Synagogues & Twin Towers
I was in New York last week, giving a talk to an adult literature class in a downtown synagogue, and staring into the wet depths of the square holes where the Twin Towers once stood. It's hard to know which affected me more.
The invite to talk to the Jewish class came out of the blue. Professor Jane Paznik-Bondarin of BMCC/CUNY was teaching them about the role of Jewish detectives in fiction. Who knew? A friend had mentioned my Brodie books set in post War Glasgow in which I'd touched on a number of big themes of the period e.g political and police corruption, attitudes to homosexuality and sinner priests. But in Pilgrim Soul [Brodie 3] I'd constructed a plot round the (fictional) attack on the Glasgow Jewish community by Nazi war criminals fleeing retribution, using escape routes - ratlines - that ran through Europe at the time.
Though my hero, Douglas Brodie was neither Jewish nor a detective, Jane enjoyed the book so much and what it revealed about the 12,000 strong Jewish community in the Gorbals back in the 40's, that she put it on the reading list for her the class. The positive feedback provoked her to have the 'chutzpah' - as she put it - to invite me to do a Skype interview with the class. As luck had it, I could do better than that; I would be in New York visiting old friends and was prepared to join the class in person.
On a night of thunderstorms and flood warnings across Manhattan, I talked to her group in their synagogue and responded to their probes into my background; how did a nice Goyim boy like me come to know so much about Jewish attitudes and customs? Who in my family was Jewish? Clearly I had to have some blood connection to write so sensitively and warmly about them.
As a Celt of Irish/Scottish Presbyterian extraction, I was incredibly touched by this - validation, I guess - of my writing. I explained I had a number of reasons for working this awkward theme into Pilgrim Soul, chief among them being the issue's prominence in 1947. Part of my research involves visiting the Mitchell Library in Glasgow flicking through microfiche screens of the newspapers of the period. It's hard to ignore the front pages reporting the Nuremberg trials and the Jewish refugee ships trying to break the British blockade of Palestine ports to get to the Promised Land. Brodie too had to face the demons eating him: as a British Major in post War Germany he was tasked with interrogating Nazi officers and sending them for trial. Much of his (undiagnosed) post traumatic stress was down to these nightmare revelations.
I also had a personal trigger: in 1946 my father was a paratrooper stationed with his regiment in Haifa as part of the UN mandated force occupying Palestine and being shot for their trouble by Arabs and Jews alike.
Finally, I explained, I was conscious of a generational shift in which the Holocaust is moving beyond the memory of anyone living. Deniers are taking the field and anti-Semitism is on the rise across Europe. I have never been able to understand why the Jews have been persecuted for so long, by so many, and through my writing, I wanted to explore the issues in search of some understanding. I still don't. But without being too grandiose about it, I wanted to play some small part in keeping the memory alive. Looking round the table at the lined and intent faces and the nodding heads, I guess I had.
Gordon
The invite to talk to the Jewish class came out of the blue. Professor Jane Paznik-Bondarin of BMCC/CUNY was teaching them about the role of Jewish detectives in fiction. Who knew? A friend had mentioned my Brodie books set in post War Glasgow in which I'd touched on a number of big themes of the period e.g political and police corruption, attitudes to homosexuality and sinner priests. But in Pilgrim Soul [Brodie 3] I'd constructed a plot round the (fictional) attack on the Glasgow Jewish community by Nazi war criminals fleeing retribution, using escape routes - ratlines - that ran through Europe at the time.
Though my hero, Douglas Brodie was neither Jewish nor a detective, Jane enjoyed the book so much and what it revealed about the 12,000 strong Jewish community in the Gorbals back in the 40's, that she put it on the reading list for her the class. The positive feedback provoked her to have the 'chutzpah' - as she put it - to invite me to do a Skype interview with the class. As luck had it, I could do better than that; I would be in New York visiting old friends and was prepared to join the class in person.
On a night of thunderstorms and flood warnings across Manhattan, I talked to her group in their synagogue and responded to their probes into my background; how did a nice Goyim boy like me come to know so much about Jewish attitudes and customs? Who in my family was Jewish? Clearly I had to have some blood connection to write so sensitively and warmly about them.
As a Celt of Irish/Scottish Presbyterian extraction, I was incredibly touched by this - validation, I guess - of my writing. I explained I had a number of reasons for working this awkward theme into Pilgrim Soul, chief among them being the issue's prominence in 1947. Part of my research involves visiting the Mitchell Library in Glasgow flicking through microfiche screens of the newspapers of the period. It's hard to ignore the front pages reporting the Nuremberg trials and the Jewish refugee ships trying to break the British blockade of Palestine ports to get to the Promised Land. Brodie too had to face the demons eating him: as a British Major in post War Germany he was tasked with interrogating Nazi officers and sending them for trial. Much of his (undiagnosed) post traumatic stress was down to these nightmare revelations.
I also had a personal trigger: in 1946 my father was a paratrooper stationed with his regiment in Haifa as part of the UN mandated force occupying Palestine and being shot for their trouble by Arabs and Jews alike.
Finally, I explained, I was conscious of a generational shift in which the Holocaust is moving beyond the memory of anyone living. Deniers are taking the field and anti-Semitism is on the rise across Europe. I have never been able to understand why the Jews have been persecuted for so long, by so many, and through my writing, I wanted to explore the issues in search of some understanding. I still don't. But without being too grandiose about it, I wanted to play some small part in keeping the memory alive. Looking round the table at the lined and intent faces and the nodding heads, I guess I had.
Gordon
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I agree that it is the responsibility of humanity never to forget the Holocaust. I look forward to reading this novel.