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BOOK REVIEW
by Roland Binet (De Panne, Belgium)
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Takis Würger, Noah. Von einem, der überlebte, Penguin: München 2021, 188 pp., ISBN: 978-3-328-60167-8.
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Reading “NOAH”, by Der Spiegel journalist Takis Würger, here in Dutch (originally published in 2021 in German), I felt that Noah Klieger had been made of the stuff of heroes. Klieger was born in 1925 in Strasbourg, France. When he started school in Brussels, Belgium, his teachers quickly ascertained that this small-sized boy of five years had a prodigious memory. Whether arithmetic or written text he seemed to never forget what he had heard or read. At the same time, he seemed not to show any actual interest for the subjects taught. He was therefore shifted to higher grades with pupils sometimes two or three years older.
Genuine heroes of this saga—both written out of the film
There is, however, disturbingly, quite a stupendous missing link in this abridged history of Lithuania in the twentieth century. Where had the quarter million Jews (the figure on the eve of the Holocaust) of the country disappeared to “overnight” (as centuries go), during that fateful century? Had there ever been a Jewish minority in Lithuania at all? When I looked at the author’s pedigree, I understood why the Jews had not played any role of significance in his biased dialectical discourse. Joren Vermeersch is a historian (of sorts) and an accomplished author. He is also a representative (stand-in, as we call it) for the Belgian House of Representatives, for the “N-VA.” This is the nationalist Flemish party that has its historical roots in the collaboration with the Nazis during World War II. The party that has systematically fought for an amnesty for Nazi collaborators. The party in which the grandparents or parents of some of the present actual leaders had been condemned by the Belgian State for collaboration with the enemy. Nobody is guilty of sins of their ancestors, but when there is a pattern of such pedigree being considered a great plus for current leadership, and that pedigree is subtly glorified rather than disowned, we have a current moral problem that merits discussion in the public square.
