The family members of the journalist Michael Tuchfeld were sure that he was locking himself in his room and writing a thriller about the field in which he specializes - the intricacies of Israeli politics.
As someone who served for decades as a congressman and accompanied many governments, it was only natural that he would write about everything he saw and experienced in the political arena.
Only when he finished writing it, they discovered that it was a suspense book that takes place in completely different areas - a plot that twists between the murder of a Holocaust survivor chief of staff, a Mossad agent sent to investigate the event, and an anti-Semitic Polish professor. to tell," he says in a conversation.
"Tikhon" (Yediot Books) is Michael Tuchfeld's debut book, published when he is in his 70th year.
He draws a line between Operation Protective Edge and the Auschwitz camp, when the security of the State of Israel was compromised and the murder of the most senior man in the IDF.
There is no person who does not go through a correction process.
All the characters in the book are looking for their inner and true correction.
It was clear to me from the first word that it would be the name of the book."
And maybe you too, in your opinion, went through a correction when writing the book?
"Definitely. The book is my correction, a correction of life in my parents' home, both Holocaust survivors, who never said a word about what they went through. For most of my life I knew nothing about their past. I first heard about the Holocaust in the Eichmann trial, as a teenager, and filled notebooks with articles and details About the trial. My parents didn't even tell me their real age. It was a complete shock to me when I found out how old my father was, when I found a health insurance register in his closet."
Root stories
Only after they passed away did the son find a notebook written by his father in which he tells the story of his life.
"He wrote a lot in German and Hebrew, poems and articles, with sharp humor, but he wrote this diary in Hebrew because he wanted his grandchildren to read the family history," Tuchfeld recalled.
"It was only from this notebook that I learned that our journalistic roots go back a generation, because his father, my grandfather, who died when my father was 8 years old, worked in a newspaper in Vienna together with Theodor Herzl. In this notebook, I discovered how the family survived the First World War and then the Second World War, the Holocaust, When they were deported to the concentration camps in Transnistria in Ukraine.
"There he met my mother, after his first wife died. All those things that I didn't know and that were hidden from me, were revealed to me on those old computer pages handwritten in his 'studio' Hebrew. It was important to me to write a book that is not a Holocaust book, but a pre-suspense book Excellence, one that people will pick up and not want to put down until the end."
Michael Tochfeld was born and raised in Jerusalem, and was educated at the Nativ Meir yeshiva.
Following the "Avivim disaster" he moved to Moshav Dubov on the border of Lebanon, where he also took his first steps in the press as a reporter for "The Observer" in the north.
He began broadcasting on "Voice of Israel" in the 1980s, and served there as a presenter and editor, a parliamentary reporter and a reporter on legal and religious matters.
He was one of the founders of the Knesset channel when it was established in 2004, and served as the main program presenter there.
Today he writes topical articles and journalistic columns for the newspaper "Mekor Rishon".
Tuchfeld lives in Petah Tikva, married to Deborah and father of four sons, including Mati Tuchfeld, the political commentator of this newspaper.
"The book started rolling in my head when I was visiting friends and their son was launched into Operation Protective Edge," he says.
"In the opening of the book, I describe the meeting without telling them that they are actually my friends, and from there an imaginary plot unfolds. The grandfather was sitting there, and he told about his history as a Holocaust survivor, how he was separated from his parents in Auschwitz. It is a story that is etched in my memory. From there I unfold into the period of the Iron Curtain and stories of Eastern European Jews, how they suddenly discovered their Judaism."
Tuchfeld connects his journalistic work with the plot he wrote.
"I was in charge of the Holocaust Day broadcasts at Kol Yisrael, and the scope included reading the text from Yad Vashem. There were several other Shoanim at Kol Yisrael, but I was the one who was sent to the ceremonies. I would read segments of testimonies that were broadcast five minutes before the news. One year We gave a platform to the survivors themselves, a year after that to the second generation, and a year after that to the third generation - the grandchildren. It became clear to me that there are two types of Holocaust survivors: there are survivors who did not speak, did not tell anything, like my parents, who wanted to wrap the children and protect them; and they were Survivors who turned their children into memorial candles, told them all the time about the horror. When the next generation came, the grandchildren, then they started telling. They actually skipped the children's generation, and everything they had they told the grandchildren.
"As a result, a trend started that became routine - grandchildren writing root stories, interviewing grandparents. My generation did not prepare such root diaries. Now my grandchildren do, but we were skipped over. It was simply amazing. That's where the motivation to write the book came from."
"A discourse that stirs up hatred"
The corona epidemic was the significant catalyst for writing, so he took advantage of the days of the first quarantine.
"Suddenly I had free time," he says and smiles.
The epidemic is also what inspired one of the book's plot motives - the poisoning of the Chief of Staff with a deadly virus. "I developed the idea of a virus from the imagination.
To make sure I was writing things that made sense I consulted an expert virologist, who read the book and gave me permission to continue this storyline.
That's how I came up with the idea of a scientist who developed the virus that killed the Chief of Staff."
As someone who has lived what happens in the Knesset on a daily basis for several decades, how do you see the state of affairs that the Israeli Knesset has been in for the past two years?
"All my life in the Knesset I have heard the saying, 'This is the worst Knesset there is.' .
"In a generation or two, our generation will be missed by the majority of the division that will be created. There are many people who mix it up. Unfortunately, we have also compromised the future of our politics. Today, it is almost impossible to form a government without the presence of a parliamentary government and things like that.
"Every party that has four mandates Ask for the position of Prime Minister, otherwise there is no government.
That's part of the problem.
This was not the case in the past - when presenting the political opponent as a real enemy.
But right and left as we knew them no longer exist - today everyone understands that there will be no Palestinian state.
This is also true for the right and the left economically.
Today it is only discussions about judicial activism and hateful discourse.
If there is no party to take responsibility, it will only continue to deteriorate."
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