Imre Kertesz, a Hungarian Jew, writer, and survivor of the Shoah, and Nobel Prize winner in literature, turns out to have been a teen age friend of Abraham Golek, a Polish Jewish friend who died last November in Israel. Abraham was a wisdom figure in my life since we met in 1990. I have kept all the emails from him and his wife and I can remember almost everything he ever said to me…funny, wrong, and profound…His wife Josette is also a friend, of course, she is French Algerian and profoundly spiritual, joyful, honest, energetic.
It turns out that Imre Kertesz and he were teen age friends in Auschwitz. There is an interview in French with Kertesz where he talks about the capacity for retaining humanity, joy even in those camps. Their friendship was part of that joy. The choice of Kertesz was criticized because he was rather unknown. But the prize recognized a profound and unique contribution to literature and human life by a man who surived the worst of Nazism and continued faithful to his writing when he was virtually exiled within his own country by the Communist regime that followed World War II.
How unreal our lives are in comparison with these two men who prevailed, became creative and life giving, and lived long lives.

Tags: Golek, Kertesz, Nobel Prize, Shoah