Marjorie Agosin - A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile
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A Cross and a Star: Memoirs of a Jewish Girl in Chile
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Marjorie Agosn Translated By Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman
UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO PRESS ALBUQUERQUE
Page iv
1995 by the University of New Mexico Press. All rights reserved. First edition
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Agosn, Marjorie [Sagrada memoria. English] A cross and a star : memoirs of a Jewish girl in Chile / Marjorie Agosn; translated by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman. 1st ed. p. cm. Contents: Family alliancesImages of my youthOsornoCarmencita and the kingdom of adobeThe Viennese ladyMy husband. ISBN 0-8263-1573-9 (cloth) 1. Agosn, Marjorie. 2. JewsChileOsornoBiography. 3. Osorno (Chile)Biography. I. Title. F3285.J4A37 1995 983'.53004924'0092dc20 [B] 94-3213 CIP
Designed by Linda Mae Tratechaud Chapter Ornament Illustrations by Beth Dennis
Page v
Contents
Introduction
vii
Family Alliances
1
Images of My Youth
45
Osorno
75
Carmencita and the Kingdom of Adobe
107
The Viennese Lady
133
My Husband
163
Page vii
Introduction
Riches can all be lost, but that happiness in your own heart can only be veiled, and it will still bring you happiness again, as long as you live. As long as you can look fearlessly up into the heavens, as long as you know, that you are pure within and that you will still find happiness. Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
In A Cross and A Star, Marjorie Agosn recreates a landscape of sounds, colors, and sensorial images that filter through her poetic vision and depict the personal journey of her mother as a child, adolescent, and young adult in southern Chile before, during, and after the Second World War. Significantly the narrative voice intuitively identifies with Anne Frank before she immerses us into the story of her own life with her fears, anxieties, reflections, and hopes.
Page viii
Although they lived in worlds apart, in hemispheres and continents separated by the vast expanse of ocean known as the Atlantic, both the young Frida and Anne Frank learned to live with the hatred which surrounded them because of their Jewish identity. As Anne herself writes in her diary, "We Jews mustn't show our feelings, must be brave and strong, must accept all inconveniences and not grumble, must do what is within our power and trust in God.... Surely the time will come when we are people again, and not just Jews."1
Like Anne, Frida and her brother are constantly aware of their "otherness" in a land where they, together with the poor native children, mostly Indians and mestizos, were marginalized and set apart by a minority that clearly perceived itself as superior and entitled. Throughout her narrative the metaphors of the cross and the star persistently delineate her sense of alienation and exile within a culture that she identifies with but can never fully adopt as her own. Recalling a New Year's Eve in Valparaso the narrator tells us how she and her brother "always maintained a discrete distance between who they were [the Christian onlookers] and what we were, Jewish children isolated from the grand commotion of the human race." Feeling an affinity to the Christian religion because of the magic of its
Page ix
imagery and mystery of its rituals and wanting to believe that all are equal in the eyes of God and his heavenly chorus of angels, the child narrator, when she is at her most vulnerable, appeals to Christian images hoping that they will shelter her with their sacred charms. However, the sharp and strident memories of little German and English girls spitting at her and calling her a dirty Jew and Christ killer prevent her from trusting and believing in a faith that excluded so many like her from its protective folds.
During the war years, anti-Semitism was particularly high in Chile, especially in southern regions like Osorno where Jews were clearly outnumberd by Germans and other foreigners who had carried their hatreds across the seas in hope chests of evil omens.
Among the first German colonists to arrive in southern Chile were trail blazing individuals who settled in Valdivia, Llanquihue, and Osorno hoping to begin a new life far removed from the disillusionments of their own country's failed democracy. Although there were many nationalists in the second half of the nineteenth century like Dr. Aquinas Ried who envisioned Chile as an asylum for Germans who wanted to preserve their identity in autonomous enclaves that were by and large controlled by their own elected officials, there were others
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