From the Shtetl to Belleville ---- With L'échappée editions, we
continue our historical and sociological stroll in the lost Paris, thetitle of their collection that mixes nostalgia and discovery of the
neighborhoods of the last century. We have already, in the program Au
fil des pages on Radio libertaire, presented Les Plaisirs de la rue by
André Warnod, Les Brasseries parisiennes by Gilles Picq, Rue du Havre by
Paul Guimard. Today, here we are in the East of Paris and sometimes on
the Boulevards, the Marais district, the Pletzl, with the book by
Benjamin Schlevin, Les juifs de Belleville. ---- Yes, the stroll
deserves its adjectives "historical and sociological". However, it is a
novel, not an essay, and the author retains control of his plot. It
tells the story of "the contrasting journeys of Ashkenazi workers and
small business owners who arrived in Paris after the First World War and
who, while trying to make a place for themselves in French society, were
confronted with all the upheavals, all the dramas of the period
1939-1945" as Joseph Strasburger, translator with Batia Baum, of the
book written in Yiddish, points out. Benjamin Schlevin was born in
Brest-Litovsk in 1913, he passed through Warsaw and emigrated to Paris
in 1934. He is a writer in Yiddish who certainly writes fiction but also
a realistic, progressive novel that he completed in 1946.
Paris, "Gar di Nor"
It is a popular fresco that begins in 1920 in Warsaw, in the conflict
between the USSR and Poland. Polish society contains sinister
anti-Semitic overtones, life in the neighborhood is miserable. The
memory of Kronstadt is evoked. Beni Grinberger, one of the protagonists
of the novel, crosses the border and begins his life as a poor, hungry
emigrant, worried by the police of the countries he passes through. The
Jewish community of Berlin does not hold him back; he arrives in Paris,
"Gar di Nor" and stays within the community. The emigrants are
recognizable by their clothing, their frightened look and the new
arrivals, small bosses, take them in to better exploit them in the
clothing workshops set up in Belleville in buildings with leprous
facades. We stay where we can, in shabby hotels. We are in the heart of
a neighborhood under the surveillance of the swallows, the Parisian
cops. We have to obtain papers, the arrangements, the scams, the abuses
of the naivety of these women and men who have little or no control over
this new life. Then there are gathering places like that of the
Kultur-lige. We maintain friendly, supportive, cultural ties there. We
discuss politics, we organize ourselves into unions, mutual aid
societies, we create a popular university. As I often say, some novels
allow us to better understand people's daily lives. This is the case
with Benjamin Schlevin's book, The Jews of Belleville.
In the heart of the neighborhood
These Jews of Belleville know economic crises. No work, no salary.
Unemployment, poverty, with anti-Semitism on top of that, the Stavisky
affair does not help. And of course, the distinction between the
bourgeoisie and the working world. We live on February 6, 1934 in the
Jewish quarter. The Poles are sent back because "foreigners steal work".
Always the same arguments!!! We also live through the elections of 1936,
the Spanish Civil War, the deaths, the widows, the Phoney War, the
defeat, life in a stalag. "Europe is delivered to the Hitlerian beast,
lying at its feet. When will this vertigo end? Who will free us from here? "
And the Occupation, the zeal of the collaborators, the Roundup, the
clandestine resistance fighters, those who seek to get their loved ones
out of Drancy, those who hide and those who leave for the camps of no
return.
Benjamin Schlevin lived through some of these scenes. For others, he
relied on testimonies and thus makes the atmosphere of these years
palpable. He knows the jobs he describes, was a prisoner in a stalag. He
denounces the exploitation between people of the same origin. And the
weight of the PCF on post-war cultural life forbade this type of
discourse, imposing a single discourse. Benjamin Schlevin will be
ostracized. Denis Eckert considers that Benjamin Schlevin "represents
the very figure of the working-class intellectual: he will never stop
writing, while continuing his work as a linotypist until 1975." He died
in April 1981: his address? Rue Mélingue in Belleville.
* Benjamin Schlevin
The Jews of Belleville
Ed. L'Echappée, coll. Paris perdu, 2025
https://monde-libertaire.fr/?articlen=8210
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten