An article about Franz Kafka and the terrible state of his papers in haaretz this weekend reminded me about a woman I met a few times who was Kafka’s girlfriend before Dora. Her name was Pua Netzer and she was a cousin of my late mother-in-law. More interested in being involved in the building of Israel than in becoming part of the literary crowd in Prague, she passed her Hebrew student Kafka over to her friend Dora. There are a few letters around from him to her, but who knows about the rest?
This whole issue reminded me of other papers lying around in Israel – Yona Wollach’s poems in the shack behind her house, Amos Kenan’s papers and letters burnt up in a freak fire, Shalom Aleichem’s papers crumbling in plastic envelopes in a safe in the Shalom Aleichem house… Who knows how many more letters and books were thrown out on the streets of Tel Aviv? We never have any room to keep things, to treasure the past…
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