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Pavel's Letters (1999)

di Monika Maron

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Pavel was Monika Maron's grandfather. But she only remembers him in black and white, as he left his children behind in Berlin when he was deported to his native Poland, and afterwards perished in a concentration camp. As a grown-up with a son of her own, researching a documentary for German television, Monika discovers letters which her grandfather wrote to Monika's mother, Hella. Teasing her family's past out of the fog of oblivion and lies, one of Germany's greatest writers asks about the secrets families keep and about what becomes of the individual mind when the powers that be turn against it.… (altro)
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Reason Read: Reading 1001 July BOTM. This is a work of nonfiction in which the author Monika Maron looks into the life of her maternal grandparents. The grandfather was a Jew who had converted to Baptist before Hitler came to power and he married a Catholic girl who also converted to Baptist. They had 3 children, Hilla, Marta, Paul. Monika is the daughter of Hilla. Pavel is the grandfather and he was taken from his family and sent to a ghetto because he was Jewish and it did not matter that he was not a worshipping Jew, he still was Jewish. He was eventually killed but how is not known. Monika tries to discover her grandparents through letters and photographs. The three children became communist and lived in East Berlin. Monika eventually rejected communism so this is also the story of a family divided up by political idealism.

Highlights;
"..We often sense our ability to forget merely as an inability to remember."
"tend to think that coincidences and spontaneous decisions of the past have a meaning that is revealed only later,"
"Poverty is as relative a concept as illness: someone who wasn’t killed by it can find comfort in the fact that he is better off than the dead."
"know the feeling of helplessness when I try to explain to someone who didn’t go through this why we nevertheless didn’t go about with drooping shoulders, burdened by the outrage of our daily lives."
"those who imprisoned political opponents, oppressed Christians, banned books, walled in an entire people and unleashed the spies of a colossal secret service. What business did Pavel’s daughters, Hella and Marta, have among such people?"
"true to the faith in which he was raised. Pavel did not remain a Jew, Josefa did not remain a Catholic, Hella, Marta and Paul did not remain Baptists, and I, in my time, stopped believing in communism."

I liked her writing, it wasn't hard to read. I liked that it was set in East Germany (mostly) and that it examined WWII and Hitler from that perspective. I also liked how it questioned how someone could be a faithful communist under the same conditions of Hitler's Germany. ( )
  Kristelh | Jul 11, 2022 |
A project for a TV documentary leads the author to reflect on her relationship with her Jewish grandfather Pawel (whom she knows only through a box of letters written from the Ghetto of Bełchatów, where he was confined before being killed by the Nazis) and with her communist mother Hella. And through those relationships of course to get an insight into the ways that history interferes with our lives and personal feelings. Was Pawel so wise and tolerant in his last letters because of his experience of breaking with his own family when he left the Jewish faith? Was Hella such a staunch communist because she fell in love with and married a senior Party official? Did Monika herself become such a critic of the failings of the DDR because she was brought up to believe in the values that informed the anti-fascist struggle? Or vice-versa?

This is a very discursive, anecdotal sort of book, jumping about between "now" and "then", giving us little snatches of analysis of documents and photographs and then shifting to memories or speculations. But Maron has a lot of very interesting thoughts and questions: definitely the sort of book to make you reflect on your own family background and pose yourself a few questions about it. ( )
1 vota thorold | Nov 11, 2017 |
Pawels Briefe. Eine Familiengeschichte is Monika Maron biography of her family, spanning about a century from 1879 till the end of the Twentieth Century, the history of three generations of a Jewish family in Central Europe.

Sixty-odd pages into the book Maron quotes the German sociologist / philosopher Niklas Luhmann: Die Komponenten eines Lebenslaufs bestehen aus Wendepunkten, an denen etwas geschehen ist, das nicht hätte geschehen müssen. Das beginnt mit der Geburt. (p. 66).

The Marons are a family that originated from Kurow, near Lodz in Poland. In the 1920s the grandparents wanted to move to the United States, following acquaintances who had, but did not. Instead, they moved to Berlin and settled in the Neukölln area, where grandfather Pawel is described as an active member of the Communist Party, at a time when the then emerging Nazi Party started marching.

The rise to power of the Nazis leads to the persecution and destruction of the Jewish population in Germany and Poland, and by 1942 the grandparents are no longer alive. Monika's mother, Hella, Polish and half-Jewish is protected and survives the war in war-ravaged Berlin, where Monika grows up as "ein Kriegskind".

The third part of the book describes the author's life an career growing up in the German Democratic Republic (DDR). After Hella's second marriage in the 1950s, the family falls apart, and Hella loses sight of her brothers and sister.

Pawels Briefe. Eine Familiengeschichte is of interest to readers who are interested in the holocaust and Polish and German history. The title prominently refers to "Pavel's Letters" while, in fact, these letters play a very minor role in the book. The letters are not mentioned until page 112, and on page 120 the author mentions that many letters are lost. No letters are printed in the book. The author writes that the letters were her starting point to work on this family history.

The book is, of course, also a partial autobiography of the author, Monika Maron, and it is an interesting source on the history of the German Democratic Republic (DDR). As the first generation survivors of the holocaust gradually disappears, their children are likely to carry on describing the terrible fate of their parents and grandparent. The historical divide may produce a somewhat different type of description of that period. On the other hand, in this respect Pawels Briefe. Eine Familiengeschichte is somewhat ambiguous. The tree-partite structure of the book could be seen as a logical divide to describe the history of three generations, grand-parents, parents and children. However, by implication, this structure suggests that Monika's life in the GDR is another "thing that should not have happened". By extension, the author portrays herself as a victim, which balances unevenly with the fate of her parents and grand-parent.

Books remain obscure because there is a certain lack of interest in them, even though that may be unjustified. Another reason may be, that the book has not had enough exposure. Pavel's Letters was published in German in 2009, so the English translation may have only been on the market for less than two years.

Pawels Briefe. Eine Familiengeschichte is different from other Holocaust literature in various aspects. Firstly, we are entering an era in which most first generation eye witnesses and survivors cease publishing as a result of old age and natural death. Holocaust literature written by this generation of writers can be regarded as scar literature, focusing very strongly on personal experience of the inhuman system and the horrors of the concentration camps. To many readers this type of writing defines the holocaust experience.

The holocaust story will continue to be told for many more years to come. Not all first generation victims and witnesses were able to tell their story. It is very likely that over the next decades, personal accounts, diaries and memoirs, written over the past six decades will be published.

Children growing up in a family, with one or both parents being first generation survivors will go on and tell the story that was imprinted on them by their parents. However, to them these stories will increasingly be regarded as "family history" as in the subtitle of Monika Maron's book. This second or third generation will most likely describe the holocaust experience of their family in a broader context, involving a greater share of history leading up to and following the "Third Reich" period, and into describing their own lives.

The end of the "Third Reich" and the Fall of Berlin, also marked the creation of the German Democratic Republic. Germans who ended up living in so-called East Germany often could not tell their story. In addition, the failed experiment of the Socialist German Democratic Republic (DDR) is seen by some as a direct result of and prolongation of the horrors of the Second World War. Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the Unification of the two Germanies in 1991, especially in the past ten years, have seen a steady stream of (auto-)biographies describing authors' youth during the "Third Reich" and subsequent life in the DDR, viz. Günter de Bruyn's two-volume autobiography Zwischenbilanz. Eine Jugend in Berlin (Vol. 1) and Vierzig Jahre. Ein Lebensbericht (Vol. 2) (my review).

Readers of Monika Maron's Pawels Briefe. Eine Familiengeschichte expecting a traditional book about the holocaust will be disappointed. There aren't many details of horror, and Maron's grandparents simply vanish out of the picture. The title of the book, Pavel's Letters is somewhat misleading, if readers would expect primary source, authentic letters. There are no letters in the book. Pawels Briefe. Eine Familiengeschichte is of interest to readers who can appreciate the evolution of historical writing about the holocaust, and who are interested in the continuity of German history before, during, and after the Second World War. ( )
2 vota edwinbcn | Dec 29, 2012 |
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So wird Monika Marons Familiengeschichte zu einer subtilen Auseinandersetzung mit der Lebenswirklichkeit zu Zeiten bewegter und dunkler deutscher Geschichte. Auf eindrucksvolle Weise versucht sie herauszuarbeiten, warum diese Epoche so sehr von Opportunisten und von "Überzeugungstätern", die die wahre Tragweite ihres Handelns und Nichthandelns nicht überblickten, geprägt wurde. Dabei beleuchtet und differenziert sie einfühlsam das Denken, Handeln und Fühlen von Einzelpersonen, die unter dem direkten Einfluß ihrer jeweiligen gesellschaftlichen Begleitumstände standen und maßt sich bei der Reflexion des Lebens, das unter Nationalsozialismus und SED-Diktatur geführt wurde, keine end- und allgemeingültigen Wahrheiten an.
 
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Pavel was Monika Maron's grandfather. But she only remembers him in black and white, as he left his children behind in Berlin when he was deported to his native Poland, and afterwards perished in a concentration camp. As a grown-up with a son of her own, researching a documentary for German television, Monika discovers letters which her grandfather wrote to Monika's mother, Hella. Teasing her family's past out of the fog of oblivion and lies, one of Germany's greatest writers asks about the secrets families keep and about what becomes of the individual mind when the powers that be turn against it.

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