Blogging is amazing, to be sure, but it’s not the most worthwhile or even the most thrilling of my life’s experiences.  Certainly not. My work with the Monuments Men–now, that was work that made me proud.  One would say I was a Monuments Woman, although we women did not get the credit we deserved.  Yet another recurring theme in the story of my life.  Yet, living the life has made up for it.

I’d finished up at Cambridge in the late 1930s and gone up to London to study at the Courtauld Institute. Back then some called the Courtauld a finishing school for young women whose parents wanted them to acquire a basic knowledge of art–one requisite, or useful tool, toward the goal of becoming a proper wife.  I, of course, having read art history at Cambridge, scoffed at this and instead applied myself with great determination; I yearned to be a curator, you see.   The Warburg Library, Aby Warburg’s vast art trove, had shifted from Germany to London when the Nazis surfaced, and its relationship to the Courtauld lent more gravity to the courses and reputation.  And Anthony Blunt, then young and promising but not yet seasoned enough to be the Courtauld director, had begun to influence the direction of the institute, which was founded in 1932 with the grand gift of Sir Samuel Courtauld’s collection.  No doubt, you’ve heard of Blunt?  The gifted teacher and curator that I knew–it is hard to imagine him as a spy for the Russians all the time.

Anyway, I do go on…so sorry.  The war was coming, and we knew it, of course, for weeks ahead, that summer of 1939.  It was no secret that Hitler had already looted the great collections of every country where his legions had stomped their boots.  And a vicious air assault was expected. Everyone attached to a museum pitched in to evacuate the national treasures out of London to the countryside.  Like sending the children away, which was called Operation Pied Piper.  Fortunately, the paintings didn’t bawl as much as the children.  That work consigned me straight into the military as an attaché in the cultural section.  By 1943 we were actively preparing our own landing on the Continent to search out the troves stolen and hidden along the Nazi path of tyranny and destruction.  Within months after D-Day we art historians arrived in France, as well.

We veered in and out of the boundaries of enemy lines until the war’s end the following spring.  Then we plunged in, especially in Germany and Austria, the last hold-outs of the Nazi regime.  Imagine the sight of an American G.I. carrying up an El Greco from an underground cave in the Alps?  Or a priceless Greek sculpture?  This was routine.  The Nazis, of course, were unfailingly systematic, what with their lists, so we could tell which cities and even which families items came from.  The tricky part, alas, was finding the people, if they didn’t make claims.  Were we to assume that they perished?  Sadly, yes, that was so often the case. Our procedure then was to return art to its country of origin, not that the Russians went along with that, of course.

Important and high-level as that work was, it didn’t matter when I returned to Britain.  Who was I to think that a Jewish woman who had served her country so nobly would qualify for a curator position?  My only option was teaching art history in a girls’ school.  In doing so, I became yet another cog in the process of imparting to young women that scintilla of culture that would make them proper society matrons.  My revenge: a few really latched onto it, told me I’d inspired them, and went on to open galleries and even land museum positions.  Times had changed, you see.

But the Monuments Woman work stayed with me.  We hadn’t solved all the mysteries or safely returned everything to rightful owners.  We’d disbanded only two years after the war’s end; there was only so long for art to remain a priority.  There were war criminals to be tried, displaced persons to be settled, countries to be rebuilt, the Cold War–and just plain cold, hunger, and austerity all over Europe, especially here in England.  It was easy to push empty-handed art owners away.

Yet, I knew survivors and their heirs would resurface looking for their treasures.  I hoarded as many documents as I could, kept my ear to the ground among collectors and curators I knew and remained in contact with my cohorts among the Monuments Men.  Once I retired from teaching, in 1984, I parlayed this into working as a consultant to people seeking looted art still missing.

Which is how Lily Kovner came to ring me up and make me a character in Secrets of the Afikomen.

Pronunciation: \ˈzhän-rə, ˈzhäⁿ-; ˈzhäⁿr; ˈjän-rə\
Function: noun
Etymology: French, from Middle French, kind, gender — more at gender
Date: 1770

1 : a category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content
2 : kind, sort
3 : painting that depicts scenes or events from everyday life, usually realistically

As the protagonist in Secrets of the Afikomen, I should be uniquely qualified to answer this question about the book my friend, Linda, has written. Ah, yes, we are friends–we’ve spent a lot of time together over the years as she’s worked to tell my story. Some in the book business strive to pinpoint a genre within fiction. Let’s go over some of the choices: mystery, thriller, literary, science fiction, romance, historical, women’s, spiritual. Then there are a couple that are new to me: chick lit and hen lit. And the “biz” categorizes uses the terms commercial and trade book, too. I understand commercial; trade fiction????

Where does Secrets of the Afikomen fit?

Like many people–Linda and me, to name two (OK, at least one of us is a real person)–it’s not a round peg in a round hole. The book transcends genres. It has elements of mystery, historical, women’s hen lit (sometimes called matron lit or granny lit, when referring to authors and female protagonists over a certain age), and I get a nice romance, too, though it’s not the bodice-ripping type. Linda and I admit we’re not literary here. But we’ll take commercial!

So, genre-wise, we’re a hybrid.

Does genre matter? Not to us. What matters is that people enjoy the read and that they get the chance to read Secrets of the Afikomen. Getting published would be a good way to accomplish this, of course. But these days there’s even not just one definition of getting published. More on that soon…

My story–the quest to find my Seder plate–was complicated enough. The vagaries of the book business these days serve up yet another mystery (but no romance).

Well, here goes: I’m nothing if not adaptable.  Warsaw.  London. New York.  Israel.  I’ve made my way for 96 years.  Pretty successful in business.  Personal life?  A few relatives, friends, a lot of acquaintances.  I stayed busy.  After I lost Elisabeth, no one could compare, so there was never a wife, no children.  But at least I had Lily; I could be like a father to her.  And a grandfather to her kids.  Such a blessing that’s been in my life.

So, that night, when Lily came over to the house and told me, who could believe it?  I was stunned.  All of a sudden, after so many years, the di Salamone Seder plate shows up in front of her eyes at an auction?  Then–poof–just like that, it’s gone again?

Such memories came back to me, memories of Elisabeth, Lily’s mother, my darling Elisabeth.  That Seder at her house in 1937, the night I brought the Seder plate.  What do they call it now?  A hostess gift?   That Jack, her obnoxious husband, thought it was for all of them, but, no, only for Elisabeth.  That jerk didn’t know what a prize he had in her.  A Seder plate?  I would have given her the world, if only…

What could I do?  One thing you learn when you’re 96 years old: you can’t look back–it’ll drive you meshuggah.  You don’t make it to 96 looking back.

Lily came to me a wreck.  She wanted me to help her.  What could I do?  I’m nobody in the collector world now, a has-been.

We sat down, we had some Chinese, I listened.  She wanted to go after the Seder plate.  I thought it was a bad idea, dangerous even. She doesn’t know  what it was like–those Nazis.  Of course, she saw them take away her father and the Seder plate. Granted, her parents and grandparents were killed in the Holocaust.  But she thinks that’s ancient history now, all wiped away.

Me, I’m not so sure.  One thing I could offer was to connect Lily to Simon Wiesenthal.  Now, there’s a guy totally wrapped up in the past, but doing something about it.  Personally, I don’t know how he can stand it: embroiling himself day after day in those files, following up on leads, hearing people’s stories.  I admire the guy. But I could never do it.

I’m not usually a paranoid type, but the whole Nazi connection–the art looting, this Bucholz name, Wiesenthal’s report that Bucholz vanished after the war–it scares me.  I don’t want Lily getting mixed up in this.  I couldn’t stand to lose her, too.  I warned her, “This isn’t child’s play like looking for the Afikomen,” I said.  So, what does she do?  She says, “Great, Uncle!  Afikomen.  That’ll be the code name for my search.”  A code name she has to have!

OK–so I can’t stop her.  She’s sixty years old.  I’m glad she met Simon Rieger.  Maybe he’ll go with her on this wild goose chase. At least maybe she’ll have a little romance out of this, if nothing else.  She’s too wonderful to sit home alone every night.  Young, vibrant, like her mother.  If I were 30 years younger…

Like everyone else at the auction, I was shocked by her outburst.  These auctions are sedate and refined.  Maybe not so fancy and formal as Sotheby’s or Christie’s–but low-key and dignified.  What shocked me most was how disgracefully everyone treated her, the people in the audience and the ones running the auction.  Sure, she interrupted the proceedings, but her charge was serious, at least serious enough for the Mosaica woman to withdraw the Seder plate and end the auction.  I couldn’t believe that no one talked to Lily or bothered to even ask about what she said; they just got up and left.  Totally shunned her on the way out. Without a glance her way.  Close to one hundred people.

I couldn’t let it go.  Or let her go.

I worked among looted art, as a private assigned to the Monuments Men, during my Army service right after World War II.  I knew there could be a scintilla of truth in what Lily said.  And I’m a Judaica collector–old manuscripts and books; do you think that between my Army experience and my years in the marketplace I’d never run into issues of questionable (a euphemism) provenance?  The aftermath of the Nazi years opened a Pandora’s box of art provenance problems. The work of the Monuments Men who sorted and tried to return art to its rightful pre-war owners could only go so far.   Let’s face it: a lot of those owners were in no position to claim their lost property.  Some of the art simply went back to countries of origin, including the U.S.S.R. and its affiliates, which plopped the Iron Curtain over it until recently. Plenty slipped through the cracks of pilfering or more outright crime.

And, I have to admit that it wasn’t just the collector in me who stopped to talk to Lily.  Here was a very attractive woman with a problem. Jumping up and screaming foul at the auction might not have been her finest moment, but my gut told me she wasn’t a nut case.  Of course, my approach–the clapping and show stopping remark–was far from my smoothest come-on, given the circumstances.  But when I backed off and apologized, she seemed receptive and forgiving.

I hope so.