Heshel's Kingdom

by Dan Jacobson

In 1919 Heshel Melamed, a rabbi in the small provincial Lithuanian town of Varniai, presented his wife and their nine children with his greatest and most unexpected at the age of fifty-three he died, suddenly, of a heart attack. Heshel’s widow, children and grandchildren were thus set free to establish themselves safely seven thousand miles away in South Africa. As a result, they were spared the Nazi invasion and the tidal wave of killing that was to engulf virtually the entire Jewish population of Lithuania twenty years later. Prompted by a few of his grandfather’s possessions that had come down to him across the decades – a pair of spectacles, an address book, a single photograph – Dan Jacobson tells the story of Heshel and his descendants. Everywhere he encounters puzzles, ambiguities and fateful turning-points in the history of nations and individual characters alike. Why, in the course of a short life, did Heshel change his identity not one, but twice? What manner of violent death eventually came to the aunts, uncles and cousins left behind in Lithuania? What kind of lives opened up before those members of the family who had settled in South Africa? In dealing with those questions, Jacobson also raises the most puzzling question of the nature of the physical and moral inheritance bequeathed by the past to each of us.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Holocaust, Memoir, History

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Dan Jacobson (born March 7, 1929 in Johannesburg, South Africa) is a novelist, short story writer, critic and essayist. He has lived in Great Britain for most of his adult life, and for many years held a professorship in the English Department at University College London. He has also spent periods as a visiting writer or a guest-professor at universities in the United States, Australia, and South Africa, and has given lectures and readings in many other countries.

His early novels, including The Trap, his first published novel, focus on South African themes. His later works have been various in kind: they include works of fantasy and fictional treatments of historical episodes, as well as memoirs, critical essays, and travel books. Among the awards and prizes he has received are the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 1959 (A Long Way from London and Other Stories); Somerset Maugham Award 1964 (Time of Arrival and Other Essays); The Jewish Chronicle Award 1977 (The Confessions of Josef Baisz); the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography 1986 (Time and Time Again). In the year 2000 he edited and translated from the Dutch Een mond vol Glas by Henk van Woerden, an imaginative re-creation of the circumstances leading to the assassination of a South African president, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, in the country's House of Assembly.

Dan Jacobson has received an Honorary D. Litt. from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and on retirement from his position at University College London was elected a Fellow of the college. Collections of his papers can be found at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austen, Texas; Oxford University, England; and, in South Africa, at Witwatersrand University Library, Johannesburg, the National English Literary Museum, Grahamstown, and the Africana Museum, Kimberley.

Reviews

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This seems to have functioned as a root text for Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebald. At the end of Sebald’s novel the main character Austerlitz gives a copy of Heshel’s Kingdom to the narrator, who sits down by the bank of a river and reads it. I’ve been meaning to read this since finishing (and loving) Austerlitz late last year. Sebald’s writing is elaborate to the point of feeling baroque—laden—and oh, so wordy. This is straightforward, nothing like Sebald; but content-wise, everything addressed in Austerlitz can be found, in seed form, right here. Jacobson’s reflections on racism, evil, death, life, family, and the participation of ordinary people in the holocaust—could not be more timely.

[Andrew]

A memoir of histories both personal and global, and unlike many such memoirs, it’s actually brilliant. Each description is like a little gem (echoes of Chatwin). Sebald, too, called this an influence… and well yeah. Massively. To the point where reading Heshel’s Kingdom after reading Austerlitz reminds me of having watched Scorsese’s King of Comedy after Joker. I hadn’t realized the extent to which Hangover Todd’s version was nearly a shot-for-shot remake, and likewise, I didn’t realize the extent to which the Czech parts of Austerlitz were largely a scene-by-scene rewrite of Jacobson’s journey through Lithuania (albeit with some major differences, the survivor vs. the descendant, etc.). It almost makes me feel a bit poorly about old W.G. (sorry Dad!).

[Hans Luiten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kwam dit boekje tegen bij Antiquariaat Kok, altijd weer leuk om daar te snuffelen. Mooi en ontroerend boekje. Jacobson gaat op zoek naar de sporen van zijn oude Joodse grootvader in Litouwen, overleden vlak voor de Holocaust. Soms wat vage uitwijdingen, maar vooral de schetsen van de kleine dorpjes in Litouwen met de oude begraafplaatsen vond ik mooi (en heel herkenbaar).

[Paulina · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I have never seen more deceitfully innocent-looking landscapes than those of Lithuania".

"Looking about me, I understand something that has been haunting me since my arrival in Lithuania; that I had drawn close to in Varniai, but had failed to articulate there. It now seems to me that I should have always known it. The abyss of the past does not have to be figured for us by bottomless pits, vertiginous plunges, stones dropping for ever down soundless chambers. This will do just as well. These benches and that set of civic buildings; those trees and traffic signs; the curve of this empty road."

[Lorri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heshel’s Kingdom is Dan Jacobson’s search for family roots in Lithuania, and is a story written in a sensitive manner, but also written in a unique autobiographical perspective. Jacobson brings us historical fact regarding how the Jews were perceived and treated before and during World War II. But, he also brings us his own journey through his ancestral past. We follow him through his travels from South Africa to Lithuania to try to find some answers to questions that he himself has wondered about.

Jacobson comes to the conclusion that he would not have been born if his grandfather had not returned to Lithuania from a trip to the U.S. That might sound odd or bizarre, but due to circumstances, it is, in fact, true. One must read the book in order to understand the background regarding that situation.

In the book, Jacobson writes a letter to his grandfather, a letter that almost seems like it might have been a catharsis for him (Jacobson) to write. The unsentimental letter encompasses Jacobson’s thoughts regarding his grandfather, which (for me) was an unexpected, yet insightful and important addition to the book, adding more depth to the narrative which was already filled with a lot of substance.

Heshel’s Kingdom is not a happy book, and there is no beautiful or fairy tale ending, but it does bring into focus how the decisions of past ancestors affect the lives of the present, in a moving manner. Jacobson writes with excellence, and precision. The book moves slowly, but he has given us many details and many thoughts to ponder in an extremely compelling read. I recommend it to everyone.

[Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book made me think about my own quest to understand the old world where my parents emigrated from and to discover my own roots, with one huge difference. I found living breathing uncles, aunts, cousins and their descendants in a town near the Hungarian border in Austria. I was able to talk with them and ask them questions and see their way of life. I was not chasing ghosts, finding deserted empty eerie streets and massacre sites where maybe my relatives perished together with dozens of thousands of others who were murdered. This author could not even find a single grave of his relatives. How sad! They were absolutely wiped from the face of the earth with no single trace left! This true story made me feel for the author's loss of the roots and family he never found.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

On one single day in 1941, in a village in Lithuania, a Nazi officer recorded the deaths of 886 Jewish adults and 1020 Jewish children. As Dan Jacobson writes: "Anyone who truly opened his imagination to just a "fragment of what happened [on that day] might well be struck dumb for ever."
The search for his grandfather, whose death in Lithuania in 1919 led to the survival of the rest of the family and Dan Jacobson's own birth in South Africa, leads to the most "deceitfully innocent-looking landscapes" of rural Lithuania and reflections on our lack of knowledge of what the future might hold, unlived possibilities, destruction and regeneration. Tragedy and humour are interwoven in this beautiful and honest book, which is both highly personal, and timeless.

[Jessica Feinstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marvellous :)