Meier Landau left a number of records, including three major manuscripts describing the various stages of his life in the first half of the 20th century and several shorter pieces. The original three manuscripts (a total of nearly 1,000 pages keyed on a typewriter) were combined and condensed into the book you are holding: At the Lowest Level: Three and a Half Years in Soviet Russia (1954), Introducing Myself (1966), and Out of the Whirlwind: The Years of Transition Between Russia and America (1943–1946) (1969).
The book At the Lowest Level included Supplementary Notes (July 1967) with a reference table, organized by page number, which provided names and details of people mentioned in the text – especially when the author had not identified them in the book. For instance, the author didn’t include the names of those who were deported with him for forced labor in the taiga (such as the Zussman family). In some passages, he even avoided including the names of his family and described his adventures by attributing them to “a certain engineer” rather than to himself. The reasons for his caution (confidentiality) have lost their validity today, so we decided to restore these names in the text based on the author’s Supplementary Notes.
The author also compiled two further manuscripts in the 1980s: Stories from My Life (1985), a compilation of key stories from his memoirs with a few new personal essays, and Ding … Dong … The Swinging Pendulum: Autobiographical Sketches (1987), a collection of essays from later in the author’s life. In addition to this, Meier Landau authored various other personal essays left with his sons Henry and George, and Last Harvest Poems (1986) a compilation of all the author’s poems.
All these writings have been carefully compared against one another. Some footnotes contain also memories of George Landau. His brother Henry passed away at the end of 2020. George has been actively involved in the editing process and has shared every memory that came up for him along the way. Henry’s daughter Jennifer Landau-Carter also played a noteworthy role in the process of editing the text.
The author’s definitions from the glossary of Stories from My Life have been included in the text. The glossary was drafted by the author, with an attribution to Dr. Abraham Mayer Heller, The Vocabulary of Jewish Life (1942). Some other definitions and footnotes in the text in relation to Jewish life, tradition, culture, religion and historical context have been added in the editorial process and appear with “ – Ed” at the end of them. This context spanned three historical periods (before WWI, the interwar period, and WWII) and vast geographical spaces.
In order to bring the three memoirs together, their respective forwards, introductions, endings, epilogues, and postscripts were combined into one dedication, introduction, and ending. This also involved creating smooth transitions between the books. Other structural edits included combining chapters (or sections within chapters) to avoid repetition and bringing relevant sections together so that the same content was discussed in the same place. For publication, the overall length of the memoirs had to be shortened. It was evident that the focus had to be on pre-war life in the shtetl and on survival in Soviet Union.
The main abridgment has been to the first and third books. For word limit reasons, sections have been left out that are interesting, however, not essential to moving the story forward – which in its essence is a story of Polish Jewry through two World Wars to deportation to the Soviet Union. From Introducing Myself, the main sections that have been significantly abridged relate to student life at the University of Vienna and the author’s military service in WWI for the Austro-Hungarian Army. From Out of the Whirlwind, sections left out include observations about Persian Jews and Iraqi Jews, a chapter dedicated to Rabbi Levi, further reflections on the author’s work for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Iran and subsequent talks given to branches in Australia. In general, the author’s journey from Iran to the US, via Karachi (Pakistan), Bombay (India), Colombo (Sri Lanka), with several months in Australia, was not included in this volume. These sections are fascinating in their own right and work well as stand-alone pieces.
The remaining stories that were omitted involved work life. The difficulty of having obtained a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Vienna, from the small beginnings of a shtetl in Mościska, was a huge accomplishment. Meier Landau’s life was upended by the war. What did not make it into the book was the painful story of the well-educated refugee and the difficulty of having to put all personal ambition and hopes away, in order to support his children. This story is one shared by educated immigrants and refugees globally.
The second book, originally entitled At the Lowest Level: Three and a Half Years in Soviet Russia, is principally unabridged. However, it took the longest to edit as it required the most linguistic corrections – due to it being the memoir the author wrote first. In his subsequent memoirs, there is a noticeable improvement in the author’s command of the English language. The challenge of this project was the “translation” of the book from author’s English to English according to the Chicago Manual of Style. The author grew up in a shtetl, speaking Yiddish, Polish, and Hebrew (mainly for prayers). In his early education, he learned German, which became the language he used to complete his studies, including his PhD. At school, the author also learned Latin and Greek. Spending three and a half years in Soviet Union, he became proficient in Russian, which he used in everyday conversation. In Iran, the author learned Farsi. So far, these are eight languages – not including English.
English was one of nine languages Meier learned in his life. In terms of languages the author was fluent in, English became his fifth language. It was important to the author to write his memoirs in English, and he did so. Nevertheless, many words, phrases, and expressions are used in the text, in their original Yiddish, Polish, German, and Russian. We tried to standardize these, and where possible, included a translation in the text or in a footnote. We have ensured that words from languages using different alphabets, such as Cyrillic and Hebrew, have been transliterated consistently. Where several spellings have been used, we have used the transliteration most used by the author and footnoted the other spellings. The author favored the Polish spelling of many words, particularly of geographical place names.
Foreign words have been placed in italics unless they have been adopted into English. In English common nouns are in lowercase and proper nouns are in uppercase. As Yiddish and Hebrew don’t use capitals, we didn’t use them here. Except for a few Hebrew and Yiddish words that are proper nouns in English – such as Yom Kippur, Chanukah, and Rosh Hashanah – which are not italicized and are in capital letters, showing their adoption into English. We kept capitals on German and some Polish words, in circumstances where they would be capitalized in their respective languages.
In the editing process, some things have been brought up to date with the times, such as using gender neutral language. The author used masculine nouns (such as “man” and “men”) and pronouns (such as “he”) to refer to an individual or groups that included women, and not actually men. This was common for the period in which the memoirs were written. To avoid confusion, and for gender inclusion, this has been updated in the book to “them” and “they,” or “person” and “people.”
The discussion of whether to correct grammar directly relates to voice – and the importance of maintaining the author’s voice. We took a minimalist approach. If the author’s original version met the grammar rule, then it was left the way it was. In relation to grammatical errors, we weighed how jarring and distracting they were to the reader on one scale, against the importance of honoring the author’s voice on the other scale.
Three common syntax issues that were corrected throughout the text are prepositions, adverbs, and verb tenses. The author consistently placed prepositions after the noun; by definition, they are placed before the noun. For adverbs, these had to be moved to the end of phrases. This was a simple fix which drastically improved readability. In relation to verb tense, most of the book was written in the past tense; however, the author occasionally switched to the present tense. To avoid losing the reader, the whole text is now in the past tense.
On the subject of past and present – time and tenses – we removed the majority of references to the author’s then present-day in America. The author thought it was helpful to have comparisons to life in America. However, it proved disorienting for the reader being teleported to the market in Union Square in bustling Manhattan, and then air-dropped back into the marketplace in Lwów. In such cases, less is more, as it is necessary for the reader to stay emerged in the past that the author has meticulously re-created, for the story to be lived and felt. Meier Landau’s portrayal of events was always recounted first in a story of what occurred and this was followed by his description of the emotional pain. For example, heartbreak was used 169 times in the text. We tried to give some space to the reader to read the stories and feel the heartbreak rather than be told about it.
The importance of keeping the author’s voice in memoir, including the vocabulary and unique voice of a refugee, is widely acknowledged. The author’s personality is not only his way of seeing the world, but also his way of speaking. Meier’s rhythm has largely been maintained. His long sentences – a grandfather sitting next to you for the start of a bedtime story that will take many, many evenings to recount. This is how this story unfolds. This is also how this story was written, “I wrote on trains, buses, and subways, on weekends and vacations, during sleepless nights when the three and a half ghastly years came freshly back to memory.” Our editing approach was based on respect for Meier Landau’s careful choice of words. He asked for his tombstone to read: “Chemist and Poet.” As a chemist, he carefully recorded all the ingredients of this life that was. It is our hope that his authentic voice can be heard.
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At the end of the editorial process, the author’s son George Landau expressed his belief that his father Meier would kvell from the result of this work, which in Yiddish means that he would praise it most highly. He would have particularly appreciated that the book was published in an academic context, which he always held in high esteem.24
Dr Lidia Zessin-Jurek’s editorial work on the manuscript as well as an in-person interview with George Landau and her research in the family archive in San Francisco were supported by the funding from the ERC-Project, Unlikely Refuge? Refugees and Citizens in East-Central Europe in the 20th Century, as part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 program (grant agreement No. 819461). The editor would like to thank Diethard Sawicki for the excellent cooperation and his idea of placing the book in the series Fokus by the Centre for Historical Studies (Berlin) of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN).