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The Politics of Hard Times Revisited
By lynmiller-lachmann on 2016-03-14 15:13:14
No, I’m not being lazy. I’ve spent a lot of time reading the news and thinking about a book I read and reviewed for “Waging
Peace” nearly five years ago, David Chotjewitz s Daniel Half-Human. This book was one of the few published in translation
for teen readers in 2004 when it appeared, and it’ even more relevant now, when violent rhetoric and news of violence at
political rallies dominates the 2016 Presidential campaign. One of the benefits of reading books from other countries in
translation is that we see the perspectives of authors from those countries. Many books set during the Holocaust and World
War II are written by authors from the United States, Canada, and Britain, and most of these historical novels have an “it
can t happen here” feel. Chotjewitz is a teacher in Hamburg, Germany. He lives in a place where it did happen — yes, before
he was born, but it happened. As depicted in Michael Moores latest documentary, “Where To Invade Next,” German
children learn about this aspect of their history in a much more pointed way than children in the U.S. learn about slavery
and the genocide of Native peoples. Today we are learning that it can happen here. And because of the importance of
international voices and international experiences, I have decided to republish my review of Chotjewitz ’s award-winning
BORIS ORGE
DANIEL
novel, a story that more than five years later, I haven t forgotten: I’ve been thinking a lot
about how citizens in a democracy come to support extremists in hard times, and whether they understand the consequences
of extreme ideas and politicians who consider their opponents enemies deserving of elimination. When people are under
stress, they are more likely to seek scapegoats and resort to violence, whether that violence takes place within their own
homes, in workplaces, out in the community, or in the form of war against other nations. The United States responded to the
Great Depression of the 1930s by investing in infrastructure, creating public-sector jobs for unemployed youth and others,
and constructing a retirement system and the beginning of a nationwide social safety net. Many of Europe’s citizens
responded to the same Great Depression by casting their lot with militant despots who blamed leftists, intellectuals, artists,
and members of religious and cultural minorities for their nations’ economic travails. Over the past several months, I’ve
picked up many of the children’s and young adult books that received the Mildred Batchelder Award for outstanding
juvenile literature originally published in languages other than English and then translated and published in the United
States. It’s a good way of learning about other countries’ sensibilities and they way they think about their history, children,
and childhood. The books tend to be stylistically and thematically innovative. And it’s a fitting way to give back to editors
and readers in those countries who have embraced my own novel and given it a new life in another language. One of those
translated works I read recently is German author and teacher David Chotjewitz’s Daniel Half Human (Simon & Schuster,
2004), the 2005 Batchelder Award winner. Told from a third person omniscient viewpoint, the novel follows friends Daniel
Kraushaar and Armin Hillmann from 1933, when they are arrested at the age of 13 for painting swastikas in a working-class
neighborhood of Hamburg to 1945, when they meet again at a prisoner of war camp at the beginning of the Allied
occupation. Daniel escapes his wealthy, cold parents to visit Armin, who lives in a poor neighborhood near the docks. While
Daniel’s parents support the old-line conservative party, Armin’s father is a leftist. Chronically unemployed, he drinks and
abuses his wife and children. The boys join the right-wing Nazi mob in part to rebel against their parents, in part out of
patriotic zeal, in part to have fun. When they spend a night in jail in the chaotic waning days of the Weimar Republic, they
slice open their forearms and mingle their blood. Shortly afterward, Hitler rises to power, supported by a militant plurality of
German voters. He and his political allies enact laws restricting Jews. Daniel and Armin’s school reorganizes to give more
power to a Nazi teacher; Jewish students are expelled and sent to their own schools. Then Daniel finds out his mother is
Jewish. In the Nazis’ eyes, he is only half a human. In chapters told in third person from the adults’ point of view, his
father’s assistant pressures his father to divorce his mother and send her and Daniel out of the country. Daniel’s father, a war
hero, refuses. Then Daniel’s uncle is imprisoned and his cousin comes to live with them. Daniel can no longer keep his
secret. In the meantime, Armin joins the Hitler Youth and rises to a position of leadership. When his superiors order him to
break off with Daniel, he does so, but he becomes attracted to Daniel’s 100 percent Jewish cousin. Chotjewitz offers a tense,
compelling story and a cast of flawed and interesting characters. There are no heroes here—not the adults and certainly not
Daniel and Armin, who regularly make choices without thinking of the consequences. When faced with the consequences of
who they chose to support on that fateful day back in 1933, they feel the tug of loyalty to each other but also the instinct
toward self-preservation. Ultimately, loyalty, friendship, morality, and all the other values they thought they held mean
nothing in the face of a totalitarian monster they helped to unleash. Even Daniel’s final choice, as an officer of the American
Army, raises questions of his own guilt and obligation. Chotjewitz asks young people reading this book today to think.
Think before you join a group that engages in mayhem and violence for fun. Think before you condemn those who aren’t
like you as enemies or less than human. Think before you pile on those who are smaller and weaker. One day you may, like
Daniel, become the victim rather than the one on top. The comments on the earlier post include one by Chotjewitz, pointing
out that the Nazis were not socialists but used the declining living standards of working- and middle-class Germans to fuel
his campaign. He made a lot of promises to improve their lives, many based on depriving other people (primarily Jews) of
their wealth and employment. Here are some of the author's comments, which I have edited for grammar since he is not
fluent in English:
German Nazis were (and are) not “socialists”. They destroyed all socialist organizations in Germany and killed
many socialist politicians. The Nazi movement just used the word “socialist” for their own propaganda. There
is nearly no similarity between the ideas of socialism and the Nazi ideology.
Although written years ago, these comments warn against the false equivalence between the campaigns of Donald Trump
and Bernie Sanders, as I find the threats by Trump and his followers against Sanders especially ominous.
