COSMIC HERETICS: Part 2 :

by Alfred de Grazia

CHAPTER SIX

HOLOCAUST AND AMNESIA

As his last year begins, Dr Zvi Rix is writing to Deg from Rechovot, Israel. It is January 9, 1980 and he sends New Year's greetings, and hopes that they might meet before long. "I am very cut off at the place where I am living now. This does not only concern libraries, but other matters too..." for the mails are slow and books arrive late in the shops. He is in touch with Christoph Marx. They travelled together to Glasgow... "He was quite obliging... So far I have not formed a final opinion of him."

I would nominate Zvi Rix to be the hero of this chapter, but it is up to the reader to find his own heroes in this book. Rix was a man who Velikovsky would have liked to write Mankind in Amnesia in his place. He was a medical man, deep into psychiatry, and a refugee from Nazi Germany. Deg knew him only through their correspondence. Deg was glad to get a description of him from his widow, whom he met shortly afterwards at the home of Christoph Marx near Basle. She wrote to Deg on January 23, 1981:

Rix, whose scrambled writings are being kept by Christoph Marx, was hard in pursuit of evidence that the cometary destruction of civilizations around 3500 years ago had warped the human mind in the Near East, inciting human destructiveness, religious excesses, and sexual deviations.

Christoph Marx was a computer expert from Basle, and an amateur of Velikovsky's work and all that it connected with. He circulated an invitation to whomever he knew to meet in Iceland, a typical groping, logical yet mad, of cosmic heretics for a way of expressing themselves and their message. Logical: let us assemble in Iceland between America and Europe, a catastrophically threatened land even now, set athwart the great catastrophic Atlantic Rider; mad: Marx was teetering on the edge of interdiction by everyone, the British, the Americans the Europeans, Deg included, a heretic practically excommunicated from the heretics. The conference did not materialize. Marx tried again in 1980, this in his home city, and found a few communicants.

The consensus among cosmic heretics of which Marx spoke in his announcement did not really exist; however, it is certain that V. 's unique and original way of searching for the roots of anti-semitism was a revelation to many thousands of people who would otherwise have not even considered the problem or would have lived with a few, often anti-semitic, stereotypes. Measuring such influences is impossible, but, by any standard, V. was a great Jew who disabused the minds of many incipient anti-semites.

After a long trip following V.'s death, Deg returned to 78 Hartley Avenue( he could never remember the house number, but would send his letters to 34 or 85 or another number, any number, and V. was puzzled -- What significance could forgetting it have for Deg? "You can address me just at Naxos, Greece and I get you alright at Hartley Avenue, Princeton!" "I have gotten letters just to 'Princeton, NJ'" -- So there you are!) to see Elisheva. The parlor was little changed. V.'s unimpressive chair stood facing the two stiff couches and the coffee table between. Deg thought, "Should the chair be sat in, moved, replaced, bound across with a museum belt, what?" It struck one with incompleteness, an uncertain quaver. He would slip some books and papers upon it. Elisheva and her assistants Jan and Richard lined up with Deg on the couches. Like a cordial committee they sat, drank tea, and reported to each other: health, manuscripts in progress, people seen; and they passed papers and books around.

Thus went the meetings in the years thereafter. Sheva would at some point ask: "Did you see Marx?" and Deg would say no or yes, and she would say "How can you see him when you know how bad I feel about him," but she was curious nevertheless, while Deg tried to evade the subject and one time she said "I will not speak to you again if you see Marx" and Deg threw his arms around her jovially and said, I tell you what, if you don't see Greenberg, I won't see Marx, and she was taken aback and all laughed because she had mixed feelings on that subject too and knew that Greenberg was not his favorite among the cosmic heretics, but setting up proscription lists in the Roman style was pointless.

It was on one of his earlier returns from abroad, in 1977, that Deg heard about Christoph Marx. V. spoke of a visitor, almost in religious tones, who had lifted weighty burdens from his shoulders, and would establish his rightful fame in Central Europe. He gave Deg a copy of a well-executed chart of his reconstructed chronology of Egypt, in color, which Marx had drawn. "Good, good," commented Deg, who was surprised, bemused, and skeptical at the same time. "What's happened?" he asked Sizemore and others when he met them aside. They seemed confused and uneasy.

What happened is this. A Christoph Marx had telephoned Velikovsky to pledge his allegiance to his ideas and to offer support. There was much he could do: he could help with the translation of V.'s books into German, working out of his more respectable (in V.'s eyes) Switzerland; he could launch a campaign to bring the Germans to their senses, so that they would remember the horrible Nazi past and thus cleanse themselves of the pest of comfortable oblivion, with its eventual compulsion to repeat the past again; he could organize study circles to confront the establishment with Velikovsky's ideas.

On April 14, 1977, V. wrote Marx, confirming in most cordial terms an invitation to visit. For ten days, Marx settled into Princeton. Professor Lynn Rose, who V. said at various times would be his literary executor, came down from Buffalo for some of the discussions. Marx departed on Mayday. V. writes him: "Dear Marx: you left on Sunday, you called from home on Monday, and today is Friday -- and very many things did happen in those few days... Earl Milton from Lethbridge, Canada, is with us since yesterday and leaves tomorrow morning together with Alfred de Grazia - who just now spent with us some time - and left copies of letters he wrote to Enc[ cyclopedia] Br[ itannica] and to NY Times. Sagan sent me a new book of his inscribed with all good wishes and a day apart arrived the tape of this year's lecture on the yearly theme -- Venus and V. -- in which he indoctrinates future astronomers in their first year with derision toward me and my work..."

Three days later V. is writing about turning over rights to the royalties from various foreign translations to members of his family. He says he is turning over the management of worldwide Spanish language rights to his recently acquired agents, Scott Meredith. He says "I reconsidered and wish to suggest the following plan: your share is one eighth (12 1/ 2%); but you retain countries not 'gifted' an additional 7 1/ 2% for work that furthers our goals -- at our common discretion (such will be the case with Germany),..." V. writes also to Lynn Rose on May 11 that "I let him [Marx] have broad powers to act, and have already the first report from him. He will take over most of the European Continent for contracting my books with publishers, and be a rather central figure in organizing groups of interdisciplinary synthesis, and in opposition to the Establishment." He mentions other rights to be bestowed upon individuals and adds "Christoph Marx will be in charge of these and many other activities."

On May 16, Marx replies that he will proceed as desired. He wonders whether the gifting of "income" rather than "rights" is not the better procedure, and suggests that the literary estate should be kept centralized and managed efficiently. His idea is of a Velikovsky Institute, a foundation not-for-profit, with an office in Switzerland and another in America.

V. seems to be in a manic phase. He sends off sundry "Notes to my Collaborators," a newsletter in fact. Inter alia he mentions lending Marx his unpublished manuscripts and writes that "I gave him wide powers to represent me in academic contacts and arrange for the publication of translations of my books"

In August, V. visited the office of Scott-Meredith Literary Agency in New York and met the head of their foreign rights department, Mr. Vicinanza, who "showed great eagerness to represent me on a broader basis." An offer was made to enter the greater European market. Vicinanza estimated that $750,000.00 could be obtained in advances worldwide for Worlds in Collision in 18 months: so V. reported to Marx, adding, "Against such figures the offers made to you appear minuscule,..."

A month later Marx reports to V. with several offers and expresses doubts (as did V.) about the high figures. Marx would like to sign in the name of the "Velikovsky Institute." In any event, he would like to draw upon the expected advances to begin microfilming and indexing V.'s archives.

Then suddenly, V. telegraphs "Please don't sign agreement with Umschau. Wait my explanatory letter. Greetings." Something has happened. There is a flurry of letters and telegram. In a telegram, V. says that his books are being returned by the thousands due to the book Scientists Confront Velikovsky (by Asimov, Sagan and others) and "other adverse publicity." Marx appeals by telegram for confidence and trust, to no avail. They also talk on the telephone. Marx is seeking to give "rational" answers to all objections, but says "I have legally signed the agreement as your proxy within the frame of German and Swiss law. At this point I again wish to thank you for the powers you have entrusted to me, which I consider as a wide obligation toward you and your family."

I suspect that around this moment, Marx had been hit by the inevitable reaction to the Grand Vision. V., always a procrastinator in decision-making, facing opposition from his family and the lack of enthusiasm of friends such as Rose and Sizemore, could not overcome his profound aversion to things German, including now spending resources "to help reeducate them." Marx might as well proceed; V. would never have returned to the Great Vision; his idea of therapy would have to be applied by others, if at all.

Marx has signed the contract on November 22; the Umschau Verlag signs on November 29. He reports that he is putting the money in a special account in German Marks, which are moving upwards against the dollar. He continues to report editorial activities.

Now young Jan Sammer, who has come from Canada to live and work with the Velikovsky's, writes to Marx. Without expressing his authorization, he relates that V. is upset with the disapproved signing, that Doubleday Company will probably insist upon 25% of the proceeds, that V. does not favor the Velikovsky Institute idea, that Marx has "overstepped the powers that V. granted" him, and that he could negotiate but not sign an agreement without the author's approval. Marx is told to stay out of affairs in Holland. Marx replies both to Jan and to V., avoiding a confrontation.

Jan writes again repeating himself more forcibly, adding a warning to Marx not to pretend to represent V. in speaking to any scholars. He repeats words written earlier by Marx: "Umschau in due course will wish to have proper signatures to the contract. You would have to empower me accordingly." How, asks V., through Jan, can you now say you had power to sign.

Marx argues at length to this point: V. had orally and even in writing granted the power to sign. Marx speaks of a further consideration being "my understanding of how distasteful Dr. Velikovsky would regard a duty to sign a German contract personally." (Deg remembered that V. had considered even not permitting his books to appear in German.) Marx states that V. had told him not to worry about any claim of Doubleday to the subsidiary rights.

Finally on March 1, 1978, Mrs. Elisheva Velikovsky writes to Marx, repeating that Marx had himself said that further empowering authority was needed, insisting that he not present himself anymore as V.'s agent, and condemning the idea of an Institute. Marx rebuts this, and indicates a desire to visit Princeton to settle matters.

The visit is declined by Mrs. V. Marx inquires about V.'s health. His letters continue to carry news of books and meetings. Jan says in the middle of a letter May 17, regarding Marx's expenses of purchasing books, that "in any case, they would have to be paid by you from the 7 1/ 2% designated for expenses connected with your efforts to arrange for translations." More reports. V. telegraphs for an accounting twice in the same month, the second message being misaddressed to "Immanuel Marx." And a third cable demands the transfer of funds to America. Marx sidesteps these and writes of his work on the Dutch contract, which he had been called away from, and of his dislike of entitling the German translation of The Velikovsky Affair (Deg's Book) Immanuel Velikovsky, Die Theorie der Kosmischen Katastrophen, a publisher's presumptuousness that one might find annoying.

On August 15 goes to Marx the first letter by V. in two years. It asks the transfer of money, and that V. be informed of all negotiations from the beginning and that no contract be signed without written approval; if not, any authority will be revoked. Marx on August 24 refuses the "fundamental change," acknowledges the end of the agreement is inevitable therefore, and suggests he be allowed his 20% of receipts from books signed up and be given all German language rights. '.... Such German monies are not going toward an enrichment of myself.... no other people in the world need your works as urgently than the German speaking peoples. ' On September 5, V. signs a handwritten message, witnessed by his lawyer; it "terminates our business relationship." Further, Marx is accused of having been in California and Washington, D. C., "but did not give a ring to Princeton."

Marx retorted that he had too many rebuffs to continue telephoning. He protests that, in V.'s name, the Kronos magazine group was denying him permission to publish in German various of its articles. He also received in due course damning letters from Lynn Rose and Warner Sizemore. Rose adds a postscript calling "a deliberate misrepresentation" a letter from Marx to the Times which asserted that "Velikovsky saw the Holocaust in terms of collective amnesia."

Matters had been sliding into the hands of Robert Pinto, Velikovsky's attorney and, with V.'s death, attorney for his Executor, Elisheva Velikovsky. The ensuing fol-de-rol among Estate, Publishers and Marx went on and on and is of little interest here.

So a kind of love affair ended, brutally, with injury to all concerned. Sizemore wrote to Marx April 3, 1980 that "the last year of Dr. Velikovsky's life was almost totally taken up with the question of how to put a stop to your activities. He rued the day he ever met you." This may be so, but is it rightfully so, and is it all? Velikovsky was not working well for years. Further in the last week of his life, Deg had him smartly discussing substantive topics of quantavolution. (Marx went unmentioned.) Yes, in a way, Marx was V.'s Waterloo, his last grandiose effort to launch himself against an opposing world. He loved Marx for the vision, even if Sheva and Warner and Rose and Deg and all the others could not share the vision nor needed it. Deg had not yet met Marx.

On May 11, Marx addresses Deg, expressing pleasure at their brief meeting:

He complains of "the most unfortunate job Mrs. Velikovsky is doing in ordering an about-face of her husband's approach to the Nazi Holocaust." He thanks Deg for suggesting arbitration and will, he says, essay a move in that direction.

Any impression that the whole story has been told would be incorrect. The major issue is hardly reflected in it. The more one considers the affair, the more one senses an underlying tension. Would it be the pronounced incapacity of either V. or Marx to work with others? Certainly Deg's original skepticism of the relationship was based upon his acute awareness of V. 's tendencies to call his troops forward, only to have them halt before commitment and forever be frozen there. V. called himself a procrastinator.

But Marx was a patient and loyal and demonstrative person. He could have gone along indefinitely and, given the neat bind trapping both parties, the relationship, hot or frozen, would have persisted.

The crux was the holocaust. It was deeply disturbing. The matter could be put syllogistically: Historic catastrophes resulted in severe collective amnesia; the world's peoples, having suppressed their memories of catastrophe, are compelled psychologically to recreate the conditions for reliving them; thus emerge warfare, massacre, self-destruction and the destruction of others, man-made holocausts. Whereupon one reasons: the Germans, like all peoples, have suppressed the memories of them; like all other peoples, they are prone to recapitulate them and do so on occasion, as during the Nazi period.

Now the process implies a therapy. To cure the penchant for human destruction, the victims of collective amnesia (practically everyone) must be led to confront and appreciate the extent to which their minds contain the experience of past catastrophe and hence the seeds of future ones; once this is done, the human will realize the meaning of his conduct and control it so as to break the endless chain of disaster. What is good for all peoples must therefore be good for the Germans. Hence any effort to cure the Germans of their collective amnesia is to be commended and supported.

This, in brief and with such defects as I shall point out, was Velikovsky's social philosophy, and this everyone who paid any attention to V. knew to be his philosophy, and Marx clearly saw this, too, and was fully persuaded of it from his reading and from his early communications with V. He was deadly serious about it.

Long before all of this, on December 18, 1963, we find V. writing to Dr. Zvi Rix in Jerusalem: "I found two of your ideas magnificent, the hatred of the Jews because they claim of having the upheaval made for their benefit (the Hyksos actually profited) and the words of the Gospels about the fiery furnaces and Hitler's accomplishing such vision and doom (by expolarizing his own hateful traits)." Again in a letter of January 7, 1964, he calls the idea "stupendous." He "wished that somebody else should write "The Great Fear," because he is so busy, but suggests a cooperative book, to which he might also contribute. Nothing came of this highly unusual disposition to engage in collaborative work.

In 1947, V. journeyed to the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, to receive an honorary doctorate. The Conference in which he starred was devoted to the topic of collective amnesia. His own address was subtitled "The Submergence of Terrifying Events in the Racial Memory and Their Later Emergence." There he commented that "the inability to accept the catastrophic past is the source of man's aggression... Warfare has its origin in the same terror." Leaders imitate what they perceive to be the gods in action. Nobel Peace Prizes have been futile. Freud, V.'s predecessor, first developed the theory that each individual desires subconsciously to repeat the catastrophe or trauma, which he believed to be the murder of the father, the Oedipus Complex.

In place of collective amnesia from the murder of the father, V. substituted collective amnesia from the trauma of natural disaster. His therapy, like Freud's, was to get the patient to realize the origin of his trauma. With Freud, the aim was not to realize the primordial murder, but to realize the oedipal complex operative in infancy. With V. it could not be this easy; catastrophes do not occur with every generation; therefore natural and human history required exposition in the light of catastrophism. Velikovsky accused many scientists of functional blindness, psychic scatoma, which he would probably assign in large part to collective functional amnesia of the anciently experienced disorders of the solar system. Thus, on November 2, 1974, he was saying at a Philosophy of Science Conference at Notre-Dame:

As a psychoanalyst, he was professionally unable then to accuse them of sin. They could not help themselves. He could not denounce them even if they refused to see when the truth was explained to them. He had simply to grant that their therapy was incomplete. The excesses of their attacks upon the analyst were to be expected and treated by inducing self-understanding.

But he was personally involved, which is an impropriety, He became a kind of Catholic psychiatrist, who has to tell his patients that they are sinners. Worse, since he is sinned against, he became inevitably angry with the sinners. There was no "Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do." The German national case of psychic scatoma was, of course, much more deadly than the case of the scientists.

V. writes, "You cannot put the human race on the couch." And then he looks at his own fate. "Without preparation, without giving the patient a chance to prepare himself, you cannot slowly release from his subconscious mind the necessary recognition of the traumatic past, and so, the patient has experienced great paroxysms and has rebelled against my revelations." But now, by patients, V. means specifically the scientific community that opposed his ideas, which like humanity as a whole, rejects bringing to the surface memories of natural catastrophe.

Many of V.'s supporters agreed with these propositions, Christoph Marx certainly did, and some, like Marx, wanted to devote themselves to its application. Not so Deg, who found both the theory and the therapy grossly simplistic. Having spent most of his life in examining human ideologies and devising techniques of changing, controlling, and accommodating them, Deg had long since abandoned hope of finding a quick fix for human destructiveness.

V. hardly recognized in his psychological theory what was so obvious in his history and in the reception of his book, that over all of history and today, the vast majority of humans and their religions actually demands that we recognize, denominate, and respond in every sphere of life to the occurrence of ancient catastrophes of fire flood, wind and earthquake.

Destructiveness seemed to Deg "normal," "intrinsically human," ineradicable without genetic engineering and breeding. It could only, by known political means, be diverted, shaped, made to play games with itself, rendered innocuous, and displaced in a hundred ways. Destructiveness was neither more not less created by natural catastrophe than human nature in its other behaviors, including an abstract active concern for the human race as a whole. Further there was probably a genetic switch, prompted by catastrophe as were most mutations and primary behaviors, that had changed a primate quickly into a human. These ideas were developing in his mind throughout the seventies, as the theory of Homo Schizo.

When, after V.'s death, I passed along to Deg a copy of the posthumously edited work, Mankind in Amnesia, that Jan had given to me, widely advertised as V.'s great testament, called by himself his most important work, Deg was prepared to be disappointed. When I said "How did you like it?" he said "Even more disappointing than I had expected it to be. Simplism is still the hallmark of the theory. Systematic development is entirely absent. The evidence is second-hand and commonsensical for the greater part. The recommendation for social therapy is nil."

Deg felt a deep chagrin. "The work is true only on the most general level, and therefore unoperational and inoperative. It contains jottings and exclamations. It reads like a string of notes. Its publication could only have been justified as 'notes and stories, ' or 'Velikovsky's Lament. ' Dr. V.'s claim to be a 'citizen of the world' is unacceptable, unless any person's declared wish that the world not be blown up by nuclear bombs makes the person a 'citizen of the world'." Nor was V., in fact, for all his high qualities, ever such.

The work is too brief for its purported task. Still it wanders; it contains extraneous matter. Too, the work had been long in the making; on July 2, 1967, V. had written Deg that he had "decided to concentrate upon it," at the urging of his publisher. He concluded the same letter: "Keep well, write again, and infuse yourself with impressions that will make out of you a ringing advocate of a need to understand the racial hidden springs of hatred." No need for exhortation: Deg had been such a resounding advocate since childhood.

In reading the new book, Deg had to reflect upon the fact that V. and he had never discussed the work, whether because there was nothing to discuss or because V. wanted to talk of less important matters or because Deg was uninterested in the theory beyond the basic fact, with which he accredited V., the fact that ancient natural catastrophes have played a large role in human and natural history. As much as he believed in the high value of introspection and of the deep interplay of honest minds, Deg had long before meeting V. assigned only a limited potential for good in a knowledge of true history.

"Psychological revelation" would help the world, commented Deg. "Philosophy and anthropology well insist upon this point, but the means for such are not given by V. (see p. 207 of Mankind and Amnesia) and therefore the statement will hardly perform the miracle. I can hardly believe that he says psychology and sociology had nothing to say about the Jonestown (Guyana) massacre and mass suicide, yet he does say so, whereas the dynamics of this event were crystal clear to the ordinary social psychologist."

And Deg wanted to go on, but I stopped him. The question of anti-semitism interested me more, so I got him into this track. In Deg's opinion anti-semites define Jews and Jews define anti-semitism, both in their many forms.

The Velikovskys were among the "most Jewish Jews" whom Deg had known, even though he had from childhood held Jews among his closest friends and, while he had something of the heart of a Catholic and the culture of a Protestant, he had the mind of a Jew, a twentieth century "assimilated" midwestern American Jew, that is. That was what his wife of thirty years was too, except that she originated in New York. He was more a Jew than an Italian, although his descent was purely Italian, even of certain Sicilians who had been the most nationalist of Italians, but this line had practically stopped at birth with a father who was chauvinistically determined upon the Americanization of everyone (except musicians, it sometimes seemed).

V. couldn't comprehend this very well. He tended to stereotypes and would conspire up an ethnic image of everyone. When once he wrote to Matthew Harris of Doubleday Publishers, upon his own insistence, a letter advancing a book scheme of Deg, he said, "You know, of course, who Professor Alfred de Grazia is. He is fierce fighter for causes he thinks just; thus he fought for my cause but occasionally we disagree. I would think that born in a different place and time he would have become a Sicilian captain roaming the seas; then Medicean Florence put an aura around him even before he first visited the country of his ancestors..."( Dec. 28, 1968). Perhaps so, but Deg's great dream as a boy of the prairies was "riding off into the Golden West."

Stecchini was Italian by birth and upbringing, but that was not all of it. He had studied in Germany for one of his several degrees and picked up another at Harvard. "Did you know that Stecchini was of a Jewish father?" Deg asked V. one time, to observe his reaction. "No." "His father was a prominent Italian anti-Fascist named Levi who had finally to flee the country. And his mother was a countess." V. was surprised, and Deg was surprised at his surprise, for V. had now known Stecchini for some years, and they had been together scores of hours.

V. was certainly able to work well with gentiles. With Freud, who was an assimilationist, there had been concerns and crises over the role of gentiles in psychoanalytic circles; nothing could be observed of a tension of conflict along such lines in V.'s circle, no more than there had ever been in Deg's circles. Time after time, Deg was asked about V.'s religious beliefs by members of an audience, but remarkably, there was no hint of antisemitism in the question, nor did he ever perceive any among V.'s many acquaintances.

Deg surmised that Christoph Marx was a Jew for various reasons (despite his Christian name, which was not heard in the Velikovsky household or correspondence) for V. had a tendency, in matters familial and financial, to draw into Jewishness. Deliberately one day, when Elisheva was remonstrating against Marx, Deg said he supposed that Immanuel thought he might have confidence in a Jewish representative when dealing with Germans. She was astonished -- Marx Jewish? -- not at all. Nor did Immanuel ever think so. Deg convinced her he was so, or perhaps of Jewish and Christian parentage, and she said, "That must be it. They are the worst." And then she telephoned Deg who had been laughing at her to say of course she didn't mean that, meaning of course that she recalled that Deg's children were all of mixed Jewish-Christian parentage. As it turned out, when Deg told him the story, Marx confirmed that he was not Jewish.

When after V.'s death, Warner Sizemore (" to get money for the cause") ventured into Amway consumer-business circles and into the formation of a "far-out" protestant church, he told Deg how surprised he was at the manifestations of anti-semitism among folk in such circles. That's to be expected, Deg advised, for the world of the aspiring small businessmen and millennialists, with its rural, radical protestant, and poorer base, held large contingents of anti-semites in America and Europe. Yet, also, this same base provided, at least among its more educated elements, many enthusiastic readers of Worlds in Collision and Ages in Chaos. Since the first Puritans, America has attracted the "true Israelites," the Christian who had been persecuted by the Jews and Romans.