A Moment On My Soapbox

Pulls out soapbox.

History never repeats itself, but it loves playing a good cover.

When we cease to understand, and only imitate, we doom ourselves and others into repeating the same chords, the same notes, eventually writing off a cover as a different song entirely.

A chord is a chord whether on a guitar or an organ.

We doom ourselves to repetition by ignoring realities.

This understanding, this acknowledgement, is absolutely fundamental to my worldview. It’s fundamental to my creative processes. These stories are my own, small, act of resistance against the comfort of letting our collective, human sins die in the veil of darkness instead of facing them in living color.

To write good historical fiction, you may need to change details, events, and fabricate narratives that have no basis in real events. And in doing so, you have to be prepared to answer the charge of “why?” From someone knowledgeable in the subject.

I posted a story for the 500 Word Shockwave story that went on to earn a Top Story. It’s a story about two Germans on the evening of Kristallnacht and how they would have experienced the events unfolding around them. It’s not the first piece I’ve written about the Holocaust and life in Nazi Germany. It likely won’t be the last.

The difference here is A Truly Great Night is a true story. The other pieces above are speculative, drawn on collective experiences to paint the narrative, and don’t reflect the views or opinions.

A Truly Great Night twice includes actual, documented responses to the events. That detail changes my duty as the author. I don’t know this for fact, but I would assume 1939-1945 is the most used setting of historical fiction. It’s understandable. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve read an analogous, fictional retelling of the Diary of Anne Frank. Again, understandable—it’s one of the most widely distributed books in the world. The formula is always something of this sort: main character is betrayed, confused round up ensues, trucks, trains, confusion, darkness, death.

And that’s fine from a narrative perspective. The issue is that almost always, there are details that are incorrect that I, as someone self-aggrandized as knowledgeable in the subject, can’t find a compelling narrative reason to change. Timelines are changed, distances are ignored, antagonists are flattened, all to the detriment of improving our understanding of the worst atrocity in human history. It reduces the real, human, suffering.

And since I did change some details in my story, I feel obliged to detail why.

The title of A Truly Great Night was taken from the paper review of the Prague Orchestra performance on the night of Kristallnacht; a story I learned about through a stunning interview I will include at the end of this piece. I changed the location from Prague to Berlin because, frankly the geography worked better for the narrative. From the location outside the Philharmonic, someone on that night likely would have seen the glow from the fires from across the Tiergarten. I originally drafted the piece being performed as something from Wagner, more as a place holder than anything; it's okay for the scholarship to come later. Feeling that it was too on the nose, I pulled the records for what actually would have been playing that night (it was scheduled to be Beethoven's Egmont Overture, the Brahms Double Concerto, and Strauss's Tod und Verklarung). When changing details in historical fiction, you must know what was.

Instead, I decided writing in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major. It is not a piece that’s out of place by any means, but I settled on it for it’s slow, peaceful, harmonic Rondo—a direct contrast to the events unfolding outside. It should be noted that the events of Kristallnacht did indeed interrupt the performances scheduled for the night.

The other key change I made was changing this final line from:

This is the RRG. It is November 11th. Last night, brave patriots of our Great Reich rounded up jews and insurrectionists across the nation who were determined in their effort to bring the Communist Revolution within our borders. In the struggle, several fires erupted which were swiftly extinguished by our brave responders…

To:

This is the RRG. It is November 11th. Last night, spontaneous manifestations of indignation against the murder of Herr Vom Rath by the young Jew Grynsban erupted across the Reich. Several fires erupted which were swiftly extinguished by our brave responders…

Admittedly, the first one is more pointed. More direct. More revealing. Keeping it likely improves my twist and thus improves my chances of placing in the challenge.

The problem is, this is a semi-true story. After way too much research into actual broadcasts, I went with the above for one key reason.

The bolded section above is a direct quote from Herman Goering given the next day about the events of Kristallnacht.

There is plenty to unpack here when it comes to how language and events are weaponized. Herschel Grynszpan himself had his identity stripped, reduced, othered, misrepresented even in the historical quote above…I’ll let the PHDs discuss the rest.

Admittedly, my change is less direct, potentially damaging to my chances in the competition, but it’s more accurate, more evocative, and, for all of that, more disturbing.

All of that aside, I hope, more than anything as the creator of this piece, that if you did not know those names, that the story would make you feel like you should know, that curious tickling at the back of your neck would drive you to search their names, learn the story, and learn what was to come.

I will leave you with one final thought, one that I hope, no-implore, stays with you. This story takes place on November 10th 1938. The first victims were gassed at Auschwitz on September 3, 1941, 2 years, 9 months, and 24 days later.

Nearly three years later.

Quite some time…

Quite some time…

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A/N:

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