The Autobiography of a
Lesser God
Synopsis
Selwyn Bergner, the fictional biographer, was born at the
outset of the Great Depression. He and his cousins,
Naomi and Norman Figler, are the children of third
generation immigrants living through WW2 in
Philadelphia. Norman, aka Chickie, is drafted on his high
school graduation and is assigned to a diversionary
regiment known as the Ghost Battalion. D-Day takes him
to Europe and through Southern Germany to the
surviving remnants of a concentration camp outside of
Flossenbuerg, Austria.
As the war ends, Chickie is introduced to the Irgun, a
shadowy Israeli organization that is smuggling displaced
Jews out of Europe and into Israel against the dictates of
the UN. This involves him with a dark figure, Seitz
Graustein, who has created a ‘Robin Hood’ action that
convinces mid-level Nazis to ‘contribute’ stolen jewelry
and art work to the Israeli emigration cause. An American,
Nathan Stern-Guilbert, devises a plan to smuggle these
valuables to America where they are converted to cash through the business of Sid Bergner,
Selwyn’s father, and the money sent back to Irgun in Europe.
But someone has been skimming. When Sid Bergner suddenly disappears the inference is that he is
the thief. However, Selwyn refuses to believe it, and with the help of cousin Naomi and Selwyn’s
friend, David Bierman, he chases down clues to his father’s disappearance. But while Selwyn’s
discoveries find the truth, that truth, as Selwyn himself says, leaves him angry and quite literally up
in the air above a yard full of subway cars.