FINK, Ida

Nationality: Israeli (originally Polish: immigrated to Israel, 1957). Born: Zbaraż, 11 January 1921. Education: Studied music at a conservatory in Lvov, 1938-41. Married: Bruno Fink in 1948; one daughter. Career: Documentary work, Yad Vashem Institute, Tel-Aviv; music librarian, Goethe Institute, Tel-Aviv, 1972-83. Since 1983 freelance writer in Holon. Awards: Anne Frank prize in literature, 1985, and PEN/Bookof-the-Month Club translation prize, for Skrawek czasu; Jacob Buchman memorial prize, Yad Vashem, 1995.

Publications

Short Stories

Skrawek czasu. 1983; as A Scrap of Time and Other Stories, 1987; revised edition, 1995.

Slady. 1996; as Traces, 1997.

Novel

Podróż. 1990; as The Journey, 1992.

*

Critical Study:

"Trusting the Words: Paradoxes of Ida Fink" by Marek Wilczynski, in Modern Language Studies, 24(4), 1994, pp. 25-38.

* * *

Born in Zbaraż, Poland, in 1921, a survivor of what a character in one of her stories calls "the Hitler time," Ida Fink is one of the most important and powerful writers to come out of the Holocaust. She stands alongside such powerful and established writers as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi , and Charlotte Delbo. Her style is gently and distinctively lyrical, restrained, and understated; her approach to the subject of the Holocaust is markedly different from that of the other writers to whom she bears comparison. Whereas they portray the horrors of life—and death—in the concentration camps, where bestiality was the order of the day, Fink portrays another heart of darkness located on the periphery of the Holocaust. It is here that ordinary men, women, and children—more than three million Polish Jews inhabiting the small towns and villages of Poland—are trying, with mounting despair and desperation, to deal with a terror so grimly threatening and grotesque that it strains credibility. It is here—as in Auschwitz—in a pastoral setting of lush green orchards, carefully tended gardens, and deep forests, that sadistic and satanic atrocities are being committed. Babies are snatched from their parents and shot, neighbors betray neighbors for small rewards, and whole towns are rounded up as targets of an action (a new euphemism for mass murder).

Fink was confined to the ghetto until 1942. She spent the remaining war years in hiding and on the run, with the help of false identity papers certifying that she was Aryan. In 1957 she immigrated to Israel, where, switching from the musical study she had begun in Poland, she became a journalist. Her first volume of short stories was published, initially in Polish as Skawek Czasu (1983), then in English as A Scrap of Time (1987). She had waited more than 10 years before beginning to write: "Subconsciously," she explained in an interview, "I needed distance. I was afraid to touch these things with words. I thought one should speak about this in a quiet voice." This "quiet voice," almost a whisper, would become the cornerstone of her style. "She chose to whisper," as one reviewer noted, "and her soft whisper breaks your heart."

Based almost entirely on her own experiences and those of family and friends, her stories provide a uniquely intimate and chilling picture of the everyday comings and goings of Polish Jews, trapped but nonetheless frantically trying to escape total extermination. Alas, most did not, but those who did are tenderly memorialized, though never sentimentalized, in the 22 brief but all who tried haunting stories included in this collection. It won a series of awards, including the first Anne Frank Prize in Literature in 1985 and the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize.

In 1990 Fink published Podróż (The Journey, 1992), a novel based on her own experiences during the war when she managed, with her false documents, to serve as a volunteer laborer in Germany. Only through great "cleverness and luck," as she points out in the novel, was it possible to survive daily life under the very nose of the enemy, surrounded as well by indifferent if not hostile bystanders. In 1996 Slady (Traces , 1997) appeared, a volume of 18 short stories representing a continuation of her portrait of Jewish life and death in occupied Poland. These three relatively brief texts, taken together, constitute the thin but deeply impressive canon of Fink. In 1995 she was awarded the Jacob Buchman Memorial Prize at a ceremony that took place at Israel's Yad Vashem shrine. The citation reads: "The theme of survival burns like fire within Ida Fink. She has succeeded in treating her subject with sensitivity, understanding, [and a] brilliant creative ability. The enormous talent she reveals in her work places her among the foremost authors of Holocaust literature."

In one interview Fink emphasized that it is not profitable, or even sensible to say, as some do, that the Holocaust reveals behavior so beyond human norms that it might as well have occurred on another planet. Not at all, she insists: "It happened on our planet, in the world of reality. I describe the simple person in this situation. My heroes live in fear and despair, witnessing death day and night, and yet [they] struggle to survive."

It is only in our own witnessing of this struggle, as Fink depicts it in her stunning vignettes, that we can begin to connect with the Holocaust as it went on—incredibly and horrifically—day after day for six years . To learn what happened in the Holocaust, we must read history. But for those who want to feel the Holocaust "on the pulse" (as Coleridge said of literature in general), it is equally important that we read the stories of Ida Fink.

—Jacqueline Berke

See the essays on The Journey, A Scrap of Time and Other Stories, and Traces.