Sherman Alexie, Inside Dachau

by R.S.

Photo source, Seattle Times

Sherman Alexie is one of my most favourite writers. When I was a teenager I stumbled across The Summer of Black Widows in a really obscure place – like in a new age/cultural theft section of a book shop. Alexie is Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian (if ever he says “Native American” you can be sure he is poking fun at someone) who now lives in Seattle.

‘Inside Dachau’ is a part of his Summer of Black Widows collection of poetry. This is only the first part, you’d better go read it in its entirety here – it is ace.

Inside Dachau

1. big lies, small lies

Having lied to our German hosts about our plans
for the day, Diane and I visited Dachau
instead of searching for rare albums in Munich.
Only a dozen visitors walked through the camp
because we were months away from tourist season.
The camp was austere. The museum was simple.

Once there, I had expected to feel simple
emotions: hate, anger, sorrow. That was my plan.
I would write poetry about how the season
of winter found a perfect home in cold Dachau.
I would be a Jewish man who died in the camp.
I would be the ideal metaphor. Munich

would be a short train ride away from hell. Munich
would take the blame. I thought it would all be simple
but there were no easy answers inside the camp.
The poems still took their forms, but my earlier plans
seemed so selfish. What could I say about Dachau
when I had never suffered through any season

inside its walls? Could I imagine a season
of ash and snow, of flames and shallow graves? Munich
is only a short train ride away from Dachau.

[ ED. UPDATE 29/4: Alexie’s Literary Agent tells me I have to cut the poem short here. Which is a bit of a problem, because the the first section of the poem is, certainly in my mind, the most boring. It sets a solid foundation and context that the rest of the poem needs, but in its entirety, it is truly great. I hope you take a few moments to have a proper read. This probably should have been made clearer irrespective of the LA’s advice]

***

The most recent work of his that I have read is his fictionalized autobiography, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. It is marketed as Young Adult  genre, but this is kind of irrelevant. It is silly and angsty and crude and warm and terribly terribly heartbreaking. Of the writing process he told one interviewer:

The material in True Diary was actually first part of a memoir. I’ve been working on a family memoir about my family’s history with war. So I wrote this entire huge section about the first year I spent at the white high school, and it didn’t fit whatsoever, thematically. So I put it aside. I had 450 manuscript pages that didn’t seem to be going anywhere. Then a YA editor called me, as she had been calling me over the years, about every six months: “So where’s that YA novel?” She called me on this day that I had printed out those pages, and as I was talking to her, I was looking at my desktop and there was the manuscript, sitting there, and I thought, “Wow! I think that’s a novel.” So it was really sort of a coincidence. And then partly I made it a novel simply because—this is weird to say—nobody would actually believe it as a memoir.

He is not exaggerating. It really did take me a while to shake it off. Here’s a youtube video with a reading, some Q&As, some insensitive laughter and teenage boy jokes.

Below is the trailer for the 1998 film Smoke Signals which Alexie wrote and is directed by Chris Eyre. It is based on ‘This is what it means to say Phoenix, Arizona’ and other short stories in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

Keep your eye out for John Trudell.

genocide on ice!!

by tobybee

Somehow I missed this, but thanks to a friend’s posting on facebook, I found out that, for their freestyle dance, the Israeli ice-dancing team at the Winter Olympics skated to the music from Schindler’s List. Here’s some information about the dance from an article in the Jerusalem Post:

Twenty-seven members of Roman and Alexandra Zaretsky’s family died in World War II, a heritage the siblings share along with their passion for ice dancing and pursuit of Olympic glory.

When they take to the ice representing Israel in three programs starting Friday night, the Zaretskys will pay tribute to that family history. Their marquee performance, the free skate Monday evening, is set to the music of Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning movie about the Holocaust.

In doing so, they are sending a message about the importance of remembrance and a significant chapter in their family’s and country’s past, in a venue most pairs will use to focus the audience’s attention squarely on the present.

“We grew up with this every year, the memory of Yom Hashoah [Holocaust Remembrance Day],” Roman Zaretsky said Thursday of the reflection on what befell their family in Minsk, Belarus, from which they made aliya in the 1990s. “It’s very important to us.”

Alexandra Zaretsky said they were also drawn by the emotive power of the piece and the opportunity to convey that to the audience through ice dancing.

“We felt that we loved this piece and that we could do it the way it needs to be done,” she explained.

Still, those same qualities make it a difficult routine to practice – and live with – day in and day out.

“It very hard to skate every day to this music,” Roman Zaretsky said of the emotional toll.

“You’re feeling it, and you’re always getting the picture of the movie” in your head, his sister noted. “It’s hard, but it’s a good, strong piece.”

The money line for me is the first one: that the routine combines their loss of family in the Holocaust with their passion for ice-skating and their desire for an Olympic medal. There’s a certain crassness there that is astounding I think. I don’t have a problem with dance as a means of expressing the loss caused by genocide. I don’t really understand dance, so it’s not a mode that I personally use, but I appreciate that for some people, dance can be a means of ‘working through’ the trauma. And, really, ice-skating is just another form of dance. But it’s when it’s made into a competitive dance, when the purpose of the dance is the pursuit of an Olympic medal – with all the consumption, nationalism, and heteronormativity (partner ice-dancing requires the performance of compulsory heterosexuality, even when the skaters are siblings) which that entails (i.e., some of the formulations in society that provided the ground for the Holocaust) – that it becomes troublesome. Plus, I can’t help but feel that it’s making the after-effects of the Holocaust a bit banal.

Anyways, if you want to check out the routine, here it is from the European Championships from earlier this year (with bonus Russian commentary!)

post-genocidal communities rebuilding

by tobybee

A few weeks ago David Mwambari came and gave a guest lecture at La Trobe uni for the subject I tutor for (Genocide and Holocaust Studies). Mwambari is from Rwanda, has spent a lot of time living and studying in Kenya, and is currently doing a MA in pan-African studies at Syracuse University in the US. We were all moved and inspired listening to him – not just because of the stories which he told us, but also for the ways in which he told us the stories. Mwambari is part of a transnational group of people who have started up an organisation named ‘Sanejo’. The name Sanejo comes from two shortened Kinyarwandan words: Sana comes from the verb gusana meaning to rebuild, and ejo means tomorrow.

The mission of Sanejo is

to support communities transiting from war to peace or facing abject poverty, through the promotion of education. This is accomplished by working with local communities to reconstruct and expand schools in order to ensure that all children have a happy and safe place to learn. Through local and international partnerships; connecting donors with grassroots organizations, Sanejo aims to create sustainable relationships that will support fragile post-conflict societies. Through this framework, project partnerships will help promote education, health and understanding by working from the ground up.

The Sanejo team is comprised of a distinguished group of young men and women from diverse backgrounds. All members are passionate travelers, having lived and worked in countries all over the world. They bring their wealth of experience and enthusiasm to the work of Sanejo, and as “life learners” are motivated to build a better future for tomorrow’s generation.

I this is a pretty great organisation for the ways that it brings together people from all over the world to work together. And for the priority which it places on education: having experienced the ability of education to open my mind to different ideas and to challenge the ways I think about the world and the power structures therein, I think that education can be an important force for change. So check out their website, or look them up on facebook, and support them if you can…

Australian Genocide

by tobybee

For those in Sydney, or who will be in Sydney at the beginning of October, there’s going to be a Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House. There’s numerous good people speaking – including Germaine Greer, Jeff Sparrow, Larissa Behrendt, Ien Ang – and some interesting topics (as well as some kinda annoying topics – ‘Bring Back Conscription’ anyone? hmmm). The one I wanted to point out is by Gary Foley entitled ‘By 2075 the Aboriginal Genocide will be Complete’:

“Gary Foley, one of Australia’s most provocative and respected Aboriginal leaders and intellectuals, identifies some of the key problems with our approach to Indigenous policy, by both the Howard and Rudd Governments.
He argues that if Australian government policies continue in their present direction, Aboriginal people will be extinct by 2075.
Foley identifies key concerns with the influential politics of fellow Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson, particularly with Pearson’s assertion that ‘self-determination has failed’.
He is critical of the assumption that the Australian Labor Party has been an ally of Aboriginal people and argues that the Rudd apology to the Stolen Generations is an example of the duplicity and deceit of politicians.”

If you don’t know Foley, he’s an incredibly generous, interesting and inspiring Indigenous activist and academic, amongst many other pursuits. The website describes him as “an indigenous Australian activist, academic, writer and actor. He is best known for his role in establishing the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra in 1972 and for establishing an Aboriginal legal service in Redfern in the 1970s. He currently runs an Aboriginal history website and lectures and tutors at Victoria University.”

So if you’re in Sydney on October 4th, you should head along.

If you’re not, you should still think about the implications of what Foley is talking about – what part do those of us who are non-Indigenous have to play in continuing or ending this genocide?

Why is this genocide different from all other genocides?

by tobybee

Last week I was in Sydney for a postgrad history masterclass in ‘patriotism, memory and history’. A masterclass basically involves a bunch of postgrads and academics sitting around discussing each other’s work in an intensive, collaborative, thought-provoking and academic setting for a few days. This was a great masterclass, with pretty much everyone being very supportive of each other’s work. But there was one stand-out moment when a postgrad from Sydney who works in Jewish studies turned up to my session to tell me I was wrong.

What was I wrong about? In a nutshell, she was adamant that 1. the Holocaust was unique and 2. that Jews in Australia after the Holocaust are not – and never have been – anxious about their/our place in this world. (This second point is basically the central argument of my thesis). This wasn’t the first time I’ve heard these arguments, but I believe that these two intertwined ideas are rather problematic.

I firmly believe, that while the Holocaust might be unique to me personally (as I lost many family members to it, and would not be alive myself if it hadn’t happened) and to many other Jews, because of their personal experiences, in historical terms, it is not a unique event. In the sense that every moment in history is unique it is, of course, also unique, but beyond that, to me the claims for uniqueness are a bit chauvinist.

Arguments put forward for Holocaust uniqueness tend to centre around the idea that the Holocaust was the worst genocide, the most terrible, the perpetrators were the most determined ever, the victims were the only victims ever who were killed just because of who they were etc etc. There are arguments against all these positions however – how do we quantify ‘the worst’ genocide (and why would we want to)? perpetrators of genocide are always determined to kill their victims, that’s the point; and, if we look at the Holocaust itself, we can see that Roma and Sinti were targeted in exactly the same racialised manner as Jews.

But I think these arguments are not about historical veracity, but instead about a determination to be identified as the worst off, the most victimised. This brings up many issues, such as why people would want such a designation and what are the political and ideological results of such a designation. I don’t want to explicate my ideas on these factors, although maybe that’s a discussion we can have in the comments. What I do want to suggest is that remembering the Holocaust in this manner works as a way of forgetting and denying other genocides. And I want to ask what the effects of this is.

Jews tend to – and rightfully so – get angry when people deny that the Holocaust happened. This is part of an ethics of memory: that we should remember in an ethical fashion, which works to remember as much as possible. By highlighting and overstating the Jewish Holocaust I think that people remember unethically: they remember for their own purposes, rather than to support others who have been through similar atrocities. Why down-play or deny others experiences? I don’t understand it.

And this, I think, underscores the anxieties which Jews in the post-war world feel: that unless we can be the standout victims then our position is precarious. Which makes it somewhat interesting to me that the woman who came to tell me I was wrong was, in the end, displaying her own anxiety that the history to which she clings would be challenged.

Maybe instead she, and we all, need to learn to live with our anxieties and ambivalences, to accept the uncertain and precarious and not always search for solid ground.

bastardy

by anzya

jack charles

I caught the fantastic doco Bastardy the other night. Directed by Amiel Courtin-Wilson, it’s a beautiful cinematic portrait of Aboriginal actor Jack Charles, who later became notorious for burgling the wealthiest suburbs in Melbourne (what Charles calls ” just collecting rent”). Filmed over seven years, Courtin-Wilson follows the loveable Charles – a heroin user, cat-burglar and homeless since ’73 – as an elderly man, tired of sleeping in laundries and running from the police, contemplating giving up the drug and finding a place of his own. The relationship between the two men is quite touching, and Charles’ radiant personality and sense of humour is infectious.

What I found most moving about the film was a scene when Charles opens up to the camera about the first relationship he had, with another man, which clearly affects him deeply still. In trying to articulate what went wrong, Charles explains that, being taken from his mother as a baby, only 10 months old, and growing up in a boys’ home, (as was the Australian Government’s practice at the time) he couldn’t recall ever being “held”. He went on to say that he’d never had a relationship with anyone, let alone a lover.

Though there is so much tragedy in Charles’ history, and in this film, his palpable sense of regret and failure in this scene was the only part of the film that made me cry.

The “stolen generations” is a term used so often in Australia, that I sometimes think the words have become an abstraction. However, after watching Bastardy, it struck me how true that phrase is. As a grandchild of four Holocaust survivors, I realised how “stealing” a generation is the most accurate description of how genocide works. And how its effects are shared across cultures.

Self-medication is common among Holocaust survivors too: many in my grandparent’s generation, as well as their children, had/still have serious, often debilitating addictions to prescription drugs (a lot easier to hide than heroin) such as valium, slimming pills and painkillers. The Jewish community’s preoccupation with marriage and procreation, (I’m speaking for mine, although I can imagine this is similar elsewhere) the rife homophobia, and the often dysfunctional, neurotic family dynamics in the Jewish community is another symptom of this.

Not to mention how my grandmother (who was 9 years old when the war broke out in Poland, and who lost her family as well as her childhood to it) has a collection of teddy bears and dolls that takes up an entire room in her house.

At another point in the film, Charles said that when the newspapers printed stories about the talented actor’s turn to crime, he half hoped that his father (he never found out who his father was- hence the film’s title) would come looking for him.

For me, what the film showed so vividly, is that it takes more than a lifetime to overcome the scars of being taken away from your family at that young age; to overcome the memories of violence and abuse heaped on you; to overcome the deaths of your loved ones, and the absence in your life of those you never knew. That’s what we mean, I suppose, when we talk about the “stolen generations”.