Good Neighbors, Bad Time speaks of suffering, kindness

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When Mimi Schwartz was a child, she didn't want to hear aboutBenheim, Germany, home to her father and his family until they fledthe Nazis, just in time. This was a place where Jews and Christianseach made up 50 percent of the population, where they lived inharmony for generations, according to the stories, until the Nazispoisoned the minds of the good people of Benheim and neighbors drewtheir curtains against the persecutions they did not wish to see.Born in Queens in 1940, three years after the family arrived in NewYork, young Mimi was "allergic" to these stories.
"I'm an American, I'd mutter whenever my father started with his'In Benheim this, In Benheim that ...' usually when we thought mysister and I didn't behave nicely. In Benheim, everyone behaved! Orwhen we fought over the best seat in the car. 'In Benheim, we allgot along!'"
She didn't study German in school. She took no interest in herparent's "mildewed" photo albums. The Germany of her father hadnothing to do with her.
Until ... decades later she saw a Benheim Torah far from home:
"An old man in shorts and a kibbutz cap, who knew my father, wasshowing me around Oleh Zion, a village in Israel founded by a groupof Benheim Jews in 1937, the same year my family came to America. Ihad no tape recorder, took no notes (didn't know then that I wasstarting a quest), but I still hear the old man saying: 'Ja, theChristians of Benheim rescued the Torah for us duringKristallnacht.' He patted the case that holds the ancient scrollsand said proudly: 'The Nazis had brought in a truckload of hoodlumsfrom outside, from Sulz, to destroy the synagogue like they dideverywhere in Germany that night. But these people, Nazi orders orno, decided to save what they could for the Jews. They buriedthings outside the gate of the Jewish cemetery, deep in the woods,and after all the craziness ended, they sent the Torah here to us.And we have it still!'"
Sometimes perceptions shift, all at once. Something as simple, andsymbolic, as a beautiful old Torah that survived the fire, survivedthe Nazis, and found a new home in Israel shakes a witness to thecore. And if that witness is a writer, she's got a subject by thetail and she's bound to hang on until she's found a way to lookthat subject in the eyes, and, perhaps, understand. Her writer mindwent to work:
"I looked at the old Torah, almost four feet in length, andwondered who grabbed it from the fire and why? And how many helpedto carry it, a heavy thing, to safety? And did the neighbors seethem? And were they denounced? Echoes of my father's nostalgia cameback. In Benheim we all got along! But he had meant a boyhoodbefore Hitler, not during Nazi times."
She had to find the answers to these questions and many others. Herquest took 12 years, all told, and led her to Benheim itself andinto the homes of the old people, who knew what happened and wouldtell her their versions of the truth of what happened. Did theseneighbors really believe the Jews forced from their homes and takenaway were being "relocated"? Did the Christian neighbors have anysense of the atrocities being committed outside their quiet littlevillage? Did they try to help? Did they turn their backs? Were theyafraid?
Her quest led her back to Israel to explore the stories behind OlehZion. It led her to Benheimers, like her father, who had settled inthe United States. It led her to Willy, who survived theconcentration camp. And Frau Bidner, who recalled Frau Lowensteincalling out the window, "Our synagogue is burning! How terrible!.""And" said Frau Bidner, "no one answering her." It led her to HerrStolle, archivist and local historian, whose motives for preservingthe history of the Jews of Benheim, seem complex, even suspect. Itled her, poignantly, to discover the wells of strength and depthsof pain in her own family. And, of course, it taught her a thing ortwo about herself and her own motivations.
"'Don't be naive!' warned Holocaust scholars at my college whereI've taught writing for 20 years. 'Trust the records, not whatpeople tell you! People are unreliable, contradictory!'
"But as storyteller, not historian, I liked how one person's memorybumped another, muddying the moral waters of easy judgment. I likedhow the same landscape of images — the white cross, the blackswastika, the burning synagogue, the fresh-baked Berches andlinzertorte — kept reappearing, no matter who was talking.And how the many angles of vision, taken collectively, made myfather's village real for me: a blend of fact, myth, and memorythat I could reclaim, at least a little bit."
And reclaim it, she does, in a graceful mosaic of story uponcontradictory story that speaks of a terrible time and suffering,but also of small and large kindnesses, of courage and denial, ofovercoming fear and helplessness to try to do right, and of beingoverwhelmed by fear and helplessness.
I won't tell what happens in the end of "Good Neighbors, BadTimes," the culminating event that surprised the author and framesthe mosaic, but I will say it is perfect, powerful, and achinglysad. It is also a tribute to the strength of our human spirit, nomatter how harshly tested.
Mimi Schwartz, who lives part of the year in Sunapee, will readfrom "Good Neighbors, Bad Times" at the Howe Library in Hanover at7 p.m., July 30, with a discussion following the reading.