With memories of World War II fading, how can anyone understand the experiences of a child affected by the Holocaust? How can one imagine the feelings of a 10-year-old orphan whose journey to Palestine is interrupted by the British and who is imprisoned on the island of Mauritius?
Nathacha Appanah offers a child’s perspective on this sorry episode in history in her splendid short novel, “The Last Brother,” told in flashback by one of the characters who has reached old age.
The recently published English edition of the book is based on the little-known story of 1,500 Jewish Holocaust survivors who were imprisoned in Mauritius from 1940 to 1945 after their ship was refused entry to Palestine.
In the book, young David Stein of Prague is sent to a prison on the island in the Indian Ocean after being rescued from a concentration camp in Europe. Not only does he not make aliyah, but David is taken even farther away from “Eretz,” some 600 miles east of Madagascar.
The British excuse: quotas on immigration to Palestine and lack of documentation for immigrants. There would be no room for David and his fellow refugees who, furthermore, would be illegal if they landed.
David soon meets Raj, the son of a prison guard. Poor, confused Raj, raised in insularity on a sugar plantation, doesn’t even know what being Jewish means. Raj lives in splendid isolation on a volcanic island, where little news of the outside world filters in.
As Raj narrates the story, his childhood naivety about the world shows. There is so much unsaid. There is so much he doesn’t know.
Throughout the book, readers get clues about the war’s impact on the Jews in Europe. David’s parents probably died in death camps or were otherwise murdered by the Nazis. But this is not stated. After all, no one can expect a young boy to understand the horrors of Jewish Europe in the 1930s and ’40s.
As such, Appanah’s writing is subtle and deftly understated, inviting the reader into the boys’ minds. We want to shout at them, “David’s parents were murdered because they were Jews! What part of that don’t you understand?” Either boy would probably answer, “All of it.”
Raj and David meet up again in the prison infirmary and develop a deeper bond. Although they are from different parts of the world and speak different languages, they have much in common.
Both have tragically lost family, David in the Holocaust and Raj in a typhoon and flood. Both come from unstable, fragile places, David from anti-Semitism that crushes Jewish life and Raj from an island where severe weather crushes buildings and people. Both are confined, David in a prison camp, Raj in his drunken and abusive father’s household. Both are refugees from the absurdities of the adult world.
It’s no surprise that they concoct a plan to escape. Unfortunately, their journey through the Mauritian forest ends abruptly and tragically. Only Raj survives, and he doesn’t understand why. In his old age, Raj develops survivor’s guilt and tells his story in flashback to show how that syndrome developed.
Raj finally finds closure at age 70, cured of polio but convinced that God cursed him with fragile health for his role in David’s death. David never reaches “Eretz,” but Raj vows to keep his memory alive: He promises to tell his son the story so that David, and the Holocaust, will be forever remembered.
“The Last Brother” by Nathacha Appanah, translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan (164 pages, Graywolf Press, $14)