Wartime Lies by Louis Begley

First published: 1991

Type of plot: War

Time of work: 1933-1945

Locale: Poland

Principal Characters:

• Maciek, the narrator and central figure in the story
• Tania, Maciek’s aunt, guardian, and guide in their escape from the Nazis
• Grandfather, Tania’s father; stubborn and defiant, he eludes capture throughout the occupation but is finally exposed and shot by the Germans
• Reinhard, a former German soldier; he becomes Tania’s lover and helps her and her family hide from the Nazis until he is betrayed by a Jewish partisan

The Novel

Wartime Lies recounts the experiences of Maciek and his aunt Tania during World War II. Polish Jews, they elude capture by the Nazis by posing as Aryans, but in their journey through cities and villages, cellars and rented rooms, they witness horrific scenes of German brutality that scar Maciek for life.

Maciek, now a man in his fifties, recollects his childhood in Poland, beginning in 1933. Through his eyes, readers see everything. The only child of a Jewish physician in the small town of T., he leads a pampered life. His mother dies in childbirth, so his aunt Tania moves in to oversee his upbringing. Frail and nervous, he is also stubborn, but his beautiful nanny, Zosia, can coax good behavior from him. Even his grandfather helps by teaching him to drive a carriage and throw a jackknife. In 1941, the persecution by the Nazis begins. Jews are forced out of their homes, beaten, and deported or shot in the streets. Maciek and his family must move to an apartment, and Zosia must leave, too, for Aryans are not allowed to work for Jews. The retreating Russians take Maciek’s father to Russia for the duration of the war. Crowded into a single apartment with the grandparents and another family, Tania and Maciek share the same bed, as they will for the remainder of the war. Toilet facilities and running water vanish; curfews and armbands with yellow stars appear. At the German supply depot where she finds work, Tania meets Reinhard, a German who falls in love with her and helps her and her family hide when her job no longer protects them.

Reinhard is betrayed, and the Gestapo comes for him. Rather than fall into their hands, he shoots the grandmother, who is hiding in his apartment, then himself. Receiving the news from a friend, Tania flees with Maciek to Warsaw, where they pose as mother and child and where they find Grandfather, who is also hiding from the Germans. To avoid suspicion, Maciek receives religious instructions and first communion. On one of their outings, gunfire forces Tania and Maciek into a cellar. The Germans come, gathering Poles and marching them to the trains bound for Auschwitz. At the station, Tania boldly accosts a German captain, insisting that she is an officer’s wife and must board a train going to her home, which lies in a direction away from Auschwitz. The officer, impressed by her educated and confident manner, helps her onto a train bound for the Polish countryside.

The narration leaps forward two months. Tania and Maciek live with a family of farmers. Tania helps harvest potatoes and beets, while Maciek tends the cows. Harvest done, Tania becomes a traveling agent for Komar, a dealer in homemade vodka. Nowak, another vodka dealer, is attracted to her and helps find her father, now living in a nearby village. She goes to find him but arrives too late; he has been shot by the Germans. When she spurns Nowak’s advances, he threatens to expose her as a Jew. Again, she and Maciek flee, taking shelter in another small town. Finally, the guns fall silent and friendly Russian troops arrive, bringing an end to the war.

The narrative leaps forward again. Maciek’s father has returned, and Maciek, well-fed, well-clothed, has a new name and new Aryan identity. The persecution of Jews has not stopped, however, so deception continues to be a way of life. Eventually, all those he knew as a child will go away, including his beloved Tania. Maciek himself will no longer exist, buried in the wartime lies.

The Characters

Some characters are vividly drawn, such as Zosia, whose amber hair and high spirits charm the child Maciek, whereas others are little more than names. The officious and curious individuals in the boarding houses where Tania and Maciek stay remind one of the ever-present danger of exposure. The peasants introduce Maciek and Tania to hard life on a farm. Though each character plays key roles in Maciek’s journey, most of the characters have a ghostly quality as they pass in and out of the narrator’s memory.

Maciek is the narrator and one of the novel’s two principal characters. When the novel opens, he is in his fifties, reads the classics, and avoids discussing the Holocaust with others. Privately, he pores over accounts of the torture of political prisoners, calling himself a “voyeur of evil.” In his narration, he shows little emotion, whether he is describing an erotic experience with Zosia or horrific scenes of war. The flatness of his emotional range suggests that the trauma of his childhood has so benumbed him that he is incapable of feeling strong emotion.

Tania is Maciek’s maternal aunt. When the Nazis arrive in Poland, her principal aim is to save her nephew from the Germans. Beautiful, headstrong, well educated, and highly intelligent, she becomes increasingly heroic as danger mounts, sometimes using her considerable sexual appeal to win favors from those, such as Reinhard, who can help her evade capture. Her every move, word, and thought is carefully contrived, and her humanity extends even to caring for the elderly and sick. Though chance plays a large part in her success in saving Maciek, her extraordinary ingenuity and courage tip the balance. Maciek expresses a passionate love for his aunt, and many of their nights together in bed are tender, affectionate, and erotic. His brief, unemotional announcement at the end, “One day soon, Tania will leave,” leaves a hollow place in the heart.

Grandfather is a country gentleman who is an important figure in Maciek’s years before the German occupation, taking the child on outings and teaching him the pleasures of good food and Polish liquor. Tall, mustached, always attired in black, he is the picture of the worldly, wealthy gentleman in prewar Poland. He is also brave and defiant, like his favorite daughter, Tania, and like her he evades capture by posing as an Aryan. Near the end of the war, he is recognized as a Jew and shot.

Reinhard is a former German soldier who has lost an arm in a factory accident and works for the Nazis in Poland. His bravery in helping the partisans, especially Tania and her family, sets him apart from other Germans and Polish non-Jews. His extreme sacrifice stands in stark contrast to those who rob, betray, and persecute Jews. When the Gestapo close in, he saves Maciek’s grandmother from capture by shooting her, then shoots himself.

Critical Context

Wartime Lies, Begley’s first novel, shares a long tradition of firsthand accounts of the Holocaust, the most famous being Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl (1947). The list continues to grow and contains both true and fictionalized accounts of the Holocaust. Begley chose to fictionalize his experiences because, he said, fiction gives him greater freedom in capturing the truthfulness of his emotions. It also gives him a way to dramatize philosophical and moral issues of his experience. Creating a fictional character such as Maciek also enables Begley to create a personal history whose design is consistent with the meaning of his story. Giving events a fictional structure allows him to bring together the development of character and theme, as he does in the novel’s climactic scene at the train station, where Tania achieves a psychological triumph over German brutality and turns the plot away from death in Auschwitz and toward safety in the village. Her heroism, predicated on masterful deception, is given a shape and drama that real life seldom, if ever, offers. Begley needs the novelist’s artful deception to give meaning to this scene.

In interviews, Begley has implied that historical truth would have taken him away from his purpose, which, readers may infer, was to portray a man who survived horrific times but, in doing so, lost his true self. This theme is also found in Begley’s second novel, The Man Who Was Late (1993), in which the protagonist, Ben, develops the theme of self-loathing introduced in Wartime Lies. Begley’s third novel, As Max Saw It (1994), returns to themes such as defiance, guilt, innocence, and suffering. All three novels are evidence that Begley remains haunted by the issues inherent in his childhood experiences. His fiction enables him to examine their philosophical nature while dramatizing their psychological effects.

Bibliography

Buck, Joan Juliet. “An Occupied Gentleman.” Vanity Fair 56, no. 2 (February, 1993): 72-82. Buck places Wartime Lies in the context of Begley’s personal life. Although the essay does not offer literary analysis, it helps explain the genesis of Wartime Lies and its relation to Begley’s second novel, The Man Who Was Late.

Dresden, Sem. Persecution, Extermination, Literature, translated by Henry G. Schogt. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Dresden’s study of Holocaust literature clarifies the tradition of which Wartime Lies is a part. Of special interest is a discussion of the differences between writing about the Holocaust fictionally or factually. Though written before Begley’s novel appeared, Dresden’s book provides insight into Wartime Lies.

Horowitz, Sara R. Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997. Horowitz examines a wide range of Holocaust fiction, including Wartime Lies. She studies the relation of muteness to the lies that Maciek tells and to the disappearing identities that result from those lies. A superb view of the psychological effects of the Holocaust on the fiction that expresses them.

Mendelsohn, Jane. “Fiction in Review.” The Yale Review 83, no. 1 (January, 1995): 108-120. Mendelsohn notes parallels between all three of Begley’s novels, devoting most of her attention to Wartime Lies.

Steinberg, Sybil, ed. Writing for Your Life Number 2. Wainscott, N.Y.: Pushcart, 1995. The profile of Begley discusses his three novels and his interest in “the strange power of words.”