The Second Catastrophe by Howard Rotberg effectively merges
contemporary historical writing and narrative fiction in a creative
and compelling manner. It is a masterful portrait of irreconcilable
struggles, global and local, distant and immediate, collective and
personal, as they have become heightened by the unthinkable events
of September 11, 2001. Before that tragic day, the eyes of the
world were already squarely fixed on acts of terrorism in the
Middle East. The Al Aqsa Intifada, or Second Intifada, intensified
an already keen interest in the West's obsession with the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For some, Israeli incursions into the
West Bank on the one hand, or Palestinian suicide bombings on the
other hand, provided adequate justification for preexisting
positions. For many more, however, the rapidly escalating situation
on the ground merely served to further cloud an already compromised
and confusing reality. At that time in the West, there was no
familiar standard by which to compare, evaluate, and judge what had
become a daily Middle Eastern drama. Not in a day but in a single
hour, this was about to change forever. As a result of the morning
of September 11, we now all find ourselves at times willingly and
at other times unwillingly replaying the horrific details of that
tragic morning - repeatedly.
As an historian, Rotberg has carefully selected, judiciously
edited, and impressively reformatted hundreds of minute details of
daily history from actual pages of Western newspapers to create a
compelling story of a man who finds himself traveling to Israel
during these troubled times because his daughter, a visiting
student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has become a victim
of Palestinian terrorism. The reader cannot escape being caught up
in a web of emotions and thoughts that such human drama demands. As
an historian, Rotberg has also done the work that we all wish we
could be able to do in order to better understand not only the
events themselves but also to ascertain their immediate and global
implications. No one who reads The Second Catastrophe can leave
unaffected or uninformed. As importantly, the reader will begin to
appreciate a sinister correlation between daily acts of terror
against innocent civilians in Israeli streets, a longstanding "war"
of attrition against Jews in their homeland, and the painful and
murderous events of September 11 in New York City, acts that
initiated the current "global war" against terrorism.
As a creative writer, Rotberg advances literary form on several
fronts. While choosing the form of historical fiction, Rotberg has
made a novel contribution to this familiar literary genre. He has
placed a historical book of non-fiction within a book of historical
fiction. Readers gain much, both in detail and perspective, about
relevant current events from chapters of historical non-fiction
that the author has brilliantly woven into his main story-line.
While I have not seen this literary technique in any former
writing, I appreciate the honesty that it brings to the reader.
Other historical fictions weave fact and myth, non-fiction and
fiction inseparably in such a manner that it becomes impossible to
know what is and what is not true. In the case of The Second
Catastrophe however, the reader has a strong sense of knowing when
the characters of the fictional story are speaking and when the
events of history with which we have become too familiar are in
play.
Finally, as a child of a Holocaust survivor himself, Rotberg
contributes to a growing collection of works in a genre of
literature produced by children of survivors. In exposing the
nature and identifying features of a second holocaust, he
tangentially provides his own insightful perspective on the (first)
Holocaust. As well, Rotberg courageously faces complex and arguably
unresolvable issues of Jewish identity that are foremost in
personal and community Jewish consciousness today.
Many of us feel we cannot get enough hard data on historical
background to and daily life leading up to and immediately
following the consciousness-raising events of September 11.
Further, some of us wish to think through the complexities and
possible links between a world that looked the other way when Jews
were being rounded up and incinerated just over 50 years ago and
today's world that tends to treat with similar deference the
frequent murder of men, women, and children by suicide bombers in
the streets of the only Western-styled Democracy in the Middle
East. Many more of us can no longer justify remaining ignorant to
history and injustice as it unfolds dramatically before our eyes.
Howard Rotberg's The Second Catastrophe satisfies each of these
needs and desires in a most creatively stimulating and accessibly
informative way.