MovieChat Forums > War and Remembrance (1988) Discussion > Basis for the Aaron Jastrow character?

Basis for the Aaron Jastrow character?


I'm trying to figure out who Herman Wouk could have had in mind when he created Dr. Jastrow, any ideas?

For a while I thought it was Martin Buber, the German scholar of Hasidic Jewry remained in Germany after Kristallnact reprinting stories from the Hebrew Bible even though Jewish texts were banned from printing. Like Jastrow, Buber was a world famous scholar recognized throughout the West for his expansive body of literature but especially for I and Thou - so famous that the Nazis didn't dare deport him for fear of the intense backlash. By the time the Nazi Final Solution had sped into high gear (during the time Jastrow would have ended up trapped in the East with no hope of diplomats being able to save him), Buber was safely in Palestine lecturing on Zionism in Israeli universities.

For a while I believed Wouk was trying to theorize what would have happened had Buber ended up in Auschwitz, although this was before I read about Rabbi Leo Baeck, who attained fame not for his scholarship on European Jewry but, like Jastrow, for his books on Christianity. And also like Jastrow, he was interred at Theresienstadt, although he would survive the war and avoid deportation to Auschwitz. Like Jastrow he had a great deal of control over his fate and could have avoided the Camps altogether had he accepted help from the diplomats who urged him to escape, but he chose to remain with his fellow Jews and endure the Camps. He even allegedly paid his electric bill to the German government before he was deported.

These are my ideas anyway... I still think components of Buber might be in Jastrow, although I am now convinced that Leo Baeck is the main basis. But I'm eager to know what you all think!

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The thing that struck me about Leo Baeck is that the last thing he did prior to being deported from Berlin to Theresienstadt was to pay his electric bill for his flat. As if a regime that had already stipped him of his possessions and murdered most of the Jews of Europe had the slightest legitimacy.

His naivete was appalling. I think there might also have been some parallel to Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas. Toklas had converted to Catholicism and both of them bristled at the mere thought of being lumped with Jews. Surprisingly (people assume that lesbians would have progressive political consciousness, as would Jews in a fascist imperiled Europe in the 1930s) they were supporters of the Vichy regime and (contrary to their friend, Ernst Hemmingway) of the Franco regime in Spain. They showed no sympathy for other Jews (who had neither American passports nor connections with Vichy officials) who ended up being deported to Auschwitz or Sobibor.

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