Ich Bin Ein Jude: Travels through Europe on the Edge of Savagery

By Herb Brin

In a proud affirmation, “Ich bin ein Jude” – I am a Jew -- journalist and poet Herb Brin retraces the train routes over which boxcars transported millions of Jews to their bitter fate during the Holocaust. Boarding in Istanbul in 1978, Herb travels through Greece, Yugoslavia, and Austria, then onward to Poland, where he visits the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Majdanek, seeking the sorrowful stories of the Jews who lost their lives and families. Along the way, Brin searches for links to his and his people’s past. In the shtetl of Konin, where his grandfather lived, all traces of Jewish life, down to the cemetery, have been erased.
Herb Brin was well-known as a courageous journalist and publisher. But as an internationally known poet, he also built a world-wide following for his brash style and unflinching passion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Herb Brin
• Release date: Mar 31, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476261058

Herb Brin

Herb Brin (1915 – 2003) was born and raised in Chicago. Herb was an investigative reporter for the City News Bureau and Los Angeles Times, a world-recognized poet, and pioneering Jewish journalist. He founded the Heritage, a chain of Jewish community newspapers spanning southern California, where he served as editor, publisher and columnist. His books include: Conflicts, My Spanish Years, Wild Flowers, Nobody Died Laughing, Poems from the Rubio, Ich bin Ein Jude, and Justice, Justice. He is survived by three sons, Stan, David and Dan.

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Preface

In the proud affirmation, "Ich bin ein Jude (I am a Jew)," which he has taken as the title of his new book, Herb Brin has poured a lifetime of loving and fighting for his people.

With anguish, compassion, even fun and reverence, he has retraced the bitter road where decades ago, millions of Jews, penned and sealed into cattle cars, moved inexorably toward the gas ovens of Hitler’s Reich, which had turned Europe into a giant slaughterhouse.

Fun along such a journey? Encountering hostile (it seemed) Iraqis aboard a fleabag train heading for yesterday’s sorrows becomes an exercise in dark humor and warm friendship.

Boarding the now decrepit train at Istanbul, Brin relives not one murder on the Orient Express, but the killing of innocents, wearing – in life as in death – the yellow Star of David. As the train rolls through Greece, Yugoslavia and Austria, the legions of martyrs are once more pushed and prodded aboard as Nazi soldiers and their lackeys bark commands.

The dual journey of the present and the past (an unusual concept by the author) resumes on the "Chopin Express," clicking off the miles along tracks of eternity to Poland and the ultimate of ultimates: Auschwitz. Along the way, Brin desperately searches for links to his and his people’s past. In the shtetl of Konin, where his and Barry Goldwater’s grandfathers worked and prayed, Brin finds that all traces of Jewish life and death, down to the cemetery, have been erased.

Brin’s personal Travels Through Europe on the Edge of Savagery ends in a highly charged dramatic encounter, where the swastika tasted its first blood – the heart of Germany.

--Tom Tugend, University of California at Los Angeles

***

In Gratitude

Every newsman has the compulsion to write his one big book.

Alas, all mine are small ones, including Ich Bin Ein Jude. Covering the history of a people, once said, what is there to say but sigh?

I admit I had intended to present a broad canvas, but alas the painting (the book) contained its own brushmarks. I felt, watching from a distance, that this book wrote itself.

My gratitude, first, to Elie Wiesel, who encouraged me to do the book. His encouragement was heartening, and inspiring. Elie is part of my life forever.

In the process, I hasten to extend gratitude to those others who, in countless ways, made possible my strange journey on the edge of savagery.

Professor and Mrs. Abe Nasatir have been the super-consciences of all my writings, and to them my profound respects.

My three sons – Stan, David, and Dan – suffered through the original drafts and helped shape the final manuscript.

To Tom Tugend, senior associate editor of Heritage and my lifelong friend, gratitude for valuable assistance in clarifying the German language used in this volume. Professor Will Kramer scanned early drafts with his perceptive eyes and helped the project along.

UCLA bibliographer Shimeon Brisman was helpful in the early stages of translation of Elie Wiesel’s French preface to the book, and UCLA staff librarian Rudolf E. Bart was gracious in the actual translation of the preface.

I hasten to acknowledge the cover artistry of Dorothy Orr, one of the unusual West Coast artists. Gratitude also goes to Heritage staffers Bertha Bernstein and Helen Saab, who helped prepare the final drafts for publication.

A word of respect to Leo Bach, whose notes on Jewish life in Krakow play an important role in the story which I tell.

Finally, special thanks to Rabbi Alfred J. Kolatch, of Jonathan David Publishers, Inc., who had the courage to take on the publication of Ich Bin Ein Jude, knowing the usual problems in distributing such a work.

--Herb Brin

September 1, 1982

***

A Letter of Introduction

By Elie Wiesel

Cher Herb Brin:

Je suis content de vous avoir encouragé à écrire ce livre. J’espère qu’il touchera le lecteur comme il m’a touché, moi.

Qu’est-il exactement? Comment le décrire? Recueil de reportages, de chose vues, rêvées et vécues, de méditations poétiques et philosophiques, de souvenirs proches et lointains: c’est une somme d’expériences juives et humaines que vous nous livrez, cher Herb Brin. Et nous vous en savons gré.

Grâce à votre vocation de journaliste, vous savez nous faire voir et sentir hommes et paysages proches et lointains. Poète, vous possédez le don de faire vibrer let mots et même de les faire chanter. Juif, vous est conscient de votre devoir de témoigner pour notre peuple.

Vos pélerinages aux sources de notre mémoire commune – au fond de l’angoisse comme au coeur de la joie – sont bouleversants; ils sont à la fois simples et obscurs, lyriques et durs. C’est la gorge serrée que le lecteur vous suit en Pologne et de là, inévitablement à Jérusalem. Parfois vous lui parlez, mais il vous arrive également de parler à sa place.

Oui, vous avez bien fait de retourner là-bas, de l’autre côté de l’Histoire raisonneuse et raisonnable, pour écouter le dernier sage juif de Varsovie, pour voir les nuages qui passent au-dessus de Majdanek, pour déchiffrer les visages des êtres qui hantent vos songes.

On vous conseillé de ne pas considérer les Juifs comme s’ils étaient le Pipik du monde? La plaisanterie est déplacée et de mauvais goût. Nos ennemis seuls nous voient partout; on dirait qu’ils ne pensent à rien d’autre. Nous les intriguons, nous les obsédons: leur ferions-nous peur? Nous sommes leur idée fixe. Ils ne sont guère la nôtre. Notre vocation est universelle, et notre mission l’est aussi. Vous l’avez compris, vous. En parlant du fait juif, vous traitez du problème humain. Pour un Juif il serait impossible d’atteindre l’universel autrement que par son judaisme. Un Juif qui pense devoir renier son judaisme, ou même l’amojndrir, pour mieux aborder les questions générales, finira par parler à côté: son discours sonnera faux.

Voilà ce que je trouve dans votre volume: un amour passionné de notre peuple, et à travers lui, de tous les hommes qui sont capables et dignes de se réclamer de l’humanité.

Vous sentez le chant monter en vous, et c’est une melodie du passé lointaine qui se fera entendre; vous marchez dans les rues d’une capitale quelconque, et c’est le nom d’un prophète – Jonah? Isaie? Jérémie? – ou d’un poéte – David? – qui sera prononcé: vous ouvrez les portes du passé et vos souvenirs appellent des Juifs que j’ai rencontré, moi, ailleurs, en d’autres temps, sous d’autres cieux. C’est qu’un homme comme vous, un poète comme vous, ne peut pas et ne doit pas ne pas chercher ses frères parmis les morts et parmis les vivants.

Certes, on vous dit: mais les autres? Les Juifs n’étaient pas les seuls à souffrir, ni à périr? Après tout, ils étaient onze millions à subir la mort au mains des tueurs Nazis…N’écoutez pas, continuez à ne pas écouter. Poursuivez votre route. Dites-vous bien que lorsqu’un poète juif chante l’expérience et pleure la mort de ses frères, il va au-delà d’eux: c’est en les évoquant, qu’il rappelle tous ceux qui, pour d’autres raisons, ont connu leur sort. Soyons précis: si nous, Juifs, nous souviendrons de nos six millions de victimes, le monde se souviendra des autres aussi; si nous mêlerons les notres dans un vaste anonymat, toutes seront oubliées.

C’est donc contre l’oubli que vous élevez votre voix; et c’est pour illustrer la valeur du défi que votre chant retentit: ces Juifs russes que nous avons rencontré, vous et moi, ne sont-ils pas une prevue vivante que la mémoire juive – donc humaine et souveraine – ne sera jamais étouffée?

Dans ce livre, cher Herb Brin, vous avez su écouter les témoins. Or, vous le savez bien: qui écoute un témoin le devient.

--Elie Wiesel

Aseret Yemei Teshuva 5742

***

A Letter of Introduction

Translated from the French

By Rudolf E. Bart

Dear Herb Brin:

I am glad that I encouraged you to write this book. I hope it will move the readers as much as it has moved me.

What is it exactly? How can one characterize it? It is a collection of reports of things seen, dreamed about and experienced, poetical and philosophical meditations, memories from far and near. It is a summary of Jewish and universally human traits that you are offering us here. And we are grateful to you for them.

As a journalist, you are able to make us see people and scenery at close range and at a distance – and to get a feeling for them. As a poet, you have the gift of making the very words vibrate and even of making them sing.

As a Jew, you are conscious of your duty to be a witness for our people.

Your pilgrimages to the very sources of shared memories, to both the depths of anguish and of joy, are upsetting: they are simple and obscure, lyrical and harsh.

With a lump in the throat, we follow you into Poland and from there, inevitably, back one day to Jerusalem.

At times you are speaking to the reader; at other times you are speaking in his stead.

Yes, you have done well to return to that region beyond the cold facts of history, to let that last wise Jew of Warsaw speak out, to review those clouds that hang over Majdanek, to reveal and interpret the faces that still haunt your dreams.

Some people suggested to you that you should not see the Pipik of the world in the Jews. This is sheer mocking, and in bad taste at that. Our enemies claim that we are ubiquitous; it seems that they can’t think of anything else. We are intriguing them, we are haunting them; are we frightening them? We are an obsession to them. They can’t frighten us. Our calling is universal and such is our mission. You have grasped this truth: when you speak about the Jews, you speak of a problem that concerns all mankind. For a Jew it would be impossible to approach this universal problem otherwise than from a Jewish viewpoint. The Jew who might feel compelled to renounce his Judaism or to water it down in order to be able to speak better about universal problems would strike a wrong note; his voice would have a false ring.

This, then, is what I find in your work: a passionate love for your people, and through it, for all men who are worthy of being called humans. A song is rising out of your heart; a melody out of the remote past can be heard. When you are wandering through the streets of any capital city, the name of a prophet is on your lips – Jonah? Isaiah? Jeremiah? – or the name of a poet – David?

You