Love and Obsession at the Time of Exile

By Alexander Askanas

This is a historical fiction novel about the 1968 Jewish exile from Poland.
In 1968, the Polish Communist government started an anti-Semitic action under the pretext that the Polish Jews were taking the Israeli side in 1967 Sixth-Day War. The Communists “encouraged” the Jews to leave the country.
The encouragement came in the form of firing Jews from their job, expelling them from their universities, or generally humiliating them.
Approximately two-thirds of the Polish Jews left for Israel, the USA, or Scandinavia. In 1968, there were only tiny remnants of the once largest European Jewish community. Out of approximately thirty thousand Jews, the twenty thousand left and their citizenship was renounced. Those were the survivors of the Holocaust or their children. This put a stain of shame, which is hard to erase, on the Polish Communist government. The story of this exile of 1968 is told by a doctor who left for the USA and is engrossed in an obsessive love for a young Polish-Jewish woman living in France.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796083347

Alexander Askanas

The author is a Manhattan cardiologist recently retired. This is his third historical fiction novel in English. Black Swastika, Red Swastika was published in 2009. He Went to Hell, It Was on His Way was published in 2012, and in 2018, he had several short stories published in Polish in Midrasz, a Polish-Jewish cultural magazine. He emigrated from Poland in 1969 due to the anti-Semitic action of the Communist government. His early childhood was spent in the Warsaw ghetto.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

B EFORE WWII, POLAND had the most significant European Jewish community of 3.3 million. Three million were murdered by Nazi Germans, but some escaped to the east, just to be taken over and captured by the Soviets. When after the war, those who survived the labor camps and the Siberian exile returned to Poland, they joined about thirty–forty thousand Jews who miraculously survived in Poland. In the post-war years, frightened by the murderous pogroms, almost all the Jews left for Palestine (later Israel), America, and Western Eu rope.

In the year 1968, which is the subject of this book, there were approximately thirty thousand of the Jewish remnants in Poland.

The Polish Communist Party unleashed an anti-Semitic action, encouraging Jews to leave Poland. The encouragement took the form of firing Polish Jews from their jobs and from the military forces and the expulsion of both students and the faculty from their universities. Some students were conscripted to the military and were assigned to the penal squads. The minuscule Jewish community was humiliated and discredited. Several thousand Jews left the country, marking Poland with the stain of shame for chasing away the remnants of the Jews whom the Nazi Germans had not managed to kill.

ADAM

M AYBE ADAM WAS not the best student in his class at the Warsaw Medical School, but he was very close to the top. Therefore, it was not at all surprising that, after his internship, he had landed an excellent position in the best hospital in Warsaw. It was all to the combination of good grades, a little bit of luck, and a good dose of nepotism. Yes, nepotism. His father had been the director of a department in this hospital. Strangely enough, in Poland of 1954, nepotism wasn’t necessarily an unethical act. As the joke goes, nepotism had been one of the very few human feelings that remained in Communism. This regime was devoid of empathy, compassion, and common sense. Therefore, as always, human nature had to compensate for the defects of the system. The only other human feeling remaining in Communism had been the ever meaningful personal connection. Nothing had persisted, however, of any such minor rights and prerogatives, like justice, equality, personal dignity, and freedom, but this analysis belongs to historians. This had been an extraordinary time, and this was how life worked in spite of all obstacles and impediments with which Communism had managed to clog the human existence and to cramp science. One had to get used to the fact that, in Poland, everything had been turned upside down, and one had to try to make the best o f it.

WARSAW, HOSPITAL

A FTER THE HECTIC years of learning the art and science of cardiology, Adam had also begun to doing research. He wanted to achieve something new and essential. Adam fantasized about some grand plans. Namely, he aspired to improve cardiology by bringing it closer to the level of medicine in America. He was ambitious, according to the people who liked him, but arrogant to those who di dn’t.

The best example of both was the answer Adam gave at the entrance exam at med. school. Usually, a candidate, when asked why he or she wanted to be a physician, would answer, Because I want to help people.

He replied, Because I want to treat heart patients not the way it is now done, but the way it should be.

The level of cardiology at that time was dismal, not much better than before WWII. The standing of Polish medicine had been at least thirty years behind that of the Western world. The best hospital in Warsaw was built in the nineteenth century, and its equipment and the facilities had not improved much from the time of its initial construction.

Furthermore, patients with heart diseases were merely treated by one month of bed rest. Adam worked obsessively, as if there was a limited time left for him. Was he now prescient? In the eight years, Adam had published more than twenty-five papers and coauthored a book.

Then he read in a cardiology journal that a cardiologist in Sweden was able to take an image of the heart valves through ultrasound. Adam had decided to take images of other structures of the heart, also using ultrasounds. Unfortunately, no commercial cardiac ultrasound machines had been available yet, neither in Poland or, for that matter, anywhere else in the world. Thus, he had to improvise his own. Fortunately, Adam was able to convince a scientist from the Polish Academy of Science to lend him the ultrasonic testing apparatus he used to examine the flaws in the metal. Adam’s friend, Mario, an excellent cardiologist, who was also an electronic wizard, connected this machine to a spare monitor and a recorder, therefore creating a primitive cardiac echo machine.

After two years of work, first on dogs and later with patients, they were able to measure precisely the thickness of the wall of the heart, which was quite an achievement. Two of their papers, describing the progress of the investigation, had already been published. Right then, he was writing their final article for an American journal. With the stronger ultrasound machine, they were likely be able to take an image of the entire heart. Before writing his most significant work, he desperately needed some rest. He was exhausted, working without any break. He practically hadn’t seen his wife and daughter. Ula, his wife, had also been busy organizing a symposia for the foreign physician guests. She was a neurologist and worked in the same hospital as Adam.

He got a week off and was able to arrange a room in the House of Journalists in Kazimierz. There were but very few comfortable places where one could stay in this town. Therefore, like almost everything in Poland, this too was arranged through personal connection.

KAZIMIERZ

K AZIMIERZ WAS A small, picturesque town on the Vistula River not far from Warsaw. Historically, it had a predominately Jewish population. Now there were almost no Jews in Kazimierz. They perished in the Holoc aust.

Adam packed a small bag and drove his Škoda to Kazimierz. It was early March of 1968, the weather had been quite mellow, slightly warmer than usual for this time of the year. He came here often to this pretty little town. Kazimierz was an excellent place for a short vacation, close to Warsaw, decent roads. He liked to drive. It relaxed him. There were not many private cars in Poland at this time. It was hard to buy a new car unless you were a party boss. You had to have a special coupon or, like in his case, to have a personal connection. It was good to be a doctor; doctors knew many people. Here was the chance for personal connection that was so necessary in post–WWII Poland, which was now further complicated under the current Communist regime.

The journalists’ hotel was beautifully located at the top of the hill and with a great view of the river. Adam registered and went to his room to drop his bag, then he went to the little bar to have a sandwich. The bar was well attended by the journalists but didn’t serve any food. Only alcoholic drinks were there. Just by a lucky chance, he run into Julek, his good friend from the high school who worked now in the daily Warsaw Life.

Julek, surprised to see him in the journalists’ resort hotel, patted him on the back. What are you doing here, Adam? Now, are you a newspaperman?

No, old man, I did no fall that low. I just like your hotel.

Julek came closer and whispered in his ear, I need to tell you something important. You better order a drink. Believe me, you may need one.

Julek was drinking Romanian brandy. Adam wouldn’t touch this swill. He ordered 50 grams of chilled vodka to prepare himself for the bad news.

Listen, Adam! Continued Julek, Gomułka, the party chief, had a speech at the trade union meeting. He vehemently accused Polish Jews of morally supporting Israel during the Six-Day War. He called them the fifth column (like in the Spanish Civil War). The audience responded not only with applause but also with anti-Semitic shouts and slurs. I suspect this is going to get ugly. Remember, you did not hear this from me. Better, let’s have another drink.

After hearing this dreadful report, Adam ordered another 50 gram.

He was upset for a while but told himself that he was supposed to rest here and so decided not to delve on this disturbing news. Nevertheless, a stubborn thought of the threat of another wave of anti-Semitism came to his mind.

Adam went to his room. The room was small and contained a narrow bed and a bedside table, but there was a super-luxury for those times, a private bathroom. He took a shower and tried not to think about those new political shots against the Jews. For a moment, losing his attention, he just stared into the mirror. Then he imagined seeing Gomułka delivering the preaching like speech in his slow monotonous voice, Fifth column, fifth column. What the shit has been going on?