Debbie Nathan

In this story, published by Wieviorka in 1937, a young, Communist mother challenges two scourges of humankind: Fascism — and her newborn son’s impending b’ris.

Gustav Hansel was a young German emigre, a blonde with close-cropped hair and a strapping build. I met him in a circle of German expatriates in Paris. They had formed a “commune” — meaning they would go in together for a kilo of bread, and would all share a single cigarette.

Just like all the other emigres from Germany, Gustav Hansel mixed his authentic Berlin German with a good deal of Yiddish vocabulary. And like the others, he pounced hungrily on the newpapers, hoping to find that the German people had finally sobered up and soon would be sending Hitler and his gang to the devil. Yet when he saw that Hitler was still high in the saddle, Gustav Hansel didn’t despair. “People need to have faith,” he would tell me. “Jewish faith, which has endured worse than this.”

I reminded him that he could be living quite well in Germany and no one would know he was Jewish, since neither his name or his looks betrayed hm. To which Gustav Hansel laughed hoarsely: “Actually I’m an Aryan. Genuine German — a yeke. You won’t find a Jewish grandmother on my family tree. Not even a great-grandmother.”

“So that means,” I said, “that you never committed the sin of being Jewish? What was it, then? Marxism?” Not Marxism either, he told me. “Know what my sin against the Third Reich was?” he asked, grinning. “Race pollution.”

He’d fallen in love with a Jewish girl and felt he couldn’t live without her, so they left Germany together. With utmost sincerity he told me that when he first met the girl, he wasn’t aware she was Jewish, a member of the group that lately was being accused everywhere — in the newspapers and at meetings, at the butcher’s, the baker’s, the grocer’s, the shoe stores — of destroying Germany and threatening to bring down the entire world.

“How was I supposed to know?” Gustav Hansel said as the grin spread over his face. “After all, they say Jewish women have cast off every last scrap of shame, modesty and virtue, and that their real role is to spread demoralization and debauchery.” (He confessed to me, Gustav Hansel did, that more than once when he was sexually aroused, he fantasized about having a fling with a Jewish girl in order to experience stormy “feelings.”)

Yet Toni Hoffman (that was her name) had really taken him aback with her extreme modesty. “I’m still young, but I’ve had lot of experience with women,” Gustav Hansel assured me. “I was accustomed to going out with a girl two or three times, taking her to the movies, buying her candy — and by then she’d get quite easy with me.”

But with Toni, even after he’d gone out with her for three months and was calling her du — even then, every time he was alone with her and tried to get bold by letting a hand wander, she would gently take his large, overgrown mitt and scold him as a grownup scolds a child.

“See here, Gustav, you have such big, clumsy hands that you can’t control them.” So saying and with truly maternal tenderness, she would caress his short-haired, blonde head and stand up, pulling him by the hand. “Come on, let’s go for a little walk. It’s not good to sit too long in one place.”

“So how do you think I found out?” young, strapping Gustav Hansel asked me. “How did I learn she was Jewish, when she was so utterly different from how I imagined Jewish girls to be?”

He found out from his mother. “Gustav,” she blurted to him once. “How far do you intend to go with this Jew Girl?” Then she told him a new era was dawning in Germany. The permissiveness which German youth had been caught up in after the country’s defeat in the war was being turned around, and good, German morality and love of the Fatherland were on their way back. She warned him that relations between a young German man and a “Jew Girl” would be considered filthy, and she reminded him that his father had died for Germany�s honor.

He confessed to me, Gustav Hansel did, that he was unpleasantly surprised to learn that Toni was a Jew Girl. He had never been anti-Semitic, but he figured that since his father died for Germany’s honor, he should not get involved with a Jewess. The thought even occurred to him to break off the relationship. But that idea lasted only briefly. As soon as he tried to imagine nights without her, he was overcome with such sadness that it quickly became clear: He was in love with Toni Hoffman and could not live without her.

Gustav Hansel left Germany after witnessing a young Jewish man being driven through the streets with a sign hung on him that read, I have dishonored German women. “It was a hideous scene,” Gustave Hansel told me. “It would take the talent of a great artist to depict it. But what’s etched in my memory is the image — I’ll never forget it — of the two sets of eyes I saw. The terror-stricken, desperate eyes of the hounded Jew, and the wild, blood-thirsty eyes of the mob.”

That very evening he went to Toni Hoffman’s house with his mind made up. “Toni, we’re leaving Germany.” The girl tried to warn him: “Gustav, living abroad as an emigre is very difficult. You’ll cut off your ties with your homeland. Give this serious thought, Gustav.” But she saw the look of resolve on his face and immediately began discussing with him the details of the trip.

****

I strolled the streets of Paris with Gustav Hansel for hours. The whole time, he talked and I listened. Finally I asked him, “So — do you have any regrets about what you did? Surely you see that your lover’s prediction about the difficulty of living in a foreign country has come true.”

He was insulted “Had it been ten times harder, I’d have done it. Don’t forget, she has infected me with Jewish hope, with Jewish faith. The Jews are an amazing people.” I told him I wasn’t so crazy about hearing Jews described as better than other groups. As I rule, I don’t believe there’s such a thing as better and worse peoples. He laughed at me.

“Toni says exactly the same thing.”

Still, he disagreed. Just as there are better and worse individuals, so there clearly are better and worse peoples. It goes without saying that Jews shouldn’t think they’re better than other groups, just as an individual shouldn’t think himself superior to another person. Indeed, that is part of being superior: not being conceited. But he, Gustav Hansel, had lately been able to study the different types of Jews. And he was sticking to his opinion: “The Jews are an amazing people.”

When we said goodbye to each other, he wanted to get together next day so I could meet his Jew Girl. I happily agreed and went to their “apartment,” a cramped, airless little hotel room. Gustav Hansel introduced me to his Jew Girl — a brunette of medium height, with black hair and even blacker eyes. During our entire conversation, Gustav kept praising the Jews, demonstrating with countless arguments that they are an amazing people. Toni Hoffman mockingly responded that since he was such a Jewish chauvinist, the logical thing would be for him to be baptized a total Jew. But Gustav showed no surprise at Toni’s biting irony. He merely demanded that she answer this:

“If the most beautiful ideals are not embodied in the Jewish people, then how to explain the fact that every reactionary movement is accompanied by a wave of anti-Semitism?” Looking victorious, Gustav Hansel waited for a response to his difficult question. But instead of replying, Tony Hoffman gave him a tender pat on the head and smilingly told him he was better off leaving politics to others since he understood nothing about them. And to demonstrate that politics were her specialty, the medium-sized brunette with the black eyes began talking excitedly about World Revolution, which, of necessity, would happen much sooner than most people imagined.

While Tony gave her impassioned talk, Gustav smiled a happy little smile. His only other reaction was his quiet words to me: “She’s really got it. Jewish faith. Wonderful, isn’t it?”

I took leave of this striking young couple, and Gustav Hansel accompanied me part way. He asked if I had noticed anything. When I told him I hadn’t, he said his wife (this was the first time he called her “my wife”) was pregnant. She was entering the last trimester, and he asked my advice about where to go when whe was ready to give birth.

Reading the amazement on my face, he responded, “Of course you’re surprised that a man in my situation, who’s not sure what tomorrow will bring and doesn’t even have a roof over his head, has decided to have a baby. But don’t forget, this is the only way I can protest the persecution of the Jews in my homeland: by bringing a Jewish child into the world.”

With a myserious smile, he continued, “I’m gong to surprise her, my Jew Girl. You’ll see.”

****

After that last visit to Gustav Hansel’s, I didn’t see him for over four months and had almost forgotten about the German philo-Semite. Then he paid me an unexpected visit. Looking dazzlingly happy, he told me he’d been searching for me for days and had just been at my place asking for me. Without pausing, he said I had to go with him then and there, because his wife had given birth to a boy, and today was the eighth day afterward. He had decided to surprise her and have the child circumcised. He’d already bought the celebratory honey cake and brandy. His son must be a Jew. And since I was their friend, I must be at the ceremony.

Entering Gustav Hansel�s hotel room on the sixth floor, we found the young woman just back from the hospital, lying in bed nursing the child. Her face was pale and her eyes mirrored profound, maternal joy and tenderness. The mohel who had come with us to do the circumcision proclaimed amiably, “Mazel tov! Congratulations, new mother!” and told her to show him the child so he could examine it. Gustav Hansel unpacked the honey cake and brandy and put them on a little table. His wife looked at him with an odd, surprised expression as he announced, “Well, Toni, soon your son will be a total Jew.”

I don’t know how Gustav had imagined she would react. But apparently, he hadn’t figured that the woman would burst out crying, explode into paroxyms, and squeeze the child tightly to her breast. Gustav’s whole face turned into one big question mark. He was so surprised that he couldn’t utter a word. Equally dumbfounded was the mohel, who hadn’t the faintest idea what was going on. I was the only one who fully grasped the situation.

Seeing how the woman was overcome with spasms of weeping, I proclaimed, “Calm yourself, Madame. Surely you understand that no one is going to force you to circumcise your child. Your husband only means well.” Seeing that my words had a calming effect, I added, “Good. Let’s have the cake and brandy.” Without waiting, I poured liquor into little glasses already set on the table. I put one in each person’s hand and said, “L’chaim! To life!”

“L’chaim!” proclaimed Gustav Hansel. Again, the question mark hovered on his face.

“Long live the new mother!” the mohel finally pronounced, then the ritual blessing. “May you be privileged to raise up your son l’torah, l’huppah, v’lemaysim tovim” — to study Torah, stand under the marriage canopy, and do good deeds.”

To be a fighter! That’s what I’ll raise him up for,” the new mother answered calmly, now that she saw the “danger” to her child was past. “A fighter! For freedom! And justice!”

At that, the mohel also understood the reason for her earlier weeping. “Ah!” he said to us. “So that’s the story!”

Only for Gustav Hansel did it remain a virtually unfathomable mystery. Even so, he told us to make ourselves at home as he finally took charge of slicing the honey cake and pouring the second round of brandy. Still, the question mark on his face would not go away.