April 14, 2009 | 11:50 am

Demjanjuk taken from home by US agents to be deported

Posted by Tom Teicholz

I just watched video of John Demjanjuk being removed from his house in a wheelchair (not a stretcher as reported elsewhere). It is hard to tell who was there (family members, attorneys).

Demjanjuk is being deported to stand trial in Germany accused of accessory to the murder of 29,000 Jewish men women and children at the Sobibor extermination camp in what was then Nazi occupied Poland. Throughout the many years of his trials (Demjanjuk was first accused of Nazi service in the mid 1970s), he has always issued a complete denial, claiming to have been a Russian prisoner-of-war during the time he was accused of being a Nazi auxilliary guard. But over the years, more and more documents have confirmed his Nazi service—and all have been confirmed as authentic and legitimate (despite defense claims of forgeries).

I covered Demjanjuk’s district court trial in Israel twenty years ago and have followed his case since. The notion that the US Justice Department had continued to prosecute him is something I found admirable—a criminal who won’t admit his crimes, who shows no remorse, can’t be allowed to go gently into that good night, believing that no one cares about the crimes, or that we have forgotten the victims.

Nonetheless, it was hard to watch the video and not feel for his family — Demjanjuk had asked for his priest to hear his confession before he was removed and there is every reason to believe that at 89, he will never see his home again or spend a night with his wife and family again.

Did it have to come to this day? Was there another possible outcome? There is no way to know if Demjanjuk had given his confession to authorities at any point after the war, and actually admitted his Nazi service, what would have transpired — would he perhaps have received a lesser sentence than he may now face (or than perhaps he deserved)? There are some cases to compare him to: his Soviet colleague Danylchenko was tried in the USSR and given a sentence he outlived — as were many during the German Auschwitz trials. But there is no way of knowing—Fedor Fedorenko, a guard at Treblinka, was deported from the US to the Soviet Union, and was executed after his trial there. One thing is certain, Demjanjuk would never have been allowed to become a US citizen and it is that crime, covering up his Nazi service, which led to his being deported today.

Demjanjuk’s denials and obfuscations drew out his prosecutions for these many many years, and he lived long enough for them to pursue him to this point. To their credit authorities didn’t give up. And Demjanjuk’s crimes and the prosecution of them will now follow him to Germany.

2 Comments — Leave your comment

March 6, 2009 | 11:28 am

Thane Rosenbaum’s thoughts on Holocaust Narrative

Posted by Tom Teicholz

I was delighted to introduce novelist and essayist Thane Rosenbaum last night at Loyala Marymount University (LMU )and moderate the Q & A after. Thane was speaking on Artful Testimony: reponsibility and imagination in Holocaust narrative.

Thane made a lot of very thought provoking comments, Basically,—and let me say, that clearly you should go hear Thane, because it is worth hearing from him—but Thane made the argument that although the artists has the license to write about anything and everything, he feels that license should not extend to fictional writing about atrocities, because artists lack the capacity, the tools to express the unimagineable—that atrocities are properly the area of testimony—which may be done artfully by great writers—but not the realm that fiction should delve into.

Thane’s work, novels such as “The Golems of Manhattan,” “Second hand smoke,” and the short story collection “Elijah Visible” have Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren as characters discussing the Holocaust—but his work remains rooted in the aftermath of the Holocaust and its impact on his characters and their conflicts.

He also said that the famous Santyana quote that those who do not learn from the past are sentenced to repeat it is a lie—that human nature is to repeat itself, and that the tragedies in Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur show that in spite of what we know we repeat the past…... so—given that the argument for making watered down versions of Holocaust narratives in films or on TV is that they will reach more people - is an argument he would only accept if he beleived that it made a difference in human behavior—and as it does not, he would be happy not have any fictionalized Holocaust movies.

Thane’s points are well taken and well worth considering.  However, knowing that there the films have been mande and will continue to be made, for me, as I wrote in a recent column, the distinction I make is by saying that there may be no such thing as a good holocaust movie, only a good movie about holocaust related events.

By the way, I’d like to give a shout-out to my new friend Prof. Holly Levitsky, of LMU’s English Department and who also chairs the minor in Jewish studies who organized the event, and whose students were also impressive. 

1 Comments — Leave your comment

March 4, 2009 | 11:56 am

Thane Rosenbaum to speak at LMU Thursday March 5

Posted by Tom Teicholz

Tommorrow night (Thursday March 5), novelist, attorney, law professor, and essayist Thane Rosenbaum will be appearing at Loyola Marymount University in their McIntosh Hall at 7pm.

Rosenbaum will be speaking on : “Artful Testimony: Responsibility and Imagination in Holocaust Narrative.” Rosenbaum is the author of the novels, “The Golems of Manhattan,” “Second Hand Smoke,” the short story collection “Elijah Visible,” and the non fiction work “The Myth of Moral Justice.”

I will be introducing Rosenbaum and then will lead the Q & A after his talk.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

February 19, 2009 | 11:09 am

Caryl Churchill’s “Seven Jewish Children: a play for Gaza”

Posted by Tom Teicholz

Controversy has been brewing surrounding Caryl Churchill’s play “Seven Jewish Children: a play for Gaza.” A blog on the New York Times, The lede, has done us all the tremendous favor of actually posting a link to the full text of the play. Read it Here.

Many have asked: Is it Anti-Semitic? That strikes me as the wrong question and the wrong term. What it is is a prose poem — tendentious, misinformed, simplistic, full of misleading assumptions all gathered in an attempt to make a point, which is in itself a judgment of a whole people (Jews) and a whole nation (Israelis) as if that were possible (I could imagine a version of this play called “seven American children” which would be equally tendentious).

I understand Churchill’s desire to put her art in service of what she sees as a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.  But perhaps a trip to Israel and Gaza first would have yielded a play that was less fanciful but more actual. And would have succeeded better in achieving her goal or in raising funds for humanitarian assistance to Gaza. (putting aside the whole question of what actually goes to the Gazans and what remains in the bank accounts of the relief organizations, and local leaders — but that’s another story) —  Perhaps it would have made no difference and this is what Churchill has to say on the subject.

But read the play, you decide.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

January 20, 2009 | 3:37 pm

President Obama: “The new era of responsibility”

Posted by Tom Teicholz

For me, that is the tag-line for President Obama’s inauguration speech — signaling the game-changing history- making moment and the journey we are embarking on.

It was a very focused serious speech, befitting the occasion, sending a signal to the world and to our country that change is a coming — and has come.

Amen.

PS. and I am happy to report that the New York Times seems to agree that “Era of responsibility” is the take-away phrase.  Job, please?

PPS did George Bush look a little too happy to be getting into that helicopter?
PPS and as for Dick Cheney in the wheelchair, with all due respect to the former VP, was I imagining it or did he look like Mr. Potter from “It’s a wonderful life”, the meanest man in town, or was giving us a last view of his Dr. Strangelove impersonation?

0 Comments — Leave your comment

January 6, 2009 | 11:40 am

What I read on my vacation

Posted by Tom Teicholz

When last I blogged, I was sitting in my office the week before Christmas, and I just ran out of steam. I had originally planned to work through the holiday and then I just said, why?

So I took the time off.  I stayed at home. I read books for pleasure:

NETHERLAND by Joseph O’Neill — which I liked but, frankly it was not the novel I thought or hoped it would be.  Netherland is a post 9-11 novel about a Dutch born English raised man who working at a financial company in New York and whose family returns to England post 9-11 and his time in New York and his friendship with a Trinidadian who he meets through playing cricket. The novel has been comapred to The Great Gatsby and I see the shadow of that classic on this work, but this is a far more interior work. It is well written, and took all kinds of side trips into areas of arcane knowledge such as cricket history, but in then end was more slight a book, more interior,  and left me feeling unsatisfied.

The English Professor by Jim Harrison, which I enjoyed, perhaps more than I should have. It’s a kind of demented book, a rambling work of a demented unreliable narrator — a 60 year ex-teacher turned farmer whose wife dumps him and he sets off on a road trip — along the way he reunites with a former student — there is plenty of drink and sex and food and plenty of nature writing — and for reasons that are hard to explain as compared to Netherword which had an air of self importance this was slight in all the right ways.

I’m also halfway into “The Widows of Eastwick,” which I both enjoy and somewhat dread. Updike has really written about the vicissitudes of age, and what older Americans do, which is travel and reunite for brief moments with their past in ways that are often disappointing. My dread comes from the feeling that nothing good can come from these characters and an expectation that on any page something bad is about to happen — which is a testmaent to Updike’s continued powers as a writer and a story teller, but still, it doesn’t make me race to pick up and finish the book, so I am proceeding at a leisurely pace with caution.

To read more of the TOMMYWOOD Blog click here

0 Comments — Leave your comment

December 25, 2008 | 5:08 pm

Lazy me, taking off until Jan 5, 2009

Posted by Tom Teicholz

thought I would be blogging and working straight through the holidays — and trust me there’s stuff to write about:. I want to tell you about recent visits to the restaurants Sushi Zo, Michael Mina’s Louis XIV, Slumdog, the wrester, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland, and Jim Harrison’s The English Major — but suddenly I’ve lost steam. I don’t feel like going in to the office, don’t feel like pushing the peanut up the hill with a pencil, as one of my editors used to say.

No, no, no. I’m just going to spend time with family and friends, read more novels that I’ve been wanting to read for pleasure — not work, and take a short trip up north.

Recharge the batteries. Put 2008 behind us. take a few days grace at the start of 2009. Blog to you then!, later

0 Comments — Leave your comment