‘My Grandfather’s Gallery’ by Anne Sinclair

 

Based on extensive research, the author describes what happened to the Paris art gallery that her grandfather, Paul Rosenberg, owned and directed in the first part of the twentieth century, until the invasion and occupation of France by the Germans in 1940. When France was taken over by the Germans all Jews, including the Rosenbergs, were deprived of their citizenship and property. In its heyday the Rosenberg Gallery exhibited the works of painters such as Matisse, Braque, Picasso and others, with whom Paul Rosenberg maintained warm relations and in some cases, especially that of Picasso, a close friendship. Many of these artists were defined as ‘degenrate’ by the Nazis, although that did not prevent them from using these works for their own ends, often selling them to museums and collectors who paid handsomely for them.

The imposing building at 21 Rue la Boétie which housed the gallery is still standing, and Anne Sinclair describes with pride the moment when she was honoured with the task of unveiling the white marble plaque on the façade of the building commemorating her grandfather and the artists with whom he had been associated. The plaque was the initiative of the present owner of the building, a certain M. Thélot, who had come across the author’s previous book,’21 Rue La Boétie,’ about the gallery and its association with the artists of the time.

While this book presents some material that is to be found in the previous one, it focuses to a greater extent on the character of the author’s grandfather, his relations with the painters he exhibited, and the spoliation and expropriation of his property and the contents of the gallery by the Nazis. On the basis of her research in both private and public archives, Anne Sinclair describes the process by which the Nazis seized works of art. She also names several of the French individuals who aided and abetted them in this process.

Anne Sinclair is pitiless in describing the actions of such individuals as the concierge of the building and the secretary of the art gallery, people whom the Rosenberg family – which lived above the gallery – considered to be friends, in enabling the Nazis to take over the building and seize its concents. What had once been an art gallery became the IEQJ (Institute d’Etude des Questions Juives, Institute for the Study of Jewish Questions), festooned with anti-Semitic posters and slogans and the centre of anti-Jewish propaganda in France. Individuals who had come into contact with the Rosenbergs after they fled from Paris and sought refuge in the vicinity of Bordeaux also participated willingly in the looting of what property—mainly art works—they had managed to take with them.

Ultimately, with the help of Alfred Barr, Paul Rosenberg’s friend and the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the family was able to enter the USA after making their way across Spain to Portugal. They spent the war years in New York, where Anne was born, and Paul managed to establish his gallery there. Once the war was over, however, they returned to France and Paul began his campaign of trying to obtain compensaton and reclaim the property that had been stolen from him. This involved going through courts in France, Germany and Switzerland, and Sinclair assesses that he managed to obtain about sixty of the four hundred valuable paintings that had been in his possession before the war.

In an ironic twist of history, it was Paul’s son, Alexandre Rosenberg, a lieutenant in the Free French army under General Leclerc, who was one of the Resistance members who stopped and liberated the last train of looted art that the Nazis were trying to send to Germany. Alexandre eventually took over the running of the gallery from his father, but for various reasons eventually decided to wind the business down. Many of the paintings recovered by Paul Rosenberg were donated to museums in the USA and France.

 

Music and Politics

 

Two politicians in Israel recently referred to music in one context or another. This made me prick up my ears and pay attention, which is not something I usually do when I come across statements by politicians, in Israel or anywhere else.

The first was the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. When asked why he preferred to stand trial for the crimes and misdemeanours of which he is accused, he replied (not his exact words, but the gist of them): “The judges in Jerusalem go to synagogue and the judges in Tel Aviv go to the Philharmonic.” What he was implying was that the judges in Jerusalem are honest, god-fearing people, while the ones in Tel Aviv are hedonistic heathen.

As someone who prefers attending a concert by the Philharmonic to going to a synagogue service, I find that statement and its implications inherently offensive, even barbaric, indicating what is to me an incomprehensible antipathy to the high culture embodied in classical music and a preference for chauvinistic traditionalism. I would hope, however, that members of Israel’s judicial system, even if observant Jews living in Jerusalem, would not allow their decisions to be swayed by religious considerations. But of course, there’s no way of knowing how things will turn out in the final event. On the other hand, what can one expect from a prime minister who appoints a Minister of Culture who makes no secret of her disdain for opera, classical music, world literature, and anything associated even vaguely with ‘Kulchur,’ to use Ezra Pound’s term.

The other, less senior, politician, one Yoaz Hendel, who is a member of the Blue-White party, referred to the differences in Israel’s population as being exemplified in the fact that some of them come from backgrounds that involve attending concerts in Vienna while others come from an environment where the beat of the ‘darbuka’ (a kind of drum used in music originating from North Africa) prevails. This statement, apparently made in an attempt to describe Israel’s cultural diversity, was pounced upon by interested parties and used as a political weapon to denigrate the supposed tenet of ‘cultural superiority’ held by Israelis of European origin.

How much truth there is in either statement is open to question. To condemn all judges who attend concerts of classical music, whether in Tel Aviv or anywhere else, seems to me to be the height (or perhaps depths) of prejudice and ignorance. Not only is that statement a sweeping and probably erroneous generalization, it is also irrelevant. But I suppose at a time when Netanyahu is standing with his back to the wall and facing a future criminal trial as well as possible humiliation in the upcoming general election, no statement can be regarded as too outrageous given the situation.

As for the cultural diversity of Israel’s population, making a contrast between western classical music and the music preferred by that segment of the population that originates from North Africa is too stark and simplistic. There are infinite variations and groupings regarding cultural and musical preferences between the two extremes, as well as some cross-over of preferences between and among groupings. But politicians are prone to speak in generalisations and over-simplifications, whether in order to gain attention, win votes or simply pander to their supposed electorate.

The bottom line is that as Israel’s ever-more-demoralized population prepares to go to the voting booth for the third time in a year, with no foreseeable realistic hope of avoiding a fourth round, its politicians are resorting to increasingly outrageous statements aimed at rousing the electorate from its inertia and possibly even changing its mind about whom to vote for.

I have never voted for Netanyahu, and his latest antics convince me that I never will. As for Yoaz Hendel, well, he’s still young and ambitious, probably eager for attention, no matter how it’s achieved. He has claimed that his words were taken out of context, but even in context politicians should be very careful about what they say. And even more so, about what they do.

 

The Pervasiveness of Anti-Semitism

By some strange coincidence – or perhaps not – in the same week as many world leaders gathered in Jerusalem to mark (celebrate?) the 75^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I was in the middle of reading a book about one child’s experience of anti-Semitism. And that child’s experience reminded me of one of my own at a similar age.

The event described in the book ‘O Vous frères humains’ (O ye Human Brethren). by French author Albert Cohen took place in Marseille in 1905, on the author’s tenth birthday. As he was walking home from school he encountered a street vendor around whom a small crowd had gathered. Fascinated by the objects on sale, the child bought some trinkets with the money his mother had given him for his birthday. Noticing his dark curly hair and dark eyes, the vendor proceeded to hurl epithets at him, ‘Dirty Jewboy! We don’t like bloodsucking Yids here, Shove off.’ etc. Adding insult to injury, the people standing around him laughed or did nothing.

Anguished and stunned, the boy wandered away and the rest of the book consists of the thoughts that run through his head, his inability to reconcile the insults he has heard with the knowledge of his parents’ kindness, the history of the Jews, the biblical injunction to ‘love thy neighbour,’ compounded by Christianity’s teachings of kindness and love. Worse still, as he wanders along, the boy comes across slogans such as ‘Death to the Jews,’ and ‘Dirty Jews,’ scrawled on walls, and these only serve to intensify his confusion and desolation.

Of course, the emphasis at the gathering to mark the liberation of Auschwitz was on the wholesale massacre of the Jews of Europe, and justifiably so, but Albert Cohen points out that the anti-Semitism he encountered as a child, and which came not long after the Dreyfus trial in France, was endemic throughout most of Europe, and eventually led to the Holocaust, which is now known officially in France by the Hebrew word Shoah.

And the anti-Semitism that pervaded Christian Europe even found its way to my ten-year-old self, as I lay in hospital in London, with a suspected (but eventually unconfirmed) case of scarlet fever. No visitors were allowed, though I was able to receive parcels of sweets and chocolates, and even the occasional much-yearned-for reading material. The nurses, many of them Irish, were practical, generally getting on with the job in hand without bestowing great affection on their young patients. My one consolation was being able to listen to the ward radio, with the customary sequence of light music and talk programmes broadcast in those days on the BBC’s Light Programme

One day, the bed nearest the radio became vacant, and I asked Maureen, one of the nurses, whether I could move there. She helped me with what I thought was a good will. But when I found that my arm was just too short or the bed too far away for me to reach the radio to adjust the volume, I asked if it could be moved a bit nearer to me. At that she exploded. ‘You Jews,’ she said. ‘Next thing you’ll want to sit at the right hand of God!’

I had never heard that phrase, had no idea what it meant, but knew instinctively that it was an insult. I had never been slighted before for being Jewish (or not knowingly, as there were probably others I was too naïve to recognize as such), and felt totally crushed by what the nurse had said. Alone in my hospital bed I began to cry, and just could not stop. The separation from home had been long and hard, and this was just the last straw. I continued to cry, refusing to answer the doctors’ and nurses’ questions as to the reason for it, as that was in fact something I was unable to put into words. Screens were put round my bed and medical staff peered round them at me from time to time. Eventually it was decided that I should be discharged. And so it was that at last I was able to go home and be reunited with my family.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, this little incident was nothing very grave, though how a nurse can bring herself to insult a ten-year-old child in hospital escapes me. The age-old spectre of religious and cultural hatred of Jews, of being castigated for being different, the myth of their supposedly grasping nature and sense of superiority can– and does – pop up unexpectedly anywhere at any time. It makes me wonder how many of those world leaders’ declarations of ‘never again’ and ‘we will never forget’ will stand the test of time.

‘O vous frères humains’ by Albert Cohen

Albert Cohen wrote this book jn 1972 when he was eighty years old and approaching death, as he states early on in the book. It describes his experiences and emotions when, on his tenth birthday, he encountered a street vendor in Marseille, where he was living at the time. A small crowd had gathered around, and the boy was fascinated by the colourful goods the vendor was selling, so bought some trinkets with the money his mother had given him for his birthday. The vendor noticed the boy’s dark hair and eyes and began insulting him for being Jewish, telling him to ‘shove off, scum,’ and ‘we don’t like dirty bloodsucking Jews here.’ The people around him either laughed or kept quiet, adding to the boy’s pain.

Stunned and anguished, the boy left the group and wandered through the streets, trying to understand what had happened, coming up with all kinds of fantasies, analysing the epithets that had been hurled at him, and wondering why it was his fate to be so accursed and reviled.

The remainder of the book consists of the whirlwind of thoughts and ideas that go through the mind of that ten-year-old boy, associations with biblical events and characters, the history of the persecution of Jews throughout the generations. Particularly prominent is the association with Christ and Christianity, whose principal teaching is ‘love for others,’ clearly taken from the biblical injunction to ‘love thy neighbour.’ The irony of this association recurs throughout the book, as the reviled Jewish child tries to reconcile the insults that have been hurled at him and his race with his affection for his mother and other people, whom he knows to be good and kind. All the time, as he wanders aimlessly through the streets of the city, seeing people talking and laughing as they sit in cafes, his mind is churning, trying to find ways to make non-Jews like him, thinking up all kinds of wild and unlikely strategies and strategems to achieve this.

Addng insult to injury, as he wanders along, in a turmoil of emotions, the child encounters the words ‘Death to the Jews,’ and ‘Dirty Jews,’ scrawled on walls. These slogans only add to his confusion and distress, and suddenly he seems to see them wherever he turns. He is a child, but his thoughts are expressed in the language of an adult, with repeated use of a rich and varied vocabulary. The phrases used to abuse him continue to reverberate in his head, alongside his understanding of Jewish and general history, his expression of patriotic love for France, and his aching desire to love non-Jews and be loved by them.

Acknowledging that he himself was spared the horrors of the Holocaust, yet able to describe the situation and the emotions it aroused in the victims, the author points out that there is a direct line between the germ of hatred of Jews that has persisted for thousands of years and the death camps of the Holocaust in the supposedly enlightened twentieth century.

At the conclusion of the book the child returns home, only to encounter his parents as they are on their way back from the police station, where they have gone to report his disappearance. At home he tells his parents what happened as they sit in his parents’ bedroom, and the three of them weep together. In the final chapter the author issues a plea to all humankind to be kind to one another and put an end to hatred.