the competence of anarchy

Synopsis of The Orthodoxy of Arrogance

Mordichai (Moritz) Lebenschizt was raised by Orthodox Jewish parents. After his parents are killed when he is 11, he settles in Schaan, Liectenstein. There he learns to suppress his Jewish tendencies, among other things. The year is 1928 and Mordichai sees a crazy Jew hating man rising out of the ashes of WWI. Mordichai becomes Moritz, a more Christian sounding name. He never has a bar mitzvah and never grows payess like his father. Moritz has a hard rebellious bend. He is brash, arrogant, and pompous, with a knack for charming people.

In 1935 he meets Hannah Krankenstein in the Haage during a protest against the National Socialist Party. Hannah was also orphaned but became reclusive, introverted and reticent. Moritz found her to be charmed by him. She hung on his word and fed his enormous ego. By 1939 they had settled in the town of Dachau, Germany. There they curtailed their Judaism and flew under the Nazi radar. They would escape through a tunnel to a beer hall in Munich when the Gestapo came calling. By 1944 they were tired of playing the game.

Hannah and Moritz make their way a night through Munich. They follow the Rhine south along the Austrian border to Switzerland. They board a train destined for La Harve, France. In a small apartment in Le Harve they wait out the war. Moritz has built a small sailboat. In the fall of 1945 they make their way with their boat to a beach at Calais. At the narrowest point, the cross the English Channel to Dover. After spending a few weeks in South Hampton they get on an ocean liner to New York as “displaced persons.” They are married by the captain of the ship.

In referrence to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC:

"This museum will touch the life of everyone who enters and leave everyone forever changed--

a piece of deep sadness and a sanctuary of bright hope; an ally of education

against ignorance, of humility against arrogance..."

--William J Clinton