Their Promised Land: My Grandparents in Love and War

by Ian Buruma

Overview

A family history of surpassing beauty and power: Ian Buruma’s account of his grandparents’ enduring love through the terror and separation of two world wars

During the almost six years England was at war with Nazi Germany, Winifred and Bernard Schlesinger, Ian Buruma’s grandparents, and the film director John Schlesinger's parents, were, like so many others, thoroughly sundered from each other. Their only recourse was to write letters back and forth. And write they did, often every day. In a way they were just picking up where they left off in 1918, at the end of their first long separation because of the Great War that swept Bernard away to some of Europe’s bloodiest battlefields. The thousands of letters between them were part of an inheritance that ultimately came into the hands of their grandson, Ian Buruma. Now, in a labor of love that is also a powerful act of artistic creation, Ian Buruma has woven his own voice in with theirs to provide the context and counterpoint necessary to bring to life, not just a remarkable marriage, but a class, and an age.
 
Winifred and Bernard inherited the high European cultural ideals and attitudes that came of being born into prosperous German-Jewish émigré families. To young Ian, who would visit from Holland every Christmas, they seemed the very essence of England, their spacious Berkshire estate the model of genteel English country life at its most pleasant and refined. It wasn’t until years later that he discovered how much more there was to the story.
 
At its heart, Their Promised Land is the story of cultural assimilation. The Schlesingers were very British in the way their relatives in Germany were very German, until Hitler destroyed that option. The problems of being Jewish and facing anti-Semitism even in the country they loved were met with a kind of stoic discretion. But they showed solidarity when it mattered most. As the shadows of war lengthened again, the Schlesingers mounted a remarkable effort, which Ian Buruma describes movingly, to rescue twelve Jewish children from the Nazis and see to their upkeep in England. 
 
Many are the books that do bad marriages justice; precious few books take readers inside a good marriage. In Their Promised Land, Buruma has done just that; introducing us to a couple whose love was sustaining through the darkest hours of the century.

Look for Ian's new book, A Tokyo Romance, in March, 2018. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143109952
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	01/17/2017
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ian Buruma is the Paul W. Williams Professor at Bard College. His previous books include Year Zero, The China Lover, Murder in Amsterdam, Occidentalism, God’s Dust, Behind the Mask, The Wages of Guilt, Bad Elements, and Taming the Gods. His newest book, A Tokyo Romance, will be on sale 3/6/2018.

Table of Contents

Don't Like the Name 1

1 First Love 23

2 Going to War 51

3 The Long Wait 77

4 Safe Haven 115

5 The Beginning 153

6 The End of the Beginning 183

7 Empire 209

8 The Beginning of the End 243

9 The End 267

Epitaph 287

Acknowledgments 293

Index 295

Editorial Reviews

…[Buruma] has given us a wholly understanding, moving account of what it meant to be Jewish and English in one of the most troubled times of the last century.

The New York Times Book Review - Nick Fraser

★ 11/02/2015
Buruma (Year Zero: A History of 1945) delivers a moving, intimate portrait of his grandparents, Bernard and Winifred “Win” Schlesinger (the parents of film director John Schlesinger, of Midnight Cowboy fame), through a close reading of their correspondence from 1915 to 1945. In a fluid, novelistic narrative, Buruma not only captures a remarkable marriage, but also a particular segment of English society—assimilated, upper-middle-class Jews. He shows his grandparents as “outsiders who were insiders too,” whose enthusiastic embrace of English culture, if seemingly excessive at times, reflected gratitude that England, unlike their parents’ birthplace of Germany, didn’t betray its Jewish citizens. The excerpted letters depict Bernard and Win during their first courtship, interrupted by his service in France in WWI; during her days at Cambridge and his at Oxford; and during their later separation during WWII, when Win saw how life carried on as usual in London even as England’s fate “was being decided in the skies,” and Bernard, an Army doctor, witnessed the Empire’s waning days in India. Buruma depicts his grandparents “with all their doubts and contradictions” as well as their “generosity of spirit,” which extended to their rescue of 12 Jewish children from Nazi Germany—and hosting two German POWs for Christmas in 1946. This illuminating story of cultural assimilation and identity will resonate with many readers. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

Their Promised Land is a carefully and admirably written, highly readable work of social history told charmingly in a most intimate way through a close perusal of family correspondence. Buruma writes of British-born Jews of the upper-middle class with a great, sympathetic perspicacity and sweetness—these are after all his grandparents who are his subject—and, most revealingly, he traces with precision the effect on their lives of being Jews of German origin in their beloved England during the two world wars.” —Philip Roth

“One comes away from this small but powerful book with a deep fondness and respect for its two central characters—and for the incredible devotion they shared, not only with each other, but with an England that was both real and an extension of their own admirable idealism.” —Washington Times

“A fascinating story.” —The Guardian 

“Bernard and Win Schlesinger are appealing characters whose personalities come through in their many decades of correspondence, but “Their Promised Land” is best when it explicitly explores the friction between Britishness and Jewishness, between national loyalty and ‘tribal, or ethnic, or official religious identification,’ between that old, old desire for belonging and the inevitable necessity of ‘standing at an odd angle’ from the only world you’ve ever known.” —The Forward 

“It was the good fortune of their grandson, historian Ian Buruma, to discover hundreds of their often mundane but cumulatively revealing letters. Buttressed by his memories and additional reporting, they form the backbone of “Their Promised Land,” an intimate, rambling, charming, and ultimately moving memoir — and social history — about the competing pulls of romantic love, family, country, and religious heritage.” —Boston Globe 

“On the face of it, this is the very definition of a vanity project, a scholar believing the lives of his fireplug of a grandfather and patriotic grandmother worth of investigating when they were just, for lack of a less disparaging term, ordinary people. But Mr. Buruma has a broader purpose here, and he regards the letters with a historian’s sensibility. The Schlesingers are important not only in their idiosyncrasy—which emerges wondrously through their own words—but also because they embodied a type of diasporic Jew so prevalent in the 19th and 20th centuries, and not unknown today….[while] questions of class, culture, and nationality give the book its worth, there is something else that sustains Mr. Buruma’s interest even more: the mystery of a passionate marriage that, at least in the letters, never seems to cool over time.” —Wall Street Journal

“If you've ever complained that your grandparents were dull, then you didn't have grandparents like Bernard and Winifred Schlesinger … [An] exceptional book.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“A wholly understanding, moving account of what it meant to be Jewish and English in one of the most troubled times of the last century….The Schlesingers chose to be English and Jewish, both insiders and outsiders, a choice that was possible in a liberal, relatively tolerant Britain.  But there is a dark side to this sunlit story.  Buruma’s voyage into the past is a warning as well as a celebration of lost lives.  Somehow we must ensure that our societies allow outsiders to flourish, however they choose to do it.” —The New York Times Book Review 

“In a fluid, novelistic narrative, Buruma not only captures a remarkable marriage, but also a particular segment of English society—assimilated, upper-middle-class Jews…. This illuminating story of cultural assimilation and identity will resonate with many readers…. a moving, intimate portrait.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A beautiful and complex love story that lasted through triumphs and disasters, years of separation, anti-Semitic microaggressions, and social and family pressures. Buruma’s work is well-paced, absorbing, and gives a human face to some of the darkest eras of contemporary European history. Readers interested in biography, Judaism, social history, European history, the history of both World Wars, and/or a good old-fashioned love story will find much here to appreciate.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“A fascinating and memorable personal family story…[A] stirring memoir” —Booklist 

“The history of assimilation is often obscured by misunderstanding—both ethical and philosophical. In Their Promised Land, Ian Buruma offers a searching, tender memorial of his grandparents’ marriage that is, at the same time, a clarifying study in the complicated pleasures and discontents of multiple identity.” —Adam Thirlwell

“Ian Buruma, the critic, is justly famous for his ferocious acuity. Ian Buruma, the grandson, brings that same clarity of observation to this exceptional memoir, but he also writes with an elegiac tenderness that may surprise—and will deeply move—both his fans, and those readers who have yet to discover his magisterial gifts.”—Judith Thurman

"In this warmly affectionate, richly textured family chronicle, Ian Buruma  draws on his own memories and a treasure trove of intimate letters, to uncover a moving love story, and paint a vivid picture of a seemingly idyllic world darkened by unexpected shadows. Informed by Buruma’s long-standing concerns as historian and cultural critic, Their Promised Land is an unsentimental elegy for a vanished cosmopolitan epoch, and an homage to lives made extraordinary by fidelity to ordinary virtues. A fascinating, subtle, wonderfully readable book." —Eva Hoffman

“Buruma impressively captures his grandparents' remarkable lives in this insightful narrative. The author shapes his family's labor of a lifetime into a scintillating work of art.” —Kirkus (starred Review) 

“To find a dusty cache of historic letters is a writer’s dream. To discover that these letters not only span two world wars, but follow the trajectory of two lovers who become the loving grandparents of idyllic holidays spent in a grand house in the English countryside, is to strike literary gold. From these letters, Ian Buruma has woven an utterly engrossing story of cultivated, upper class German Jews who grew up in England and made its values their own. On the way, he probes anti-Semitism in all its guises and shifting social attitudes. At once family memoir and history, this is a book to linger over and savour.”  —Lisa Appignanesi, author of Trials of Passion and All About Love

From the Publisher

★ 11/15/2015
While novelist and scholar Buruma (human rights, Bard Coll.; Year Zero) is no stranger to studies of early and mid-20th-century history, this work hits a bit closer to home for him. In it, he details the relationship of his grandparents—both English Jews with German heritage—through letters and photographs, from the time they met just before World War I until the end of World War II. Buruma gives the missives depth and context by conveying events of the time, as well as sociocultural concerns of those of Jewish faith who longed to be accepted in English society and had to decide how to assimilate. The correspondence reveals a beautiful and complex love story that lasted through triumphs and disasters, years of separation, anti-Semitic microaggressions, and social and family pressures. VERDICT Buruma's work is well-paced, absorbing, and gives a human face to some of the darkest eras of contemporary European history. Readers interested in biography, Judaism, social history, European history, the history of both World Wars, and/or a good old-fashioned love story will find much here to appreciate. [See Prepub Alert, 7/13/15.]—Crystal Goldman, Univ. of California, San Diego Lib.

Library Journal

★ 2015-10-06
A prizewinning historian recounts his German-Jewish family's time in England during the most turbulent years of the 20th century. A treasure trove of love letters, produced over five decades and discovered locked in steel boxes in a barn, provided the raw materials from which Buruma (Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism/Bard Coll.; Year Zero: A History of 1945, 2014, etc.) has shaped the fascinating story of his grandparents Bernard and Win Schlesinger. Both were children of German Jews who had immigrated to Britain in the 19th century and prospered. So, too, did their children, who, for the author, represent "the old immigrant story" of advancing through "higher education and prosperity." Buruma, however, probes the tensions below the surface of the family's apparent success. Never distant from their family connections in Germany, they were also targets of anti-Semitism in England. Both Bernard and Win served in World War I; Win was a nurse, and Bernard was a stretcher-bearer on the Western front. However, anti-Semitism ultimately stymied Bernard's career as a doctor. "The senior job is not for me at any price," he wrote in 1938 after rejection by St. Thomas's Hospital. Before the horrors of Kristallnacht, Win and Bernard had begun to set up a hostel where they sheltered rescued Jewish children. Raised by their parents as normal Germans, most had no idea why they were singled out for persecution. The family also found time to raise a family of five, which included future award-winning movie director John Schlesinger. During World War II, Bernard wrote daily from India, even knowing delivery was months away at best. On May 8th, 1945, he wrote, "my Beloved…on this historic day I must send you a word of love…perhaps now after this war people will finally work out their salvation." Buruma impressively captures his grandparents' remarkable lives in this insightful narrative. The author shapes his family's labor of a lifetime into a scintillating work of art.

Kirkus Reviews