DRAFT - NOT SENT

August 6, 2021

Dear Donald,
 
An inertia of my thinking keeps me preoccupied with the concept of family.  Anthropologists and sociologists have argued that the "family" is the primary and fundamental bond among human beings. That seems obvious to me, at least to the extent that the infant's survival is unconditionally dependent on its parent for nourishment and protection. But there is more ambivalence in the parent-child relationship than we usually care to recognize.  Consider the predicament of Abraham on the summit of Mt. Moriah when he agreed to sacrifice his son Isaac, father and son being rescued at the last minute by the appearance of a ram as a substitute.  Jesus was less fortunate than Isaac.  Jesus' divine father who allegedly ordained the crucifixion of his son, never relented. 

Pagan myths are even more drastic.  Kronos, the Titan, it is reported, perceived his sons to be such threats that he swallowed them all, except for Zeus, whose mother Rhea presented to father Kronos to swallow instead of an infant, a stone wrapped in diapers, making it possible for Grandmother Gaia to raise Zeus to manhood and to protect him from his father's voraciousness.  And, of course, Cain and Abel are classical evidence of the limits of family harmony.  Brothers are not always enamored of one another, to say the least.

All this in the context of the description of our Rosenthal family members, as recounted by Reinhold Busch, all of whom seem pleasant, friendly and easy to get along with, except, of course, my own grandfather, Joe Meyer, who spoiled the harmony of the family. About him Antonie Gerson wrote: “He was liked by nobody, particularly not by us children. He was always filing lawsuits and battling with lawyers.  He was a very domineering person. Besides, he was constantly borrowing money from the family which he repaid with wholly devalued currency. I remember that my father laughed and sent me out quickly to buy a few groceries, because during the inflation of 1923, prices were rising from day to day." If I considered it appropriate, I could supplement Antonie Gerson's criticism with many more derogatory accounts not only about my grandfather but also about his descendants, down to and including myself. One of the most valuable characteristics of my childhood, was my parents' propensity for language. Discussions were essential to family functioning. All experience was to be denominated and enumerated. Nothing was left unsaid. The code word was "Auseinandersetzung", "setting apart", in which each family member was to participate by relentless disclosure of his thoughts and feelings.  One might assume that because each of us was different, that restraint, self- effacement and silence were essential to keep peace, and that untrammeled expressions of individuality would make family life intolerable. As I grew up, I began to understand that these discussions, these Auseinandersetzungen, were in fact orchestrated, that our family life was like a series of musical performances where each of us "played" his part, and my mother was the conductor, who held it all together. Friendly, supportive comments were encouraged. Radical, sceptical criticism was reviled as traiterous apostasy. My parents died 34 and 31 years ago respectively.  For the past half century I hear the echo of my mother's voice: "Na, wenn wir mal tot sind, dann könnt ihr erst richtig über uns herziehen." (Well, when we are finally dead, you can really rake us over the coals.) 
As I review the "information" which I provided to Dr. Busch about my parents and my sister, not to mention myself, I become aware that I told nothing to which the subject would have objected, nothing that he would not have approvingly reported in his own behalf.  It is the sort of testimony which lawyers would deprecate as "self-serving".  When I reflect on "Verstreut über alle fünf Kontinente", I feel as if I were looking at a painting by Norman Rockwell, an account an extended family which is oblivious of, and immune to, pain and suffering, and I am startled, to the point of being frightened, since the edifying story told by Reinhold Busch is, after all, an account of the Holocaust in which at least 17 members of the model family were murdered, and all the others had their lives upended, where some recovered and others did not.  Thus this documentation of the Holocaust, its affirmation as history, reveals itself to be an existential, spiritual denial, such as is perhaps inevitable as the requirement for survival.

Jochen