This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.
Michael Commane
Last Wednesday was a special anniversary that reminds the world of unspeakable evil. On January 27, 1945 an advance group of scouts who broke away from their unit in Oswiecim in Poland, arrived at the gates of Auschwitz.
It was the day that the advancing Red Army began the liberation of the remaining living skeletons at the German death camp.
And these first days of February celebrate another important date in the history books. On February 2, 1943 the Germans surrendered to the Red Army at Stalingrad on the River Volga.
It was that great victory that allowed the Russians to move west, eventually arriving in Berlin in May 1945.
The world is always a dark place when we lose our freedom. I have just read a powerful book about the impending doom of what it means to have our bodies and minds incarcerated by evil.
Robert Seethaler’s novel ‘The Tobacconist’ tells the story of young a man, who has the innate goodness and courage to stand up to the all-powerful invading German thugs who arrived in Austria in 1938.
Seethaler weaves a story of so many parts around 17-year-old Franz Huchel, who leaves his sleepy Austrian village and moves to Vienna to work in a kiosk that sells newspapers and magazines. It’s owned by Otto Trsnjek a former friend of his mothers. Franz grew to respect Otto. He listened to him, picked up tips of the trade and began reading newspapers and magazines.
The world-famous neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud bought his newspaper and cigar at the kiosk.
On one occasion Franz runs after him to give him his hat which he had left at the Kiosk and so begins a wonderful friendship between 17-year-old Fanz and 81-year-old Sigmund Freud.
Franz meets Anezka at a fair in the city and instantly falls in love with her, or at least so he thinks.
He turns to Freud to discuss his love troubles, who tells him that having worries about women are usually unwise but never unimportant.
In a letter he writes to his mother he tells her about his friendship with Freud and that it does not bother him that he is a Jew.
All the time in the background there is the ghost of the arrival of German troops in Austria. It’s not long before the Nazis turn up at the kiosk and take away Otto. It’s the last that Franz sees of him.
While most of Vienna is now giving the Heil Hitler salute, Franz refuses, indeed, lets people know his opposition to the growing darkness.
He is broken-hearted when he discovers that his old fragile friend Sigmund Freud is leaving for London. Unbeknownst to Freud, Franz stands at the back of the railway station the day that Freud is boarding his train for his journey to London.
Goodness and courage stay with Franz Huchel right to the end. In the midst of Austria’s overwhelming enthusiasm for the Nazis, the young idealistic man stays loyal to all that is good and right.
‘The Tobacconist’ is a great read. I strongly recommend it.
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