The Street Sweeper by Elliot Perlman. Riverhead Books, New York. 626pp, 2012, ISBN 978-0571236848
By David Strom
SAN DIEGO — Elliot Perlman wrote an engrossing novel about today and the “not so recent” past. He has beautifully integrated knowledge of the Holocaust with the American Civil Rights Movement of the fifties and sixties through characters who cross paths and impact each other’s lives in unexpected ways. In this intricately interwoven tapestry of events and characters, Perlman addresses important social issues, even examining the challenges of earning tenure at a major university.
The first character the reader meets in the story and the one who carries the thread of the plot is Lamont Williams, an African American and ex-convict working as a sweeper in a Manhattan hospital. One of the first days during Lamont’s six-month probationary period, he meets a patient sitting outdoors in a wheelchair. The elderly cancer patient asked Lamont if he would take him back to his room to get away from all the car smoke and cigarette smoke on the balcony overlooking a busy New York street below. Lamont hesitates, fearing the consequences of delivering the patient to his room since this was not part of his job. But the patient insisted and persisted. Eventually, Lamont gives in and this initiates a relationship that will prove to be life changing for Lamont and others whose lives become intertwined as a consequence of the dying man’s remarkable history.
Back in his room, the sickly old patient, Mr. Mandelbrot, looked out the window and asked Lamont; “What are they?”
“What… the chimneys?”
“Yes… three chimneys… Where are they…?
Lamont reminded the man, him he had to get back to his job. As he stared out the window, the old man responded:
“There were six death camps.”
“What?”
“There were six death camps.”
“Six what?”
“Death camps.”
“What do you mean, ‘death camp’?”
“There were exactly six death camps but you could die more than once in any of them.”
Enter the character, Adam Zignelik, a young probationary professor of history at Columbia University who will later become the researcher who is called in to verify the credibility of the dying man’s story as he retells it to Lamont, the ordinary hospital worker whose kindness involves him in transmitting an almost lost piece of Holocaust history.
The backdrop to the story of Adam’s struggles with completing his doctorate and earning tenure at Columbia relate to his parents’ involvement with the Civil rights Movement. His mother worked for the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), formally a part of the NAACP. His father was one of the prominent Jewish lawyers who worked for the LDF. His parents’ marriage broke up because his father was more in love with his civil rights work then he was with his family and marriage.
As a young professional, Adam flounders, moving from one unsatisfying or unsuccessful job to another. Eventually, he decided to move to New York City where he had friends. At 28 he enrolled in a PhD program in the history department of NYU. Much of the history then and to a great degree today was written around the “great man theory.” Adam chose to write the civil rights history in favor of social history. It was a history of the nameless numbers of people who changed the course of history and constituted the bulk of the mass civil rights movement. This perspective on history was inspired by his parents’ cultural and intellectual roots, which now led him into authoring a book and eventually, a faculty position in the History Department of Columbia University.
After five years in the department, Adam had not produced or contributed anything historically significant to the civil rights field. Adam finds himself in an academic rut that was about to take an interesting turn as his path crosses with William McCray, the father of a colleague, who hoped to get Adam interested in researching the topic of black soldiers who liberated some Nazi extermination camps. William McCray convinced Adam of the urgency of this research because the participants in these events were old and quickly dying off, so he began the project of interviewing the few remaining World War II black veterans and possibly liberators of some extermination camps.
The scene shifts back to Lamont, the sweeper and Mr. Mandelbrot, the sick Holocaust survivor. After he finished his day’s work, Lamont visits Mandelbrot daily. He tells Lamont about his growing up in Europe and his life as a Holocaust victim. After each visit Mr. Mandelbrot quizzes Lamont on the names and places he had talked about to test his memory in his newfound role as chronicler of a piece of Holocaust history. Mandelbrot insists that Lamont learn how to say the foreign cities and towns correctly.
When Lamont visits the next time, Mr. Mandelbrot asks him to repeat the details of his accounts of the torture and struggles of the death camps.
Mr. Mandelbrot tells Lamont he worked as a Sonderkommando at Auschwitz. When the cattle cars arrived at Auschwitz, the doors were opened and the Jews were hurriedly rushed into different lines. The Sonderkommandos took the dead from the cattle cars to the crematorium. The living women victims were told to undress. Many of the women were modest and initially did not want to undress in front of strange men. The Sonderkommando was told not to say anything that might cause the women to panic. Just rush them to the showers, close the doors, the gas was dropped and soon all were dead. The same was done to the men.
“A good Selektion was when maybe as many as thirty per cent were sent to work in some part of the camp.” Seventy percent were murdered within minutes of arrival at the Auschwitz death camp. “Business was so good” for the Nazi camp commanders that thousands were gassed and burned daily.
At Chanukah time, Mr. Mandelbrot gives Lamont a new Chanukah menorah as a gift. Lamont was reluctant to take it, but eventually Mr. Mandelbrot convinces him to accept this symbol of freedom and their friendship. But then, Mr. Mandelbrot succumbs to his cancer just days before Lamont’s probationary period was over.
The loving gift prompts another turning point in Lamont’s struggle to overcome his past and find a stable new life. The Mandelbrot family claims he stole the menorah, which they want returned to them and they insist that Lamont be fired. The head of the human resource department of the hospital, Danny Erlich-a childhood friend of Lamont, gives in to the Mandelbrot family’s demands.
Lamont, however, appeals his firing and convinces a lady doctor who saw him several times talking with the dying Holocaust survivor to vouch for him. All he wants is a chance to meet with the Mandelbrot family and explain how he got the menorah.
Adam, the professor from Columbia, is called as an expert historian on the Holocaust to verify for the Mandelbrot family Lamont’s legitimate claim to the menorah. This meeting begins the revelation about how a dying man befriends an ordinary hospital worker to preserve the dramatic account of how he survived the Holocaust.
Elliot Perlman’s intricate plot with well-developed and moving characters whose interwoven life stories create a tapestry of day to day struggles as well as tragic events in history is well worth reading. It is a strong novel written with simplicity and with love of life, remembrance of the historical indignities of the Holocaust and the civil rights struggles of the recent past. Once you pick up this book, it will be hard to put it down.
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Strom is professor emeritus of education at San Diego State University. He may be contacted at david.strom@sdjewishworld.com