Yossi Waxman

Every evening, 80-years old Gabriella meets Gabi in a suburban Tel Aviv park. She feeds stray cats while he walks his dogs. Gabi is a married Israeli man, an antiques collector in a midlife crisis. At eighty, Gabriella is still a sexual and sensual woman. She falls in love at first sight with Gabi because he reminds her of someone. Will Gabi fall for her too? Will she dare reveal her secret to him? Short conversations about life between the two turn into a surprisingly racy romantic love affair. 

 

Gabriella, an eccentric Holocaust survivor, is haunted daily by her nightmarish memories. In WWII, she served as a Kapo in a concentration camp, and while she did cooperate with the Nazis, she also saved many Jewish women from death thanks to her ties with Herr Otto, the Lagerführer — the concentration camp commander and her lover/tormenter. She tells Gabi nothing about that. She is ashamed of her past and must deal with Herr Otto, the Nazi ghost that still lives in her house and shows up at the most unexpected moments, in her kitchen or bed, forcing her to address the terrible secret she is hiding.

 

Published in 2004, “Liebchen” won several prizes and critical acclaim. An impossible love story, a deeply emotional tale that speaks not only of romantic love and the love of life, but also about forgiveness. It is one of a few Israeli novels whose protagonist is a kapo — a Jewish woman who was forced to collaborate with the Nazis — casting an emphatic and compassionate gaze upon her.

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From the Media:

"This is a tale of a seemingly impossible, deep and uncommon romantic love that opens a porthole into an intricate, dark, fearful world that puts the readers' sensitivity to a constant test: The test of love (…). Fully applying his linguistic skills, surprising inventiveness, and a rare sense for balance, Waxman has managed to turn the twilight zone in which his book protagonists operate into a complex, trustworthy, and richly meaningful world that is even full of light." 

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The ACUM Award Jury – Haim Be’er, Savyon Liebrecht, Eli Hirsh, 2004

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"Liebchen invented new speech, using some mad and bizarre Hebrew-Yiddish-German. This is the story of an 80-years-old woman who used to whore for the Nazis and now has an affair with a 40-years-old man she met in the park. You cannot not fall in love with this Grand Dame, the Big Mama of whips and Nazi officers who pop out of her kitchen's knife drawer and float around her grandiose mind…. The wonderful jargon Waxman gave Gabriella is very catchy. Not only her words are catchy. It is even tempting to adopt her moves and full sentences. What could possibly be cooler than lighting a cigarette and saying in some tragi-fantastisch humor: 'I was a piece of ass like you won't believe. Supreme epidermis I had. But today, I am like a balloon whose life slipped out of it.'"

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Rana Werbin, Ha'ir, 2004

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"Reading a book about a woman who is 80 but also feminine, coquettish, and desirable left a very powerful impression on me."

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Zohar Wagner, Time Out Tel Aviv, 2005