THE BERLIN SHADOW

In a tale embroidering two boyhoods, a father and son revive their relationship by reliving the elder’s traumatizing World War II experience.

Before the outbreak of the war, the Kindertransport relocated thousands of children, many orphaned and most of them Jewish, from Nazi-occupied nations to Great Britain. One such child was 12-year-old Hans Lichtenstein, depicted by his son—the author of this poignant memoir—as a mix of taciturn anger and mordant humor. What has Hans repressed, and how has the author absorbed his father’s trauma? Scenes of the author’s eccentric childhood in Wales serve as a sort of B-plot, interspersed with chapters showing an unusual father-son road trip: the undertaking, in reverse, of Hans’ forced exile, the train journey his father has been ever loath to discuss. Revelations start small, as Hans recalls images that befit the worldview of a 12-year-old. At Berlin’s Jewish Museum, Hans erupts with long-concealed details about the destruction of his own father’s shop during Kristallnacht. The dialogue can be gutting: Recalling children on that perilous train ride, Hans says, in typical laconic prose: “They wept. For the whole journey. Tremendous grief. I didn’t cry….My mother told me that I was going away for a holiday. And I’d believed her.” The author continues with the narration: “He stops. He cannot think the next thought. It cannot be thought by him. We sit in silence. There. Some of it’s been said. Words have been formed and have left him. They have passed through the air. He lifts his cup and stares at the coffee grounds. Silence. A thickening.” Because Lichtenstein is a playwright, his account is dotted with similar bits of dialogue, enlivening the weighty prose. As we wind backward through that ghoulish journey, we can feel the growing intimacy between father and son, acting as catharsis for not only the author, but also for readers.

A unique and intimate addition to the literature about the Holocaust.