The Left Berlin News & Comment

This is the archive template

Wartime Survival Guide

The one who gets disappointed earlier gains more.


22/07/2024

Last year, I flew to Prague to meet an old friend. Sitting in a bar, he told me he was glad to live in one of the safest cities in the EU. 

There was a stack of Czech newspapers on the bar counter. I picked one up. As I flipped through it, not understanding a word, my friend talked about the sense of security in Europe.

Suddenly, he pointed to an article. The headline read, Nothing Has Changed in Czechia Six Months After Brutal Terrorist Attack On Gay Bar.

After that, my friend talked about the power of NATO. But at the same time, he said that, according to the news, the Czechia is not ready for war; that the Baltic countries have declared unpreparedness. The same is being said by Poland and Germany.

That was when I decided to write a survival guide for ordinary people, turning my wartime experiences into advice. This could save them – or show them how insignificant their current problems are compared to those faced during a war. 

So, here is my 20-item survival guide, for anyone who doesn’t want to kill anyone else and strives to save their own life:

  1. If missiles are falling on your city, the safest places are metro stations (they are deep enough to save your ass), as well as railway stations (transport communications are highly valued during war, even by the enemy).
  2. Military facilities and power plants are likely to become targets, so if you live near one, it’s best to move.
  3. There’s no point in taping your windows; in the event of a missile detonation, the shards will scatter throughout the room anyway.
  4. Hide behind two walls to protect yourself from explosions.
  5. Tiled walls can be as dangerous as glass shards during an explosion.
  6. Do not trust government officials. People can commit great treachery if their superiors remove their responsibility by giving them orders.
  7. Do not trust patriots. They are friends of the state, not fellow citizens.
  8. If you don’t want to end up on the front lines, avoid living at your registered address. Move somewhere (in my case it was firstly an office, then a flat rented without a contract). Be sure, the state will use any information it has about you to turn you into a soldier.
  9. Don’t rush to hide in the countryside. In a big city, there are more people, making it easier to stay hidden. In a village, everyone knows each other, so newcomers stand out and will be reported.
  10. If state media spreads rumors about the possible sabotage, every unfamiliar person will seem suspicious, including you.
  11. The military protects the state’s borders, not you. Their goal is to send you to the battlefield so you can defend the borders instead of them.
  12. Don’t believe state propaganda. Protecting your family doesn’t mean leaving them under bombs to go to war. Protecting your family means ensuring that none of them get hurt.
  13. Buy canned food, but don’t forget Snickers bars. Food is not only calories but also currency in emergency situations.
  14. Don’t expect your friends to save you. During wartime, a person saves themselves first, then comments about it on social media, and only after might they come to help. Rely only on yourself.
  15. If your home is bombed and you have to seek shelter, don’t rush to the ones provided by the state. The military and police might forcibly take men from there to the front lines, and on TV, they’ll present them as a line of volunteers.
  16. Pay attention to what people take with them when leaving their homes. This can reveal things about them they might prefer to keep secret.
  17. Limit your time watching the news. In reality, a missile explodes once, but on the news, it explodes thousands of times which can destroy your psyche.
  18. Stock up on painkillers. It’s unlikely you’ll find a dentist willing to treat your tooth when the neighboring building is on fire.
  19. If your teeth are fine, you can trade the painkillers for food with those who didn’t take care of their health in time.
  20. Stock up on lubricant and condoms. War is stressful, and stress often increases sexual desire – not only on the front lines. Sexual activity also increases on the home front.

Europe. NATO. Attack on a gay club. Newspapers lying on a bar counter. I flew to Prague to meet an old friend. Sitting in a bar, he told me he was glad to live in one of the safest cities in the EU. I didn’t tell him that during my last visit to Prague, someone tried to rob me on the train. Instead, I smiled and promised myself to write a survival guide that would make others’ suffering less than what I once had to endure.

This piece is a part of  a series, The Mining Boy Notes, published on Mondays and authored by Ilya Kharkow, a writer from Ukraine. For more information about Ilya, see his website. You can support his work by buying him a coffee.

 

The rise and fall of the hubris of the Israeli leadership

Family visit in Israel: no words of peace

Netanyahu embodies Israel’s Oedipus, relentlessly pursuing total victory in the Gaza war. However, his hubris will inevitably lead to regret when he realizes the catastrophic consequences of his actions. His reluctance to cease the Gaza conflict is not solely driven by military objectives but also by political motives: avoiding elections, thwarting a state inquiry into the October events, and postponing his court appearance until March 2025. Netanyahu’s determination to prolong the war illustrates his desire to evade legal accountability, demonstrating that his personal concerns outweigh the nation’s welfare. Four years ago, when the Supreme Court was required to address petitions against Netanyahu’s continued tenure, his supporters claimed that the dual roles would not hinder him and that a Chinese wall separates the defendant from the Prime Minister. It turns out that it is difficult to run a legal system while also managing a country in such a deep war crisis. Netanyahu’s hubris will drag Israel further down, but ironically, his refusal to recognize a Palestinian state might lead to the opposite result.

At the end of June, I went to Israel to visit my family. Israeli fighter planes did not stop circling over our home in Haifa, and the fear was palpable at every moment. The newspapers reported that the IDF spokesperson stated the military would remain in Gaza for at least another six months and control the border with Egypt. There is no sign of a hostage deal that might calm the entire region, which is being destroyed. To make matters worse, there are no indications that Benny Gantz, who left the Israeli government to sit with the opposition, will discuss a proper way out of the turmoil—a peace process with the Palestinians. In post-October 7th Israel, the peace process, the end of the occupation, and the establishment of a Palestinian state are seen not as solutions to the escalating regional crisis but as rewards for Palestinian aggression. Israel stands at a crossroads: one path leads to a hostage deal and a permanent ceasefire, while the other leads to the deepening of fighting, potentially against Hezbollah in Lebanon and possibly Iran in the future.

As we entered the city of Haifa, the GPS signal was lost. The entire city is functioning without location services due to the ongoing military conflict with Hezbollah. The fear of an impending war with Hezbollah from the north is palpable among my family members. How can you plan life this way? The IDF spokesperson announced a temporary truce in Gaza operations, warning that if Hezbollah does not cease its activities, war will soon commence. Western countries, including the USA, Britain, and France, have already advised their citizens to leave Lebanon. According to the American Bloomberg website, former head of the National Security Council, Eyal Hulata, stated that a war with Hezbollah could result in 15,000 Israeli casualties. On July 3, 2024, the deputy leader of Hezbollah said that the only sure path to a ceasefire on the Lebanon-Israel border is a full ceasefire in Gaza.

I went to the sea with a friend who confided his fears about Israel’s future. The climate was oppressively hot, and the air was heavy with moisture. The jellyfish had already migrated south, possibly reaching Egypt by now. As I listened to my friend, I could see he was traumatized by the Gaza war, and I also found myself contemplating the future of the entire region.

This tragedy affects all the peoples of the region, but especially the Palestinians in Gaza, who live in a small strip of land with no infrastructure, teetering on the brink of famine and epidemics. There is no safe place in Gaza, most of which has been destroyed by the IDF, and tens of thousands of innocents have been injured or killed. The war also affects the residents of the occupied territories, who suffer under the violent actions of settlers’ militias, actions that are often supported by the IDF and police forces, under the influence of ministers Ben Gvir and Smotrich. The army invades the occupied territories weekly, often resulting in the deaths of innocent people. And the violent settlers attacking the Palestinians villages and there is no one who could stop them.

The war also harms Israel, which is increasingly isolated and boycotted internationally. Hundreds of thousands of residents have fled settlements in the south and north, bearing the enormous cost of the ongoing conflict. The government’s refusal to address the issue of hostages is tearing the country apart from within. The economic damage from the Gaza war is also impacting neighboring countries—Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan. According to a report in the New York Times, based on estimates from the United Nations Development Agency, in just three months, the war has wiped out $10.3 billion, which is 2.3% of the combined GDP of these three countries. Egypt is also grappling with the loss of revenue from Suez Canal traffic and tourism, finding itself in a dire situation after eight months. Lebanon, already one of the poorest countries in the world, faces the displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents from southern Lebanon due to war fears. Even before the war, Lebanon was on the brink of bankruptcy, and now the situation has worsened with the loss of tourism income and the looming threat of conflict.

During my visit, I noticed that the word “peace” is absent from the media, and there is no real conversation about the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations. One of Netanyahu’s hubristic traits is his reluctance to discuss the future in Gaza, recognizing the existence of a Palestinian people who demand peace and justice. Therefore, it is crucial to consider three possible solutions for the day after a hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza:

1. Complete annexation of Gaza and the establishment of Israeli Jewish settlements on Gaza land

This option is favored by far-right extremist leaders Ben Gvir and Smotrich. Channel 14 host Yanon Magal stated in an interview with the Prime Minister: “A large part of the public thinks that territory should be taken, and the Gaza Strip should be settled.” There are even more radical voices, such as the “Awaken North” movement, contemplating re-occupation and settlement in the south of Lebanon.

2. The Gaza Strip controlled by the Israeli army

This scenario would likely lead to civil resistance and the strengthening of Hamas.

3. A full peace process with the Palestinians, arranged under the umbrella of international powers and mediated by moderate Islamic countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.

This would include the deportation of Hamas leaders, the rehabilitation of Gaza, and the transfer of control to the Palestinian Authority within Gaza. 

In an interview with Channel 14, Netanyahu rejected the first option, calling the annexation of Gaza an unrealistic idea. The second option, military control of Gaza, is the path we are currently heading down under Netanyahu’s leadership. Why isn’t Netanyahu’s coalition or Gantz’s opposition discussing the third option? Because they, too are infected with hubris. After decades of Netanyahu’s control over state mechanisms, the opposition has accepted the basic assumption of an overwhelming fear of a Palestinian state, even if it is demilitarized and coexists alongside Israel.

Hubris is a fitting term to describe Netanyahu’s lack of leadership

Why do I consider “hubris” an apt term to describe Netanyahu’s lack of leadership? The term originates from ancient Greek, denoting excessive pride or self-confidence. In classical literature, hubris often characterizes individuals who, by overestimating their abilities or importance, provoke the gods or exceed the limits of what is feasible, ultimately leading to their downfall. Netanyahu disregards the imperative for peace, healing, and reconciliation with Palestinians, opting instead for a militaristic approach to navigate his ongoing corruption trials.

Israeli journalist Amir Oren of Haaretz writes, “Netanyahu is simultaneously managing four fronts: legal, military, political, and diplomatic (and possibly family and health). In each, his aim is to buy time.” Netanyahu’s hubris mirrors a prevalent mindset in Israeli society, one historically dismissive of Palestinian aspirations for equality, justice, and peace, including the establishment of their own demilitarized state. This hubris deepens the binary divide within Israeli identity and fosters a mentality of “we are the eternal people” versus “the Amalek seed,” dehumanizing Palestinians by attributing collective blame for Hamas’s actions.

Memories of past atrocities, such as the October 7 massacre and the refusal to return the hostages obstruct prospects for reconciliation. Nevertheless, courageous leaders can defy public opinion, reminiscent of when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin pursued the Oslo Accords despite initially advocating for harsh measures against Palestinian protesters during the first intifada. This resulted in the enduring peace agreement with Jordan, where Jordan even defended Israel against Iranian missile attacks.

A survey by Israeli Channel 11 (June 2, 2024) reveals that 40% of the public supports President Biden’s proposed framework for a hostage deal and cessation of the Gaza conflict, with an equal proportion believing it will conclude hostilities. In contrast, 27% oppose the framework, and 34% foresee renewed conflict post-deal. Despite Israeli public support for Biden’s proposal, Netanyahu persists in disregarding these voices. His reluctance stems from facing an internal inquiry commission regarding the October 7 massacre upon cessation of hostilities, potential coalition losses in upcoming elections, loss of immunity from corruption charges, and the prospect of facing ICC in Hague.

Social shifts, particularly among younger Woke generations in America and Europe, signal a departure from the entrenched narrative of continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Increasing global dissatisfaction with colonial norms, coupled with heightened awareness of Global South struggles, heralds an unprecedented shift. While acknowledging the need for a self-reflection process within the Palestinian movement following the October 7 massacre, Israeli society must also reflect on its treatment of Palestinians through administrative detentions, blockades, and other colonial measures.

In Israel, dissenters are often dismissed as radicals or labeled anti-Semitic, failing to consider the millions of Palestinians living without basic rights alongside them. Like characters in a Greek tragedy awaiting revelation, Israel must awaken to recognize how its occupation fuels conflicts like the Gaza war, Hezbollah clashes, and hostilities with groups such as the Houthis.

Dialectically, as long as Israeli leaders—whether from the right or left—persist in hubristic attitudes toward Palestinians, Israel faces increased global isolation and boycotts, akin to South Africa’s historical experience. Leadership must defy electoral promises and initiate a political process for peaceful coexistence and justice alongside Palestinians.

It may culminate tragically, with countless lives lost on both sides and irretrievable time wasted. As I journey back to Germany, anti-Netanyahu graffiti and flags line the route, and airport images of hostages prompt questions about their return. Paradoxically, Netanyahu and his camp have already labeled the voices demanding their return as “Leftist,” dismissing it as if it weren’t a genuine human rights demand. Yet, a singular solution remains: two nations sharing their homeland peacefully, free from violence, perhaps a reality to emerge long after my time.

Mati Shemoelof is a writer, editor and curator based in Berlin. His site: http://www.mati-s.com 

This article was originally published in German in the Berliner Zeitung. Reproduced with permission.

The Radical Jewish Tradition – A speech introducing a book

Speech from the book presentation in Berlin, 18th July 2024


20/07/2024

Introduction: Hallo zusammen. Vielen Dank, dass ihr mich heute Abend hierher eingeladen habt, um über das Buch zu sprechen, das ich gemeinsam mit Donny Gluckstein geschrieben habe. Ich freue mich sehr, hier in Berlin sprechen zu dürfen.

Berlin has become a centre of support for Palestine and developed an alternative position as to what is Antisemitismus und Antizionismus. A look at German history shows this is an actual theme of it.

Und ich bin auch hocherfreut, dass ich alles teilweise auf deutsch sagen kann, da ich schon lange deutsch lerne. Ich spreche jetzt auf English und zum Schluss komme ich noch einmal auf Deutsch zurück.

To start off with – I’m a Jewish Australian. A large part of my mother’s family emigrated to Australia in the 1930s from a small town in Poland. Every single family member who remained behind died in the Holocaust. So I’m not a holocaust survivor in the formal sense, but my existence is marked by that event.

I am a life long socialist, and I’ve been an active anti-Zionist almost all my adult life. I’ll by talking about why a book like this matters today. The book ends in 1948 – 80 years ago. Perhaps some people might think this is a niche history – interesting but not important today.

But history matters because the battle for memory is also a battle for the present.

The Zionists constantly invoke Jewish history as a justification for their support of Israel, so an alternative view is very immediate and urgent. The Zionists don’t want us to know there is a different answer to antisemitism than the Israeli state.

Our book brings together a range of material and information available but scattered in many places. We trace antisemitism, modern Jewry and Jewish political currents; moving to Jewish radical  history, focusing on Russia and Poland; the and Jewish in emigration to London and New York. We then discuss  Nazism in Germany, the Holocaust and how Palestine impacted the radical Jewish tradition.

We introduce  at the beginning the “lachrymose (or tearful) conception of Jewish history”. Or the idea that the main element of Jewish experience has been suffering, it’s always been so and can’t be changed. In other words, Jews are eternal victims.

There are three ways to respond to this idea. Firstly, you can say we can’t do anything about antisemitism, so we withdraw into our own ghettoes, customs and religion, we do nothing, and remain victims.  The second option is to change from a victim by joining the perpetrators: become an exploiter and an oppressor yourself.

Zionism combines both of these. They start saying that we can’t do anything about antisemitism and non-Jews will always be antisemitic. But then they say victims must to take lessons from the colonialists, imperialists, the ruling class and even the antisemites. Let’s set up our own state and become just like them.

But there is a third option. In this book, Donny and I show that while the oppression and suffering are certainly there, it’s not true that Jews are nothing but victims. They have always resisted and fought back. The radical tradition is the history of working class and socialist Jewish struggle against both antisemitism and their position at the bottom of society. Against both oppression and exploitation. It’s the tradition that says we can fight to defend ourselves. The tradition that knows what antisemitism is, but doesn’t accept it as eternal or plan to go somewhere to set up oppress someone else. And this tradition has historically been entwined with the working class and socialist movements.

Most people have heard about some parts of this story. Everyone knows about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Battle of Cable Street in the East End of London 1936. Many are aware of the 1908 strike of mainly Jewish women garment workers in New York, known as the uprising of the 20,000.

But these are usually treated as one-off events. I asked myself, where did these mass actions come from? Things like that don’t just come out of the blue. I  was simply astonished at what I hadn’t previously known about. realised these were just the peaks of a movement with connections over at least 6 decades over continents.

This book rediscovers this history to set it in the context of what antisemitism is, and the role of Jews in the socialist and radical movements between the 1880s and 1948.

This was a very exciting journey.  I want to take you on some of the stops on that journey and some exciting and inspiring stories.

Tsarist Russia

One of my first discoveries was that Jews had fought back against pogroms in tsarist Russia. Previously may image was of frightened Jews huddling in synagogues. But there were armed self defence groups, led by the Jewish Labor Bund but also with other socialists and leftists involved, Jews and non-Jews.

The Bund put out a call for armed self-defence after a horrific pogrom in Kishenev in 1903: “[W]e must come out with arms in hand, organise ourselves and fight to our last drop of blood. Only when we show our strength will we force everyone to respect our honour.” And a year later they were able to say “There are no longer the former, downtrodden, timid Jews. A new-born unprecedented type appeared on the scene—a man who defends his dignity.”

The self defence groups were led by the Bund in coalition with radical and socialist groups. They didn’t see the issue as just about Jews. What they said was that the struggle against antisemitism was “also directed against the ruling class and for socialism. Thus the two struggles were one”.

And they enjoyed successes. For instance in 1906 in Bialystok in Poland they completely protected major working-class sections of the city: “At every corner of the poor section of Bialystok, patrols of the Jewish Self-Defence League were stationed with revolvers and grenades… They guarded the streets and fired warning shots into the air. If a gentile went by carrying loot, they would frighten him until he threw down the stolen package and fled”.

A very different picture to huddling in the synagogue.

Migration to the West

Nonetheless pogroms continued. Poverty and misery of life in tsarist Russia led hundreds of thousands of Jews to emigrate including to the UK, the US.

In the US almost continual struggle in Jewish areas of New York occurred from the late 19 century until WW2. Jewish men and women fought the bosses and the state with the support of socialist organisations.

Early on there was strike after strike as Jewish workers fought to establish trade unions. After the turn of the century, activity moved into the community. In May 1902 an increase in the retail price of kosher meat outraged housewives and a crowd of 20,000 women set out.

One newspaper reported that “an excitable and aroused crowd [mostly of women] roamed the streets…armed with sticks, vocabularies and well-sharpened nails”.  The police attacked but they didn’t have it all their own way—one woman retaliated by slapping a cop in the face with a moist piece of liver!

When the issue spread to Brooklyn, the New York Times had this headline: “Brooklyn mob loots butcher shops. Rioters, led by women, wreck a dozen stores. Dance around bonfires of oil-drenched meat piled in the street—fierce fight with the police”.

The Times ended by calling for the repression of this “dangerous class…especially the women [who] are very ignorant”.

When a magistrate asked one woman why they were rioting, she replied:  We don’t riot. But if all we did was to weep at home, nobody would notice it”.

Once more – the falsity of the lachrymose or tearful conception.

The meat boycott was followed by a series of rent strikes again led by women. And then the community action fed back into the workplace in 1908 with the Uprising of the 20,000. Female Jewish garment workers went on strike over piece work rates and other issues.

Leading up to the strike, socialists called a large parade on a date honoring an 1857 demonstration of New York garment workers, which police had attacked and dispersed. The 1908 demonstration was so successful that German socialist Clara Zetkin proposed an International Working Women’s Day in 1910. This has continued ever since.

So when talking about the Jewish radical tradition – we commemorate the real heritage of International Working Women’s Day which is Jewish, internationalist, socialist and working class.

Now I head over to London where in the East End, conditions were indescribable. Many Jewish socialists understood how important class was here. Many bosses and landlords in the slums were also Jewish and synagogues generally preached acceptance. As one early socialist in the East End said:

“The underlying class struggle exists also amongst Jews… Therefore Jewish workers must unite among themselves against the other spurious unity—that with the masters!”

The early Jewish radical movement in London is full of stories about all sorts of currents – anarchists, socialists, early trade unionists, Marxists and many others.

The leader of the anarchists was a German Rudolf Rocker, who wasn’t Jewish. But he learnt Yiddish and threw in his lot with the Jewish East End. They set up a club which became a centre for radical and trade union activities throughout London. It was particularly important during strikes. It also provided premises for a Jewish socialist newspaper, and was an educational, social and cultural centre as well. They welcomed everyone – Jews and non-Jews, young and old, men and women. Above all it was a centre for political debate and argument.

The Jewish anarchists were very much “in your face atheists”. They  ostentatiously ate ham sandwiches outside the synagogue on Yom Kippur the most important fast day of the year. Perhaps this was a bit sectarian. But we should remember atheism was as an important political topic then.

Over decades the workers struggled against the sweating system and their appalling working and living conditions. But not alone. In 1889 the Jewish tailors went on strike and received a large donation from dockers.

Then in 1912, during a major dock strike, Jewish families took in and cared for dockers’ children helping the dockers to stay out on strike. And then 24 years later in 1936, the dockers again returned the favour and constituted the militant vanguard of the mass demonstration at Cable Street.

One of the participants, Bill Fishman described it: “I was moved to tears to see bearded Jews and Irish Catholic dockers standing up to stop Mosley. I shall never forget that as long as I live—how working-class people could get together to oppose the evil of fascism.”

So Cable Street didn’t come out of the blue. I was also very excited to discover another movement at the same time which fed into the resistance to the fascists. That was the tenants’ movement which carried out rent strikes in the same period.

One of the leaders said this: “It was a genuine united movement of the people, drawing together Jews and Christians at a time when antisemitic propaganda was being stepped up, helping to isolate and expose both fascists and right-wing local Labour leaders.”

Let’s move back to Europe. The “lost world” of Jewish life in interwar Poland is very often invoked with nostalgia – the romanticised shtetl (small town) focusing on food, family warmth and traditional customs. But there is another side to the story.

Arnold Zable, an Australian refugee activist and writer, describes his trip to Poland to meet people of his parents’ generation. He says:

“Stories survived, countless tales of partisans and revolutionaries, resistance fighters and firebrands engaged in a fiery struggle.”

From Arnold’s words I got the idea for the sub title of our book: ‘Revolutionaries, Resistance fighters and firebrands‘. With rising antisemitism in Poland in the 1930s, the Bund again set up self defence groups.

Today, the Jewish working class says to the fascist and antisemitic hoodlums: the time has passed when Jews could be subject to pogroms with impunity… Pogroms [will not] remain unpunished.

The Bund didn’t want confrontations between Poles and Jews but between fascists and anti-fascists. So they deliberately drew in non-Jewish workers. The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party collaborated over Mayday parades and held general strikes against pogroms and antisemitic attacks. That cooperation built up over many years habits so when the nazis invaded in 1939, thousands of Jews found a hiding place in the flats of non-Jewish workers.

And this brings us to the war and the Holocaust and the worst of the myth of Jewish passivity – that Jews went to the concentration camps like sheep to the slaughter.

But there were underground resistance movements in approximately 100 ghettos and armed uprisings in 50. There were also uprisings in 21 concentration camps and approximately 50 Jewish partisan groups. About 10,000 people survived in family camps in the forest.

Forced labourers in shoe factories sabotaged by putting nails in boots and tailors sewed left arms into right armholes of coats and vice versa. The united underground organisation in Minsk had a culture of solidarity between Jews and non-Jews. It ran a clandestine press, smuggled children out of the ghetto and helped 10,000 to escape to the forest, most of whom survived the war.

There are so many more stories I could tell you, but if I told you all of them you wouldn’t buy the book! So I will end with this – the women couriers who maintained communications between the ghettos.

They smuggled people, cash, fake IDs, underground publications, information and weapons. They hid items in their clothes, their bras, in sanitary towels, in their shoes, in sacks of potatoes. They smuggled guns in loaves of bread and coded messages in their plaited hair. Most of these women were members of Jewish socialist youth groups or communists. Yet they are virtually unknown.

So my last story is about a communist Niuta Teitelbaum – blonde and blue eyed and looking like a naïve young Polish teenager. But as an assassin she used to walk openly into the offices or homes of gestapo officers and shoot them in cold blood. One day she strolled up to the guards outside a gestapo prison, feigned shame, and whispered that she needed to speak to a certain officer about a “personal matter”. The guards assumed that she was pregnant, and they politely showed her the way. Once in the officer’s room she pulled out a concealed pistol with a silencer and shot him. On the way out, she smiled meekly at the guards who’d let her in.

The couriers endured prison, rape, humiliation and beatings and kept on fighting.  The astonishing bravery, intelligence, resourcefulness, drive, determination and self-sacrifice of these women fully destroys the myth that Jews “went as sheep to the slaughter”.

I’m now going to wrap up and end in German. The following translates the German spoken words:

I want to say how exciting and inspiring I find this whole history – a Jewish radical tradition, a tradition of socialists who fought back against oppression and exploitation, a history of resistance and of the struggle to change the world. A history of people who didn’t just weep and hide away, who refused to be just victims or to join the oppressors. This history has been a joy to rediscover.

But this history doesn’t just belong to Jews. It belongs to all of us here in this room, and to all of those who are engaged in struggle against the horrors of our society, of oppression and exploitation and of war. This isn’t an academic or a sectional history but is avowedly partisan, a history to support and inspire struggle.

So I want to end with the words of Marek Edelmann, a Bundist and participant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After the war Edelmann went back to Poland and remained a radical all his life. During the second Palestinian Intifada Edelman wrote a letter to the Palestinians. He compared them to the Jewish Fighting Organisation that had led the Warsaw ghetto uprising. He addressed it to “commanders of the Palestinian military … to all the soldiers of the Palestinian fighting organisation”.

Just as Edelmann linked the resistance fighters in Warsaw, so do I link the Jewish radical tradition with today’s fight of the Palestinians against expropriation, persecution and genocide. I stand with Palestine. I hope the book that Donny and I have written will contribute to the ongoing struggle for their freedom and for the freedom of all of us.

As Milan Kundera says:

“The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was… The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

 

Is It Also Murder?

Even if you really want to, you can’t protect someone whom you don’t even notice


15/07/2024

Previously, I wrote about how in Ukraine I rented an apartment in a brothel. One day, I was woken up by a knock at the door. I opened my eyes. The room was filled with smoke. I looked out the window, and there was already a crowd  gathered outside. Everyone was taking pictures of me.

The building was burning. Electrical fire. The firefighters arrived before I could get down. The house was saved.

The fact of the matter is that today the whole of Ukraine looks, to my eyes, like a house that is on fire. Numerous cameras are pointed towards it. But those who were supposed to put out the fire only throw kindling into it in order to enjoy everyone’s attention longer.

I constantly hear demands from Ukrainian politicians for Russia to compensate for the damage caused during the war. Reparations. Apologies. But why does no one talk about the fact that Ukraine should also compensate its own people for the harm done to them?

In one of my manuscripts awaiting publication, I wrote about something that happened to a friend of my family. Today, I’m forced to return to this story because it continues. It’s about a man who played a key role in my relatives’ business. Yep, war takes not only lives but also businesses. But that’s not the point right now.

This man has an adult son. One day, his son was caught on the street by representatives of the military recruitment office. Later, the man managed to negotiate that his son would not be sent to war, but instead, he himself had to join the army. And so, it happened.

People who lived in the USSR have an amazing ability – they treat great evil with the same ease as they do a common cold, knowing that everything passes. He spent 6 months at war. Then he began to feel nauseous. Not like the main character of Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel Nausea, since we are talking about an ordinary person. He felt nauseous often. Even when there was nothing left for his throat to expel, his stomach still danced in spasms. Severe pain. Diarrhea.

When you’re on the battlefield, no one will give you sick leave if you come down with diarrhea. Weight loss? Fatigue? Even if shit runs down your leg, as long as you can shoot, you must shoot. And if you don’t, then they’ll bring your son here, and you’ll still have to shoot to keep enemies from killing him.

From time to time, we received news from him. He spoke about the decline in morale. He talked about how no one was fighting anymore for a free Ukraine; now the goal was to protect not the whole nation, but at least those in the same trench with you. He also mentioned the constant pain in the upper part of his abdomen.

Soon he told the military doctor about his symptoms. The doctor didn’t react well, assuming the man wanted to escape the war under the guise of illness. A couple of days later, the man died. He was smoking. He was talking with his comrade. Then suddenly he felt onset of pain. A couple of seconds later he fell and died.

When we hear about deaths in war, we rarely think about diarrhea. Nope, we immediately imagine heroic battles. We envision explosions. Muscular soldiers. But reality is often different. Here, a question arises: are we deliberately ignoring reality or is it that we don’t often see it?

His wife had to fight to have her husband buried not in a military cemetery, but in an ordinary one. Military cemeteries are mind-blowing because all the graves there are new and they stretch endlessly. Yet, a group of soldiers attended the funeral. These soldiers fired their rifles into the sky as the coffin was lowered into the ground. His son wasn’t present at the funeral. Neither was I. The son was afraid the military would take him to the war right from the cemetery, and for me, returning to Ukraine means a choice between prison or war. I couldn’t comfort my family members in their grief. I remained silent from a distance while my relatives wept.

The doctors who examined the body determined that the man died from pancreatitis. It’s an unpleasant disease, but it can be treated. If the military doctor had truly listened to the patient’s complaints and provided timely treatment, he could still be alive. Instead, the doctor saw him not as a patient but as a potential deserter, and this led to his death. This perspective on men in Ukraine is a reflection of the entire system, not just an individual doctor.

In February 2024, the majority agreed that Alexei Navalny’s death in prison was a political murder. Yet Navalny was Russia’s most prominent opposition figure. When unjust deaths befall non-public figures, we often remain unaware of their tragedies. Stories of Ukrainians imprisoned for expressing their views do not gain international attention. It’s not just that crimes by those in power go unpunished, nah, we have not only allowed these crimes to occur but also failed to notice them.

This piece is a part of  a series, The Mining Boy Notes, published on Mondays and authored by Ilya Kharkow, a writer from Ukraine. For more information about Ilya, see his website. You can support his work by buying him a coffee.

Review of Die Drei Groschenopera (The Threepeny Opera) performance of Saturday 30 June, 2024.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956), Kurt Weill (1900-1950), and Elisabeth Hauptmann (1897-1973); Current Production by Barry Kosky (1967-) at berliner-ensemble.de.

The current repertory of the ‘Berliner Ensemble’ includes the famous operata-cabaret – Die Drei Groschenopera, ‘The Threepenny Opera’. I recommend this to any leftists finding themselves in Berlin. Owing to its small, old ‘vertical’ design, the theatre has good viewing from even the cheapest seats – ‘the gods” – unless labelled as restricted. First premiered in this theatre in 1929, this outstanding production was directed by Barry Kosky, until recently the chief director of the Komisches Oper. I will discuss the origins of the ‘3Groschenopera’ focusing not only on Brecht but also on Weill; review this production with a short synopsis; and then try to place the work within Brecht’s dramatic theory. 

Origins of the work

Many discussions of this work incorrectly see Brecht as the sole creative architect. In 1927–28, Elisabeth Hauptmann, Brecht’s then lover and secretary, translated John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera” (1728). It concerned a band of robbers in London, and scandously criticised the “moral degradation of society” and the Sir Robert Walpole administration. Its songs became wildly popular in 18th century London. Brecht took the idea over and got Kurt Weill to write new music. 

That music was key to its success. Brecht had composed and sang songs since his school days, often consciously imitating Frank Wedekind and fairground performers. But the musical collaboration with Weill took the ballad-music to a new level. Weill’s father was a cantor, and by age twelve he composed and staged concerts. After the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, he joined Ferruccio Busoni’s composition class. By 1925 Weill was famous for incorporating American dance-music into his compositions. Weill first worked with Brecht when the Baden-Baden Music Festival commissioned him in 1927 for Mahagonny (Ein Songspiel). Weill set himself in the words of Arne Stollberg, against all the ”[n]arcotic, foggy, opiate of Wagner’s music” (Programme notes, Brecht Ensemble p.33). Certainly you know at least one or two of the songs from this work.

Lotte Lenya (1899-1981) as a working class girl of 4 years, performed with a circus troupe. She married Weill in 1926 to “quell gossip”, and in 1929 premiered the role of the prostitute Jenny in ‘3Groschenopera’. In the 1930 film of Die 3Groschenoper (directed G.W. Pabst) she famously sang “Pirate Jenny”, originally written for the character “Polly”. Likely the only song in the opera even approaching a near-revolutionary position, it unleashes a maid’s pithy hatred of those who have exploited her. She dreams and gloats of their being butchered by her pirates. Weill’s compositions soon outraged the Nazis and in March 1933 he slipped into exile. Lenya and Weill divorced soon after. Brecht with his wife Helene Weigel also became refugees. 

It is still commonly thought that Brecht injected the politics, while Weill provided pretty tunes. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Weill independently believed that the music, play and libretto should interact to entertain and to instruct. In 1929 Weill outlined:

“With the Dreigroschenoper we reach a public which either did not know us at all or thought us incapable of captivating listeners… Opera was founded as an aristocratic form of art… If the framework of opera is unable to withstand the impact of the age, then this framework must be destroyed. In the Dreigroschenoper, reconstruction was possible insofar as here we had a chance of starting from scratch. We wanted above all to restore the primitive form of opera… How can… especially song be used in the theatre? We solved the problem in the most primitive manner possible… I was faced with a realistic action and had to use music in opposition to it, since I do not think that music can achieve realistic effects. Thus we either interrupted the action in order to introduce music or deliberately led it to a point where singing became necessary.. This entailed a drastic simplification of the musical language. I had to write music that could be sung by actors, i.e. laymen.”          

Stephen Brook, “An Anthology of Opera”; London 1995; p.471 

Weill’s view is very close to the later well known Brechtian theory of Entfremdung. Usually its rendered as the “distancing effect”, or the “alienation effect”. But the word “defamiliarization” is a better translation, as originated by the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky in in 1917 “Art as Device” (“Art as Technique”). (John Willett, ed & Trans.; Brecht on Theatre, (New York; 1964; p.91). We return to this later. 

A short reprise 

The story-line revolves around two crooks in Victorian-era London. The stage has a bright blue glittering streamer curtain which effectively acts as a “fourth wall” to be sliced open and re-stitched repetitively, as actors smash back and forth through it – breaking ‘illusions’ of reality. Another staging element is a set of narrow tubular frames, almost like gym bars. Tightly spaced, the actors deftly weave in and through them as needed, even if with impossibly high clunky heels!

The start – the curtain is partially penetrated by a spotlight onto just the wispy whitened face of Josefin Platt – a “Moon over Soho”. She quietly sings the famous “Ballad of Mack the Knife”. Thus is the infamous killer “Macheath” or Mackie Messer (‘knife’) introduced. A fragment of Brecht singing this exists, but better known are the famous later 1960s versions by Ella Fitzgerald in 1960, or Louis Armstrong

In this performance all the songs are delivered with panache combining musical chops, humour and at times emphasising deadly political wit. Each actor that sings has a wonderful voice which exudes the requisite passion, irony or tenderness. The music melds jazz and contemporary German dance music. As originally played by a small group, there is an extraordinary small ensemble of seven, each are multi-intrumentalists. 

The action segues to the second villain – Jonathan Peachum (played by Tilo Nest). This stalwart of the hypocritical businessman trains beggars to move city-dwellers in pity to give alms. But the beggars must return half their takings to Peachum. Peachum’s daughter Polly (Cynthia Micas) is enraptured with Mack, and sneaks off to ‘marry’ him in a stable. As Macheath (Nico Holonics) is standing up from the pit, the ensemble band serve as the gang members. At several points they are brought into the action, heightening a ‘defamiliarization’. Polly sings a riveting Pirate Jenny. 

Suddenly the Chief of Police – ‘Tiger Brown’ (Kathrin Wehlisch) interrupts festivities. Far from chilling the mood, it emerges that Brown and Mackie are former barrack comrades in the pillaging British army in India. Now Brown serves as Mackie’s protector from the law. The rollicking “Kanonen-Song” (“Cannon Song”) is lifted almost straight from Rudyard Kipling. 

But when Polly tells her parents she is ‘married’ to Macheath, they vow to get him arrested. Defiantly, Polly tells them that Brown is Mackie’s friend and protector. But this gives them a path. Peachum’s organised power in his army beggars threatens Brown with civic disruption. Macheath flees, handing his gang over to Polly. 

But he cannot resist seeing one of his lovers Jenny (Bettina Hoppe) at a brothel. They sing the “Zuhälterballade” (“Pimp’s Ballad”). Yet Mrs Peachum (Constanza Becker) understands Mackie’s weaknesses and sings “Die Ballade von der sexuellen Hörigkeit” (“Ballad of sexual dependency”). She has knowingly bribed Jenny to betray him to the cops. Brown jails Macheath, as the latter intones the “Ballade vom angenehmen Leben” (“Ballad of the Pleasant Life”). Here Macheath excoriates the poor but virtuous life (“They tell you that the best in life is mental/Just starve yourself and do a lot of reading/Up in some garret where the rats are breeding/Should you survive, it’s purely accidental/If that’s your pleasure, go on, live that way…”). 

Such reality – or at least a cynical reality – is reprised by Peachum in a later song, here as sang here by Brecht himself – Das Lied von der Unzulänglichkeit des menschlichen Strebens – ‘The Song of Inadequacy’. But perhaps the most searing indictment of capitalist base and super-structure comes when Macheath sings on “What Keeps Mankind Alive?” in “Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral” – “First comes the feeding and then comes the morals” – sung here by Franz Josef Degenhardt. 

Macheath demands more applause from the audience as he praises his own philosophy tossing glitter around. This is funny in the production, and reminds us of a more than a passing resemblance to the character of Brecht himself. Even a brief perusal of the standard biography should conclude this (Steven Parker, “Bertolt Brecht – A Literary Life”: London 2014). 

Yet another lover, Lucy Brown (Tiger’s daughter Laura Balzer), and Polly appear at the jail, simultaneously igniting a furious “Eifersuchtsduett” (“Jealousy Duet”). Lucy achieves marvellous heights of ridiculous physical comedy, spitting and spinning. Then she helps Macheath escape. Peachum forces Brown to capture him otherwise his beggar army will disrupt Queen Victoria’s Coronation. 

Jenny demands her money for betraying Macheath, revealing that Macheath is now at another lover’s Suky Tawdry. Back to jail for Macheath. Sentenced to execution, his gang refuse him cash to effect bribes. He is strung up dangling on stage. At the eleventh hour Peachum proclaims that this is not real life, and therefore a messenger on horseback will arrive (“Walk to Gallows”) with mercy. As Macheath is released from the gallows having become a landed aristocrat by grace of the Queen, a neon sign blares out “Love Me” and he dresses up in a snappy suit. 

The show ends with a plea from the same be-curtained ‘Moon’ that began the performance. Now Josefin Platt softly sings that wrongdoing should not be punished too harshly, as life is harsh enough: “Some people are in the dark, and some are in the light/ you can see those in the light, you’ll never see the ones in the dark.” 

On this sad moralistic note, a great entertainment ends an amazing production. Go to see it, but contrary to an often heard Left mythology, it is hardly ‘revolutionary’. The work praises individualism and small-beer rebelliousness, and cannot be thought to ignite revolution. In many ways the work glorifies the lumpenproletariat and the petit bourgeoisie. For me, none of that detracts from the songs, the fulcrum of this work. These blend words and music in an amazing way. Note that at least 3 of the songs were initially unattributed from Francois Villon (1431-1463), and one very closely resembled Rudyard Kipling’s (1865-1936) barrack room songs.

Nonetheless most of the songs’ libretti were by Brecht, though working with Hauptmann. And personally for me, it is Brecht’s poetry that comes closest to a revolutionary literary spirit. Such as “A worker reads history”, or “The Carpet Weavers of Kuyan-Bulak Honour Lenin. Brecht himself wrote to the novelist Alfred Döblin (1878-1957) that “The trouble is that my poetry is the most telling argument against my plays. The reader heaves a sigh of relief and says my father should have brought me up to be a poet and not a dramatist.” (Stephen Parker Ibid, p.230)

He also remarked that his poems were more of a subjective character while his plays were of an ‘objective’ character. What did he mean, and how does this work fit into Brecht’s dramatic theories? Such questions bring into view the ‘Entfremdung’ theory. 

Entfremdung or defamiliarization

Brecht first wrote about this in 1936 in “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting”, describing it as: 

performing in such a way that the audience was hindered from simply identifying itself with the characters in the play. Acceptance or rejection of their actions and utterances was meant to take place on a conscious plane, instead of, as hitherto, in the audience’s subconscious.

(John Willett, ed & Trans.; Brecht on Theatre, (New York; 1964; p.91) 

His dramatic theory evolved as he set himself against the predominant structure derived from Aristotle (384-322 BC). Namely, that the audience should be convinced that events on the stage were real. In contrast Brecht argued that:

“The essence of his theory of drama.. is [to] avoid the Aristotelian premise that the audience should be made to believe that what they are witnessing is happening here and now… if the audience really felt that the emotions of heroes of the past – Oedipous, Lear or Hamlet – could equally have been their own reactions, then the Marxist idea that human nature is not constant but a result of changing historical conditions would automatically be invalidated… Hence [his] “epic” (narrative, nondramatic) theatre is based on detachment, on the Verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect), achieved through a number of devices that remind the spectator that he is being presented with a demonstration of human behaviour in scientific spirit rather than with an illusion of reality, in short, that the theatre is only a theatre and not the world itself.” 

Bertolt Brecht, Encyclopedia Brittanica

There has been since the 1930s much debate on the left as to whether Brecht’s theories, or their translation into plays were successful in the goals to convince audiences of socialism. It has been challenged by Marxist-Leninists on the sound (in my opinion) grounds that this undercuts the materialist, realist understanding of events. W.B. Bland has argued this convincingly. Bland traces Brecht’s evolving views of the stage, but retaining always an anti-realist approach:

Brecht’s concept of the drama continued to change throughout his life. But there was one consistent feature. Although Brecht always presented himself as a “rebel”, his anti-realist philosophy of the theatre was in accordance with norms of society in that he developed the thesis that ‘Naturalism is a superficial realism’.
He tried to present this as being necessary since “Life must be observed through a missing fourth wall”. The meaning of this is made clear as follows:
“It is of course necessary to drop the assumption that there is a fourth wall cutting the audience off from the stage and the consequent illusion that the stage action is taking place in reality and without an audience”. 

(Bertolt Brecht: ‘Short Description of a New Technique of Acting which produces an Alienation Effect’ (1940), p. 136).

The goal of all this was to destroy illusion of reality. 

By 1948, he had changed his views and rather than seeing the stage as a ‘lecture hall’ he now asked artists to:

“Let us treat the theatre as a place of entertainment”.

(Brecht: ‘Kleines Organum fuer das Theater’, in ‘Versuche 12;’, p. 109). From W.B.Bland.

Other Marxists including Steve Giles, point out that:

“The years from 1926 to 1932 constitute one of the most productive and problematic phases in Brecht’s career. .. It occupies a central position in this phase in Brecht’s career, a phase of particular importance in Brecht’s shift to Marxism. Accordingly, The Threepenny Opera has tended to be seen as a transitional work, not only in terms of Brecht’s politics, but also as regards his developing theory and practice of epic theatre.” 

Moreover that Brecht’s re-writing of the original staged production in 1931 did attempt to place a “Marxist gloss to a work whose original politics were rather more vague”; while also  

“rendering more explicit the text’s critique of capitalist society.” 

To conclude

This production of a key work of Brecht, Weill and Haputmann is riveting, hilarious and very entertaining, while being thought-provoking. It will not bring the revolution. But a revolutionary in Berlin should make the investment to see it.