(Vatican City, 1945)

Two years ago, I read an impactful novel written by Joseph O’Conner entitled MY FATHER’S HOUSE that centered on the role of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish Catholic priest and senior official of the Roman Curia who was responsible for saving 6500 allied soldiers and Jews during World War II.  He had the ability to evade traps set by the Gestapo and Nazi SD earning the nickname, “The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican.”  O’Connor’s portrayal is one of suspense and intrigue creating a gripping World War II drama featuring the unlikeliest of heroes who did battle with SS Commander Paul Hauptmann who failed to corral the principled Vatican official.

O’Conner has returned with a strong sequel, THE GHOSTS OF ROME, which mirrors the same approach toward historical fiction dripping with action, and unforgettable characters.  In his latest work O’Conner reintroduces the “Choir,” a ragtag group dedicated to spiriting those threatened by the Nazis to safety.  As World War II winds down, this covert group successfully leads untold numbers of escapees out of Nazi controlled Rome along a secret route called the “Escape Line.”  Once again, Hauptmann is ordered to destroy O’ Flaherty’s underground railroad – this time his family is seized by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Berlin until he accomplishes his task.

O’Conner begins the novel on Ash Wednesday, February 1944 as he introduces an eclectic  group, all members of the “Choir” as they shelter from Nazi aerial bombardment. They are an interesting mix of people consisting of Giovanna Landini, a Countess, leftist who became a Red Cross motorcycle courier when the war broke out;  Sir Francis D’Arcy Osborne a British diplomat to the Holy See; Marianna de Vries, a Swiss reporter writing a book on the “Hidden Rome”; Delia Murphy-Kiernan, the de facto ambassador of Ireland to the Holy See and her daughter Blon, a university student; Sam Derry, a tough British soldier who escaped Nazi imprisonment; John May, a British jazz musician; Enzo Angelucci, a wise cracking newspaper vendor; and Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty.  As O’Conner introduces these characters, another is descending by parachute into Rome trying to avoid German fire as he hits the ground.

(St. Peter’s Square, 1945)

The author offers a series of storylines in the novel.  First, as part of a continuation from MY FATHER’S HOUSE, is SS Commander Hauptmann’s attempt to shut down the “Choir” and its “Escape Line.”  Second, is Countess Landini and Monsignor O’Flaherty’s prolonged attempts to hide escaped POWs, airmen, and others throughout Vatican City.  Third, the battle to try and save a downed Polish pilot named Bruno Wisniewski.  Lastly, the intertwining of the “Choir” and the diverse personalities and beliefs of its members as they tried to reach consensus as to what actions they should pursue.  O’Conner integrates a series of interviews of some of the main characters given a 15-20 years after the war to fill in historical gaps, personal observations, and tightening the story.  These made up texts from letters to memoir extracts to interview transcripts are important for the reader’s understanding.

O’Conner provides a tour of Roman historical sites as the diverse characters navigate Roman streets above and below ground in their cat and mouse game with the SS.  In addition, the author provides a glimpse into the Nazi occupation of Rome which by February 1944 is dominated by increasing black market prices, a lack of food and other essentials including sanitation, constant bombing raids, and the omnipresent fear of being arrested by the SS, interrogated, and executed.  As O’Conner takes the reader through the catacombs of Vatican City, particularly under St. Peter’s one is reminded of the novels of Steve Berry and Dan Brown for plot development and anticipation.

There are two watershed moments in the novel.  The first centers on Heinrich Himmler’s warning to Hauptmann that Hitler wanted the “Choir” to shut down or the SS commander’s family would be the price for failure.  Hauptmann’s wife and children were returned to Berlin where they would be guarded by Himmler’s henchman –  the warning was clear, “smash the Escape Line or face the inevitable.”  The second occurred on March 23, 1944, when the Roman resistance in the guise of pavement sweepers attacked a 156 German troop column with a 40 lb. bomb that killed 30 and wounded countless soldiers.  The bombers would escape, and Hitler ordered 100 Italian civilians  to be killed for every German soldier who died within 24 hours.  Hauptmann would prepare a death list of people who hid POWs, Communists, Socialists, members of trade unions, journalists to be killed in retribution.  Victims were sent to caves where they were shot 5 at a time known as the Ardeatine Massacre.

(The band of the Irish Brigade of the British Army plays in front of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, June 12, 1944).

THE GHOSTS OF ROME do not measure up to MY FATHER’S HOUSE in terms of pure excitement and thrills.  It continues the story but with more dialogue and less action.  It is still a strong historical novel, but with a more laid back approach, though the underlying fears and emotions of the characters easily come to the fore.  As is the case in both novels, O’Conner has the knack for creating memorable characters and scenes.  Perhaps the best in the current story is the character of Manon Gastaud, a medical student under Professor Guido Pierpaolo Marco Moretti, a superb surgeon, who happens to be pro-Nazi.  The conundrum rests on how to save the Polish pilot who was wounded as he descended from his airplane.  Most of the “Choir” members are committed to saving his life, no matter the cost and its is the pugnacious Gastaud who volunteers to operate on Bruno despite the fact she has never performed the type of operation that is needed.  With a lack of medical supplies, an acceptable site to operate, and the fear of the SS, the “Choir” takes the risks necessary to save the pilot.

Important relationships abound in the novel.  There is the haunting connection between Hauptmann and Countess Landini centering on his obsession with her palace which he seized and how she leads him on in the hope of providing misinformation that would work to the “Choirs” benefit.  Another is O’Flaherty and Landini’s bonding and how in another life they could have been more than wartime compatriots.  The commentary of John Moody, an American soldier, and a wisecracking charmer is priceless as O’Conner injects sarcasm and humor whenever possible. 

In terms of historical accuracy, O’Conner does an exceptional job producing the ambiance of wartime Rome, but also the characters of O’Flaherty and Hauptmann.  The Monsignor character as mentioned earlier is based on a historical figure.  The Hauptmann character is fictionalized, but the character itself is based on Herbert Kappler, a key German SS functionary and war criminal during the Nazi era. He served as head of German police and security services in Rome during the Second World War and was responsible for the Ardeatine massacre.  With the completion of volume two, O’Conner’s conclusion is useful as it creates further interest for the reader to continue on to the third volume as it is not clear in which direction O’Conner will go.  Volume one focused on Monsignor O’Flaherty, the second, Countess Landini, one wonders what or whom the emphasis will be on in volume number three.

(Irish author Joseph O’Connor at the Festival of Literature in Rome)

According to Alex Preston in his February 4, 2025, New York Times Book Review, “Escaping the Nazis, With Help From a Priest and a Countess,” O’Connor has often been likened to the great Irish modernists for the lyricism of his voice-driven novels. But “The Ghosts of Rome” — which despite being the second in the trilogy can be read as a stand-alone novel —also situates him within a broader European tradition of memory and moral reckoning, one that returns again and again to World War II.

O’Connor embraces this legacy while transcending its clichés. His Rome is not merely a setting but a crucible, a city where the sacred and the profane collide, where resilience is forged in the shadow of ruins. By crafting a chorus of voices, he ensures that no single narrative dominates, reflecting the messy, multifaceted truths of history — both the way it is lived and how it is constructed in retrospect. What emerges is not just a wartime thriller, though it is that, but a meditation on how we remember, how we resist and how, even in the darkest times, humanity endures.

(St. Peter’s Basillica, 1945)

(A portrait of Chaim Grade Image by Yehuda Blum)

In the tradition of Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer and his younger brother, Israel Joshua Singer, both Yiddish novelists, Chaim Grade last novel, SONS AND DAUGHTERS captures a way of life that no longer exists – the rich Yiddish culture of Poland and Lithuania of the 1930s that the Holocaust destroyed. The novel, which is finally available in English was originally serialized in the 1960s and 70s in two New York based Yiddish newspapers, dissects the lives of two Jewish families in early 1930s Poland torn apart by religious, cultural, and generational differences.

Grade who passed away in 1982 was one of the leading Yiddish novelists of the 20^th century.  His novel, RABBIS AND WIVES was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1983 and his last book was expertly translated by Rose Waldman from Yiddish to English.  SONS AND DAUGHTERS is a sprawling and eventful novel that takes place in the villages of Morehdalye and Zembin and depicts daily life as it unfolds among two families of rabbis that are splintering as they face the pressures of the modern world.  The rabbis, Sholem Shachne Katzenellenberg and Eli-Leizer Epstein possess wonderful reputations as Torah scholars and leaders of their communities.  Interestingly, Sholem Shachne is the son in law of Eli-Leizer, and both belong to different generations and beliefs of their children.  They differ in religious stridency, the grandfather is stricter, but in no means is the son in law lax, even though he is more lenient.  Both expect their sons to become rabbis, or at least Torah scholars, and their daughters to marry men of the same persuasion.  Grade is the perfect novelist to convey this type of story as he was raised Orthodox, studied in Yeshiva as a teenager, but developed a strong secular view of life.  Having lost his family in the Holocaust, he resettled in New York, remarried, and turned to fiction, writing in Yiddish.

The revolt by the younger generation against orthodox Judaism drives the novel’s plot, though Grade doesn’t forfeit his sympathy with old men who are trying to keep Judaism alive. The Sholem Shachne family is developed first as his children rebel against their religious upbringing.  In his discussion with his son in law, Yaakov Asher Kahane we learn how each child rebelled.  Bluma Rivtcha, perhaps the most attractive character in the novel, leaves home to attend nursing school in Vilna after her father fails to negotiate a successful arranged marriage.  Naftali Hertz, the eldest son ran away to study at a secular university in Switzerland, earning a doctorate in philosophy and married a Christian woman who gave birth to a son who was not circumcised.  Tilza, Sholem Shachne’s daughter is married to Kahane, but their marriage has issues as she does not want any more children with her husband as she rejects the life of a rebbetzin.  Bentzion leaves for Bialystok to study business, and the youngest son, Refael’ke wants to join the pioneer Zionists and run off to Palestine.  For their father there is a constant debate in his psyche as to the way his children have rejected the rabbinical life and what role he played in their decisions.  He possessed internal demons, and he had to admit to himself that he had not been successful in instilling in his children the sense and strength to rebuff the modern trends developing in Poland in the early 1930s.

Grade’s writing apart from dissecting the rabbinical community embodied in Jewish family life is also an ode to nature as he describes the weather, the leaves, the trees, the Nariv river, fruit, lush green foliage that surrounded his village.  Grade also describes inanimate objects with the same degree of detail and emotion, items like dishes, cups, glasses, figurines are all part of his approach.  Grade also discusses his characters with the same introspective scope he applies to nature and objects through the diverse personalities he presents which allows the reader to gain an understanding of the Orthodox Jewish world of the period.  In addition, we witness the arguments and disagreements between different rabbis and diverse individuals which at times reflects the similarities between the old world and the oncoming secular environment.

The Katzenellenbog family is at the center of the novel.  The travails brought on by some of the children are fully explored, but Grade integrates the lives of other families, particularly that of Eli-Leizer Epstein, the Zembin rabbi who refuses to allow Jews to travel on the sabbath or attend any form of entertainment.  The conversations between Sholem Shachne and Eli-Leizer are emblematic of the crisis in Judaism as it is confronted by an increasingly secular world.  Both feel betrayed by their children as they torture themselves in trying to rekindle old world beliefs among family members.

Grade does a marvelous job developing interesting characters who epitomize the crisis in Judaism but also the character traits of people who are not part of the rabbinical world.  Chavtche, one of Eli-Leizer’s four daughters despised her father’s third wife, Vigasia, who she believed was robbing her inheritance for her own sons.  Further, she lived off her sister, Sarah Raizel’s money, who had a fulltime job.  When Eli-Leizer wins a lottery much to Chavtche’s chagrin, he and Vigasia decide to devote the money to rebuild the Talmud Torah where orphans had been living in squalor.  Chavtche is a selfish and jealous person emitting the characteristics of many people. 

Refeal Leima is another sibling who left for the United States as he grew tired of the strict religious life fostered by his father and became a rabbi and Rosh Yeshiva of Chicago which practiced a less orthodox approach to Judaism.   Shabse Shepsel, Eli-Leizer’s eldest son suffered from what appears to be a manic-depressive personality with delusions of grandeur as he changed his avocation repeatedly.  He married Draizel Halberstadt because of her impressive dowry.  He would deplete her wealth with a number of faulty business decisions but would move back to Zembin and purchase a house near his father who he disrespected.  Grade uses his character as a vehicle to explain the religious dichotomy that exists throughout the novel.  In fact, Grade describes him as “half demon and half schlemiel.”   It seems that Shabse Shepsel is stalking his father and trying to humiliate him.  But in the contorted logic of the rabbinical student mind, he also defends his father in a dispute over the teachings of the Tarbus school, where one of the teachers described his father an “an old, senile dotard who expects Jews to sit with folded hands here in exile until the Messiah comes and redeems us.”  He further argued that the faithful hide behind their mezuzahs in the hopes it will protect them against the perpetrators of pogroms.  Shabse Shepsel’s dichotomy is on full display as he humiliates his father in private and defends him in front of his congregation leading Eli-Leizer to try and convince his son in Chicago to send for Shabse Shepsel if at all possible due to America’s stringent immigration quotas.

Grade creates a number of important characters apart from the two main rabbinical families.  We meet Rabbi Zalia Ziskind Luria, the head of the Silczer dynasty and father of the protagonist, Marcus Luria. He is described as an ascetic sage, burdened by the suffering of others and trying to keep Judaism alive in a world where the younger generation is rebelling against it. He is a complex character, portrayed with both sympathy and a sense of the harsh realities of the world he inhabits, seeming to absorb the pains of others as his own, reinforcing his depressive personality which fostered hatred on the part of his family.  Further, as a favor to his friend, Sholem Shachne he tutored Naftali Hertz at his yeshiva to try and reinforce Judaism, however, it failed, and he would soon flee for Switzerland where he failed to fully free himself from his intense Orthodox upbringing.   Marcus Luria, however, is a young man who also abandons his studies at rabbinical school after becoming wealthy in the stock market, signifying his rejection of his father’s traditional Jewish path. Marcus is seen as a pawn of trendy ideologies, who unlike his father embodies the younger generation’s revolt against traditional Judaism, and sees himself as a follower of Friedrich Nietzsche, and eventually turns to communism.  Lastly, Grade introduces Khlavneh Yeshurin, an aspiring Yiddish poet, seemingly modeled on himself.  Khlavneh is the fiancé of Sholem Shachne’s daughter Bluma Rivtcha and strongly believes that secular Yiddishists like himself hadn’t rejected Judaism, but rather, they understand religion and Jewish folklife differently than their predecessors.

It is clear from Grade’s portrayal of Judaic Polish society with its petty jealousies, fervent scholars, crooked businessmen, class consciousness, dysfunctional families, constant conflict between religious and secular issues, fears of political movements, in this case Zionism in actuality mirror the same types of conflicts that exist among people in the gentile world.  As a former Yeshiva student, Grade was well trained in the art of Talmudic debate.  Unlike the first half of the novel, which describes the horrible reality the Polish Jews will face on the eve of the Holocaust, the second half of the novel accentuates the philosophical which is highlighted by arguments between Naftali Hertz and Khlavneh.  It is in the protracted philosophical arguments that the author’s talents dominate.

(Jewish Street in Opatów, 1930s. Photo credit: the collection of J. Brudkowski)

One of the characterizations of the rabbinical world that Grade describes concerns Dwight Garner’s label that SONS AND DAUGHTERS is a beard novel.  Writing in his New York Times book review of March 30, 2025, Garner states; It’s a great beard novel. The emphatic facial hair possessed by Grade’s rabbis and Torah scholars curls luxuriously around the margins of nearly every page. Here is a typical sentence: “Eli-Leizer’s mustache was still moist from the meal, and some dairy farfel noodles stuck to his beard.” And: “Avraham Alter Katzenellenbogen’s beard hung stiffly from his chin to his waist, as if it were made of porcelain like a seder plate.  Who can trust these new, clean-shaven, Americanized rabbis? The greats of the Torah had beards so bushy they could hold water.”

The issue of how to raise one’s children emerges in numerous discussions.  Sholem Shachne’s wife, Henna’le complains to her husband that had he been more flexible his children would not have run away.  He wonders: “where they disobeying him because he slapped them too frequently, or because he hadn’t slapped them enough?”  The doubts and inner thoughts of parents reflect this dichotomy which can be applied to modern children as well as rabbinical ones.  Other issues that Grade integrates into the novel include the role of Zionism in Palestine, the ideas of Marx and Nietzsche, the allure of America, arranged marriages, the selling of kosher and non-kosher clothing, the overcrowding in rabbinical homes, what do trees tell us, and the beauty of certain foods.  All are part of an intense examination of the orthodox world but also told with a great deal of humor.  What stands out is a remark by Naftali Hertz who ruminates on children who have been bequeathed an inheritance which is basically growing up in a shtetl, and its impact on their lives which in the end is why they desert their family and home.

As the book begins to wind down, parents and children begin to soften toward each other, but since Grade never finished volume two of the novel (it was to be written in two parts) we do not know how the familial tensions were resolved.  But at the same time modernity cannot be stopped as Jewish socialist youth groups parade through villages, and more concerning, anti-Semitic Polish nationalists mount a successful boycott against Jewish merchants across the region.

In her article describing SONS AND DAUGHTERS appearing in the April 2025 edition of The Atlantic Judith Shulevitz relates that “Toward the end of the book, Grade unites life and fiction in the character of a lapsed yeshiva bocher (student) named Khlavneh who has become a Yiddish poet. He is the fiancé of Sholem Shachne’s daughter, the one who went to Vilna to study nursing. Lest we fail to grasp that Khlavneh is a self-portrait, Grade drops hints. The daughter, for instance—an attractive, spirited woman, perhaps the most appealing figure in the novel—is named Bluma Rivtcha, a rhyming echo of Frumme-Liebe, the name of Grade’s murdered first wife, also a nurse and also the daughter of a rabbi.  Bluma Rivtcha brings Khlavneh home to meet the family. Over Shabbos dinner, the brother who moved to Switzerland and no longer observes Jewish laws ridicules him for writing poetry in “jargon”—that is, Yiddish, the bastard language of the uneducated Jew, “a common person, an ignoramus, a boor”—rather than in Hebrew, and for thinking that he and his fellow Yiddish writers could capture the spirit and poetry of Jewish life without following Jewish law themselves. Khlavneh refutes the brother in a brilliant show of erudition, then concludes: “You hate the jargon boys and girls because they have the courage to be different from their fathers and grandfathers, even to wage battles with their fathers and grandfathers, and yet, they don’t run away from home. The father, who everyone thinks will be offended by a guest’s outburst at the Sabbath table, laughs in delight. Grade, having fashioned a world in which the old fights mattered, now gets to win them.”

Rose Waldman, the translator provides interesting insides in her note at the end of the novel.  She describes Gade’s personal dilemma as he experiences “the tension between his desire to live and write like a secular human being in a modern world and the constant nostalgic pull of his Yeshiva past, the traditional Jewish Vilna of his youth.”  For Grade sees himself as “a thoroughly ancient Jew, while the man inside me wants to be thoroughly modern.  This is my calamity, plain and simple, a struggle I cannot win.”  This dichotomy is pervasive throughout the novel.  Waldman does the reader an important service by tracing the history of the novel’s preparation for publication and the difficulties that arose due to the fact that it was incomplete.  Grade was prepared to write a two volume novel but never completed the second volume.  However, the translator discovered some of Grade’s ideas for the second book and its ending, which she includes in her note which provides the reader with a semblance of a conclusion.

The tortuous rabbinical arguments are on full display throughout the novel as the characters dissect the Torah, Mishna, and Gemora, and other sacred texts of Judaism as they apply them to their modern situations.  These commentaries can appear to be provincial but in their day were the rule of law and every yeshiva bocha (which I was one in the 1950s and 60s!) must conform to.  In the end Grade’s novel overflows with humanity and heartbreaking emotions for a world, once full of life with all of its contradictions, that within a decade of the novel’s setting would be destroyed forever.

In closing, Grade never mentions the coming Holocaust in the book, however its future existence is felt on every page.  According to Yossi Newfield in his February 24, 2025 review in the Yiddish newspaper, Forward;  “In some sense, SONS AND DAUGHTERS can be considered a Holocaust memorial, as the events it describes foreshadow the upcoming annihilation of Polish Jewry. It is this tragic awareness that animates Grade’s questioning and demand for answers from the rabbinic establishment, from the Torah, and from God himself.”

(Chaim Grade wrote “Sons and Daughters” during the 1960s and ’70s.Credit…YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)