|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Madonna of the Open Fields
| Article
# : |
10781 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1993 |
2,141 Words |
| Author
: |
Juliana G. Pilon
Juliana Geran Pilon is director of programs for the Americas,
Asia, and Europe at the International Foundation for Electoral
Systems. Originally from Romania, she has most recently
written The Bloody Flag—Post-Communist Nationalism in Eastern
Europe: Spotlight on Romania, published by Transaction Press
at Rutgers University. |
KATERINA
Aharon Appelfeld
New York: Random House, 1992
212pp., $18.00
To describe the destruction of Jews in Bukovina--the eastern region of prewar Romania--Aharon Appelfeld uses an unusual narrator with electrifying effectiveness. Katerina is in fact the memoir of an old peasant woman who looks back on her life and in simple language reveals her love for the Jews that she comes to know, her revulsion at their systematic murder during the Second World War, and her growing awareness that she is slowly becoming a Jew herself. Katerina's conversion is neither religious nor intellectual but existential: her fate becomes intertwined with that of the people of Israel. She is chosen to bear their cross, and she comes to suffer their unspeakable fate. Yet after the initial shock, to which she reacts like a wounded animal, her resigned acceptance of God's will is ethereal, compelling, sublime.
The setting for Katerina is Appelfeld's home. Born in Bukovina sixty years ago, he was deported to a concentration camp at the age of eight and separated from his parents. After his escape shortly thereafter, alone, he spent three incredible years hiding in the forests of Ukraine, then joined the Russian army and eventually left for Palestine in 1946 at age fourteen. Appelfeld thus crafted the character of Katerina partly from himself: The wandering young woman who first ran away from her drunken father before he has a chance to abuse her sexually, who then works as a maid for one Jewish family and then others, inherits elements of the author's own odyssey. The fact that she is a woman--who does not deny her own erotic feelings, and is in turn victimized by men who desire her--does not detract from her more universal identity: Katerina as innocent, as orphan, as suffering child of God.
Her mother having died when Katerina was a small girl, she becomes an orphan who would never find her place among human beings except for the Jewish people--yet this only after "there are no more Jews on earth," her loneliness irremediable, at least on earth. At first unfamiliar with the habits of Jews, she comes to understand them and is horrified by the pogroms and ferocity of hatred.
Appelfeld, having grown up in a town where Jews and non-Jews lived together in considerable harmony, has little difficulty describing Katerina with empathy and even identifying with her. His rather irreligious upbringing, moreover,
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
