“Good God . . . this unveiling of my past is a little bit like
listening to someone else’s history,” George remarked in June
1984 as I interviewed him for Volume III of An Honest Tale
Plainly Told. He’d always thought his upbringing had been
in no way extraordinary for a child of immigrants in the
Depression, till I jumpstarted the long-stalled Ehrlich Family
History and excavated numerous surprises, large and small—e.g.
his participation in a high school round table discussion,
broadcast over the radio, “in which the aims and objectives of
Mechanical Drawing were set forth, as well as subject material
of various blueprinting,
architectural drawing, and aviation drawing.”
George
[over his wife’s loud delighted laughter]:
Oh surely that’s wrong—we weren’t
talking about that.
Myself:
Well, not
necessarily on the radio.
Mila Jean:
HA! HA! HA!
My father was the prime participant in reviving this dormant
project and encouraging it through to completion. In March 1986
he responded to the draft version of To Be Honest
with a four-page single-spaced professorial critique:
I’ve finished the manuscript, and I have dried
my eyes. Yes, there were parts which really got to me. That
means that I have a problem in making objective comments which
can be useful to you. Nevertheless, I shall give it a try, and
bear with me if I seem overly pedantic; it is my way of trying
to distance myself from the details while concentrating on the
overall narrative.
I read “To Be Honest” with two sets of eyes. In
the first instance I read this as an editor. What is this story
about; how it is organized; and how is it told? In the second
instance, I read as a copy editor who happened to know the
facts, and thus picked up on rather specific things.
Unfortunately, I also read this as a character in the story, and
that has created a lot of problems for me, more than being the
author’s father. You have been on your own long enough to have
reduced my parental anxieties, so I think I am writing to you as
my capable colleague. But can I distance myself sufficiently
from the story to be useful in my comments? We shall see.
I will begin with some impressions. First,
there is the obvious fact that the story of Joseph and Mathilda
Ehrlich is worth telling, if only to delineate the why and how
two people emigrated to the United States, and what happened as
the result of this momentous decision. The story is more than
that, it is also a story of coping with adversities. In this
story, the children of Joseph and Mathilda are important (as are
their children), since they represent for the “first generation”
both a responsibility and a surrogate who would enjoy the better
life. Nevertheless, the book is a narrative of two
Europeans, born in the last decade of the nineteenth
century, who lived to see and experience a great deal.
Consequently, everything reported by you should be tested for
its relevance to as well as be directly connected to the elder
Ehrlichs.
Let me illustrate this last point. Consider the
role unexpectedly but happily received by the elder Ehrlichs as
“parents” to Sherry when Martha returned north. This is not a
matter of Martha’s failed marriage, and reentry into teaching,
though obviously these things need to be explained. Rather, it
was the first and only time that the elder Ehrlichs had a chance
to be with and raise a small child with much attention. Both in
Kolozsvár and in Chicago, both Ehrlichs had to work long and
hard hours when their own children were born and small. They
were too tired to do the things they wished to do with or for
them. Also, times were desperate. In Chicago, with Sherry,
they had the time, they had the opportunity (and the resources)
to do things. Thus the “Little Princess” was a chance finally
to achieve what had been earlier denied them through no fault of
their own. It is worth pointing this out; it explains much.
What I recommend then is that your
“Introduction” be made into a “Preface,” and the new
“Introduction” should be the Narrator (you) providing the reader
with some insight into what this story is all about, and why it
is worth the telling and the reading. It is true that I never
gave much thought to “their lives” as being “interesting,” but
you showed me that it was not only that but also more heroic, in
a quiet sort of way, than even I recognized by myself. The
reason it is worth telling us also about the children and
grandchildren is that this aspect of the family, in the elder
Ehrlichs’s eyes, validated their lives. For them,
through the progeny the story has a happy ending they can see,
even though for us the story is one that is unfinished as
we still have to cross uncharted waters undoubtedly filled with
demons. You need to tell your reader these things before we get
into the actual narrative.
This brings me to the fact that you, as
Narrator, must be more consistently obvious throughout the
story. I’ll develop that point in a moment, but consider, we
need to be reminded periodically of the fact that Joseph and
Mathilda represent European and late Victorian values, while
Martha and George are 20th Century and American. Thus, once we
get to the USA, we have a story of two worlds, of split
generations. This is true even though Grandma adapted
remarkably well to America and the modern life. The Narrator
needs to point out that with my entrance into military service,
for the first time since coming to America, Joseph and Mathilda
had the potential of getting ahead of the steady diet of always
being in debt, or barely making ends meet. With the departure
of their children from home, the elder Ehrlichs lost something
precious, but they also gained, for the first time,
financial independence.
Independence would be led by retirement, even
though it meant leaving behind Chicago, the fur business
(neither missed), but it also meant being removed from family.
The Narrator should remind us of the significance of this. You
refer to it, but do not make it as important as indeed the
narrative preliminary to this point tells us it is. What is the
significance of buying a proper home with new furniture, for
people who lived so frugally virtually all their lives? Why
must we wait to the last chapters to learn that both children’s
professional involvement in teaching is in a way both ironic and
symbolic (of something larger)? Martha had difficulty getting
into teaching, and at least twice interrupted that career.
George really backed into it. What is the significance for the
elder Ehrlichs of the facts that Martha got married again, and
this time it took, and George, who seemed destined to be a
bachelor for life, finally got married and had children, in
addition to completing eventually his Ph.D.? The significance
is that you finally have the achievement through the surrogates
of the good (and proper?) life. Except for the tragedy of
Parkinson’s. The Narrator’s reminder that the past would not
let go its hold is needed (I think). The past had caught up
with the elder Ehrlichs, but at least it was after having
a taste of the good life. The fatalist in Joseph would mean he
would shrug his shoulders, not give in but reconcile himself to
the fact that he had once again to cope with adversity, this
time without any hope of winning. But he had seen more than
Canaan from the hill; he had actually enjoyed, if briefly, the
milk and honey of the promised land. He saw his children
successful in his eyes. Therefore, I think he died relatively
content.
As for Grandma, it is a story of continued
spunk, puzzled a bit over why she and her two cousins have been
given so many more years than their husbands, but at least each
still having an opportunity to see what happens to their
progeny…
This narrative, in my opinion, is then a story
which is essentially optimistic, but that fact was not visible
to the participants until near the end, and then perhaps only
partially. I only now see it that way. That means that the
role of the Narrator (Paul Ehrlich) looms much larger than you
have allowed it to be. As a historian, you have to identify the
relevant facts and fit them together into a coherent whole.
However, you know how the story turns out, and that
influences what you choose to emphasize and how to advise the
reader to interpret the information provided. You are not only
our guide through this story, you are, in turn, a teacher of
history, geography, politics, etc.
For example, when you allow Martha’s diary to
take over a large part of Part I, it is because you hope it
illuminates the immediate concerns of Joseph and Mathilda.
However, much of what you include in Part I can be paraphrased,
and it should be. The extreme love and protection of
baby Martha is best told in your words with a few deftly
inserted quotations. The same is true of other people, such as
Sándor, Fáni and Jani. However, when you need to discuss Joseph
and Mathilda’s reactions to the world in which they must
function, full quotations are invaluable and thus necessary.
As for the history of the nation and the
Hungarian and Transylvanian Jews, this is obviously important,
but the Narrator needs to tell us that we don’t know how much of
this larger history the elder Ehrlichs knew, other than those
results which did impact upon them. That is why we must
know more than they did. Similarly, the Holocaust is important,
but I see the period of World War II as having three distinct
sections (chapters?), rather than the integration which you
tried to achieve. There is the story of the elder Ehrlichs,
seeing at a distance dreadful events in Europe (and in The Far
East), and being helpless to deal with them. Their business
slowly declines, their children are no longer at home. They
manage (once again) to make do during a war. Then there is the
story of Martha and George who are now “on their own,” caught up
in the war in their own ways, as were all of my generation. The
girls were married to people in service; all of the boys were in
uniform. The older generation, despite its intense interest in
world politics, was not really that well informed (who were in
the United States?), but they were loyal and were proud of their
children’s service. But they were separated from it in a way
that was not the case in World War I. And then there is the
grim reality of what in fact was happening to the relatives left
in Europe. While I remember some Europeans who got away and came
to Chicago (we knew they had been in camps of some sort), none
of the immediate relatives made it out.
I really don’t know what my parents knew about the Holocaust.
It was never really discussed. How could it be? Our family has
always mourned very privately. For example, I wasn’t taken to
Grampa
Kohn’s funeral (I assume there was one). I was not told for
some time that Grandma Kohn had died (while I was in service),
so I would not be upset. When the end for someone came, such as
Alex Temmer, still a young man, there was no great family
outpouring; each seemed to deal with it privately, and damn it
all I suspect that will still be the case when Martha and my
Mother go, which I fear will be soon.
The point in all this, Paul, is that you have to
be even more ruthless than you have been in your
writing/editing. You need to remove still more of the
interesting things you have learned for the simple reason that
they tend to distract from the principal story of two people
coping. And you have to become more of a presence (and not as
the little postscript) in your role as narrator. That puts you
in a precarious position, but I think it is important you assume
that role. After all, you are not acting as an editor of a
diary, writing a few explanatory notes. You are holding up a
lens and directing our view through it at the past.
Finally, I think it is wise to remind us
periodically of how old Joseph and Mathilda are at key times in
their lives. Joseph was only 29 when he left for what he hoped
would be a better life. He went to a land where he discovered
he was linked with Hunkies, but he had to face also the dreaded
spectre of being taken for a greenhorn. He was not only a man
of his word, he was a mighty proud man. Even in his 20s. I
wonder if I could have coped half as well when I was his age
facing what he had to face? And that is the sub-text, isn’t it?
Many of these recommendations, including citations from this
critique, were incorporated into the final 1986 text of To Be
Honest. Others I respectfully differed with then (when
Martha and George’s stories were still ongoing) and more so now
(when each has long since concluded).
Joseph and Mathilda’s story does remain the heart of the
narrative; yet their children didn’t merely fulfill and validate
parental hopes and dreams. Martha and George each had to
overcome obstacles, survive ordeals, and elude potential
sidetracks that could have left Martha in a Miami trailer park,
never returning to the classroom; and George pursuing a career
in computer design, with only a hobbyist’s interest in art and
architecture. Fate might even have caused the Vice-Consul to
deny the Ehrlichs a visa on that momentous day in 1923, leaving
them marooned in Cluj to ultimately perish and be forgotten.
But as Fate would have it (and Joseph would say), both of the
Ehrlich children were able to grow up in America and have a
beneficial educational impact upon generations of students, who
might have gone without a trusted teacher’s friendship and
support; as well as entire communities, where historic buildings
might have fallen to the wrecker’s ball. And this Martha and
George accomplished not just as their parents had brought them
up, but to a very great extent from being honest.
Notes
