A Son of the Rock

Hutchinson, 1991, 299p.

In Argentina in 1964 two young lovers, Franz Schmidt and Rebecca Czinner, children of German emigrés, decide to marry. When the two sets of parents meet, Becky’€™s father, Eli, a concentration camp survivor now blind, thinks he recognises something about Franz’€™s very affable father Rudi. Despite his reservations about all that the state of Israel represents and his past complicity as an economist with the Nazi regime, he contacts Jewish authorities in Vienna and Tel Aviv. The ramifications of this decision and of the continuing effects of the Holocaust both on individuals and on Israel are the backbone of the book.

Franz’s father disappears. His associates in Argentina reveal Franz’€™s father’€™s past to him and kidnap Becky and her friend in a bid to prevent Rudi’s transportation to Israel. It is too late, a trial date is set and the girls are set free. The love story here is a twentieth century variation on Romeo and Juliet but any animosity between the two families can barely be described as such.

The bulk of the book is set in Israel to where Franz has gone to support his father and try to understand his past actions. Becky joins him to avoid their relationship falling apart. They fall into the orbit of an Israeli journalist who speaks out against the trial. In a rather unlikely coincidence which stretched credulity, another journalist covering the trial turns out to be the former husband of Becky’€™s mother and the lover of a boy whom Franz had an affair with at school.

The inevitable outcome results and in a coda the lives of the main characters thereafter are described through the medium of Becky’€™s English cousin Gareth of whom up to then we had never heard.

The Holocaust is a sensitive subject and while Massie treats it obliquely he is clearly attempting to deal with serious issues. In this respect it is unfortunate that he renders the sentence Arbeit Macht Frei under which Franz’€™s father was photographed during the war with an “s”€ at the end of its first word. His control slips at times too. This humdinger of a sentence leapt out at me. The evening was spread out peacefully as they left the hotel, and looked for a taxi. This, with its strategically placed comma, can only mean, “The evening looked for a taxi.”

If I was to sum this up in one phrase it would be, densely written but flawed.