LiteraturSchweiz

Reading tip

Jacques Chessex, A Jew must die: On April 16th 1942, the cattle dealer Arthur Bloch is slain next to the market in Payerne and then dumped into the Lake of Neuchâtel. Bloch was highly estimated among the farmers as a fair dealer – but he was a Jew. That was enough to bring a group of half-witted Nazis to prey on him. Jacques Chessex, born in 1934 in Payerne, had heard about this case. He reviewed the case again. He recounts Arthur Bloch’s martyrdom matter-of-factly, like a chronicler, not least in order to evaluate if something similar could happen again. Behind the naive and fanatic murderers who were caught quickly, he discovers a network of perfidiously scheming agitators, among them the former vicar Lugrin whose hate was unbridled and essential. Chessex describes how he accidentally recognises Lugrin in a café in Lausanne in 1964 and sits down with him for a couple of eerie moments. Bloch was a random victim to set a warning example. By revisiting the case, Chessex brings back the preposterous and terrible act into the collective consciousness. The book was received as a provocation especially in Payerne, most probably for its factual, sober recounting and for its wanting to understand rather than to denounce. (Beat Mazenauer, transl. by Anja Hälg)