In 1993 I was doing some consulting here for the American Jewish Committee, and my late boss said, “You know, there are things in Ukraine important to the outside world, to the Jewish community in particular, things people will pay for. There are rumors that Bruno Schulz left an unpublished manuscript, and I know that people like Neil Simon or Woody Allen (both in their own ways his creative progeny) would give their eyeteeth to see it.”
I did ask around, but no such manuscript was ever unearthed. Instead there were the paintings recently discovered in his native Drohobych. Then it was noticed that they were gone, perhaps in Israel, but nobody is saying anything definite quite yet. The resultant scandal has extended all the way from Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza (he wrote in Polish) to The New York Times (June 20) to our own newspaper. In the glorious city of Drohobych it looks suspiciously like the official guardians of culture either had their fingers in a foul kettle of fish or, as they claim, simply had no idea about Bruno Schulz and his importance. They can certainly be blamed for violating the regulations in giving permission to allow the frescoes out of the country. Where was the customs man, the experts, and society as a whole that looked on in silence? Where were they all?
The issue here is not whether Schulz’s legacy belongs to Polish or Jewish culture or of Ukrainian insensitivity toward either. Ukraine, like most major countries today, has a multicultural heritage that helps keep things from becoming too bland. Nobody in their right mind would ever think of tearing down the monument to Mickiewicz in Lviv — the Polish, Austrian, and Jewish heritages all contribute to the unique charm of this most Ukrainian of Ukraine’s major cities. Nor would one do so with those wonderful imperial Russian churches in Kyiv.
Sometimes I cannot avoid the thought that the wonderful slogan of harmony (zlahoda) masks a deep internal infirmity, especially when the priceless works of one of this country’s great cultural figures of the twentieth century can be sold for only $100. And nobody knows how much it cost the purchasers to get the necessary permits to export such a good buy. Whether it was caused by ill-will, greed, or simple ignorance is irrelevant to the issue at hand. This event, truly tragic for Ukraine, can be seen as a mirror reflecting all the problems of contemporary Ukraine — social, spiritual, cultural, and even political.
