People of the Book

In Vienna, elated by the discovery of the butterfly species and its origins, Hanna makes a trip to visit her old mentor, Heinrich. He is an old-world man, exquisitely dressed, who Hanna realizes with a start is getting on in years and looking frailer than when she studied with him after her master’s degree. Hanna talks to Heinrich, drinking tea and eating rich cakes, and the pair discuss the theories of the Haggadah’s location during World War II. Heinrich reveals that many believe the manuscript was kept safe in a mountain village, perhaps in a family known to the kustos. Heinrich also talks about Serif’s life after the war, when he was kept in solitary confinement for six years by the Communists, who claimed he was a Nazi conspirator. Hanna questions this given his legacy of kindness to Jews, and Heinrich reminds her that, “a charge of collaboration was a useful way for the Communists to get rid of anyone who was too intellectual, too religious, too outspoken. He was all of those things” (100). Heinrich then makes a call to the museum in Vienna where documents on the rebinding of the Haggadah are kept, and Hanna leaves for the night.