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The Death of the Adversary: A Novel

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This is a brief novel that is not beach reading. First translated in 1962 from Dutch into English, it is a psychological examination of how good people merely watched the rise of Adolf Hilter in the 1930's. It was written by Hans Keilson, a German Jew who fled to the Netherlands before World War II, participated in the Resistance against the Nazis and made the Netherlands his permanent home after World War II. The book is not a thriller, but an inner dialogue of a future victim who can not comprehend the evil he is observing. The prose is in a detached style with sentences that needs to be re-read again and again to fully understand them. It is worth reading.

What is the relationship between persecutors and their victims? In The Death of The Adversary - poised on the brink of what soon will be one of the world's most horrific tragedies - an unnamed narrator in an unnamed country reflects on an unnamed figure who will soon ascend to power. Although the figure ("B") is never revealed, it soon becomes obvious that he is Hitler and that the narrator is of Jewish descent.

The narrator - who bemoans his own passivity - is blessed, or cursed, with high intelligence. Because he is unable to come to grips with evil for its own sake, he twists his logic to make sense out of the insensible; he knows B hates what the narrator represents, but he believes that the narrator desperately needs that hatred and, in fact, feeds on it...eliciting hatred in return. He goes further: in his "logical" mind, he believes that the adversary and his victims are in a state of symbiosis, feeding upon each other and because of their mutual need, neither adversary will eliminate the other. History, of course, has sadly shown how ludicrous this conclusion was.

The key character muses, "I could not give him up; I needed him. His existence meant my destruction in the near future, that much was certain. But his sudden death, or some other event that would have robbed me of his threatening presence, would equally have destroyed me. Between us two, ties and obligations had come into being, perceptible only to those whose share in the things of this world lie in suffering. A strange and questionable share, perhaps; but who can break the community that secretly establishes itself between the persecutors and their victims?"

Mr. Keilson uses a conceit in presenting these musings; his fictional (or autobiographical?) narrator has deposited a manuscript for safekeeping during the war years. Now, as he awaits word of the death of B, he rekindles his memory about the events of those pre-war years.

In haunting prose, he remembers his father's words when he was only 10: "If B. should ever come to power, may God have mercy on us. Then things will really start to happen." He recalls being ostracized from a group of non-Jewish children who expel him from their games. He remembers the ending of a close friendship with another man who, it turns out, is enthralled by B. and his ideas. He recounts the two times when his path and his adversary's intersected.

And, in one of the most devastating parts of the book, he recreates an evening at the apartment of a saleswomen he worked with whose brother and friends are revealed to be Nazi thugs, who desecrate a supposed Jewish cemetery to prove that even in death, Jews will not allowed to experience peace. As the young man describes in exhaustive detail how gravestones - even those of young children - were defaced, our narrator sits transfixed, unable to admit to his heritage or condemn these monstrous acts.

It bears acknowledging that Hans Keilson - now a centenarian - lives in an Amsterdam village, after the Nuremberg laws forced him to flee from his native Germany. He is a psychoanalyst who pioneered the treatment of war trauma in children. It is no surprise, then, that the book is underpinned by a deep psychoanalysis of the relationship of perpetrator and victim, and the victim's sense of denial and self-delusion.

Sometimes this works; sometimes it doesn't. By removing the victim from his more primal emotions, there is a certain sterility that is not normally seen in Holocaust-themed books. The translator, Ivo Jarosy, appears to take a literal rather than interpretive approach, which creates a certain British formality in tone.

Still, as Arthur Miller once wrote, "Attention must be paid." Hans Keilson is one of the last witnesses to the atrocity that was the Holocaust. In an era where - incredibly - a new breed of Holocaust deniers are rearing their ugly heads, it is important for the world to understand once again the sheer evil and damning repercussions of this most heinous act of genocide.

At 100, German-born Jewish author and psychoanalyst (among a variety of other things) Hans Keilson, was surprised to say the least when he read Francine Prose's glowing praise of two of his WWII era novels in the Sunday NYT book review. The re-released novels were "masterpieces", she wrote, the author "a genius". For Keilson, who fled Nazi Germany for the Netherlands in 1936, such praise is merely icing on the bittersweet cake of his life. During the war, he had been unable to convince his parents to escape the motherland early enough. Although they were able to defect eventually to the Netherlands, they'd been too old and sickly, and had never really been able to sense the gravity of the danger they were in. Keilson's parents were soon deported and died at Aushwitz; he still suffers with guilt to this day. In a recent interview in the New York Times, Keilson reacts to Prose's words by confessing that his scientific work in the field of psychoanalysis is truly more important to him in the scope of his life than any of his novels.

At the outset of one of those novels, Death of the Adversary, the narrator explains that the manuscript herein was given to him by a Dutch lawyer, who had, two and a half years into the war, obtained it, along with other important personal documents, from a client of his, an enigmatic German, a mystery man of sorts. The anonymous author had entreated his attorney to keep these papers in a safe place until such time as he could retrieve them. "Read them and tell me what you think of them" says the lawyer to his friend, the narrator, who presumably is a psychiatrist of some repute. The resulting novel consists of the fictionalized memoir of this mysterious German, in which he wrestles with the relationship between himself and the one he calls his "adversary", the enemy of his family, his people. This adversary, who is never mentioned by name, called only B throughout, obviously represents Adolph Hitler; and the memoirist's people, the Jews - a word, incidentally never used in his writings.

The title word, Adversary, is an interesting and careful choice since it is commonly an appellation of Satan, and would logically connote the paradisaical serpent along with Hitler (B in our story), as he seductively tempts his fellow Deutsch-landers, bending their will to the perpetration of genocide. This equation of Hitler to the devil would seem hackneyed from a less insightful writer, instead Keilson delves deep into the relationship between adversaries, exploring the magnetism that draws our memoirist to his innate enemy.

He learns from his parents at an early age of the rising charismatic politician, the bane of his photographer father and therefore of him. "Who was this man, who made it necessary for God to have mercy on us, something of which my father spoke only in a trembling voice?" he writes, relating his fears as a child. Later in his youth, he is shunned by the other boys on the soccer field. His mother, learning of this, marches him back to the sandlot and beseeches the children to include her child in the game. But after they let him play, he is still abused, and attacked on the field, made to play fullback, not allowed to showcase his natural talents of speed and agility. During one particular play, he decides to fight back. Leaping for the ball with the defender upon him, he kicks with full force, his leg connecting with the other boy. After writhing for some time on the ground, his opponent jumps up to confront him with "indescribable hatred" and "boundless contempt". This experience affects him, he decides never in the future to defend himself in the same manner he is attacked.

As our memoirist grows older, he becomes hyper aware of who and what he is and how his enemy, or the mere fact of calling this man his enemy, affects his relationships. A strong friendship goes awry, as he confesses to his friend that he has a secret enemy. "Why didn't you tell me about this before?" his friend asks, adding later, "...your enemy should be more important to you than your friend." After naming the enemy, he realizes the boy is likely involved in the Hitler Youth, yet he launches into a tirade against B, the first time he has unleashed his enmity. But it is through the subsequent discussion that he learns that he may have more in common with his adversary than he would ever dream possible. His friend exclaims that B has great ideas, that he only "needs someone an enemy or something, to achieve his aims". At the end of their visit, the Hitler Youth tell him a story about the Kaiser and his cousin the Tsar. After a visit from his cousin, the Tsar decided to present him with a parting gift: a herd of elk that had lived on the Steppes in Russia. The Kaiser brought the herd back to Germany, selecting a protected area in the country for the elk to roam where he felt they would feel at home. They lived there happily for a considerable time, but soon there came reports of the herds dying out. The Kaiser, upset with this turn of events sent word to the Tsar who dispatched a master forester to investigate the matter. He examined everything that might have affected the elk in their new habitat, and at the end of a year's investigation, he determined that nothing was done wrong relating to their feeding, climate, soil and so on. "So why have they died out?" asked the Kaiser. "They are missing one thing," said the forester. "Wolves." The Hitler Youth, implying that prey lose their will to survive without predators to keep them vigilant and vital, strikes a dissonant chord in our young writer, opening the dam of self doubt.

(spoilers)

By the end, our memoirist has, among other experiences: come face to face with his enemy, now Der Fuhrer, at an inauguration rally; has his convictions tested when he falls in surreptitiously with Nazi thugs; has aided in counter propaganda campaigns with a friend; and has even come to imagine the death of his adversary. He finally comes to peace with that great wraith that has thrown a pall over his entire life. What Keilson illuminates in the pages of this mere novel is more than just a study of temptation to evil, or of the struggle of good to prevail, it is of the very nature of the human spirit, its will, and dedication to purpose, along with its vulnerability. What the centenarian Keilson has produced here is lasting and profound, much like his own life.

~Book Jones~ 5 Stars

During a conversation in "The Death of the Adversary," after a particularly abstruse existential conversation, one of the characters said that "It was a queer and complicated conversation..." Well, I think the same can be said of the entire book: I found it both queer and complicated. Although originally published in 1962, apparently without much fanfare, it has just recently been reissued and the NYT Book Review (August 8, 2010) said that it was a "masterpiece" and that its author, Hans Keilson, "...is a genius." Although that might be so, you couldn't prove it by me.

It's not a difficult book to read because the situations, (there not being any plot to speak of), are clear and the book is short. But, it's difficult to find meaning out of the existential angst of the protagonist, even though one empathizes with the lurking horror of his life, nor did it add to my understanding of the times. The book is a cross between Camus and Kafka, and I think that either of them is at least as much of a genius and writer of masterpieces as is Keilson. At least with Camus and Kafka, there are plenty of commentators and scholars around to help one navigate through the difficulties. I'm willing to grant that "The Death of the Adversary" is a masterpiece written by a genius. It isn't the first, nor will it be the last, of such towering achievements that leave me thinking "What's all the shouting about?" It is a good book for someone to read who's looking for something queer and complicated.

SPOILER ALERT: This review contains information about a plot twist.

This short novel takes us into the mind of a tormented Jew as he copes with the rise of National Socialism in his country. In utterly fascinating vignettes, the author describes interpersonal relationships between flesh-and-blood characters who reveal human nature at its best and at its worst.

In a scene reminiscent of the similarly timed Monaco, our protagonist is so enraged with the Nazis that he cannot even utter their name, much less their leader's, Hitler. He visits a young girl with whom he has a crush but their moment is interrupted by the girl's friends. A shocking twist occurs when we find out that the friends are themselves Nazis and our protagonist is (though he doesn't say it) a Jew.

The ultimate morale of this story is that evil can rise only in the presence of idle good. This should be prescribed in all ages, but perhaps is most timely today.

This book left me devastated. After reading the last page I still felt the book around me and could not leave it. So I did a cyber flick-back through the book to see my highlights, and was surprised to see that I could see not only what I had highlighted, but the highlights of other the other Kindle readers as well. And not only was I surprised at this discovery, but at the fact that what I had highlighted had been highlighted by the others.

"They turned into wolves and devastated cemeteries at night. But however much they tried to appear like wolves, they were not animals. It was not just a question of what they did and said, but also of what they had to keep silent about."

- Thoughts of the protagonist after spending an evening with young Nazis.

In "The Death of the Adversary" the "adversary" and his followers are not named. The adversary is merely referred to as "B", and his followers as his followers. Similarly the central character is not labeled by himself as Jewish. Merely as "other".

And so when we read of him being outcast by the other children when he was very young, and about how his mother takes him by the hand to lead him back to the children to ask them to please play with him, the effect is even sadder than it would have been, had its circumstance been explicit. 'There,' my mother said, and tried to loosen her stern, serious face into a smile. 'He's a child like you. You are all children, play with one another."

For some reason, perhaps because I had never completely comprehended the real horror of it before - the effect of the persecution of the Jewish children in Germany, Poland, Czech ...., I was struck by this scene, where the child feels only humiliation and anxiety when the children turn reluctantly to play with him. His short time with them is filled with his anxiety and their cruelty.

"My former pleasure in playing games was dampened by the constant fear that I might be excluded."

Sadder even than when "they took the old people away.

My father carried his rucksack on his shoulders.

My mother wept.

I shall never see them again."

Yes, I've read The Diary of Anne Frank, and seen "The Pawnbroker". I've read and seen countless other novels and films set in Nazi-occupied Europe. But for some reason I'd never looked upon the particular tragedy of the effects of persecution on children.

Anne Frank was a child. Only ever a child. But Anne retained her sense of joy and hope. The child Keilson describes is a sad little boy and one's heart goes out to him, but it goes to him without hope.

In Wikipedia I read that Keilson, " is a Jewish German/Dutch novelist, poet, psychoanalyst, and child psychologist who wrote about traumas relating to what happened in Europe during WWII. In particular, he worked with traumatized orphans."

What else can one say? Oh yes, there's this -

Hans Keilson is a 100-year-old Holocaust survivor. "The Death of the Adversary" is autobiographical.

Read it!

Hans Keilson, recently deceased at advanced age, was a German-Jewish refugee from Nazism. He eventually became a psychoanalyst and evidently had no aspirations to become a professional writer. His literary output, consisted of only 2 short books, both largely forgotten. They have recently been the subject of revived interest and critical acclaim. "Death of the Adversary" is the first of these books. It was written in the early war years and is a psychological-philosophical exposition of the relationship between an unnamed demagogue (Hitler, in fact) and a member of a persecuted group (the protagonist, who is by implication, Jewish).

Keilson wrote beautifully. Take, for example, this passage: "I am sitting in my room, looking at the houses and gardens across the street, while all kinds of thoughts pass through my head. There, at the corner, in a neglected garden, stands a big, strong tree. Its trunk is hollow, it is slowly dying from the root upwards. Every year, death rises higher into its branches and twigs. Soon it will have reached the top." Perhaps this is intended to be a metaphor for the creeping political and moral decay of Germany (the "big, strong tree") with its pervasive rot, starting with the aggrieved masses (frustrated, angry, unemployed, desperate), extending to the military (humiliated by the loss of WW-I, seeking a scapegoat and hoping for revenge) and the progressive, ascending decay which eventually infects the governing class. Equally evocative and obviously important to the author (having mentioned this parable twice) is that of the transplanted Tsarist elk herd, now dying in exile for lack of a predator (the wolves). Presumably, this metaphor invokes the need for the Jewish community to face a predator, an implacable and dangerous adversary, in order to survive and prosper. Then, there is the issue of Jewishness, itself: a simple religion or an hereditary burden? Keilson seems to favor the latter: "I hated him because he had tied the chain of the inescapable round me, as one chains up a prisoner. Futile to tr to free oneself. The sentence had been pronounced, but the guilt was his, Father's." Perhaps the most poignant and disturbing episode is the recounting of the grave desecration by a group of Nazi youth. Yet, these are all sidelines to the primary theme of the book; that is the nature of the relationship between the oppressor (B., that is, Hitler) and the unnamed Jewish protagonist. Keilson explores the nearly reverential attitude exhibited by the intelligent, romantic-tempered young man and the cult of the leader-figure, Hitler. Of course, this has been fodder for innumerable books, fictional and otherwise, but it is cleverly and insightfully depicted here.

Keilson was supposedly chagrined to discover that his legacy will largely be determined not by his academic work but rather by his brief foray into the literary world. It is probably not too presumptuous to suggest that "Death of the Adversary" will be remembered and read long after Keilson's professional labors have passed into the "dustbin of history" and that the book deserves the critical acclaim it has recently garnered.

Translated from the German by Iva Jarosy

"One cannot cut the lines of experience out of one's face, like the rotten bits in an apple; one has to carry them about in one's face and know that one carries them; one sees them, as in a mirror, every day when one washes oneself, and one cannot cut them out, they belong there."

"He had swore to her...that this was how it had all happened, as though he had first to mist the mirror slightly with his breath before he could dare to look into it. [...] What can a man do but breathe at the mirror and look gently at his misted image?"

Mirrors are a repeating motif in Hans Keilson's novel, The Death of the Adversary. Written during WWII, this novel has been republished this year. The Los Angeles Times wrote enthusiastically "It's as if, one morning, we were to learn that not only had Anne Frank survived the secret annex but was also still among us." (Sept 26, 2010*) Mirrors generally symbolize self-reflection and contemplation, and are fittingly used to describe the inner questions that plague a young man as he realizes that Hitler's influence was inevitably going to change his life. First, he hears his parents whisper and worry, and tries to decipher the codes they seemed to be speaking in. Next he finds himself an outcast in the neighborhood as the other children begin to avoid him. His mother takes the well-intentioned step of intervening on his behalf, trying to convince the children that they are all alike and should play together. His humiliation is complete, and never fully leaves him. Thus, he begins focusing on his "adversary".

"...enemies will never die out in this world. They are recruited from former friends."

The next salvo comes from a close friend who reveals he supports Hitler's agenda. He explains to the unnamed protagonist that it is simply a matter of balance: just as elks need wolves to control their species and balance their habitat, so too, Germany is balancing itself. For the greater good, he implies. Their friendship quickly dissolves. The young man now explains the details of his experience, from strained friendships to watching his parents change to going into hiding.

Certainly, this novel has a more mature voice than Anne Frank's diary. The protagonist is more somber and definitely more pessimistic. I didn't find that the story gave any exceptionally new revelations about the time period, but it does provide a new perspective to describe the experience. One brief passage about the change in his parent's attitude reveals a surprising aspect of human nature under trial: his father who bitterly lamented the rise of Hitler's power becomes almost giddy with excitement when the horror begins, while his religious mother, who started out optimistic, begins to withdraw into depression and anxiety.

One thing that is especially fascinating is that Keilson never actually defines his adversary as Hitler. He uses the term "B" to represent him, although it's clear of whom he speaks: a man with an evil plan and the power to implement it. Yet, at times "B" is also portrayed as an intangible force, a concept of evil bigger than the Holocaust. The ambiguity gives the reader pause to consider what defines evil and apply the revelations experienced to virtually anyone suffering oppression. Incidently, I was curious if by using the initial rather than the name, Keilson is attempting to lessen the power of Hitler's name, giving it less fame. For example, notorious killers today are well known by name: Ted Bundy, Lee Harvey Oswald, or John Wayne Gacey. After a period of time when their horrific deeds are forgotten, they become simply a pop culture reference. By not using Hitler's name, it could be that in some small way, Keilson doesn't want to give him any further notoriety.

(Copy provided by publisher for review: receipt of which has no influence on review contents)

In The Death of the Adversary the narrator fantasizes about assassinating B, whose rise to power is interfering with his and his family's state of well being. B, of course, is Hitler, whose name is never used. As with the newly "discovered" works of Irene Nemirovsky and Hans Fallada, Hans Keilson's books, written over 60 years ago, give penetrating insight into European life during the Nazi regime in a way no contemporary author can duplicate. This haunting tale of a young man in Berlin during Hitler's rise bears the stamp of truth in a harrowing fashion. Beginning with the narrator's bewilderment at his sudden ostracizing on the playing fields at a young age. Since Keilson left Germany but only made it as far as Holland, where he lived in secrecy and fought with the Resistance, the book seems autobiographical, more than any other seems to shed light on the unmistakable power of B's rhetoric and why so many German citizens were pulled under his spell.

This may be the most enjoyable experience reading fiction that I have had in the last year - and also one of the most profound and unexpected. My attention was piqued in June when I heard of Keilson's death at the age of 101; I knew he was considered to be a good author, yet I never read him. Having long had a penchant for the bleak, searching quality of twentieth-century Dutch fiction, particularly Willem Frederik Hermans, Harry Mulisch, and Gerard Reve, I decided to read this.

However stunning Keilson's novels are - and I hope to communicate that momentarily - he is even better known for other work. For many decades, he worked in child psychology and psychiatry, with an especial focus on children severely traumatized by World War II. His keen insight into human nature, thought processes, and motivation is on par with the world's greatest novelists, and that is no hyperbole. As if his psychological and psychiatric training were not inducements enough to read his work, the horrors of the War were not pure theory for him. Both of his parents perished in Auschwitz.

The novel's setting is 1930s Germany. We follow an unnamed narrator in childhood; we get hints of his precociousness and impishness through learning of both his penchant for forging stamps, and also through a sustained theory of the history of struggle that he presents and continuously develops throughout the novel. As a boy, he acquires a lifelong fascination with an adversary who is almost always unnamed, but sometimes goes by simply "B." Some reviews have been only too eager to guess at the existence of "B," seeing as how we are in 1930s Germany. However, I personally think Keilson might have a good reason for keeping the adversary anonymous; using one name would collapse the entire structure of the novel into a kind of singularity; keeping the adversary nameless (even though we still may continue to guess, and guess accurately), Keilson keeps the narrative at a level of constant psychological, humanistic portraiture, instead of the story of a single couple locked in interminable battle.

As the novel progresses and the narrator grows into manhood, we learn that he has a friend who is utterly taken with "B" and his ideas; another time, we see him spending an afternoon with a girl that he knows and fancies from his workplace whose friends turn out to be sympathetic to fascism, too. Instead of simplistic moralism, Keilson intelligently and deftly engages with the adversary on a human level, at one point realizing the nihilism inherent in the logic of "I want to kill him just as badly as he wants to kill me."

Narratively speaking, Keilson's biggest gift is to mix tone and message in such unique and telling ways. On hearing that a novel is set during World War II, one is almost preconditioned to expect the trials and tribulations of the oppressor against the oppressed and hiding in safe houses; it is assumed that we will root for the good, the just, the persecuted, and that evil, in the end, will be vanquished. Keilson presented us with nothing so sugar-coated. His efforts at characterization drive toward showing the similarities between himself and B, not the vast differences. He is not interested in showing you how morally superior he is (we already know that), but instead wants to show how existentially, a word applied perhaps too liberally to this novel, he and "B" are similarly situated.

Keilson's search feels so liberating, instead of the moral burden that seem to come with reading so many novels of the Holocaust. As much as I have read Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, I found Keilson to be better than both of them. Unfortunately, he is not well known in the United States, but he should be. I should also add here that Ivo Jarosy's translation from the German is luminous, especially in its ability to capture dialogue. I would recommend "The Death of the Adversary" for anyone in search of a great novel that, like all great novels, is more eager to share questions than answers.