MISCHA LANDER

Exile

KINDLY CONSIDER THE UNFAIRNESS of the situation. I have conducted my life in a way that was both lawful and helpful. Lawful according to the laws of the society in which I lived and helpful to the world as a whole. Oh yes, you would deny this? Someone on this earth has to stick up for the poor. That is of course what it was all about. No one can finally deny this, even as they peck at all the rest of our entrails. If you help the poor, you had better win. But it’s not so easy to win such a battle.

And for my troubles, now even Israel denies me entry. They let every Jewish gangster in, they even let Meyer Lansky in. Why? Because they have no choice, they say, he’s a Jew, so they let him in. It’s the law, they say, the right of return, all of that. But when it comes to Mischa Lander, oh no, wasn’t he high up in the Stasi, we’ll see, we’ll have to see. When he’s dead, that’s when we’ll decide. Politics seem to extend even to who is a Jew. Well, very well. It’s what I always thought.

Regardless of what you have been taught, it is not only in the East that show trials have their place. Germany would delight to see me in the dock. So I have pulled what levers I can. All have been worthless. When your country disappears, so self-evidently does your leverage. I had hoped nonetheless to conclude a fair bargain: a prominent Zionist wished Israel to obtain a supply of GDR gasmasks which it might still have been within my power to obtain. All I asked in return was that they accept me in the bargain, which even this Israel refused.

I am only a little embarrassed to say that I am now reduced to what some would call, rather imprecisely, blackmail. I know a few things about the worthy businessman Herbert Kaminski and a few things about his Russian wife and a few things more about Kaminski’s lieutenant, who is precisely the prominent Zionist with whom I previously negotiated. What makes the situation the more delicate is that I am rather fond of the Russian wife. Oksana Koslova calculates as I do. It’s as though we went to the same school.

I continue to be appalled that Israel would take a man who has been portrayed even in films as the greatest gangster of them all and will not take me. The country lacks the spirit of universal brotherhood. Yet I am not surprised.