Lynne Kositsky
Kids Can Press, 2004
ISBN: 1553376218
"How can we find something to represent this memory of evil--evil without purpose, without reason, without boundaries? How can we contain in the framework of a work of art a representation of something that, in its very essence, refuses to be contained?"
--from "Peter Eisenman: The Image as Memory", Alberto Manguel*
Introduction
Lynn Kositsky's The Thought of High Windows borrows from the true story of the Chateau de la Hille, a French castle where a hundred Jewish children refuged after the Kristallnacht in late 1938. The story's protagonist, Esther, has experiences common to many adolescent coming of age narratives: family, identity, and first love. In foregrounding a fictional narrative against the horrors of the Holocaust, Esther's story outshines many others in the war genre. Kositsky's evocative descriptions of Esther's physical and psychological suffering elevate what might have been a typical young adult novel into the realm of unforgettable fiction, examining issues of individual memory and cultural memory, as well as individual identity and group identity.
The Gymnasium Window: Other Children
A recurring theme in the book is that of personal wars--from the cruelty of children at school to the struggling neighbourhood businesses. After seeing violence and anti-Semitism in the streets, Esther learns to question if it's human nature to need someone to hate. Esther is an overweight, unpopular girl, snubbed by the other Jewish girls because her family is "Old Jewish". Though the children have a shared fear, a common enemy, the other girls still tease and fight her. Her father is a baker, and her family "lived in the Jewish quarter, ate knaidlech and lokshen... [Esther] went to shul and listened to [her] parents speak to each other in Yiddish." Far from feeling a kinship based on their ethnicity, the other girls--especially a girl named Eva--tease her on the grounds of her class.
The Thought of High Windows starts with a dream-like memory. As a toddler, Esther tried to jump out of a window. She is seen in time and is somehow saved. In the years that follow, Esther recounts several other instances where she attempts to jump from windows. Shortly before Kristallnacht, her classmates, who call her "Fraulein Jew Cake", terrorise her so much that Esther jumps out of a school gymnasium window to escape the torment.
Esther's past is told episodically in flashbacks, alternating the reality of fugitive life with remembrances of family life and schooldays. In school, she has one true friend in Walter, a serious, older boy with a penchant for pretty girls and mathematics. Like the other children, Walter was first mean to Esther. When she answered a question incorrectly in French class, the children sniggered and Walter muttered, "'God save me from dogs and children,'" making Esther cry. But Esther fell for him after Walter apologised and befriended her. He is handsome, and more importantly, he is the first boy to treat her with kindness. His nickname for Esther is "Mouse", a reference to her mistake in class, and she calls him "Elephant".
