Heretics

Elias Kaminsky traveled to Havana, Cuba in search of the story how his family's Rembrandt painting of Jesus came to be auctioned off in London 70 years after his grandfather Daniel landed in Havana in the late 1930s. Daniel Kaminsky, a Polish Jew, was sent ahead of his family to an uncle, Joseph Kaminsky, who was already living in Havana with the expectation that his parents and younger sister Judith would follow in a matter of weeks. 

Their ship, the Saint Louis, did arrive in Havana in 1939, but none of the 937 passengers were allowed to disembark and after a week of political wrangling they were sent back to Holland where the ship had originally set sail. However, while the ship was in Havana harbor Joseph hired a small boat to get near the Saint Louis in order to speak with his brother Isaiah Kaminsky. His brother mentioned that he had the painting and that he was going to be able to sell it so that the family could pay people off in order to exit the ship. Upon their arrival back in Holland they were placed in a refugee camp and later they were exterminated at Auschwitz. 

Joseph Kaminsky was a religious, Orthodox Jew but Daniel decided on the day that the St. Louis set sail from Havana with his family on board that he would no longer be Jewish.  He grew up in Cuba and considered himself to be Cuban instead of Jewish.  Daniel married a Catholic woman named Marta, even converting to Roman Catholicism only so that he could marry in the Catholic church as his non-practicing girlfriend wished, and they later emigrated to the U.S. and lived in Miami Beach where their son Elias was born.  Marta converted to Judaism while in Miami so when Elias was asked in the story whether he is Jewish he says yes, because his mother was Jewish.  However, Elias was not religious. 

The story followed Elias' search for his parents' story as well as the painting's story. He enlisted the help of former Havana police detective Mario Conde to help him in his search. The author alternated chapters between Elias' time and Daniel's time.

I had read Leonardo Padura's Havana Gold a few years ago and thought it was just OK. I wasn't sure if I wanted to try another book of his but the back cover blurb convinced me to buy this novel as the history of the Saint Louis ship in Havana harbor in 1939 is another one of the heart wrenching stories of the Holocaust.

You could not help but feel great emotion for the main characters, Joseph, Daniel and Elias Kaminsky. They all suffered from the one act of the Kaminsky family's death in Auschwitz. All were heretics in some form with Daniel becoming one by trying to deny his faith and Joseph breaking a commandment. A big one. The Sephardic Jew who posed for the portrait in the 1600s was probably the first heretic in the novel. 

I love family sagas and that's probably one of the reasons I loved this book. Daniel's changing emotions toward his faith tradition was compelling and the reader was able to get inside his head as he grappled with personal decisions when Israel became a nation and when he converted to Catholicism so Marta could have the extravagant wedding she always wanted. 

While the subject matter of the story is serious and the author wrote much emotion into this story, it still flowed effortlessly and was an easy read. If you are not familiar with the St. Louis incident in Holocaust history, you will find the book informative. At 528 pages it's a chunkster but I guarantee that you will love it. I certainly did.