House on Endless Waters by Emuna Elon

I hope you are adjusting to your new routines as we all do our part to flatten the curve of new infections. 

Emuna Elon’s exquisite novel House on Endless Waters bears witness to one man’s search for the truth about his childhood during WWII in Amsterdam. The book, translated from the Hebrew by Anthony Berris and Linda Yechiel, illustrates how instinct, unconscious and repressed memories can burst into a person’s consciousness. Beautifully written and structurally unique, Elon’s novel is a magnificent example of how a seemingly unknowable past can shape a person without their consent.

Yoel Blum is a writer and the protagonist of the narrative. When he speaks about the theme of the books he has written, he says, “The past cannot be hidden.” But ironically, this Israeli husband, father and grandfather’s past has always been hidden. When Yoel’s publisher persuades him to include Amsterdam on a book tour, he struggles whether to visit the city of his birth. He hesitates to break his deceased mother’s edict: Never visit Amsterdam. But he does.

While visiting the Amsterdam Jewish Historical Museum, he sees a grainy black and white film about the abundant cultural life of Amsterdam’s Jews before WWII. His mother, father, sister and a small boy appear in several frames, startling Yoel. He initially thinks he is the boy in his mother’s arms, but after watching the film over and over again, Yoel realizes he is not that small child.

Yoel disrupts his life and moves to the dwindling Jewish section of Amsterdam and researches at the Jewish Historical Museum. Rotating between WWII Amsterdam and present-day Amsterdam, we travel with Yoel on his emotional journey to learn the identity of the boy in the film and the true story of how his family moved to Israel. We learn of the cruelty inflicted on the Jewish population of Amsterdam during WWII. Yoel’s father was taken away and never heard from again. Yoel’s mother chose to allow Christian families to hide her children.

The most potent aspect of the novel is the way Elon writes about Yoel’s experience discovering the truth about his early years. The rain hovers, the mist descends, there is almost a dream sense to this story. Many of the scenes occur inside Yoel Blum’s mind. 

Yoel tries to imagine growing up In Amsterdam, speaking Dutch and, attending the Esnoga Synagogue. In a scene at the Anne Frank Museum, Yoel merges the past and present. When Bat-Ami, his wife shows him that her cell phone could connect to the Anne Frank House Wi-Fi, he became confused: “If the Frank family hideout is connected to the net, why don’t those hiding use it to tell the world of their plight? Why are they not using the internet to call for help?”

Though Yoel’s mother’s experienced severe trauma, she told Yoel not to go to Amsterdam not because of her complicated past, but because of his. As a writer and researcher, Yoel discovers more about the suffering of his mother, her fellow Jews and his tumultuous beginnings. The novel becomes a book within a book as we learn how Yoel incorporates his present-day experiences into a fictionalized account of his family’s plight during the War. It is a grim story for his family and Amsterdam’s Jewish community; the anti-Semitic fervor spread like a plague. Only 8000 of Amsterdam’s 140,000 Jews survived WWII.

Emotional nuance permeates the novel as Elon comprehends the emotional weight he has carried from his childhood. Taken from their families and hidden, many children, like Yoel, learned to detach themselves emotionally.

The book is one man’s introspective journey to come to terms with the psychic pain and emotional cruelty that effected his family during WWII in Amsterdam. Yoel Blum comes to understand that the repercussions ripple into his present life. “Yoel discovers that there is no difference between past, present and future.” And by the end of the story, he feels more peaceful now that he knows the truth about his life.  A beautiful story.