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These Holocaust survivors were once classmates in a DP camp. They just reunited after 76 years.
(New York Jewish Week) — The last time Michael Epstein, 87, and Abe Rosenberg, 83, were in the same room, they were in Germany, studying in a classroom in a displaced person’s camp in Bavaria after the Holocaust.
On Sunday, March 19, the two men — along with Rosenberg’s older sister, Ada Gracin, who was also in the DP camp — reunited after 76 years. This time around, it was in the social hall of Young Israel of New Hyde Park, New York, where the pair embraced, said the Shehecheyanu prayer to mark their reunion and shared their survival stories with an in-person audience of about 100.
The reunion came together quickly, just a few weeks after the two men learned they lived less than 40 miles from one another — Rosenberg in New Hyde Park, on the eastern border of Queens, and Epstein in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Originally intended to be an intimate meeting between the two families, the reunion soon broadened to a festive brunch and celebration open to the public.
“The Torah says it’s a mitzvah to relate what happened to us,” Rosenberg said. “Hitler’s goal was to destroy Yiddishkeit, Judaism. When we gather here, we are involved in a victory over him.”
Michael Epstein, Abe Rosenberg and Ada Gracin, left to right, stand together for the first time in 76 years after meeting as children living in a displaced person’s camp after the Holocaust. (Julia Gergely)
The two were brought together by a sharp-eyed videographer. In February, Epstein participated in an interview at a Jewish day school in Edison, New Jersey as part of the “Names Not Numbers” oral history project, which is dedicated to preserving the memories of Holocaust survivors and ensuring their legacies live on in future generations. As part of the project, high school students interview survivors about their experiences, which are filmed and made into mini-documentaries.
During the interview, Epstein presented a photograph of himself as a 7-year-old in “cheder” or elementary school at Feldafing, an all-Jewish displaced person’s camp near Munich, where he lived from 1945 to 1949.
As it happens, the videographer that day recognized the photograph. He had seen the same one during an interview he had filmed the prior year with another survivor — Rosenberg — who was living in Queens. When Epstein and his two daughters learned this, they knew they had to arrange a meeting.
“This is the first time I know of a reunion happening between survivors as a result of our program,” Daniel Mayer, a Names Not Numbers board member, told the New York Jewish Week.
As for Rosenberg, when he got the call from Epstein, “it just concretized the fact that the whole experience [of Feldafing] wasn’t a dream,” he said.
Though the two men did not specifically remember each other — Rosenberg was 8 and Epstein and Gracin were 11 at the time of the picture, taken in 1947 — at the event, they acutely recalled their lives at the DP camp.
Rosenberg and Epstein point themselves out in the picture of their childhood classroom, taken in 1947. (Julia Gergely)
Rosenberg, for example, remembers living in Barrack Nine with his sister and parents. During the war, the Nazis used Feldafing as a training ground for Hitler Youth. In Feldafing, like at other Jewish DP camps, survivors waiting for a country that would taken them in opened Jewish schools, started newspapers, composed music and began to rebuild their identities.
“We were hoping to go to Palestine, to Eretz Yisroel — that was our dream,” Rosenberg said. “It was not available to us” under the British Mandate. “Unfortunately, the doors of the whole world were closed to us.”
“So what did we do?” he continued. “We started to build on Jewish life again.”
On Sunday, as the assembled crowd noshed on bagels, lox and egg salad — and other participants joined via Zoom from California, Florida, New Jersey and Canada — Epstein, Rosenberg and Gracin shared their experiences with those in attendance.
First to speak was Epstein, who brought with him a scrapbook of pictures from his childhood. Epstein was born in Łódź, Poland, in 1935, which his family was forced to flee when Germany invaded in 1939. They went to Bialystok, which soon fell under the control of the Russians, who transported Poles and Jews to labor camps in Siberia via cattle cars. After spending time at a gulag camp in Siberia, Epstein and his family were moved to another in Uzbekistan.
When the war ended, Epstein and his parents returned to Łódź, only to find that their entire extended family had been killed and a Polish family was living in their apartment. With nothing left for them in Poland, they left for Feldafing. They lived there until they could find a way to get to the United States, where they eventually arrived in 1945.
Epstein, who is known as Zayde to his 11 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren — many of whom were in the room — left the crowd with a message to invest in Jewish education, and to work to uphold democracy. “We live in ‘di Goldene Medine’ (the Golden Land),” he said. “We thought, in Europe, that meant there was gold on the street. There’s no gold on the street but there is gold on paper in our Constitution, and in our Constitution there is still mining to do. There is still work to be done to make our Constitution’s morals realistic.”
The family of Michael Epstein gathered from New York and New Jersey to celebrate his life story. Epstein, second from the right in the front row, is holding one of his five great-grandchildren. (Julia Gergely)
Rosenberg and Gracin, who spoke next, were also from Łódź. Gracin, born Ada Rosen in 1935, recalled wearing the mandated yellow Jewish star patch on her clothing as a 4-year-old. Her mother was pregnant with her brother when they left Poland for Soviet Georgia, a journey she said was “fraught with peril,” as they were stopped multiple times by the Gestapo. The family lived in Georgia for six years and “fear was a constant.”
When the war ended, the family also returned to Łódź to look for surviving family members — there were none. They connected with the Jewish Agency and HIAS, which helped them get to Feldafing in 1945.
There, “we were referred to as ‘she’arit hapletah,’ the surviving remnants,” Gracin said. “I refer to this period in my life as ‘life reborn,’ as I lost my childhood prior to this. Although we lacked many things, I never felt deprived. The survivors cherished each child as if it were their own. We were precious jewels to them, as they had lost their own children.”
“For the first time in my life, I went to school, made friends, played and laughed,” she added. “I was a happy 9 year old.”
Gracin, her brother and her parents arrived in New York Harbor on April 6, 1949. “At last we were free of fear, free to live and practice our religion and thrive,” she said. “I feel blessed to have been given this chapter in my life and my revenge to Hitler is that I was blessed with three children and six grandchildren.” Two of Gracin’s children and four of her grandchildren were at the event.
In his remarks, Rosenberg recalled the heroism of the parents, teachers and rabbis in Feldafing, many of whom had lost their entire families but made it their mission to educate the few children who made it to the camp. “They were the heroes,” Rosenberg said. “They deserve the accolades — we were kids.” It is in their honor and memory that Rosenberg continued to share his story throughout his life, he said.
Though Epstein and Rosenberg did not stay in touch upon their respective arrivals to the United States, their lives continued to follow similar paths. Both went on to study engineering at the City College of New York and for a time both worked at Bendix Corporation, though in different departments — Epstein in the space program and Rosenberg on the supersonic transport team.
Congregants and community members brunched on bagels and listened to the survival stories in the social hall of Young Israel of New Hyde Park. (Julia Gergely)
Chuck Waxman, a docent at the Museum of Jewish Heritage who moderated the discussion, told the New York Jewish Week he was “blown away” by the event — he said he expected less than half the room to be filled.
But full it was, with family, friends, community members and other survivors who wanted to be a part of the miracle — both the miracle that happened in Feldafing and the miracle of the reunion in Queens.
The event also included speeches from Mayer Waxman, executive director of Queens JCC and Torah commentaries from Lawrence Teitelman, the rabbi of Young Israel of New Hyde Park, where Rosenberg is a member, and Benjamin Yudin, the rabbi of Congregation Shomrei Torah in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where Epstein is a member.
At the close of the event, the lyrics of “Zog nit keynmol,” the “Song of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising” — which was sung by Jewish partisan groups around Eastern Europe — were passed in sheets around the room. Rosenberg heartily led everyone in Yiddish.
“We plan to meet again in another 76 years,” Rosenberg joked to the New York Jewish Week. “Everyone is invited.”
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The post These Holocaust survivors were once classmates in a DP camp. They just reunited after 76 years. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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An organ divided a synagogue. The fallout helped create Reform Judaism.
A new musical traces the origins of Reform Judaism to a question that, on paper, seems more likely to produce a subcommittee than a schism: Should a synagogue have an organ?
In 1840, a synagogue in Charleston, South Carolina, voted 46 to 40 to install a pipe organ in the sanctuary to accompany services.
The vote triggered a scandal: Organs were commonplace in American churches, but unheard of in synagogues, since rabbinic law traditionally holds that musical instruments should not be played on Shabbat.
The instrument caused such an uproar that those who opposed its installation started a breakaway congregation and fought for control of the synagogue in civil court. The case paved the way for a Reform Jewish movement that would embrace music as a key element of religious life.
Happyland, a musical based on those events, will debut Thursday at the same congregation where the real events took place, Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim — today, still an operating Reform synagogue with an organ in its sanctuary. As the musical progresses, the organ becomes a vehicle for exploring broader questions of progress, including the uncomfortable reality that many Jews owned slaves in the antebellum South.
“It really embodies this tension in Reform Judaism, which is how much do you adapt to the wider culture around you, versus how much do you maintain your identity and your tradition?” said Elijah Siegler, co-producer of the show. “There’s no easy answer, and the organ is a perfect example of that.”
Charleston as happyland
The idea for Happyland came from an unusual pair in the theater world: a former synagogue president and a professor of religious studies.
Rob Turkewitz, a civil litigation attorney who had led Kahol Kadosh Beth Elohim, and Siegler, a synagogue member who teaches at the College of Charleston, thought that their congregation’s dramatic history had theatrical potential.
The duo set out to write historical rap songs emulating the Broadway show Hamilton. But they discovered they were out of their depth.
“We realized pretty quickly that we probably are not the right people to be writing a musical,” Turkewitz said. “Because we have no musical talent.”
Instead, they recruited Toby Singer, the congregation’s former music director and a Brooklyn-based composer, to write the script and songs.
The resulting show follows the arc of the real-life Kahol Kadosh Beth Elohim cantor, Gustavus Poznanski, who had been hired by the congregation in 1836 partly for his traditionalist bona fides.
But Poznanski ended up aligning with those who sought to modernize the synagogue. He supported the installation of the organ, conducted services in English rather than Hebrew, and advocated for observing just one Passover Seder instead of two.
Born in Poland and educated in Hamburg, Germany — where a Reform Jewish movement had already taken root — Poznanski saw the New World as a place where Jews could shape a distinctly American Jewish life.
That vision was captured in a famous speech Poznanski gave in 1841 — the inspiration for the title of the show. “This synagogue is our temple, this city our Jerusalem, this happy land our Palestine,” he said, later adding, “America is our Zion and Washington our Jerusalem.”
But not everyone in Charleston shared his vision. Appalled by the reforms championed by Poznanski, a group of congregants took the dispute to state court.
A judge ruled in favor of the organ’s installation — not because he necessarily agreed with playing music on Shabbat, but because the synagogue had voted for it. According to Turkewitz, it was one of the first appellate rulings in American history that affirmed the separation of church and state.
“The court basically held that judges can’t determine for a religion how to practice,” Turkewitz said. “How could the judge tell the Jewish community how to practice their religion when the Jewish community doesn’t even agree?”
Reckoning with slavery
For Singer, the organ controversy was only part of the story. As congregants argued over what progress looked like inside the sanctuary, the nation outside was hurtling toward civil war.
“I just couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a story about religious freedom couched within a larger story about not freedom, because this was taking place in antebellum Charleston,” Singer said. “I needed to write a story that dealt with that and sat with the fact that the Jewish community of the South was complicit in the slave trade and was involved in it.”
Many of the founding members of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim came to Charleston to participate in the slave trade. And after the congregation’s first synagogue was destroyed in a fire, enslaved people built the replacement in 1840 — the grand Greek Revival structure that still stands today.
That history is woven throughout Happyland. In the musical, Poznanski grapples with the fact that his wife, Hetty, owns slaves. The second act takes place during a Passover Seder on the eve of the Civil War, as the characters confront the hypocrisy of celebrating Jews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt while slaves labor in their own home.
“Some people in the audience are going to see their great, great, great grandparents depicted on stage, because we still have Charleston Jews who are descendants of those Jews of the 1840s,” Siegler said. “I think some Jews don’t necessarily want to watch a musical about their ancestors owning slaves.”
Poznanski eventually resigned from his position, unable to bridge the divide between the traditionalist and reformist factions of the synagogue. A century later, in the 1960s, Rabbi Burton Padoll was forced to resign from the congregation after members objected to his support for the Civil Rights movement.
Today, the synagogue has made efforts to acknowledge that painful past, erecting a monument outside the congregation commemorating the enslaved people who built it.
For Siegler, the conflicts over slavery and religious reform share a common thread: how communities respond when long-held practices are challenged.
“One is a public fight over the organ, and then the other is this kind of family argument at the Seder table about owning enslaved people,” he said. “They actually are narratively linked by this idea of, what do we do to feel safe and secure?”
The post An organ divided a synagogue. The fallout helped create Reform Judaism. appeared first on The Forward.
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A conference in Warsaw focuses on Jewish languages
דער ייִדישער מוזיי „פּולין“ אין וואַרשע האָט לעצטנס דורכגעפֿירט אַ קאָנפֿערענץ וועגן ייִדישע שפּראַכן, אין שײַכות מיט דער צײַטווײַליקער אויסשטעלונג אויף דער זעלביקער טעמע, „דער כּוח פֿון ווערטער“.
כאָטש די קאָנפֿערענץ, וואָס איז פֿאָרגעקומען פֿונעם ערשטן ביזן דריטן יוני, האָט אין פּרינציפּ באַהאַנדלט אַלע ייִדישע לשונות, האָט דער מוזיי אין וואַרשע — די אַמאָליקע הויפּטשטאָט פֿונעם אייראָפּעיִשן ייִדישלאַנד — באַשטימט, אַז די פֿאָרשערס זאָלן רעדן מערסטנס וועגן ייִדיש. 14 פֿון די 27 רעפֿעראַטן האָבן באַהאַנדלט די ייִדישע קולטור אויף ייִדיש; 3 וועגן העברעיִש; 2 וועגן לאַדינאָ; 2 וועגן פּויליש, און נאָר 1 וועגן אַנדערע שפּראַכן: דזשוהורי (די שפּראַך פֿון די באַרג־ייִדן אין די קאַווקאַזן), עספּעראַנטאָ, ייִדיש־אַראַביש אין מאָראָקאָ, דײַטש, רוסיש און סערבאָ־קראָאַטיש.
אַלע רעפֿעראַטן האָט מען געהאַלטן אויף ענגליש.
לויט מײַן מיינונג וואָלט געווען אינטערעסאַנטער צו הערן וועגן ייִדיש דווקא אין אַ ברייטערן קאָנטעקסט, ווען מע נעמט אויך אַרײַן אַנדערע ייִדישע און נישט־ייִדישע שפּראַכן און קולטורן. עס זענען פֿאַראַן אַ סך פּאַראַלעלן און קאָנטראַסטן, וואָס וואַרפֿן זיך אין די אויגן, ווען ייִדישיסטן קוקן אַרויס פֿון די אייגענע דלתּ אַמות.
די הויפּטרעדע האָט געהאַלטן חנה פּולין־גלאַי (אוניווערסיטעט פֿון אַמהערסט), וועגן דער טעמע פֿון איר נײַ בוך: חורבן־ייִדיש, ד״ה די נײַע ווערטער און אויסדרוקן וואָס זענען אויפֿגעקומען אין די געטאָס און לאַגערן. כאָטש די לעקציע איז געווען אינטערעסאַנט האָט זיך מיר געפֿילט אַ ביסל אומהיימלעך צו הערן וועגן די דאָזיקע ווערטער אין „פּולין“־מוזיי, וואָס געפֿינט זיך ממש אויפֿן שטח פֿון דער אַמאָליקער וואַרשעווער געטאָ.
עס איז נישטאָ קיין אָרט צו דערציילן וועגן אַלע רעפֿעראַטן, אָבער וועגן עטלעכע לוינט זיך אָפּצוגעבן אַ באַריכט.
מאַטשעי ראַטאַיטשיק (פּויזנער אוניווערסיטעט) האָט גערעדט וועגן עטלעכע פּרוּוון במשך פֿון דער געשיכטע צו שרײַבן העברעיִש מיט לאַטײַנישע אותיות. איתּמר בן־אַבֿי (בן־ציון בן־יהודה), דער זון פֿונעם גרויסן באַנײַער פֿון העברעיִש, אליעזר בן־יהודה (אליעזר יצחק פּערלמאַן), איז געווען דער ערשטער געבוירענער רעדער פֿון העברעיִש אין דער מאָדערנער תּקופֿה. אין די 1920ער און 1930ער יאָרן האָט ער אַרויסגעגעבן עטלעכע ביכער און זשורנאַלן אויף טראַנסליטעראַציע, אַרײַנגערעכנט אַ באַנד זכרונות, „אַבֿי“ (ד״ה „מײַן טאַטע“; געשריבן „Avi“). זאבֿ זשאַבאָטינסקי, דער באַרימטער פֿירער פֿון די רעוויזיאָניסטן, האָט אין אַ געוויסער תּקופֿה געשטיצט די רעפֿאָרעם — אָבער צום סוף האָט זיך עס נישט אָנגענומען. העברעיִש איז געבליבן העברעיִש — מיטן ייִדישן אַלף־בית.
הילה שלם בהרד (תּל־אָבֿיבֿער אוניווערסיטעט) האָט דערציילט וועגן די שפּראַכן פֿון די „מעברות“ (די פּליטים־לאַגערן), וווּ עטלעכע הונדערט טויזנט נײַע עולים קיין ארץ־ישׂראל האָבן געוווינט, ווען זיי זענען ערשט אָנגעקומען אין לאַנד אין די יאָרן 1948־1951. אַזוי ווי די ייִדן זענען געקומען פֿון אַ סך פֿאַרשידענע לענדער, האָבן זיי אָפֿט נישט געהאַט קיין בשותּפֿותדיקע שפּראַך. אַ מאָל האָט איין געוויסע שפּראַך דאָמינירט; למשל, אין איין לאַגער איז די הויפּטשפּראַך געוואָרן בולגאַריש, דערפֿאַר ווײַל עס האָבן דאָרט צופֿעליק געוווינט אַ סך ייִדן פֿון בולגאַריע. אין אַנדערע לאַגערן האָט מען גערעדט אַ מין העברעיִש. אַ מאָל האָט זיך אַנטוויקלט אַ מין פּידזשין, אַ געמישטע שפּראַך, אָדער ייִדן האָבן גערעדט מיט די הענט.
חיה־רחל נאָווע, אַ לינגוויסטקע בײַם פֿאָרדהאַם־אוניווערסיטעט, האָט פֿאַרגליכן די עפֿנטלעכע שילדן אויף ייִדיש און לשון־קודש אין די חסידישע ייִשובֿים אין מאָנסי און קרית־יואל. קרית־יואל איז געשאַפֿן געוואָרן ווי אַן אָפֿיציעל חסידיש שטעטל און די עפֿנטלעכע שפּראַך און אַ סך שילדן זענען פֿון תּמיד אָן געווען אויף ייִדיש. מאָנסי, ווידער, איז אַ געמישטע שטאָט; פֿריִער האָבן דאָרט געוווינט אַ סך „מאָדערנע“ ייִדן, נישט קיין חרדים, זענען אַלע שילדן במילא געווען אויף ענגליש. צו ביסלעך איז די שטאָט געוואָרן וואָס מער חסידיש, און אין די לעצטע 10־20 יאָר האָט מען אָנגעהויבן הענגען שילדן אויף די געשעפֿטן און אויף די ווענט אין ייִדיש און לשון־קודש. דאָס איז אַ סימן פֿונעם נײַעם שטאָלץ פֿון די חסידים דאָרט, וואָס פֿילן, אַז זיי דאַרפֿן זיך מער נישט באַהאַלטן הינטער ענגלישע שילדן. די געגנט איז געוואָרן זייערע.
שפּעטער האָט נאָווע באַמערקט, אַז אין דער ייִדישער געגנט אין אַנטווערפּן, למשל, זענען כּמעט נישטאָ קיין שילדן אויף ייִדיש אָדער לשון־קודש. דאָס ווײַזט מסתּמא אַרויס די אומזיכערקייט פֿון די אַנטווערפּענער חסידים, וואָס ווילן זיך נישט וואַרפֿן אין די אויגן.
שירה פֿריד, וואָס האָט נאָר וואָס פֿאַרענדיקט אַ דאָקטאָראַט בײַם העברעיִשן אוניווערסטטעט, האָט געלייענט אַ רעפֿעראַט וועגן די „בית־יעקבֿ“־שולן פֿאַר פֿרומע מיידלעך, וואָס שׂרה שנירער האָט אָנגעהויבן שאַפֿן אין קראָקע אין 1917. שנירער האָט איבערגערעדט די גרויסע רבנים פֿון איר תּקופֿה, די פֿירערס פֿון דער „אַגודה“, די נײַע אָרטאָדאָקסישע פּאָליטישע פּאַרטיי, און זיי האָבן באַשלאָסן צו שטיצן „בית־יעקבֿ“. שנירער און די לערערינס אין די שולן האָבן די גאַנצע צײַט באַקעמפֿט די לינגוויסטישע אַסימילאַציע, ווײַל אַ סך פֿרומע מיידלעך האָבן דעמאָלטס שוין גערעדט צווישן זיך אויף פּויליש. אין זייער קאַמף פֿאַר ייִדיש האָבן זיי אַדאָפּטירט דעם „אָרטאָדאָקסישן אויסלייג“ פֿון שלמה בירנבוים, דעם באַקאַנטן בעל־תּשובֿה און ייִדיש־פֿאָרשער פֿון ווין, וואָס איז געוואָרן דער ערשטער ייִדיש־פּראָפֿעסאָר אין האַמבורג אין 1922.
קלמן ווײַזער, אַ היסטאָריקער און ייִדישיסט בײַ יאָרק־אוניווערסיטעט אין טאָראָנטאָ, האָט ווײַטער גערעדט וועגן בירנבוים און וועגן זײַן אויסלייג. נאָך דער מלחמה, איז בירנבוים געוואָרן אַ ביסל אָפּגעפֿרעמדט פֿון זײַנע אַמאָליקע פֿרײַנד אין דער אַגודה און „בית־יעקבֿ“. די אַגודה האָט געפֿירט אַ מער פּראַגמאַטישע פּאָליטיק לגבי מדינת־ישׂראל און עבֿרית. די אַגודיסטן זענען געווען צופֿרידן זיך צו באַטייליקן אין דער ישׂראל־רעגירונג און צו נעמען די מלוכישע געלטער פֿאַר זייערע אינסטיטוציעס. דערפֿאַר האָט ייִדיש גיך פֿאַרלוירן זײַן חשיבֿות בײַ זיי און דער יונגער דור איז גיך אַריבער אויף דער לאַנדשפּראַך: עבֿרית אין ישׂראל, און ענגליש אין אַמעריקע. בירנבוים, ווידער, איז געבליבן אַ שאַרפֿער קעגנער פֿונעם ציוניזם און פֿון עבֿרית. אָבער צוליב עפּעס אַ סיבה האָט ער נישט געזוכט קיין קאָנטאַקטן מיט די אונגערישע חסידים (למשל, סאַטמאַר), וואָס האָבן געהאַט אַן ענלעכע שטעלונג און וואָס האָבן ווײַטער גערעדט ייִדיש.
הגם די רעפֿעראַטן זענען געווען אויף אַקאַדעמיש ענגליש, נישט אויף קיין ייִדישער שפּראַך, האָט מען די שמועסן אין די קאַווע־הפֿסקות געפֿירט אויך אויף עבֿרית, פּויליש און אַוודאי — ייִדיש. שלמה בירנבוים וואָלט געווען שטאָלץ.
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In David Baerwald’s epic tale of espionage and wartime horrors, family history is stranger than fiction
“When I started out writing this book, my model wasn’t James Clavell,” David Baerwald said with a laugh, as he paused for a smoke break at a waterfront picnic table in his current hometown of Kingston, New York. “It was more like Bernard Malamud, or something; it was this kind of interior, depressing thing about a family coming to grips with its crimes — the hazards of epigenetic traumatic memory in a family, and what it does to people. It was a much more personal tale, you know? I wasn’t really thinking of this huge, swashbuckling thing.”
The Fire Agent, Baerwald’s debut novel, is indeed a huge, swashbuckling affair, an epic, massively entertaining and often gut-punchingly horrifying tale of international espionage spanning four continents, two world wars and countless collisions between heartfelt idealism and the harsh realities of human behavior over its 600 pages. Though some of its characters and most of its conversations are fictional, The Fire Agent is firmly grounded in actual historical events and figures both well-known and obscure — some of which are truly stranger than fiction.
“I would not have dared to make up most of this,” Baerwald said with a shrug. “Some of the characters are so over-the-top, they’re like super-villains from a Bruce Lee movie or Get Smart. The Black Dragon Society? Treasure hoards of Chinese gold? That all sounds ridiculous, like something out of Terry and the Pirates, or fucking Indiana Jones. But it all happened! I really wanted to provide people with clues, so that they could look into the actual history, because I found it so interesting.”
Much of The Fire Agent’s plot is based around the life and career of Ernst Baerwald, the author’s actual grandfather, a German Jew who spent several decades in Japan — ostensibly working as a liaison for the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben, though the position served as cover for his extensive and deeply impactful espionage activities on behalf of the German (and later the United States) government. Long dead by the time his grandson was born in 1960, Ernst rarely came up in family conversation. “He went largely unrecognized in his lifetime,” said Baerwald. “Nobody ever really talked about him, and from what people would tell me about my grandfather, I had the impression that he was this kind of bum that sold ink on the streets in Tokyo. I had no idea that he’d led this crazy life!”
It wasn’t until about eight years ago, when Baerwald was cleaning out his parents’ wildfire-threatened West Los Angeles home, that he got an initial glimpse at Ernst’s actual occupation. “There were two boxes with a bunch of his papers that were in his office when he died,” Baerwald said. “They’d just been packed up and put away and buried under, like, 1960s-era skis and gardening equipment. In fact, I was gonna throw them away without looking at them; I was like, ‘Well, I’ve lived long enough without them.’ But this woman that was working with me, archiving the things in the house, she was like, ‘Well, let’s have a look.’”
Along with Ernst’s diaries and letters, Baerwald found maps and photographs of Japan, a Samurai sword and a miniature spy camera from the 1930s, and a speech that his grandfather had given to a U.S. government-run spy school in San Francisco in 1943. “I realized that there was, in fact, a huge story here that I needed to uncover,” Baerwald recalled. “That speech to the spy school was really the map to a huge portion of what I was soon to be researching. I didn’t know where it would take me, I didn’t know what it was for; I just knew that that was what I had to do, and suddenly that became my only thing in life.”
Baerwald is singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and film and TV composer best-known for Boomtown, his platinum-selling 1986 album by David & David, his duo with musician and producer David Ricketts, as well as his Golden Globe-nominated song “Come What May” from the Moulin Rouge! Soundtrack. His songs have been recorded by such disparate luminaries as Waylon Jennings, Sheryl Crow, Susanna Hoffs, Fishbone and Olivia Newton-John, but Baerwald said that writing a novel felt surprisingly natural for him.
“My first role was research, not writing,” he said. “But I did write some scenes just to see if I could do it, to see if I could actually write longform without meter or rhyme schemes, and it was like stepping into a warm, welcoming seat. You can get to feeling pretty claustrophobic as a songwriter; I’d accumulated a lot of rules for myself over God knows how many decades of doing that, just to survive — practices that I had acquired, mindsets — and I was happy to let them go, frankly. And I realized that there were a lot of things that I learned from not just lyric writing, but composition, that applied to writing a novel. When you’re composing for monophonic instruments like flutes or strings, they play the chords together as a group, but they’re each playing individual lines; and when you’re structuring complicated human interactions, that kind of muscle memory is really handy.
“To me, plots are like chord changes,” he continued. “They’re signifiers for change, but the real change is happening within the chord. It’s actually like a thousand minnows swimming in vaguely the same direction, rather than these monolithic events that proceed one after the other; there’s always a certain individuality in their movement. So if you think about characters like, ‘Here’s the cello section, and here’s the percussion,’ or whatever, it enables you to structure these sort of complicated scenes where everybody’s got some agenda, and everybody’s got their own melody that they’re singing.”
And as Ernst’s improbably cinematic life gradually unfolded for Baerwald through the diaries and correspondence of his grandfather and other family members (including Baerwald’s father Hans, who taught political science and Japanese studies at UCLA for 30 years), the plot of The Fire Agent fell into place. “I didn’t really need to outline the plot, because I already had the outline. It was his life — and it was like, ‘Wherever he goes, I go,’” he said with a laugh. “I just did research along the way to find out what he was doing and what was happening around him. Whether there’s a huge earthquake or whether there’s a plague or whether there’s a war, it kind of gives you the plot point, right there.”
Far more challenging for Baerwald was dealing with the “emotional rollercoaster” of researching the many soul-crushing horrors that his grandfather witnessed (and, in some cases, was directly involved in) as a soldier, citizen and spy. “I would find myself just weeping more than once,” he said. “You just find yourself coming across these artifacts that really take you into the historical moment, and it’s really powerful. I remember I was in the rare books library at Columbia, looking at my uncle’s papers, and there was a letter from one of the soon-to-be-dead fighters during the Lublin Massacre, and it’s 28 pages of just savagery. So I’m sitting there, reading the details of this doomed-yet-heroic effort, and I feel this little tap on my shoulder, and this girl says, “Excuse me, Sir, I’m sorry — there’s no crying on the manuscripts.’”
Indeed, one of the major themes running through The Fire Agent is mankind’s innate ability to solve a major problem while creating even worse ones with the solution. Early on in the story, Ernst is present at the unveiling of the Haber-Bosch process, the revolutionary industrial development which enabled man to produce synthetic ammonia on a grand scale — a discovery which then allowed the industrial synthesis of nitrogen fertilizers, which were desperately needed by farmers across the globe at the beginning of the 20th century. Unfortunately, while this discovery saved humanity from worldwide famine, the industrial-scale production of ammonia and ammonium nitrate also resulted in tremendous carnage on the battlefield and elsewhere.
“I knew that there was going to have to be some reference in the book to the transformation from life-giving fertilizers to life-taking gunpowder and phosgene gas,” said Baerwald. “The Haber-Bosch process has made the lives of the probably 7 billion people alive today possible, but it’s bleached the coral in the ocean, and the high-pressure tests that emerged from it ultimately fueled the Nazi air force and tanks and trucks…
“There are a lot of scientists in my family,” he said, “and one of them said something to me once that I put in Albert Einstein’s mouth in the book: ‘Look at us — we’re in the dreamiest of sciences, astrophysics, and what are we doing? We’re making missile trajectories and warheads.’ And that’s been a kind of a refrain in my family for my whole life, this awful feeling of being trapped in a sociopathic system that takes everything beautiful and turns it into a weapon somehow, that takes brotherhood and camaraderie and turns it into teams and armies, and takes love and turns it into prostitution.
“One of the reasons I chose the music business was that I didn’t want to be part of all that. I thought, ‘Even at its very worst, at least I’m not making weapons!’” Baerwald said. “But apparently, I am! Ultimately, the record companies started merging with multinational corporations who made fucking nuclear weapons, and now Spotify has gobbled up all my friends’ livelihoods and is investing in AI weapons. You can’t get away from this shit!”
Though he’s currently busy promoting The Fire Agent, Baerwald says that a sequel is already in the works, one which will include material cut from the first novel. “I’ve been like a guy chasing a piece of paper across a windy field for like seven years,” he said. “The full story was always just slightly out of reach — for the 600 pages that I ended up with, I wrote probably 1400. I wanted to take The Fire Agent up to 1980, but I realized that there was no way I’d physically able to do it; I honestly thought I was going blind by the end of it. But now I’m really looking forward to working on the next one.”
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