Bruno Schulz’s Biography, Part of the Holocaust

2002 will mark two jubilees in Drohobych; July 12, the 110th anniversary of the birth and November 19 the sixtieth anniversary of the death of Bruno Schulz (1892-1942). Most likely, certain public events will take place, as will be the case this year with regard to Ivan Franko: the eighty-fifth anniversary of his death (1916) and one hundred forty-fifth of his birth (August 27).

As for Franko, nothing worthy of public note has happened or is likely to happen (like issuing a complete collection of his works, likely to amount to 100 volumes, rather than the currently available 50). And the same is true of Bruno Schulz, unless the Ukrainian side is assisted by Polish, German, and especially Jewish factors.

The name of Bruno Schulz is unfamiliar to general Ukrainian public, just as most people in Drohobych know nothing about Ivan Hnatiuk from neighboring Boryslav (he won the Taras Shevchenko Prize last year, presumably a nationwide event, although few know about it in the laureate’s native province). Perhaps such is the lamentable lot of the writer, while a local politician is recognized by everybody in the neighborhood and beyond, owing to the officeholder’s money, gift of gab, activity, and skill at going through the motions of being extremely active in the public domain.

There is nothing out of the ordinary about Bruno Schulz’s biography. He may have met with Franko, seen him, or (banal but truthful enough) simply completely ignored him, although he could not have missed the name or his literary endeavors. Indeed, this is nothing out of the ordinary, at first glance. His life story may well have remained in a backwater province of history, familiar only to local history enthusiasts, but for the Jewish factor and the scandal that erupted after his frescoes found their way from Drohobych to Israel.

I will leave the possibility of Franko’s and Schulz’s paths ever crossing to the enthusiasts of local lore.

AN “ORDINARY” BIOGRAPHY

Bruno Schulz was born on July 12, 1892, in Drohobych. His father, Jacob, owned a small shop. His mother, Hendel-Henriette, nee Kugmeker, came from the family of a small-time industrialist and lumber trader. Bruno had an older brother Isidor and sister Hanja.

In 1902, Bruno Schulz enrolled in Drohobych’s Franz Joseph High School. In 1910, he entered the Architecture Department of Lviv’s Higher Technical School.

Like his father, Bruno often took ill and had to undergo treatment at the nearby Truskavets spa. His father perished in World War I and Bruno continued studying architecture in Vienna.

Back in Drohobych, he took a serious interest in painting. He was now Professor Bruno Schulz and taught the fine arts at the high school (by then renamed for Polish King Wladyslaw II Jagiello).

In 1922-23, he took part in collective graphic art exhibits at Warsaw’s art gallery Zachenta, also in Lviv, Wilno [current Vilnius, Lithuania], and at the German resort of Kudowa. In 1926, he took an examination with the board of the Krakow Art Academy and passed it with honors.

At a 1927 art exhibit in Zakopane, Schulz met Wladyslaw Riff. Researchers believe that the extraordinary man prompted Bruno to take up writing. Cinnamon Shops and The Resort Near Klepsidra are his best-known works.

His mother died in 1931 and his brother Isidor in 1932.

Bruno Schulz wanted to have a family, but when his intention to marry a Catholic woman by the name of JЪzefa Szelinska became known he was expelled from the Jewish religious community.

Came September 11, 1939, and the war burst into his life and that of millions of his compatriots. On that day Wehrmacht units entered Drohobych and the first pogrom took place.

The Nazi terror was eventually replaced by the Bolshevik one, but Bruno Schulz did his best to adapt to the new way of life. He painted a giant portrait of Stalin displayed on the facade of the city hall and the canvas was soon dotted all over by flyspecks, and then the NKVD came to regard him as something akin to a Ukrainian bourgeois nationalist just because he used too much yellow and blue paint, making communist posters and slogans on government orders.

Even then Schulz tried to take part in creative life. His works appeared at art exhibits in Lviv and he cooperated with Lviv’s New Horizons journal and Moscow’s Foreign Literature Publishing House.

Then the Nazis returned to Drohobych and Schulz, together with the local Jews, was sent to the ghetto. He seemed to realize he was doomed, as he just handed his manuscripts and paintings to friends.

Then suddenly he had a guardian angel in the person of SS OberscharfЯhrer Felix Landau, commander of the Drohobych SS force. It was a weird kind of friendship, considering Bruno’s Jewish parentage. On top of everything else, Landau was a central figure in the Nazi program of the extermination of Galician Jews.

Schulz was the OberscharfЯhrer’s personal artist and decorated the interior of several buildings serving as Nazi cultural facilities in Drohobych.

Before his death (Schulz was shot by SS man Karl Gunther on November 19, 1942, where the Frosia’s Cafe is, quite popular with Drohobych residents), he painted fairy tale princes and other entertaining murals at the Gestapo chief’s villa to cultivate five year-old Wolf-Dieter’s and three year- old Helga’s artistic taste.

Indeed, there is nothing out of the ordinary about Bruno Schulz’s biography, for it could not have been different at the time. It often takes pragmatism, even cynicism to get used to such banality.

In reality, there is nothing ordinary about his life story, and this became apparent after his death.

German film director Benjamin Heisler plans to release the documentary Finding Images in 2002, to commemorate the Schulz jubilees. It took him two years to prepare to start work on the film. He began in Drohobych on February 5, 2001.

Already on February 9 he made a happy discovery: Schulz’s murals under several layers of plaster inside a small private home (part of what had been the Gestapo chief’s villa).

Heisler notified the German ambassador and the ministries of culture in Ukraine, Germany, and Poland. The only country left out of the list was Israel, but no one paid attention at the time.

Experts examined the paintings and confirmed their authorship. Needless to say, Heisler and the film crew were not going to let go of the initiative and made sure they had the exclusive right to video copies of Schulz’s frescoes.

Since the Poles, just like the Jews, consider Bruno Schulz theirs (Ukrainians do not, although the writer and artist lived in Drohobych and made the town known all over the world), they took a very active part in the process. Thus, the right to start cleaning the frescoes was bestowed on Agneszka Kijowska, restoration expert with the Warsaw National Museum.

The idea was to turn Landau’s villa into an international cooperation center, restoring and preserving the Schulz Memorial Room. Benjamin Heisler declared he had contacted the Krupp Foundation, requesting $300,000 so the five families currently at the so-called Landau Villa could be properly accommodated elsewhere.

Everything seemed all right, but then the so-called Jewish factor came in.

When the State of Israel appeared on the world map it undertook to protect Jewish rights everywhere. The Mossad would kidnap Nazi war criminals in different countries, formally in violation of international law, bring them to Israel and make them stand trial. Much could be said on the subject, but the main point is that defending the interests of Israel all over the world comes first if it means defending Jewish rights.

Whether or not one likes this Israeli policy, it has to be reckoned with, especially when planning actions that Jews might find damaging to themselves or to their state of Israel. Moreover, even if there were international protests against such unlawful Israeli acts, they have caused no serious consequences — like international isolation — and have only served to strengthen Israeli morale.

In this sense, the theft of the Schulz frescoes by Israeli subjects is a flagrant violation of Ukrainian sovereignty — and a moral feat in the eyes of Israeli society. What happened was by no means cause enough for Kyiv to get into a tussle with Tel Aviv, just a bitter pill silently swallowed, yet additional proof of Ukraine’s political weakness, meaning that other stronger countries can act without taking it into account. And even the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry forwarded a note of protest to Israel (quite belatedly, because things like this need to be responded to immediately), this would not add to Ukraine’s international image.

WHERE ARE SCHULZ’S FRESCOES?

The allegation that they are still in Ukraine sounds most fantastic. The Israelis might have left them in Ukraine with all the hubbub in the press (Polish, not Ukrainian), so everybody would believe that the frescoes were really smuggled out and they could actually do so after the uproar died down.

Most likely, the frescoes are in Israel, if not at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum as yet (as alleged by the press). This is done on purpose, to see if Germany and Poland will become angry (no one expects any reaction from Ukraine, of course) and protect the museum staff. And it is clear that Heisler or even the Polish Ministry of Culture will find fighting the state of Israel difficult enough.

Yad Vashem spokeswoman Iris Rosenberg explains the frescoes’ transfer from Drohobych to Jerusalem by their poor condition and that they would perish in Ukraine.

Yuri Guppert, a reputed Israeli lawmaker and columnist who emigrated from Poland in 1950 writes in the Gazeta Wyborcza, “In a sense Israel is the inheritor of Jewish property worldwide,” and that “it has been universally accepted, in view of the Holocaust and from the international standpoint, that Israel is the moral and historical representative and continuer of Judaism. The wall decorations withdrawn from the Nazi villa in Drohobych are the tragic reason for the final stage of Schulz’s biography, they are part of the Holocaust. He died the way Jews died in the ghetto. Thus, despite the fact that I am not generally uncritical toward the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, I am of all people called upon to immortalize the last minutes of Bruno Schulz’s life.”

Much as I, being Ukrainian, regret to admit it, there is a tangible point in what Iris Rosenberg and Yuri Guppert say. Consider this: there is a choral synagogue in the center of Drohobych. The premises were used as a furniture store under the Soviets and now — well, it is a public lavatory patronized by women selling things at a nearby market. The local authorities never lifted a finger to stop this outrage, and the place is not only an architectural site, but also and above all a synagogue. Thus the local officials’ indifference toward the frescoes was to be expected.

WHY WERE THE FRESCOES TAKEN FROM DROHOBYCH?

There are all sorts of verbal attacks aimed at the Drohobych administration, directly or otherwise accusing them of taking bribes and allowing the Schulz frescoes to be taken away.

Needless to say, local officials are no different from their colleagues anywhere else in Ukraine; they are just as corrupt, except that the appetite depends on one’s rank and position and what is left of one’s personal decency. However, I am convinced that, even if any of the Drohobych administrators did take bribes he is now cursing his stupidity for not demanding more, considering the international scandal, meaning that the frescoes’ value has soared.

Drohobych Mayor Oleksiy Radziyevsky said at a press conference that he learned about the frescoes from his subordinates on May 25, adding that he was misinformed, made to assume that Heisler informing Yad Vashem about the frescoes and Mark Schraberman taking away the frescoes were a team.

Mr. Radziyevsky stated that he, as an ordinary citizen, was absolutely unimpressed by “those drawings” (referring to the Schulz frescoes) and said, “It was some kind of graffiti and was impossible to make anything out.” No comment.

In fact, the mayor’s artistic impression was shared by others. Borys Voznytsky, manager of the Lviv Art Gallery, when asked by journalist Jemmy Dombrowska what he thought of the frescoes’ value (Vysoky zamok, No. 119, June 2-3,2001), had this to say, “I would not describe them as world masterpieces. Bruno Schulz was a very original and interesting writer but not much of an artist. He has interesting prints betraying Spanish Goya’s influence. As for his professional level, I would compare him to an average modern Lviv painter. The wall paintings were valuable because they were made by Bruno Schulz in the last days of his life, before he was shot. It is more like a memorial than a creative monument. But of course, it should be part of Ukraine’s national property.”

Mr. Voznytsky was quite sincere, of course, but the part of his statement about the frescoes’ low artistic value, even if inadvertently, gave the smart operators a carte blanche, and they made a very good bargain.

Mr. Kaliuzhny, owner of the home with the frescoes who allowed them to be taken to Israel, had once worked as chairman of the Drohobych district executive committee. Mayor Radziyevsky was first secretary of the Drohobych city committee of the Communist Party. Can people with such a Soviet Communist background and mentality appreciate the true worth of the Schulz frescoes for Drohobych (let alone Ukraine as a whole)?

PESSIMISTIC FORECAST

The export of creative works dating from before the end of World War II (as in our case) is forbidden by law; those with later dates can be exported only if so authorized by the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine.

Formally, Mark Schraberman for taking the frescoes out of Ukraine should stand trial in Ukraine. Of course, I doubt this will happen and would not be surprised to learn about his second visit to the Kaliuzhny’s to pick up the remainder.

The owners of the apartment will not be punished, considering their age, although ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Even if criminal proceedings are initiated, the Drohobych officials will get off scot-free; all charges will be dismissed. Likewise, those that helped clear the frescoes through customs will never be identified.

One final and most disheartening point is that the man in street in Drohobych knows little if anything about the Schulz frescoes, that they were discovered and then taken to Israel. Those that knew received the news with surprising calm. It is not that everybody in Drohobych is an anti- Semite, just that they have other things on their mind, like trying to figure out how to survive in the truest sense of the word. That was why almost no one showed any emotional response to the fire at the Prosvita People’s Home or Ivan Franko Museum at Nahuyevychy.

Sad but such are the current Drohobych realities. The issue of returning the Schulz frescoes to Drohobych remains open.