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“This is a Holocaust story of quite a different sort than we’re used to.”
Menachem Kaiser is a writer currently living in Brooklyn, NY. He grew up in Toronto, Canada, has a BA from Columbia University and an MFA from University of Michigan, and was a Fulbright Fellow to Lithuania. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, New York, BOMB, Vogue, and elsewhere.
Plunder
by Menachem Kaiser
Houghton Mifflin, 2021
Reviewed by Ralph Wintrob
TORONTO, December 17, 2021 – Plunder is a word that conjures up images of forcible theft of treasures for personal gain or national booty.
And that’s, in part what author Menachem Kaiser is writing about, the theft of Holocaust-era property or art treasures and his effort to regain what once belonged to his family.
But the book in fact is much more than that. It’s a personal journey, vigorously told, into the far reaches of myth and memory, how differently the Holocaust is perceived and used, how complicated simple stories can get. Indeed every chapter is an adventure in discovery, on so many levels, that truth and justice are elusive, but the journey is illuminating and elevating…and engrossing. He chews over what it all means, just as we would in his place.
At no point in his journey through Poland, spanning several years, does he ever feel threatened. Most people he meets are friendly and helpful. That’s one surprise. Only bureaucracy proves obdurate. That’s no surprise. But every experience is transforming, and more important than the lessons learned.
Early in the game, Kaiser discovers that a memoir written by what turns out to be a near relative, about an army of slave labourers, mostly Jewish, forced to build a labyrinth of tunnels for the Germans, to hide their loot, or conduct scientific experiments for nefarious purposes, is used by an army of treasure hunters as a guide to hidden entrances to the maze. The memoir was written on scraps of paper bags that held cement, that were hidden under latrine floors in the many subcamps the relative was assigned to. He recouped every single scrap after the war and had them printed, first in Polish, then in Hebrew, having finally settled in the newborn Jewish state. They describe in horrific detail the brutal treatment of the slave labourers. But that part was totally ignored by the treasure hunters. The contrast made such an impression on him that he describes visiting each and every one of those subcamps, just to connect with one aspect of his family’s past. And he tries to come to terms with what the difference means. Indeed, he thinks deeply about the meaning of every experience he describes in the book.
The book is framed loosely around Kaiser’s attempt to regain title to a building his family once owned. The arguments for and against this enterprise take up almost four equally charged pages But it soon becomes a side issue. As Kaiser describes it, what becomes more important is “to declare your legacy, to assume a role in a story you can never fully understand, in a spiral of questions about justice, morality, and memory.”.
No question, this is a Holocaust story of quite a different sort than we’re used to. It works on so many levels…personal growth, memory retrieval, and encounters with universal issues in a most personal way. The final episode of the book, which he shares with a fellow treasure hunter leaves us hanging. But that’s OK. There are no definitive endings to this story, just tentative endings. That’s life. And as he describes it, it’s been a glorious adventure. We can all easily identify. Bravo, Menachem. We’re with you every step of the way.
Credits: mnchm.com; Beowulf Sheehan
Do you have comments or questions about this article? Ralph Wintrob can be reached at cjnonline@protonmail.com
Ralph Wintrob is a former journalist, teacher-librarian
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