Few emotions slice as deeply into our sense of equanimity as the feeling of being an outsider, of not belonging to the people around you, or, perhaps even more painful, to any community you ever thought you were part of. This is the meaning encapsulated so deftly by the stark title of Michael Moritz’s outstanding book: Ausländer, literally the German word for a foreigner, but one that also carries the associations of a person who unaccepted, outside the boundaries that bind us humans together.
Moritz was born in Wales to German Holocaust survivors. Despite being a holder of a British passport and enjoying American citizenship for almost three decades, Moritz felt he belonged nowhere. “I am an Ashkenazi Jew,” he writes, because that was how he was described by his genetic profile. He feels accepted by no country, and hated by all of them.
Antisemitism, he writes, is a “condition of humanity; over the centuries, for many religions and countries, Jews have always been the source of all evil.” And while he believes antisemitism will always be with us, he grew determined to turn his attention to the many ways in which his life has brought good fortune his way.
Some eighty years after the Holocaust, when Covid had closed so many doors to the outside world, Moritz found himself drawn inward, captivated by the story of one of the millions of families torn to pieces in the Holocaust: the story of his own family. As he researched it, the decades collapsed and deeply buried memories came back to him clearly.
The result is this beautifully crafted history wrapped inside a memoir. Moritz tells us at the start that this book is “a reflection, not a lament of complaint.” We learn how his family was formed, what they cared about, how they found the courage to move ahead whenever they were threatened by destruction. His descriptions of his ancestors’ experiences are so lucid that we see his relatives standing before our eyes as he relates them to us.
Moritz is a resourceful writer, adept at elegant phrases and graced with the ability to move his narrative about in time without losing the thread that ties his ideas together. We learn at the very beginning that he is suffering from a deadly genetic blood disease that is most often found in Ashkenazi Jews, and looks clear-eyed at how this ties us together. His colleagues see him as white, male, and privileged, particularly since he speaks with a British accent; he tells us with a wink of irony that he is never considered part of an underrepresented minority. And yet, of course, Jews represent less than 0.02 percent of the people on earth.
Moritz is a former Time journalist and the author of several previous books, so it is no surprise that his writing is so deft and assured, despite the difficult material. The book takes us back two centuries and forward into the next, crossing boundaries and joining disparate worlds of thought and geography, but never skewers us with the shock of pain. It sheds light into the darkest corners of the Holocaust by honoring the author’s family, and despite its deep analysis of the dangers of increasing antisemitism in today’s society, it ultimately brings us a sense of hope and peace for the future.
Linda F. Burghardt is a New York-based journalist and author who has contributed commentary, breaking news, and features to major newspapers across the U.S., in addition to having three non-fiction books published. She writes frequently on Jewish topics and is now serving as Scholar-in-Residence at the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County.
