The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (36 page)
Read The Puppet Boy of Warsaw Online
Authors: Eva Weaver
Finally, a big thank you to my parents Erika and Karl Heinz for sharing their stories with me, and to my partner Maz for being the special woman you are and walking the journey with me.
Sylvin Rubinstein, the resistance fighter, died on 30 April 2011.
PUPPET
BOY OF
WARSAW
In conversation with Eva Weaver
What made you write this book?
I guess even after years of working with the theme of the Jewish Holocaust through performance and poetry, I still felt a strong need to attend to this in a substantial way. More than sixty million people died as a result of the Second World War, six million of those Jews – children, women, men, systematically killed.
The Puppet Boy of Warsaw
is an attempt to give those numbers a human face.
Who or what was the biggest inspiration to you when writing your novel?
The resistance and resilience of the Jewish women, men and children in the ghetto has deeply moved and inspired me for a long time – how in the deepest despair and horror people rose to risk their lives daily to help each other. Also, I was moved to hear how in the overcrowded ghetto, musicians, singers, dancers, actors, artists still put on productions, concerts and theatre pieces. The power of the arts to strengthen the human spirit even in the most horrendous circumstances has always intrigued and fascinated me.
What is the significance of the puppets?
The puppets allow Mika to tell his stories with a certain distance; he can hide behind them like a mask. The puppets are in some ways metaphors for the will to survive and the power of survival and resistance in general. The puppets come to life in times of biggest challenge, when most needed. They comfort, entertain, exclude authority and call for resistance.
Why do you tell both Mika’s story and the story of Max, the German soldier?
I could have written two separate books, but I felt that these stories somehow belonged together and together would create a more powerful story. I was shocked to hear about the extent of just how many German soldiers had been taken to Siberia after the end of the war. As many as one million are estimated to have perished in the Siberian gulags. We have little evidence for their deaths, as the Russians did not keep precise records. The historical facts were not available to me while I was still in Germany and are only slowly emerging now. This is a different side of this terrible war that I felt I wanted to attend to as well.
Is Max ever able to acknowledge his guilt?
Of course! Max believes in his duty to the fatherland, but he is not without a conscience. Through Mika, Max becomes unable to continue to see a homogenous mass of Jews. We witness his struggle with guilt and shame throughout the book, particularly of course in the second part.
Do you think your novel is realistic? Could something like the coat belonging to Mika’s grandfather have existed?
In my research about how people have resisted and have smuggled people, babies, children and adults out of ghettos and camps, I have come across many extremely creative and amazing ways. I know for sure that quite a few people did create secret pockets in coats to hide very precious objects.
Can a non-Jew write about the Holocaust and, in particular, from a Jewish perspective?
I have known from the beginning that to write a book about the Holocaust as a non-Jew – and not only that, but as a German woman – is something that will be questioned and sometimes contested. I have written this book not as a historian, as a political activist working for reconciliation or with a particular agenda, but as a storyteller, humanist and artist who believes passionately in the power of story and art to help us attend to, deal with and sometimes transcend and heal terrible trauma.
Do you think that Germany still has a debt to pay to the Jewish people? How can such a debt be paid?
Germany and its people, as well as Jews everywhere, will for ever carry this wound. I do not believe that it can be ever simply paid off or be ‘made good’. I believe that the only way forward is genuine, open dialogue, an exploration on both sides of how Jews and German non-Jews have been affected by the Holocaust and the horrors of the Second World War. It is crucial for Germany and Germans to acknowledge their guilt, without defending themselves, and ask for forgiveness. This guilt and shame about the Holocaust sits deep in our bones and requires much soul searching, bearing witness, but also self-forgiveness, especially on the part of my own generation, which has been affected but has not carried any direct guilt.
— Before reading this book, what did you know about the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust?
— The puppets’ company helped us forget the adult world for a while. A world where people created ugly things; like a ghetto for Jews. A world we couldn’t understand.
In what way do the puppets allow Mika and Ellie to escape from the oppression of the Nazis?
— What other forms of art – music, stories and performance – allow the Jewish inhabitants to cope with pain, grief and suffering?
— Mother was gentle, but also very brave – she had soldiered on with a broken heart after Father died, never complaining. And she had risked her life to honour Grandfather’s last wish – that I should have the coat.
Which other everyday acts of heroism do men, women and children achieve in the Warsaw Ghetto?
— Yes, I had put on the show to survive, but wasn’t I betraying my own people? I felt disgusted with myself and the puppets, which were contaminated and compromised just as I was. What would Grandfather have thought of me now?
How does performing for the Nazis change Mika’s relationship with the puppets and with his family?
— Why does Max help Mika? Does Max’s friendship with Mika allow him to acknowledge his own role in the oppression of the Jews?
— Ellie decides to stay in the ghetto, as a part of the Warsaw resistance, but Mika decides to escape. Why do you think each of them make these different decisions?
— Everything had changed – here they were now, grown men, once proud soldiers who had brought so much death and misery to Poland, to the world, now just bags of bones fighting over a bunch of puppets.
When Max is in Siberia, he begins to talk to the puppet prince. How do the puppets give Max and the other German soldiers courage?
— When Max returns to Nurnberg after the war, he is only a ghost of his former self, and his wife and son treat him differently. Why, after the Second World War, can nothing ever go back to the way it was before?
— What does the reader learn from Mara’s visit to Warsaw sixty-six years after the Ghetto was created?
— How is Mara’s puppet play different from Mika’s real experiences in the Warsaw Ghetto?
— As Mika’s story unfolds, Mara slowly sheds the defensiveness that has become second nature to her, the price for being German and speaking about the war. The author of
The Puppet Boy of Warsaw
, Eva Weaver, is German and not Jewish. What challenges do you think she must have faced when writing this book?
— In what ways does this book suggest this generation should go about healing the wounds of the Holocaust and the Second World War?
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Eva Weaver is a writer, art therapist and performance artist, often exploring issues of belonging and history in her work. Like many Germans, she is haunted by the events of the Second World War, which inspired her to write
The Puppet Boy of Warsaw
, her first novel. She moved to Britain in 1996 and lives in Brighton.
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A Phoenix ebook
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Ebook first published in 2013 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson
This ebook published in 2014 by Phoenix
© Eva Weaver 2014
The right of Eva Weaver to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
With the exception of historical figures, including Janusz Korczak and those mentioned in the appendix, all the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-0-2978-6829-3
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