Speak, Silence

The other question concerns Dr Abramsky. He is certainly invented: no doctor can talk about a patient, and everything he tells the narrator about Ambros’s torture is in the books Sebald consulted. He is also symbolic: a saint and martyr for the guilt of Samaria, with his fire-red hair like the flames over the heads of the Apostles. But now there’s a problem. The horror for which he bears the guilt, though he has deeply repented, is German: the annihilation method, so reminiscent of other German annihilation methods. But Abramsky is a Jewish name, and he grew up in Leopoldstadt, which is the Jewish quarter of Vienna. And Samaria, as Abramsky’s sanatorium is called, is Jewish too – Judea and Samaria made up the ancient kingdom of Israel. Sebald certainly knew all these things; yet he chose them. It is strange enough that the models for Sebald’s Jewish characters are so often non-Jews. But that is a hidden strangeness; this one is visible to every reader. Why is Abramsky, the bearer of German guilt, a Jew? His part of ‘Adelwarth’ is one of the most beautiful, but also the most disturbing.