My Kipplesteins

Rating: 10/10 (20 February 2008)

The holocaust was perhaps unique, in the scope,efficiency and very banality of its evil. True art, at least my definition, brings the observer to the edge of experience, to that point of being of the moment depicted, but safely viewing it from the distance of the observer.
I will never know what those who lived in fear of the dehumanization that was a prelude to mass racial slaughter experienced. Yet, in a strange way I do. This is a true story,not true in Hollywood terms, where a nucleus of actual actual events is shaped into a salable product. This was true in that it depicted Louis Malle's life in a Catholic boarding school during the Nazi occupation. And while all around him was in turmoil, while the slaughter of world war was reflected in the sound of distant bombs, something inexorable and universal was also occurring. Friendship, the enjoyment of one person of another.
Two boys, bright enough to be competitors in being the best student in their class, connected. Their friendship was shown in the brief scene of their playing a simple ditty on an old piano, the pure joy of the timing, the sound and the laughter of music. For the young Malle, the school was an extension of the wealthy protected life of a child of a wealthy respected French family. The new student was more reserved, except when he had the answer to a math question that only he could explain to the class. Something didn't fit about his life story, however , until buried deep in his book case his real name was discovered, not Barnett, but Kippelstein.
The slaughter of European Jews took place as I was only slowly becoming aware of a world outside of our little apartment in Washington D.C. Antisemitism for me was a fistfight, and my coming home with a bloody nose to my mother's arms. And then there were the letters from Europe after the war, written in Yiddish script, an arcane medium that only my Uncle Irving could read, as my entire family was transfixed around the table to hear whether some of our cousins, perhaps one or two, had survived. Kipplestein, millions of Kipplesteins, most died but a few lived.
Representive Lantos was a Kipplestein, who survived to come to America, get his doctorate in Economics, and play a part in Congress. And he had two daughters, each one having large families to please their father who had lost everyone as a child.
My friend Arnie, who would hang out at the Cafeteria with me after finishing his messenger job was a Kipplestein. I remember his words:
---- "When we got off the train the kids were separated into two lines, by age. I knew what was happening, so I bolted from the little one's lines and yelled, "I'm strong I can work, I belong with the big kids." And so he was in a work detail throughout the war. I remember his saying, in his calm accepting voice, how he looked at the German kids his age, and marveled that they were walking free, while he had forgotten what it was like not to be marched, in unison." ----
Did Louis Malle's friend Kipplestein survive? Did he live a rich, full and happy life. Did he use his intellect to contribute to society? I said this is a true story, but the answer is really unimportant. The vast reality transcends the destiny of any one individual. The tragedy is those who did not live, whose lives were ended, who were exterminated by those who saw them as the vermin that the Nazi propagandists depicted. How easy it was for the SS members to do their jobs, to simply obey orders, not to risk being a trouble maker.
I have the gnawing sensation whenever I back away from a challenge. Whenever I say, "why bother," in the face of what I see as a mindset, a passive acceptance of injustice, that I am not being a Kipplestein, but following in the tradition of those SS who murdered them.
I do miss my cousins whom I never knew. Those who were sent to the wrong line at the train station. I bet we would have been real friends.