The Dance of Gengis Cohn

The Dance of Genghis Cohn is the second volume of the Frère Océan trilogy (following Pour Sganarelle and preceding La Tête coupable); its only film adaptation was American, released in 1983, starring Robert Lindsay and Diana Rigg, and featuring the very first screen appearance of a young British actor, Daniel Craig.

Here Gary addresses the Shoah for the first time, adopting a burlesque tone and ridiculing Officer Schatz, an SS man haunted by the spirit of the Jew Genghis Cohn, whose execution he had ordered. “Humor has been, all along the way, a fraternal companionship to me: I owe it my only true moments of triumph over adversity.” Beneath the comedy lies a painful experience that left him feeling he would “never be the same again,” as he confided shortly afterward: “During a trip to Warsaw, I visited the museum of the uprising. I knew everything about the murder of the six million Jews […]. But although I often spoke of my Jewish origins, deep down I did not feel Jewish, despite my attachment to my mother’s memory. Yet, standing before the section of the museum devoted to the Ghetto revolt, I suddenly collapsed and remained unconscious for twenty minutes. I had perhaps not realized the weight, for me, in this city where I had been raised, of this immense, massive absence: that of the Jews. At that moment, I felt more than Jewish.” (interview with Jelenski, Livres de France, March 1967).

A very fine copy.