Professions of a Lucky Jew
Autor: Benno Varon
Número de Páginas: 468In 1932, Benno Weiser was a student of medicine in Vienna. During a brawl at the Anatomic Institute he rescued a Jewish fellow student, when he cracked the skull of a huge Nazi with two outsized metal keys, while some thirty Nazis watched from an upper floor. He considers this event his rite of passage, in which he proved to himself that "Jews are no cowards." Life would give him many an opportunity to prove it again. A Jewish Rambo? Not at all. Fellow Viennese remember him for making them laugh. He wrote, directed, and performed in literary cabarets. Gerhard Bronner, Vienna's foremost entertainer, claims that watching Weiser perform inspired his choice of career. "All I could take along from Nazi Vienna," says Weiser Varon, "was my accent." But he also exported his fighting spirit. As Ecuador's first syndicated columnist, blending drama with satire, he dispensed faith to those who rooted for the Allies and heartburn to the powerful Nazi colony. The Axis powers sponsored seven weeklies to counteract his influence, there was an interpellation in parliament, a promise by the minister of the interior to shut him up, an op-ed duel with a Vichy diplomat. The New York Times, reporting...