The cuts and bruises have long since healed, but sometimes, when Peter Vogler shuts his eyes, he can still hear the hatred in the angry voices of children calling him a “Christ killer” and “dirty Nazi Jew.”
As a young boy growing up in Trinidad — where his family had fled during World War II — Vogler endured a seemingly endless stream of anti-Semitic taunts and beatings from cruel classmates at the Catholic school he attended.
“I used to get beat up all the time. Especially when I would say that Jesus was a Jew; then they would really let me have it,” recalled Vogler, author of a new book on the Holocaust called “The Broken Cross.”
Staring out the kitchen window of his cozy Danville home, Vogler sipped coffee and discussed his 220-page fictional account of a young Jewish man’s struggle to hide his identity and save fellow Jews from certain death in Nazi Germany.
“I wanted to write a book exploring the relationship between Christianity and the Jews. Ever since I was young the roots of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust have been on my mind,” said Vogler, turning away from the window, which offers a stunning view of the Mount Diablo countryside. But scenery is the last thing on Vogler’s mind this crisp winter afternoon, as he reveals the novel was something of a catharsis for him.
Born into the free city of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) in 1934, Vogler and his family fled to the British West Indies, leaving behind most of their friends and relatives who perished in the Holocaust.
“I wrote ‘The Broken Cross’ to get it out of my system,” said Vogler, who has been living in the Bay Area since 1962. “It just came pouring out of me,” he added, settling down on a small brown sofa.
Surrounded by plants and bookshelves, Vogler — who is casually dressed in a tan shirt, blue jeans and slippers — looks every bit the writer. Yet he will be the first to admit that he is not a writer, had never written anything before and, in fact, doesn’t even know how to type.
The self-published author, former pianist and practicing optometrist said he wrote his novel by hand in Yiddish in a loose-leaf notebook, then had it transcribed.
“Although the characters are fictional, all the events, told to me by my parents and Holocaust survivors, are true,” Vogler maintained. Vogler intentionally wrote the book from a spiritual perspective, as opposed to a philosophical, historical, theological or sociological one, because “there are already so many books on the Holocaust out there like that.”
With 4,000 copies in print, the novel has begun to generate a number of positive reviews for Vogler, who now has a literary agent and is working on getting “The Broken Cross” out in paperback with movie rights.
With the help of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who is showcasing the book in his Holocaust library, Vogler intends to donate any leftover hardcover editions to an array of Jewish agencies. “I just got a call from him [Wiesenthal] and he’s already begun contacting a number of organizations,” he said.
Recently returned from a book tour in Canada, Vogler also reported his novel is going to be used in classes studying the Holocaust at the universities of Ottawa and New Brunswick.
“The Holocaust is not another blip. It just didn’t come out of nowhere. You can’t keep indoctrinating people that Jews killed Christ for nearly 2,000 years and not have it break out in a Holocaust.” Vogler, who is already working on another novel set during the Holocaust, said his parents used to have a saying about anti-Semitism; that you get it from “mother’s milk.”
“What they meant was that anti-Semitism is so ingrained in society that you will never be able to get it out.”
While not wanting to give away too much about his second book, Vogler, whose mind is still on the Holocaust (“I can’t get over it”), did allow that it will explore the plight of Gypsies, who the Nazis singled out for persecution along with the Jews.
“You know,” he said, “after reading ‘The Broken Cross,’ a lot of Christians have approached me and said, ‘I never realized; I didn’t know we were that bad to you.'”