Emil Draitser
Kto ty takoi: Odessa 1945-53, Avtobiograficheskie zapiski
(Who are you: Odessa 1945-53, Autobiographical Notes)
Published by Seagull Press
516 Academy Ave
Owings Mills, MD 21117-1310, U.S.A.
Who Are You is a memoir of years of childhood and adolescence spent in the most stressful and perilous time of post-World War II Soviet history, of the enormous internal and external pressure of growing up Jewish in an anti-Semitic and totalitarian society.
The book is not only an eye-witness account of the impact of the unfolding historical events on the lives of ordinary members of the Jewish community in Odessa, but also an attempt to unveil the deep psychological ramifications of those events, of how they shaped personality traits, value systems, and the sense of self.
For the most part, the stories told in this memoir are poignant and harrowing. But in many of them the author often resorts to humor. The memoir ends on an upbeat note of hope and renewal.
Professor of Russian at Hunter College in New York, Emil Draitser is the author of ten books of creative and scholarly prose, and anthologies of Russian poetry. He is a two-time recipient of the New Jersey Council of the Arts Fellowship in Fiction and numerous City University of New York grants in both non-fiction and fiction.
Chapters of his new book have appeared (or forthcoming) in Partisan Review, The North American Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Midstream, as well as in Midrash (Warsaw, Poland) and Evreiskoe slovo (Jewish Word, Moscow, Russia).
The book's list price is $16 with 25% discount ($12) for seniors. To order your copy of the book, please add $3 postage and send a check or money order to:
E. Draitser
6600 JFK Blvd East, # 21F
West New York, NJ 07093.
Book Review
Notes on Contemporary Literature (Forthcoming in March 2004 issue)
Roots: Emil Draitser's Who Are You? (Kto ty takoi: Odessa 1945-53 (in Russian), Seagull Press, Baltimore, 2003).
The author of ten books of fiction and literary criticism, Emil Draitser is a Russian-born émigré living in New York. His reputation as a productive writer and scholar is now enhanced by a compelling memoir of his youth entitled appropriately Who Are You? (Seagull Press: Baltimore, 2003). This is the question which best encapsulates the book's moral dilemmas, defining the sensibilities of a person in search of self.
The story is situated in place and time of Draitser's childhood, in post-war Odessa. Searching to elucidate his life, the author evokes his experiences during the most repressive period of Stalinism. Woven into this memoir are events that actually happened: persecution of writers, campaigns against "rootless cosmopolitans," "kowtowing before the West," and "The Doctors' Trial." Draitser presents a confining society which crushes human spirit and where everything is suspect. Part of the book's impact arises from Draitser's ability to reconstruct how a child thinks and tries to make sense of the world.
One of Draitser's most notable achievements is his presentation of the Jewish experience in Russia. Stalin's era especially was not an easy time to be Jewish, since the dominant culture was aggressively anti-Semitic and the Soviet way of life was intensely hostile to the beliefs, values, and culture of Judaism. Draitser's poignant and gripping book demonstrates the identity-annihilating quality of this attitude toward Jews, representing the depth of its virulence. Equating unity with uniformity, Stalinist ideology proved detrimental to the Jewish identity, smothering diversity and breeding resentment, intolerance, and violence. To read Draitser's childhood experiences is to participate in the pain of the identity-erasure and to understand the anguish of a child caught in the situation of shaming and abuse.
Not surprisingly, tragedy sets the tone in Draitser's pages: there are bursts of malice towards the Jewish Other, vigorous Russian nationalism, and state-promoted anti-Semitism. Russia's larger cruelties are mirrored in the cruelties of children, as the boy is ridiculed, teased and assaulted by his peers. Draitser shows how marginalization due to prejudice exerts long-lasting and cruelly damaging effects to one's selfhood. He presents us with intricate and complicated emotions — the feelings of inferiority and inadequacy — that well up inside the boy, making him an outsider. Desperately struggling to integrate into the fabric of Soviet life, Draitser's Young Pioneer seeks to align himself with the dominant culture and rejects his Jewish identity outright. His quest to fit in proves futile as the introspective, sensitive and tormented boy is consistently alienated from his environment by his Jewishness. The book chronicles many anxious moments when repressions against Soviet Jews seem imminent, adding to the boy's angst and despair. His reflections on contemporary social and political events as they are inscribed in the sordid reality lead him to new revelations about Stalin's tyranny and it is the boy's Jewishness that allows him to see through the official rhetoric and expose it. The process of emerging from childhood illusions and false values has been a long one. At the book's end the evolution of self-awareness is complete, to the point that the teenager no longer engages in ardent resistance of his ethnic heritage and finally finds his way into a dialogue with it.
While the boy finally feels connected and has achieved a partial resolution of his crisis in the recognition of his roots, the scrupulously honest writer admits his failure to build a positive Jewish identity. In a society that accommodates totalitarian homogeneity, he will continue to experience the ravaging alienating consequences of anti-Semitism, perennially aware of his existential aloneness. By delving retrospectively into the past, Draitser searches for an explanation of his disdain for Judaism and for the reason his identity as a Jew became a lifelong prison for him.
The real treasure of the book lies in the portraits of Draitser's parents and the flashbacks to their youth, marriage, and family backgrounds. United in their loving and devotion to their children, his parents loom large in these pages and deserve credit for their commitment to Jewish culture. Unwilling to ignore the injustice done to their people, they see preservation of their heritage as the only response to oppression. Draitser's family history represents the tragic destiny of the Russian Jewry, as illustrated by the appended genealogy table, featuring ancestors murdered during pogroms and in fascist ghettos. Several illuminating chapters trace the hardships endured by Russian Jews and bemoan the state's tyranny over them. A sweeping panorama of the Jewish history in Russia, this richly documented work is a remarkable humanitarian contribution and a challenge to the continued silence in Russia surrounding its persecution of Jews. The volume touches a nerve and is written with a depth of feeling. The reader will appreciate the skilled craftsmanship that elevates Draitser's perfect gem of a memoir to fine literature.
— Tatyana Novikov
University of Nebraska at Omaha