Daniel146;s Six

A wrenching story of a man8217;s quest for relatives killed by the Nazis

Killed by the nazis 8212; yes, but by whom, exactly?8221; Ever since his childhood in the 1960s, when old Jewish relatives in Florida would start crying as soon as he entered the room, Daniel Mendelsohn had been intrigued by the story of the dead relative he resembled, Shmiel Jager. Shmiel, with his wife and four daughters, perished in the Holocaust in Europe 8212; but for Mendelsohn, the real story is the story of their lives. His grandfather8217;s suicide 8212;whether from unbearable cancer pain, or from guilt at not having been able to save his brother 8212; becomes the starting point for his quest to find traces of the lost six.

Which makes this book part memoir, part work of imagination, and part enthralling detective story. For Mendelsohn, Auschwitz is in a sense the opposite of what he is interested in: he wants to know not about the vastness and scope of the tragedy, but about the particular 8212; about the six members of his family who were part of the Jewish community in the Polish village of Bolechow. After his grandfather8217;s death, when he opens the dead man8217;s wallet, he finds Shmiel8217;s letters. In January 1939 Shmiel had written to his cousin in America: 8220;Since by now the times that have arisen can only be called strange, if not indeed hard to believe, with the respect to the troubles of the Jews, I8217;ll hope all the more that you8217;ll be able to help me if only with a letter in response, if you can8217;t help me with anything else.8221;

Shmiel8217;s truck has been burned, and he wants his cousin8217;s help to buy another. His letters go on, in a chapter called 8220;The Sin Between Brothers8221;, and the words tear at our hearts. 8220;Although I know that in America life doesn8217;t shine on everyone; still, at least they aren8217;t gripped by constant terror.8221; 8220;If only the world were open and I8217;d been able to send a child to America or Palestine8230;8221; 8220;In life now there are so many opportunities for people to be so evil to one another8230;8221;

Chance encounters, scraps of conversations, hazy memories, tenuous grapevines 8212; the trail is heartbreakingly fragile. An old Ukrainian woman in Bolechow tells the Mendelsohn siblings about how 8212; to drown out the machine gunfire in which Jews were being killed 8212; her mother would start up the sewing machine. A Bolechow survivor telephones from Australia to say he had dated one of Shmiel8217;s daughters. Across continents and decades, as the dust slips away, a story becomes visible. Not one story but many overlapping and sometimes contradictory narratives, sometimes just a scrap of detail, or even just a word, or the utterance of a name.

Mendelsohn, who is a classicist, narrates the story of his search in great sweeping loops, much like his grandfather8217;s stories. The narrative is punctuated with reflections on Biblical stories, and eleventh-century and contemporary Biblical commentaries. At the heart of these reflections is the story of Cain and Abel. Wondering about the difference between the two commentaries, Mendelsohn asks a disturbing question: 8220;I wonder if it is easier for us8230; to imagine that maybe, after all, God could punish unfairly.8221; At the end of five hundred pages, as the world continues to simmer with anger and violence, the question remains with us. Along with Shmiel8217;s words: if only the world were open.