Portrait of an Authentic Schnorrer: Abrasza Zemsz in Richard Marienstras’s Memory

Introduction

Born in Moscow in 1919, Abrasza Zemsz was one of the many displaced non-religious Polish Jews who ended up in France after World War II. Like other refugees in the postwar period, he struggled to start a new life. He is of interest to us due to the world he inhabited; a Holocaust survivor stricken with poor health and unable to adapt to postwar French bourgeois life who simultaneously inhabited a space among a variety of postwar Parisian artists and intellectuals. An extremely gifted commentator on the art scene—including painting and cinema, literature and poetry—and intensely interested in postwar global politics, especially in France and Israel, Zemsz made a lasting impact on those with whom he came in contact.

A Polish soldier in World War II, Zemsz fought in 1948 for the future State of Israel but soon returned to Paris, where he became a student of the grammarian A.J. Greimas and the anthropologist André Leroy-Gouran. Most of all, he was close to Claude Lévi-Strauss. However, Zemsz’s weak health—a consequence of the war years and a poor diet in the immediate postwar years—prevented him from becoming an anthropologist in his own right. Nonetheless, he took part in the first archaeological missions in the caves of Lascaux. Zemsz befriended a large number of people in postwar Paris who were to become important artists, such as Francis Picabia and his daughter, and intellectuals such as Pietro Sarto, David Perlov, and Claude Olievenstein. He was well known in literary circles, socializing with and influencing Alina Szapocznikow, Emanuel “Tolek” Proweller, Richard Marienstras,¹ and Adolf Rudnicki.² Many other exiled Poles, both Jewish and non-Jewish, crossed paths with him, including Suzanne Weissfeld, Wanda Aftergut, Liliane Atlan, Bruno Durocher (Bronislaw Kaminski), and Czesław Milosz.

Most notable was Zemsz’s relationship with André Schwarz-Bart, author of Le Dernier des Justes (The Last of the Just). Schwarz-Bart benefited from numerous discussions with Zemsz, who introduced him to the idea of the Lamed-Vav, the Talmudic legend of the Thirty-Six Just Men. Thanks to Zemsz’s aid, one might say, Schwarz-Bart won the Goncourt in 1959, though he never recognized his debt to this “schnorrer.”³ Nor has Francine Kaufmann, who befriended Schwarz-Bart and knew about Zemsz’s important contribution, yet never set the record straight.

Zemsz did not find regular employment because he did not have the required degrees, but he did at one time teach as guest lecturer at the University of Vincennes. But he lived unmoored and became an errant in the French capital, living from many little jobs and financial and material help from a vast network of friends. He never raised a family. Ultimately, Zemsz, a man unable to create for himself a settled life after the rupture created by the war, grew more and more depressed; eventually he would bring a tragic end to his uprooted existence. He committed suicide by jumping out of the window of a hotel in Rue Feuillantines, close to la Rue Gay-Lussac, on September 8, 1979.

Zemsz was remembered by many of those who encountered him in Paris, both as an intellectual and a man struggling with the aftermath of the war. The below text explores Marienstras’s memory of him—as a man full of contradictions who decided to put an end to a life he felt was unbearable. This interview with Marienstras was conducted in Polish by Jolanta Kilian.⁴ She encountered Zemsz during her first student stay in Paris, and returned later, after his death, with the intention of writing a book on this fascinating man.⁵ Elisabeth Brami, the daughter of Emanuel Proweller, who was friends with both Zemsz and Marienstras, assisted with translation and research for this article, and kindly agreed to let us use two illustrations of paintings by her father.⁶ Irena Milewska also provided translation assistance.⁷

Interview with Richard Marienstras

Jolanta Kilian (JK):

Who was Abrasza Zemsz?

Richard Marienstras (RM):

He always used to send post cards. I met him a...