Bitter Prerequisites: A Faculty for Survival from Nazi Terror (review)

Memory is one of the five canons of rhetoric created by Cicero and derived from Aristotle. It is often connected to what is remembered from a speech or the memory needed for the delivery of a speech. Yet, memory for the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Jews was also focused on the future. The recording of events and their stories were formed into bodies of literature that eventually made those stories both timeless and universal. The Torah, Neviim, Judges, Kings, etc. as they are seen in their canonical versions have become the corporate memory of the Jewish people handed down from generation to generation. What will be the memory of the Shoah? Will it be the historical documents of the perpetrators or will it be the writings of the victims in the ghettos and camps or will it be the remembrances of the survivors? I have argued often that that memory will be some combination of all of the above. In any case it would be the statements of the survivors that would have lasting impact in educating our children about the moral, ethical questions derived from any study of the Shoah. In fact there is being discussed in places like California the idea that the testimony of survivors should be an anchor for teaching about the Shoah and genocide.

Bitter Prerequisites is one of those collections of oral history of the Shoah that have begun to show up in the last decade. This work is not a memoir. It is an oral history of a group of people who shared two things: their exposure to the Shoah and their being hired to teach at Purdue University. On the surface this seems to be at best a facile basis for a book and at first glance I felt this work was self-serving and an ego trip. Then I read the book. I was captured. Page by page, I found myself being drawn into the stories of each of these survivors. The book contains twelve survivor stories organized in four parts. Part one deals with Germany, part two deals with Austria, part three focuses on Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Hungary, and part four focuses on the experience of all twelve survivors in the United States.

While the entire survivor oral statements contained in this book are important and compelling, two specially stand out. The two I want to comment on are the stories of Joe Haberer and Bob Melson. Haberer and Melson are both founding faculty of Jewish Studies at Purdue. For many years Haberer was the editor of Shofar, the journal of both Midwestern and Western Jewish Studies Associations. Melson is a political scientist who teaches and writes on the Shoah and has an important book out comparing the Armenian genocide to the Shoah.

Haberer was a member of the famous “kindertransport” from Germany to England. His story is a poignant story of loneliness and depression, hope and discovery. What was certainly compelling was the story of his progression into Jewish identity and the development of Jewish Studies at Purdue. This story in an age of assimilation and demographic change for the Jewish community is both heartening and enlightening and should be the basis of discussions in classes introducing Jewish Studies as a field.

Robert Melson’s story is also compelling in a very different way. Melson also was a founder of the Jewish Studies program at Purdue. His story is one that could easily be made into a movie. A Jewish family in Poland makes a decision to pass as a Polish count and countess. They obtain copies of the baptismal certificates of a real count and countess, move to Krakow and pass. While in Krakow they start up a manufacturing business, à la Schindler, and proceed to make money. They entertain Nazi officials and dress well, and their son is told never to undress in front of others. This story is captivating, exciting, and compelling—even more so...