163256: A Memoir of Resistance (review)

Wilfrid Laurier’s Life Writing Series publishes autobiographical works by people ‘whose political, literary, or philosophical purposes are central to their lives.’ Michael Englishman’s 163256: A Memoir of Resistance clearly fits the parameters of the series. Born Michel Engelschman, Englishman resisted the Nazis in the 1940s and the neo-Nazis in the 1960s. More recently, convinced that educating the young offers a more effective way to resist racism and hatred, he has dedicated himself to Holocaust education. His memoir is inseparable from that educational commitment. Ending with his diary account of his participation in the March of the Living, he includes in an earlier chapter his answers to the most common questions students ask about the Holocaust. Those who have participated in Holocaust education will recognize both the questions and the answers. Survivors normally speak on the basis of their specific experiential knowledge, but the lessons that they hope the young will derive from their experience are general: ‘Racism and hatred is [sic] something that everybody must fight.’

At the end of his memoir, Englishman thanks his family for persuading him to tell his story and assisting him in telling it. The editors at Wilfrid Laurier might have helped a bit more; typos, grammatical errors, and awkward sentence construction do not add to the power of his account. The manuscript has been edited; one chapter was first published in Canadian Jewish Studies 4–5 (1996–97), 117–24. Englishman’s essay, ‘Neo-Nazis in Toronto’ appears in 163256 with minor changes under the title, ‘Déjà Vu.’ Surprisingly, 163256 does not acknowledge this prior publication; nor does it explain why Englishman no longer identifies ‘Irv’ as a detective, but rather as ‘a man whom I took to be a detective.’ In 1963, the mysterious ‘Irv’ informed Englishman of the neo-Nazi presence in Toronto. Englishman is equally cautious in no longer giving the names of executive members of the Canadian Jewish Congress who advised him to keep quiet when he told them about neo-Nazi plans to march in Allan Gardens.

Such caution does not factor into Englishman’s story of resistance. Although he believes that his memoir deserves attention because it is exceptional, in that it is authored by a Jewish Dutch Canadian and because he wants to show ‘how the two worlds of horror and love coexist,’ the memoir’s exceptionality lies elsewhere. Indeed the declared focus upon the coexistence of horror and love is undercut because Englishman says so little about his relationship with Hendrika Pels, the mother of the two children he had promised to protect if the children’s parents did not survive the war. When neither Englishman’s wife nor the children’s father returned from the camps, Englishman married ‘Rika.’ Repeatedly mentioning his loyalty in keeping his promise to Rika’s first husband and willing to tell funny stories about their children, Englishman may well think that his relationship with his wife is both private and irrelevant. Such silence is found in other Holocaust memoirs and is addressed in Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale I; My Father Bleeds History when Artie’s father directs him not to include private details, and Spiegelman then depicts Artie promising not to include exactly what his father has just recounted.

What Englishman offers his young readers, instead, is a story of luck and chutzpah. A young man gifted with all the right instincts, he recognized that he must help his Jewish neighbours in whatever small way he could. Initially his luck held, but as in most Holocaust memoirs, it eventually failed, and in May 1943 he and his first wife were deported. Englishman narrates his subsequent experiences in a manner that is graphic, matter of fact, and remarkable: repeatedly he escaped death, once by operating on his infected finger, and another time by complaining to German rocket scientists at Dora-Mittelbau that a vicious kapo wouldn’t let him work. A rebel from childhood, who never forgot the inadequacy of the adult advice to keep...