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A review by daveparry67
The Secret Purposes by David Baddiel
4.0
I bought this from the ‘signed books table’ at the Hay Festival 2019. Through the eyes of a young man interned in Britain at the start of the 2nd World War & some of the key characters in his story we get insights into German Jewish culture in the 30s & 40s, British War mentality, the conflicting motivations & passions which drive people in everyday & exceptional circumstances, men’s abuse of power over women & the way the consequences of decisions & turns of events can stay with us forever.
It’s quite a long book, over 400 pages, crammed with detailed descriptions of characters & events, with room still left for lots to be left to our imagination somehow; some things transpire much as we expect & others are a surprise, including for me given my limited historical knowledge of the subject.
At the start we follow a rabbi on his walk of repentance round the 7 bridges of Königsberg, amidst the rising turmoil in 1934 Germany. I found it odd that to cleanse himself of each of the 7 deadly sins he seemed to feel he had to make himself commit them first; what was important though was the cleansing & this & the idea of the healing power of bridges links the beginning & end of the book & the 3 generations of the central family.
The focus shifts to the rabbi’s son, the central character of the book, estranged from his father for marrying a catholic, exiled from Germany due to Hitler’s oppression, barely allowed to settle in Britain because of suspicion & ignorance, struggling but succeeding with his wife & baby daughter in scraping together a living in a Cambridge college & just beginning to make friends, then interned on the Isle of Man, separated from his family... quite bleak stuff this...
& so well written... The German Jewish characters are fully believable & juxtaposed with well observed realities about the British - we’re all about fairness but act unjustly towards the refugees we’ve taken in; we’re essentially lazy (so it’s British soldiers who’s lax discipline ruins an event at the camp, not the internees) & it’s almost as if prejudice, rather than our self-perceived sense of fair play, is our predominant, guiding principle... enter June Murray, a translator with a conscience, integrity & more than a little bravery...
So we have Isaac, the Rabbi’s son interned on the Isle of Man, meeting June as part of her (self-appointed) mission to find more appalling details of Jews’ suffering & Lulu, his wife, still in Cambridge, meeting Douglas; we’re not quite sure who he is, but he’s helping her with her testimonials to try to get Isaac released... people are testing the limits of their integrity as they try to survive... & there’s sexual tension in the mix as well... will they be faithful? Who will end up with who? The answer to these questions bring surprises & not a small amount of tragedy & sadness...
There’s humour, like the interned Rabbis farting frequently as the only food they consider acceptable to eat is white beans; there are questions of ethics & perspective, like how much brutality & injustice is needed to call something an atrocity; there are details which say so much more than a long explanation, like the Anderson shelter having been made more comfortable & pleasant by the landlady than she’s made the Jewish couple’s room in the house, Douglas ripping up the letter when Lulu turns him down & Michael leaving the ‘phone call ‘till the last minute after June resists his advances...
The book spans only 66 years; the beginning & end seem to be from such different eras, with such different cultures & constraints & hopes & fears, that you wonder if they could ever be reconciled, but the book manages to do that & of course it does so through the characters who lived through the events depicted. The need to learn from dreadful atrocities is a theme through the book, & if you leave things where the book ends there’s hope that despite many contrary forces maybe the worst of the past couldn’t ever return.
When you read this less than 20 years after it’s set & know that the shocking events of the 30s & 40s seem all too likely to happen again, you think no lessons will ever be learnt from history again. There’s so much more than I’ve mentioned here & in case it’s not clear, I’d highly recommend the book!
It’s quite a long book, over 400 pages, crammed with detailed descriptions of characters & events, with room still left for lots to be left to our imagination somehow; some things transpire much as we expect & others are a surprise, including for me given my limited historical knowledge of the subject.
At the start we follow a rabbi on his walk of repentance round the 7 bridges of Königsberg, amidst the rising turmoil in 1934 Germany. I found it odd that to cleanse himself of each of the 7 deadly sins he seemed to feel he had to make himself commit them first; what was important though was the cleansing & this & the idea of the healing power of bridges links the beginning & end of the book & the 3 generations of the central family.
The focus shifts to the rabbi’s son, the central character of the book, estranged from his father for marrying a catholic, exiled from Germany due to Hitler’s oppression, barely allowed to settle in Britain because of suspicion & ignorance, struggling but succeeding with his wife & baby daughter in scraping together a living in a Cambridge college & just beginning to make friends, then interned on the Isle of Man, separated from his family... quite bleak stuff this...
& so well written... The German Jewish characters are fully believable & juxtaposed with well observed realities about the British - we’re all about fairness but act unjustly towards the refugees we’ve taken in; we’re essentially lazy (so it’s British soldiers who’s lax discipline ruins an event at the camp, not the internees) & it’s almost as if prejudice, rather than our self-perceived sense of fair play, is our predominant, guiding principle... enter June Murray, a translator with a conscience, integrity & more than a little bravery...
So we have Isaac, the Rabbi’s son interned on the Isle of Man, meeting June as part of her (self-appointed) mission to find more appalling details of Jews’ suffering & Lulu, his wife, still in Cambridge, meeting Douglas; we’re not quite sure who he is, but he’s helping her with her testimonials to try to get Isaac released... people are testing the limits of their integrity as they try to survive... & there’s sexual tension in the mix as well... will they be faithful? Who will end up with who? The answer to these questions bring surprises & not a small amount of tragedy & sadness...
There’s humour, like the interned Rabbis farting frequently as the only food they consider acceptable to eat is white beans; there are questions of ethics & perspective, like how much brutality & injustice is needed to call something an atrocity; there are details which say so much more than a long explanation, like the Anderson shelter having been made more comfortable & pleasant by the landlady than she’s made the Jewish couple’s room in the house, Douglas ripping up the letter when Lulu turns him down & Michael leaving the ‘phone call ‘till the last minute after June resists his advances...
The book spans only 66 years; the beginning & end seem to be from such different eras, with such different cultures & constraints & hopes & fears, that you wonder if they could ever be reconciled, but the book manages to do that & of course it does so through the characters who lived through the events depicted. The need to learn from dreadful atrocities is a theme through the book, & if you leave things where the book ends there’s hope that despite many contrary forces maybe the worst of the past couldn’t ever return.
When you read this less than 20 years after it’s set & know that the shocking events of the 30s & 40s seem all too likely to happen again, you think no lessons will ever be learnt from history again. There’s so much more than I’ve mentioned here & in case it’s not clear, I’d highly recommend the book!