God's Horse and The Atheists' School - Softcover

Dichter, Wilhelm

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810127938 ISBN 13: 9780810127937

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 2012

Synopsis

God's Horse (1996) and The Atheists' School (1999), Wilhelm Dichter's novelistic memoirs, are both striking for their spare, precise prose and for the fullness with which they inhabit the perspectives of, respectively, a young boy trying to survive the Holocaust in hiding and an adolescent in the turbulent world of post-war Poland. The books openly address a rarely documented phenomenon - a young Jewish boy who, having escaped death in Nazi-occupied Poland, ascends into the upper echelons of Polish society as a committed Communist. After the war, the narrator becomes the stepson of a rising star in the petroleum ministry. He tries to gain acceptance by becoming a propagandist, but he can't help wondering if those who constantly warn of a renewal of Jewish persecution may be right. It is a coming of age story with Poland's changing political and social climate as a backdrop.

About this title

From the Author

Q: When you were asked for a couple short book fragments, you thought for a long time. What special significance do they hold for you?
Borysław Poland, where "God's Horse and The Atheists' School" begins.

WD: When I was 54, I faced a life-threatening illness. It was then, in a hospital on Long Island that I realized I knew almost nothing of my own childhood. I started recalling old emotions; fragments of people's faces; sounds; and to a lesser degree, words and sentences. I began to put these elements together like a jigsaw puzzle, asking my mother about some details, writing everything down painstakingly. This process took five years and at first I was not aware that I was actually writing a book. The success of "Koń Pana Boga" (God's Horse), encouraged me to continue writing the story of the Jewish boy, who was pushed by the pendulum of history into the abyss of Nazi crimes and later elevated to the Stalinist elite in war-ravaged Poland. Two fragments from the book highlight this extraordinary journey. 

I was 4 years old on September 1, 1939 when the Germans attacked Poland from the west. Seventeen days later, the Russians invaded from the east. Based on the secret Ribbentrop-Molotov pact between the Nazis and Soviets, the part of Poland containing our town, Borysław, was given to Russia. It was the end of Polish times, and the beginning of Russian times. In June 1941, the Germans attacked their Russian partners, occupied the land and the German times began. Jews were murdered or deported to the gas chambers. My father committed suicide. Hidden by Christian neighbors under a bed, in an attic and finally in a farmer's well, I waited for death. 

GOD'S HORSE AND THE ATHEISTS' SCHOOL:
I was most afraid of children. I was convinced that they would recognize me instantly in the street and hand me over to the Germans. Grown-ups might take pity on me, but not children. I dreamed that I was running away from them. I was running blindly, farther and farther, until I stopped because I didn't know what to do next. In the shadows under the bed I saw my thin legs in white socks. I slowly lost the ability to walk. During the day I heard the sounds of birds outside the window. Their voices didn't mean anything. I was indifferent to them. I was waiting for the voices of the people who would come to get me.

Q: But you survived... 

WD. Yes. In in 1944, the Russians returned and I was enrolled in a school. 

GOD'S HORSE AND THE ATHEISTS' SCHOOL: 
We were taught arithmetic in Russian by a lame man in a uniform without insignia. He brought along a newspaper which he placed on his desk. "Children!" he said in Russian. "The best mathematicians in the world are Russians. Lomonosov and Kovalevskaya have no equals. But they are dead. And now, who is the best of all?" He smiled, seeing us looking at the portrait. "Yes, just so. Comrade Stalin." He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and asked a boy in the first row, "How much is one times one?"

Q: So you started school in 1944? You were already 9 years old. 

WD: Yes, I enrolled into the first grade in a Russian school. The fragment reveals how they indoctrinated the children, and that the teacher was a buffoon. 

Q: Did you finish this grade? 

WD: No. My mother married a Jewish engineer who had fled to Siberia to avoid the Germans. His wife and child were killed in Poland. We moved westward to what was still Poland, now under Communist rule. My stepfather became very successful, and my unexpected rise began.

From the Back Cover

God's Horse and The Atheists' School, Wilhelm Dichter's acclaimed autobiographical novels, recount a Polish Jewish family's harrowing struggle to survive the Holocaust and their privileged post-war lives as members of Poland's political elite. In God's Horse, the young narrator's life in hiding takes a dramatic turn after the war, when he becomes a little "Red prince," thanks to his Jewish stepfather, a rising star in he communist regime. The Atheists' School follows the narrator through the years of high Stalinism into young adulthood. This period is marked by a growing tension within Poland's Jewish community between dedicated communists and those who are convinced that their country will again turn against them.
In sparse, precise prose, Dichter depicts the uneasy coexistence of ideologues and pragmatists, Polish patriots and their Soviet masters. These evocative novels also present a psychologically persuasive and profoundly moving portrait of the narrator. The author's alter ego, supported by his stalwart and overly indulgent mother, possesses the tenacity to transform himself from an awkward, traumatized child survivor into an unsettled but finally independent-minded young man.

About this edition

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0810127938
• ISBN 13: 9780810127937
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 392