In this powerful and moving semi-fictional narrative, Wayne Karlin imagines what might have happened to them if his Jewish family hadn't managed to emigrate to America in the 1930s but had instead stayed in their native Poland when war arrived. He speculates what life would have been like for them and how events would have transpired in his mother’s village of Kolno where the whole family would have been massacred. He poignantly describes Jewish daily life there, already difficult with anti-Semitism and pogroms the norm. The story focuses on Elazar, a renowned boxer, and his love for Rahel, the daughter of a smuggler. When Elazar is almost trapped into an unwelcome marriage with a wealthy widow, he and Rahel decide to run away and go to America. But it turns out the price is too high and they are forced to return to the village, where they receive a luke-warm welcome. Everyone feels they should have taken their chance to escape. Gradually they settle back down into village life, but the Nazis are on the doorstep and once they arrive all hell breaks loose for the Jewish population. In actuality Karlin’s parents did escape, but by reimagining their lives in this way he gives voice to all those who stayed and perished, and the final scenes of the book are graphic in their detail and emotionally harrowing.
A Genizah is a storage area in a Jewish synagogue or cemetery where worn out Hebrew religious texts are kept until a proper burial is possible, and here relates to all those Jews who themselves never had a proper burial, and who now exist in such a temporary holding place. A chilling metaphor in a chilling narrative, one which I occasionally found overwritten and overly lyrical, with some less than convincing episodes (mainly concerning Elazar’s and Rahel’s initial escape) but which overall I found a compelling imaginative re-working of an all too familiar tragedy.

Okay, let’s start with the fact that I didn’t really care for Wayne Karlin’s The Genizah very much. The premise is fine: the author/narrator goes back in time to Poland in the 1930-1940s and reimagines his Jewish family’s history under the various persecutors of Poland during the era. I found that a bit difficult to follow initially though I then got into the rhythm.

As a scholar of the era, I was already familiar with the depredations that occurred even if not in the specific location that is the focus of this book. As such, I was essentially familiar with the events described here and recognize their basic accuracy. That includes the role of the Poles themselves, which is brought to the surface here – as perpetrators as well as victims. One of the problems with historical fiction in general, as well as alternative histories, is the difficulty knowing where the reality ends and the fiction begins – even with Karlin’s explanation at the end of the book, I found that to be true here.

But the hardest part for me was how brutally graphic Karlin was at times and how depressing the story was in general. As mentioned above, I am not a stranger to this topic, so it is not easy to move me in this way. And that, perhaps, is exactly the strength of this book: It is well written enough to be very moving and to give real, compelling “legs” to the story. Not easy to do.

So that takes me back to where I started this review. I don’t know that anyone can truly “like” or “enjoy” this book – but I can admire its artistry. It certainly captured my attention. But I think I will look for something a bit lighter for my next read.

From the first page of The Genizah, Karlin moves the reader effortlessly to the worlds of used to be and might have been. The narrator, Avram, and three friends discover a Genizah in the wall of the old Yeshiva they’re using as an art studio. According to the Law, old, worn out sacred texts are buried in such a crypt.
The discovered pages take Avram to Poland, to the village of Kolno in the 1930’s. The village sits on the border between Russia and Poland and has been part of both countries. The majority of Kolno’s residents are Jews, which makes it a target for rampaging Poles and Russians. The murder, looting, and rape of these attacks are accepted by the residents in the same way that other natural calamities, like drought or hurricanes.
The Nazi conquest of Poland gives license to even more horrifying waves of murder and rape. In this reality, Avram’s mother and father don’t escape to America but hide in the forest until they are ultimately caught and murdered.
The meat of the story isn’t the horrors visited on Jews, but the seemingly universal need to butcher the Other. Karlin points to My Lai in his personal experience. Through his alternate father’s adventures as a horse trader and smuggler in Kolno, Avram lives through love, loss, and betrayal. Ultimately, he faces the question of identity. He concludes that “we are the people to be whipped.”
Karlin’s language soars as Hebrew letters float like birds and sunshine paints beautiful women with greater beauty. Avram’s grandfather describes his relationship with his wife “…it is still a struggle to read the complex text she is” Or on being a Jew, “…it is understood, you see, that we survive by moving between the raindrops.”
The Jews of Kolno are in between—not just between Poland and Russia, but also individually “He had torn himself free from the inevitability of his life and was neither here nor there, nichstihein, nichstihier.”
Well worth wandering through the world could have been in a time that used to be. Five stars.