Legacy of War

I have been a scholar of history – especially the battles of the Second World War. My doctoral dissertation, written many years ago, dealt with the identification, incarceration and destruction of Jews in the death camps of Eastern Europe. My publications since then have all been on the same or related themes. Although I am not Jewish, I have been called, behind my back, “The Irish Jew of NYU.” Perhaps it is because I have been too obsessed with my subject matter, almost to the exclusion of any other interest.

It was subsequent to my first stay in Europe that I became interested in a Jewish family named “Schönberg.” I was able to trace the Schönberg family from the mid-1800s through the end of the Second World War. What a glorious family I discovered with its humble origins as textile merchants in Ulm, Germany. But their great intelligence and drive led them to reach honorable positions in medicine and physics and law. David Schönberg, for example, was professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg from 1902-1914. His son, Samuel later distinguished himself in medicine in Munich. Jews like the Schönbergs gave strength to the intellectual fiber of Germany for many years. Their devotion to the teachings of the Talmud Torah gave them inner strength to endure the continual abuse from their Christian neighbors. I do not wish to review the cruelty against the Jews since the advent of Christianity – that would be too monumental a task. That Jews were tolerated within their ghettos for hundreds of years provided they washed their feet before walking on Christian soil, provided they endured the absurdly heavy taxes on their earnings, provided they secluded themselves and lived behind Jew gates so as not to not contaminate the general population, is all a matter of record. The Schönbergs endured. They educated their children, kept the Sabbath and prospered professionally. Under the Third Reich, the Jews of Europe were delivered their harshest blow. The Holocaust claimed two-thirds of Europe’s nine million Jews as well as Slavs, gypsies and homosexuals. While Adolph Hitler was gaining strength with his advances to enslave the minds and bodies of Germans in 1933, a young man named Julius Schönberg slipped across the border into France to make a new life for himself. He was in his early twenties. He turned his back on his religion and became a Catholic, befriended a young priest named de la Croix, rewrote the history of his family, used his innate intelligence to forge ahead and make a fortune for himself. But this was acceptable to his neighbors only because they did not know he was a Jew – he became a very wealthy Christian.

But I am getting ahead of my story. Let me tell you first about myself and how I became interested in living in the south of France.