Mendelssohn Is on the Roof

by Jiri Weil, Marie Winn (Translator)

Overview

Julius Schlesinger, aspiring SS officer, has received orders to remove from the roof of Prague's concert hall the statue of the Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn. But which of the figures adorning the roof is the Jew? Remembering his course on racial science, Schlesinger instructs his men to pull down the statue with the biggest nose. Only as the statue they have carefully chosen begins to topple does he recognize that it is not Mendelssohn; it is Richard Wagner.

Thus begins a story of disarming simplicity that traces the transformation of ordinary lives in Nazi-occupied Prague. Death abetted by the petty malevolence of Nazi functionaries wins all the battles but ultimately loses the war, defeated by the fragile flowering of courage and defiance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810116863
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	11/25/1998
Series:	Jewish Lives Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.75(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jiří Weil (6 August 1900, Praskolesy - 13 December 1959, Prague) was a Czech writer. He was Jewish. His noted works include the two novels Life with a Star (Život s hvězdou), and Mendelssohn Is on the Roof (Na střeše je Mendelssohn), as well as many short stories, and other novels.

Editorial Reviews

Originally published in Czech in 1960, this novel by the author of Life with a Star is a fierce and mocking portrayal of ordinary lives as they are changed by the presence of the Nazis in occupied Prague. When top-level Nazi Reinhard Heydrich attends a performance of Don Giovanni at Prague's concert hall, he is not only disturbed by the vengeance of the Commendatore's statue in Mozart's opera, but by the sight of a statue of the composer Mendelssohn (who was born a Jew, but converted to Christianity) atop the roof of the hall. He orders it removed. But the hapless low-level minions whose task this becomes cannot identify Mendelssohn's likeness amongst the rooftop statuary. In a series of biting ironies, Weil, who died in 1959, takes us on a guided tour of the hearts and minds of both victims and persecutors. Images of statues are abundant throughout the text, from an enormous Moses being hauled into storage to the tragic paralysis of a Jewish doctor to this musing on the part of the infamous Heydrich: ``Knowing the secret of the Final Solution means invisible power. It means standing high above all people and looking down on them in scornful safety, like a statue. It means being made of stone or bronze. . . . '' Perhaps shriller in tone than Primo Levi, this insistent and important novel of the Holocaust is more than a manifesto; it is also literature. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Prague withers under the boot of Nazi occupation. The Acting Reich Protector cruises the city, taking pleasure in its deserted streets, feeling like one with the marshal statues, and suddenly becomes offended by the statue of Mendelssohn atop a building. The Jewish composer must be removed. Meanwhile, the real Jews of Prague are rounded up, the lucky ones sent to a ghetto, the unlucky ones sent east into the unknown. Of course, they are all unlucky, eventually, from the innocent to the collaborators, and even those in the resistance who try to hide their countrypeople from the crushing progress of the ``Final Solution.'' Weil, himself a death camp survivor, writes an unblinking portrait of the Prague he knew. The many characters humanize an inhuman world and make personal the broader struggle of death and hatred.-- Paul E. Hutchison, Pequea, Pa.

Library Journal