Who Is the Righteous Gentile in Yiddish Holocaust Narrative? Isaiah Spiegel’s FLAMEN FUN DER ERD and the Ambivalent Representation of Polish Catholicism

• In Event: Non-Jews in Yiddish Literature

Abstract

Isaiah Spiegel’s novel FLAMEN FUN DER ERD (recently translated as “Flames from the Earth: A Novel from the Lodz Ghetto”) provides an illuminating case study for rethinking the relationship between victims, perpetrators, and saviors in Holocaust narrative. Originally published in Israel in 1966, this autobiographical novel draws on manuscripts that Spiegel (1906-1991) wrote in the Lodz Ghetto, where he was imprisoned for over four years. The narrative is framed by a romantic plot involving Jews in the ghetto resistance movement, but the middle of the novel focuses on Poles living just beyond the walls of the ghetto: Nicodem, an old “bell ringer” who hides a Jew in a nearby church and Stefan Kaczmarek, a Polish tavern-keeper who betrays Nicodem to preserve his smuggling business. In his heroic act of self-sacrifice, Nicodem emboides the figure of the “righteous gentile,” and his death is dwelt upon in an excruciating and surprisingly-detailed scene. Why would Spiegel, writing in 1966, carve out a central role for a sympathetic member of the old Catholic clergy in his single full-length novel about the ghetto?

In this presentation, I offer several contexts for understanding Spiegel’s engagement with the righteous gentile trope. I suggest that while his elevation of the “noble Pole” appears to run counter to prevailing public sentiment in the post-Eichmann moment, the popularity of this novel (the Hebrew translation won a prize) suggests the enduring sentimental appeal of his sympathetic portrayal of the old Polish Catholic order. This appeal may have been heightened given the repression of Catholicism in postwar Communist Poland. While Nicodem’s efforts to protect the Jews ultimately prove ineffectual, he also seems to embody Speigel’s hopes for a possible postwar rapprochement between Jews and at least some elements of Polish society. Finally, I consider how Spiegel’s feelings of alienation as a Yiddish writer in postwar Israel may be read into his portrayal of a Pole who was out-of-sync with opportunistic younger Poles.

Author

• Julian Levinson, University of Michigan