![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fiddler on the roof
Book Review: Mendelssohn is on the Roof, by Jiří Weil
The story starts with minor officials in the occupying German forces being ordered to remove the "Jewish" statue from the roof of the Prague Academy of Music. Unfortunately, neither they nor the workers assigned to the task know which is the statue of Mendelssohn. They decide it must be the one with the biggest nose, but that turns out to be Wagner. Awkward. Fortunately their mistake is prevented, but leads to a long trail of trying to discover, without admitting their ignorance, which is the statue to be removed. (This reminds me, retrospectively, of a conversation in the film The Death of Stalin: "There are no good doctors in Moscow, remember? We got rid of them". Likewise, presumably any books containing helpful reference images of Mendelssohn would have been burned.)
But the book weaves together, without really cohering, other stories of life in occupied Prague. A dying hospital patient, who has to be moved to the Jewish hospital. Fugitive children, who have to hide behind cupboards. The parlous existence of Jews in Prague and Theresienstadt, not initially included in transports to "the East". Resistance or indifference of other citizens. The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, which seems to be a fixed point in time and space that features frequently in fiction concerning the period (for example The Visible World, The Prague Sonata). Early on in the book there is absurdism and humour; whilst it could have taken many directions, the tone becomes darker as it progresses, and though various conclusions would have been possible, the path that is ultimately taken is one that is foreseeable. No doubt a bleak case can be made that this is a work of catharsis or therapy for the author, who had to fake his own death to avoid the German authorities in 1942, and only a slight reworking of his experiences.
The story starts with minor officials in the occupying German forces being ordered to remove the "Jewish" statue from the roof of the Prague Academy of Music. Unfortunately, neither they nor the workers assigned to the task know which is the statue of Mendelssohn. They decide it must be the one with the biggest nose, but that turns out to be Wagner. Awkward. Fortunately their mistake is prevented, but leads to a long trail of trying to discover, without admitting their ignorance, which is the statue to be removed. (This reminds me, retrospectively, of a conversation in the film The Death of Stalin: "There are no good doctors in Moscow, remember? We got rid of them". Likewise, presumably any books containing helpful reference images of Mendelssohn would have been burned.)
But the book weaves together, without really cohering, other stories of life in occupied Prague. A dying hospital patient, who has to be moved to the Jewish hospital. Fugitive children, who have to hide behind cupboards. The parlous existence of Jews in Prague and Theresienstadt, not initially included in transports to "the East". Resistance or indifference of other citizens. The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, which seems to be a fixed point in time and space that features frequently in fiction concerning the period (for example The Visible World, The Prague Sonata). Early on in the book there is absurdism and humour; whilst it could have taken many directions, the tone becomes darker as it progresses, and though various conclusions would have been possible, the path that is ultimately taken is one that is foreseeable. No doubt a bleak case can be made that this is a work of catharsis or therapy for the author, who had to fake his own death to avoid the German authorities in 1942, and only a slight reworking of his experiences.