praise is both deserved and all the more notable as "Papa," otherwise so thrifty in lauding contemporaries, intensely disliked Markham as a person. – Authorship of the book has been called into question by the claims of Markham's ex-husband Raoul Schumacher, and by Errol Trzebinski's biography (which relies substantially on third-party accounts and merely proves that Schumacher had time and opportunity to write the book, not that he actually did). It's a great shame that writing as lasting and beautiful as this should be marred by such a controversy. Frankly, though, I don't hear any voice but Beryl Markham's in this account; both philosophically and stylistically, I have no doubt that this is her story alone. And therefore, ultimately ... "What matter who's speaking?" (Michel Focault, "What is an Author?")
An online biography of Beryl Markham
Themis-Athena's select annotated bibliography of nonfiction books and memoirs
Boy soldiers in a war that turned out to be a "mistake."Growing up in Germany and learning about World War II in school and from my parents and grandparents, among the things that impressed me most – that I just couldn't get out of my mind – were the pictures of those boys drafted into Adolf Hitler's "Volkssturm" (literally: "People's Storm"); the pictures of those 16-, 18- and 19-year-old boys torn out of school before they had even had a chance to graduate, and turned into cannon fodder; the pictures of those eyes staring out of faces grown old long before their time. I have now seen those same eyes and those same faces again in Vladislav Tamarov's photo-journalistic report on his experiences as a Russian soldier in Afghanistan, subtitled simply "A Russian Soldier's Story."
There is, for example, Sergei, the author's best friend in Afghanistan, who had his leg shattered by an exploding bullet – and so much more than just his leg was shattered with it. Then there is Sasha, who wanted to be a pilot and asked his friend Vlad, who was from Leningrad (St. Petersburg), whether his parents could enquire for him about the application procedures for the city's flight school – and who didn't even live to receive his answer. There is Aleksei, who walked into a minefield because somebody misread a map. There is Aleksandr, who got killed covering his commanding officer's body with his chest and who was posthumously awarded the Soviet Union's highest medal – which was given to his mother, to take the place of her dead son. There is Kravchenko, who went out to check a road with a couple of newcomers and was blown up by a mine – only weeks before he was scheduled to return home. There is Volodya, who couldn't look into the eyes of other minesweepers returning to camp if he hadn't gone out with them – and who was also killed only months before his time in Afghanistan was supposed to be over. There is the group picture of Oleg, Renat, Aleksandr, Vladimir and Sergei, taken while they are resting somewhere under a tree – only 14 hours before one of them would be killed by an ambush, 46 days before two more of them would be seriously injured and another one killed, and one year before the last of them would also be killed. And there is Vladislav Tamarov himself, who in 1984, like so many others, suddenly found himself in a boot camp, being trained for a two-year turn of duty in Afghanistan because the Supreme Soviet had proclaimed seven years earlier in the country's revised constitution that "[t]o serve in the Soviet army is the honorable duty of Soviet citizens" – and ever since the Communist party leaders' 1979 decision to yield to the "call for help" issued by the communist satellite government in Kabul, that "honorable duty" consisted in "supporting the Afghan revolution." And so Tamarov was pulled out of university, learned to put on a parachute and jump into the abyss below his plane (a completely useless skill in Afghanistan), learned to kill boys as young as himself in order to survive, was made a minesweeper without any prior training at all; and as a minesweeper, quickly learned that you make a mistake only once – it's between you and that mine, and there is no second chance. Not ever.
"Afghanistan – A Russian Soldier's Story" is Vladislav Tamarov's intensely personal report of his two-year turn of duty in Afghanistan; not a journalist's or a professional writer's detached account but the story of one who was there, experienced "what it was like" and came back alive: the human side of the inhumanity of war. The book very much has the feeling of a conversation with the author – in the form of letters, perhaps, or excerpts from a diary shared with the book's readers. Divided into chapters entitled for the main components of the author's experience (Boot Camp, Combat Missions, Minesweepers, the Base, etc.), the narrative structure nevertheless frequently alternates between the report of events in Afghanistan and the sensation of being back home again afterwards; thus introducing the reader to the confusing feeling of conflicting audiovisual and sensory associations; and of waking up in the morning and not knowing for a few seconds where you are. Most impressive, however, are Tamarov's black and white photographs, processed by the author himself (primarily while still "in country"), which convey a darkly acute and poignant sense of Afghanistan, of the Russian soldiers' scarce encounters with its people, and again and again, of the dangers and desolation of a minesweeper's life, and his loneliness even in a group of fellow soldiers. The author's comparisons of his experience with that of American VietNam veterans further add to the complexity of his account, and deepen the understanding that the terror of war is the same, regardless on which side you are fighting. "When you live next to death ... you don't think about it anymore, you just try to encounter it as seldom as possible," Tamarov writes, and: "We didn't believe in tomorrow. And we couldn't forget what had happened yesterday." Like too many others, Tamarov had to learn to live with this experience for the rest of his life – and it's certainly not made easier by the Soviet Union's belated admission that the war in Afghanistan was "a mistake." His story is a powerful reminder that regardless of its motivation, war is never, ever a glorious thing – at least not for those who are sent to fight it; even if they are not as young as the boys who made up the largest contingent of the Soviet Union's troops in Afghanistan.
Themis-Athena's select annotated bibliography of nonfiction books and memoirs
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