One Writer’s Process: David Chotjewitz

A writer and director living in Hamburg, Germany, David Chotjewitz is the author of the award-winning YA novel Daniel Half Human, the story about a German boy who discovers in the spring of 1933 that his mother is Jewish, which means that he’s half-Jewish and, according to the Aryan definition, half human.

It’s a book that Hazel Rochman, the reviewer for Booklist, hailed as “...an important title for the Holocaust curriculum, especially given the friendship drama that keeps raising ethical questions to the very last page.”

Kirkus wrote about Daniel Half Human: “There are many Holocaust books for children, but this one stands out in its careful dissection of one family's experience before the war, and in its nuanced approach to the complexity of emotions and relationships under stress.”

And the reviewer for School Library Journal called it “An outstanding addition to the large body of World War II/Holocaust fiction.”

Chotjewitz has published several other novels, including Das Abenteuer des Denkens (The Adventures of Thinking) about Albert Einstein, which have been published in Germany, as well as in other countries.

“Presently I'm working a lot with my group Theater: playstation," he says. “I've produced music-theater projects since 2002, and in these projects I work together with choreographers, musicians, young actors, singers, dancers and rappers. Some of the projects have been staged in abandoned houses, empty apartments, discotheques, and, most recently, a playground.”

Crazy Diamond, his latest novel, which received a CCBC Choice Award, evolved out of his work in the theater and his development of the script in cooperation with the performers. The story depicts the life of Mira , a runaway teen, and the harsh contemporary music scene in Hamburg.

Chotjewitz was kind enough recently to share his thoughts on writing with Wordswimmer.

Wordswimmer: If writing is like swimming...how do you get into the water each day?

Chotjewitz: Actually, I don't get into the water each day. Often, I just stand there looking at the lake or whatever it is. On other days I have other things to do because I also work as a director in the theater.

I'm probably a shore-side personality. Writing is something I like to stay distant from. I prefer reading and admiring the wonderful things that others have written.

Wordswimmer: What keeps you afloat... for short work? For longer work?

Chotjewitz: I try to find my very personal interest. And then, I need the money...

Wordswimmer: How do you keep swimming through dry spells?

Chotjewitz: I have only a few convictions about writing. One of them is not to write if it doesn't come by itself. So I would rather do a million things than write if it's not coming...

Wordswimmer: How do you overcome obstacles, problems, when swimming alone?

Chotjewitz: Sometimes it’s nice to be alone. If not, you just have to stand the pain. But that's what every work is about.

Wordswimmer: What's the part of swimming that you love the most?

Chotjewitz: Honestly, I prefer real swimming, but only in natural water --lakes and the sea-- not in the public swimming pool.

I also like Jung’s image– that the sea is the unconscious.

For more information about Chotjewitz and his work, visit: http://www.theaterplaystation.de/

And if you’d like to read an excerpt of Daniel Half Human, check out: http://www.simonsays.com

Daniel Half Human and the Good Nazi

David Chotjewitz’s Daniel Half Human and the Good Nazi (translated by Doris Orgel) occupies a rare place in Holocaust literature, sharing the perspective of a German boy whose life begins to unravel when he learns his mother is Jewish, and that he is--according to the newly established laws of the Third Reich--only half-human.

Until this moment of revelation, Daniel, the son of a successful lawyer, is simply another one of the German boys who make up his elite school, and best-friends with one of his soccer team-mates, Armin, the son of a dock worker, with whom he has sworn to share his deepest secrets.

So loyal is Daniel to his friends and the "new" Germany, in fact, that he even sneaks out one night with Armin to paint swastikas on the walls of houses in support of Hitler’s rising Nazi Party. And, like the rest of his classmates, he longs to join the Hitler youth.

But once Daniel learns the truth about himself, he struggles to come to terms with it, knowing he can’t share such a devastating secret with his best friend. Not only is there the risk of losing Armin’s friendship, there’s the high likelihood that he might find himself, along with other German Jews, imprisoned in a concentration camp.

Daniel's story is told from two different points of view spanning the years from 1933 to 1945. In brief sections dated "June, 1945," Daniel, now an American soldier, is sent to Germany as an interpreter for special interrogations of Germans after the war. These first-person accounts serve to bring Daniel back to the scene of the crime, so to speak, where his life as a German ended and his life as a Jew began.

But the bulk of the story--the longer narratives of Daniel as a boy in the 1930s--is told in third-person, revealing the incremental, almost imperceptible, way German society comes undone as the Nazis gain more and more power, and how each new law against the Jews makes life more unbearable for Daniel and his family, especially after his father, a decorated German war veteran of WWI and a non-Jew, loses his job because of his marriage to a Jewess. And, of course, each new law makes it harder for Armin and Daniel’s friendship to survive.

The two points of view–from 1945 and from the 1930s– converge at the end of the story when Daniel, as an American interpreter, hears a familiar voice and turns to find his old friend, Armin, undergoing questioning across the room.

But is Armin a friend (a good Nazi) or an enemy (a good Nazi)?

Initially overjoyed to see his old friend, Daniel notices a fresh scab on Armin’s arm and suspects that he must have removed an SS tattoo to hide his past. At that moment Daniel has to decide what he owes his “friend.” Should he befriend Armin again? Or should he punish Armin for the sins that he committed as a member of the SS under the guise that he was just doing his job?

It’s a mark of Chotjewitz’s skill as an author that he places the reader in the same difficult moral quandaries as the characters in this story.

By asking us to think of how we might have acted under similar circumstances, he leaves us with important questions that we can't ignore, even if we may never find adequate answers.

For more information (in German) about Daniel Chotjewitz, visit:
http://www.theaterplaystation.de/

For information about the book’s translator, Doris Orgel, visit:
http://www.answers.com/topic/doris-orgel

For other responses to Daniel Half Man and the Good Nazi, visit:
http://readingandbreathing.blogspot.com/2007/08/daniel-half-human-and-good-nazi-by.html
http://www.interfaithfamily.com/arts_and_entertainment/books/A_Powerful_Fictional_Evocation_of_Growing_Up_Half-Jewish_in_Nazi_Germany.shtml?rd=1
http://richiespicks.com/users/stories/picks/daniel_half_human.html
http://yzocaet.blogspot.com/2005/12/daniel-half-human-and-good-nazi.html
http://www.discoveryjourney.com/PublicSummary165.asp
http://martsubhub.lib.wv.us:8000/kcweb/kcContent?isbn=9780689857478&type=review&controlnumber=eph00022661&referedby=titlelist