Mathias B. Freese

About a year ago Jane and I met a Holocaust survivor whose name, for my purposes, will be Josef Vekkony. An author of a ghost-written book about his experiences during the Holocaust, he lectures around Henderson, Nevada and elsewhere. He is probably past seventy and is a retired businessman. Something of a celebrity here, I now view him as the Holocaust “expert,” used by jewish agencies when next faced with an oubreak of anti-Semitism. All this back story is necessary as I was readily repelled when he gave me his business card which listed him as a Holocaust survivor — that was a new one on me. In fact, shortly after I wrote an extended short story called “Shoah Business,” exploring in fiction the correspondence he and I might have over this issue. I was really annoyed by his aggrandisement. I never published it. I believe Josef Vekkony is oblivious to what he is and what he does — welcome to the world.

I recall giving him my book and receiving his which I read. I never heard from him again, although I expected he might read my book and get back to me on it; but that was not to be and I soon gave up on that wish. During the year there was a scene in a local high school in which a gym teacher made remarks that essentially denied that the Holocaust had ever occurred. Local jewish groups got involved;  Mr. Vekkony was called in to talk to a large group and gave what I imagine is his silver bullet speech. I caught that talk on YouTube and was appalled in how he dealt with the students. After all, he is not a teacher but some of his techniques were ridiculous and more than ineffective — more on that later on. (I was so aggravated by his performance that I spent time drafting a letter to a local newspaper about it; it went unpublished.) Apparently he is the local Jewish fireman on call to put out anti -Jewish blazes. If you want to read my take on the Holocaust, see “On the Holocaust,” in Pages on this site; I gave it to a group of survivors and military personnel at an air force base in Arizona, about three years ago.

I am offended by Shoah business, the subtle and blatant kind. Enough said! On Sunday 27 June I received this e-mail from LinkedIn.

Matt,

I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

-Josef

All the latent anger emerged. Jane and I chatted. She knew my anger and suggested that I may want to play the game, that is, connect up with him, that my book on the Holocaust might get some readership and whatever else the politically correct way might do for me. Jane  presented an option, but she knew that was not the way I would go. I sent this e-mail.

Mr. Vekkony: I read your book; you did not read mine or you did not respond; in any case, I have significant differences in how you go about presenting yourself. A Holocaust survivor is not an occupation which you apparently feel it is. Here we part. I will not become part of your network which only serves to advance your own narrow needs.

There is a curious synchronicity here; the other day I really considered to dispose of Vekkony’s book as I had enough of him as well (in trash now). The book reminded me of his narcissism if not grandiosity. in any case, after a year or more, he writes me so that we can link up professionally, ah the world of the business mind. Clearly he was scouring through business cards to extend his network — but not one word to another author about the Holocaust. Or to even say hello.

Vekkony answered the e-mail within minutes: here it is as it appeared with spelling errors, etc.

You are Right Holoasust Survivor is not an occupation. Under choices opf occupation, Retired or Lectuer was not listed. I did not list myself as a Holocaust survivor, but as a Phylantropist. “As to serve my narrow needs.” World wide there are around 140,000 people, who have listened, to my 560 lectures. At home I’ve around 7,000Letters, from my followers. You will have a hard time to convince these people. You are entitled to your opinion. By the way what was the title of your book? I’m getting a lot oof b ooks to read. May be I’ve not yours. No hard feeling on my side. god bless you and have a great life. Sincerely Josef Vekkony.

When I met him a year back, he made special note to Jane and I of how many lectures he had given! Tragic. I thought less is more applies not only to architecture but to life, to writing especially.

I wrote back:

You condemn yourself by your own words — you have “followers”; I have your business card given to me by you which lists you as a Holocaust survivor; yes, I am angry at you because you are into Shoah business and have very little insight into your own behaviors. I also watched you with young people at a recent school event and you simply have no idea how to deal with these kind of children — “Repeat after me, Never again!” {Jane finds that “refrain” personally distasteful.} Are you so simple that you believe people will change because of your exhortations? You are the one with the narrow mind; as an English teacher and psychotherapist I know what I am speaking about. You don’t. Any further correspondence will be deleted.

I had so much more to say but I left it at that.

I have no grand conclusion to come up with. It’s not the first nor last time that Jews will differ over the meaning(s) of the Holocaust; but I will not have it merchandised, especially by a dim-witted Jew who hasn’t the foggiest notion of what he is about. Survivors are human beings not immortals — I direct you, once again, to “On the Holocaust” at this site for further clarification of my point of view.

I think I know, rather, I believe, how my writing mind works, which really means I know shit about it. In any case it goes like this: sink into books about the Holocaust or just this one and let it all percolate and seep through my unconscious filters until it fills up the acquifer. I had read Clendinnen’s book several years back and included a few terms into The i Tetralogy and returned to it for a second read. An Australian historian whose books mostly deal with the Aztec experience in the Americas, for her own reasons she began to study the Holocaust and in so doing brought an “outsider’s” (her own words) take to the leviathan which is Shoah. She is rigorous when she examines ideas, like a garlic press getting at the clove. And does not humor fools, calling Bruno Bettelheim “fatuous” in one instance, which he was. She honors Gitta Sereny who did remarkable interviews with Albert Speer and SS Unterscharfuhrer Franz Suchomel. Her bibliography is expansive, acute and recommendations for further reading very apt.

Presently I am sweating out the final selection of short stories for my new book on the Holocaust, “Working Through the Holocaust,” with its analytic allusion to the therapeutic process. Again I am wrestling with issues, trying like a fool to get at the “why.” A telling comment about that is in the off-hand comment by an Auschwitz guard to a prisoner when asked about an ugly incident in the camp: “Here there is no why.” I accept that, but I plow ahead trying to get at the victim’s mind-set, although I have had the experience of imagining seeing things through the eyes of the killers. Clendinnen argues well that we need to understand both. At length she writes of Primo Levi and others who have explored profoundly the victim’s experience, very well indeed; what has nourished and nurtured me while my book exists in the deserts of mind and matter, an isolate stuck on a stylite, is that on unconscious levels I was emboldened to work through the eyes of the murderer. (Goddam it! my fellow writers, trust your gut.) And Clendinnen makes her case that Nazis were not aliens, but variants of each of us. Again it is rewarding, alone with my own book, on my mental lap, in my own time, that I have struggled with this. And so in my new stories I try to see it both ways, the victim, and the victimizer. I seek no why. When I was a history major I enjoyed and relished reading the bibliographical essays of major historians who gave us the sources of their themes or motifs and generously commented on the idiosyncracies of their fellow colleagues; often the essay at the back was better than the book itself. I mention this because it is my belief it is in the accrual of detail, in the miniscule accretion of detail that we come upon insight and substance. Clendinnen’s book is such an example.

And so for a book I hope to have out in late spring, I am assiduously going line after line, tightening up sentences, providing intricate detail, using my own garlic press to get the most out of the fewest words possible, for as I hone my stories like a razor on a strop, I become clearer about what it is I need to attain or  say. Style is me, who I am, so I just go about my business in sentence-making, using images, which I tend to favor very much, to make my prosecutor’s case. I must share with you the joy or personal pleasure to have one’s own manuscript before one’s eyes — the collection of detail, thought and image. And my task is to “simply” order the stories so that the reader is taken in, massaged and then amazed or struck dumb by my intellectual tinker toys, my orientation and prejudices. I sit before the manuscript and revise and revise and revise and then will all this to stop. I give it to Jane who hopefully I will marry this weekend and she uses her acute eye to excise my often tendency to reiterate, to perseverate all in a sentence. I think my need to say things three different ways is probably my own arrogance that the reader will not get it unless I write it three different ways or it is my own sense of not being heard or being underestimated. In any case she takes the lawn mower to it and my vanity about words has relatively eased so I can take it. Wasn’t it the editor, I forgot his name (Gordon Lish?), who made James Carver the writer he is; he pruned the hell out of his works and now his heirs are barking unfair. Perplexing, is it not? However, don’t each of us need an editor for our own living, other than death who is the grim and final reaper?

Perhaps we should consider perennially revising our existence, less is more, says the cliche; but I favor that common scold, Thoreau: “Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!” I sit with a text of stories trying to imagine what it is to be the victim and several stories of what it is to be the victimizer. At times I go into surreal fantasies as my attempt to say indirectly but very concretely the unheard scream I feel. In my legerdemain I write of golems, a retarded child destined to be gassed, a doomed cantor in love, survivors, Holocaust deniers, lovers of quirky Nazi memorabilia, cannibalism, an interview with a camp “doctor,” and Jane’s personal delight, an interview with the nondescript Eva Braun who revels in Hitler’s defecating on her firm abs. I take risks. Whenever I take a risk, I give up that internal censor that mottles amd brutalizes our very safe and corseted lives.

At this juncture let me say that a new version of The i Tetralogy is at the printer. New cover, the first few pages with commentary about the book by bloggers, reviewers and the like and internal tweaking here and there. The book stands as it is. If you want a free book for teaching purposes or the Holocaust is of significance to you, you can reach at ifreese@hotmail.com. And since I will be e-mailing hundreds informing them of the book’s availability, if you have a suggestion and e-mail address of a librarian, scholar, college instructor, or rabbi, let me know — that would be a kindness.

I will be spending our honeymoon at CityCenter in Vegas — the Aria: New York in the desert.