“When is this world going to grow up? When are people going to learn that we’re all alike and nobody’s any better or worse than anybody else? How many wars do we have to fight, and how many more millions have to be slaughtered before the world gets any sense in its fat head?” I love this quote from the book I just finished reading entitled, “The Invisible Wall: A Love Story That Broke Barriers,” by Harry Bernstein. From the very first chapter I was “hooked,” reading it every moment I could. I was completely captivated by this little book depicting the barriers between Christians and Jews and the love story within the story that broke down those invisible walls. I had no idea the extent of bigotry and anti-Semitism that existed before the war and still exists to some extent today!
Harry Bernstein grew up in a small world of poverty with an abusive, distant father. In the Lancashire mill town of his English childhood, during prewar and wartime of the early last century, the poverty stricken Jews clustered along one side of their neighborhood street and the Christians lived on the other side, separated by a few feet that might as well have been hundreds of miles. “The Invisible Wall,” is a heart-wrenching memoir, describing two cultures cohabiting uneasily, prey to misunderstandings that distort lives on both sides. It is a world of pain and prejudice, a story that brilliantly illuminates a time, a place and a family struggling valiantly to beat impossible odds.
The book was suggested to me by my neighborhood book club. At first I was only interested in it because of the author, Harry Bernstein’s amazing accomplishment of publishing his memoir at the age of 93. That is a story in itself, an inspiration to anyone who thinks it’s too late. However, as I read this engaging story I quickly fell in love with the book and it's poignant message. Here are some thoughts in Harry's own words from an interview he gave after making the New York Times best sellers list.
“If I had not lived until I was 90, I would not have been able to write this book,” he said. “It just could not have been done even when I was 10 years younger. I wasn't ready.” And he suggested that he might not be an anomaly: “God knows what other potentials lurk in other people, if we could only keep them alive well into their 90s!”
The interview went on to say that the catalyst for “The Invisible Wall” was the death, nearly five years earlier, of Ruby, his wife of 67 years, who had leukemia. “It was a terrible thing for me because it never occurred to either one of us that it would not last forever,” he said. “There was so much emptiness, especially at nighttime, and you had to find something to fill in that gap. I was looking for a home.”
He found it, he said, in his childhood memories, and then in writing about them. “I realized then why I had failed in writing novels,” he said. “Because I turned away from personal experience and depended on imagination.” Harry Bernstein is now 99 years old and has published a second book depicting his life after immigrating to America, called, “The Dream.” I can't wait to read it!
“People get smarter. The human brain has a potential for development. Someday it will grow big enough so that everybody will see and understand the truth, and then we won’t act like a bunch of sheep, and then that wall that separates the two sides of our street will crumble, just like the Wall of Jericho . . . We’re going to have a better world. Things won’t always be the way they are now. I promise you, there’ll be a better world than the one we’re living in today.” ~ Quotation from “The Invisible Wall”
No comments:
Post a Comment