Reflecting on the 6th Lamenation in the 6th Lamentation

In my last post I reviewed The 6th Lamentation by William Brodrick. The title of the book is striking.

In the story a former SS officer, Eduard Schwermann known in England as Nightingale, seeks sanctuary at the Gilbertine priory of Lakewood in England in 1995. He is alleged to have been a leader in the deportation of Jews from Paris in 1942. 

Brodrick could not have known when The 6th Lamentation was published in 2003 how the concept of sanctuary would become such a fraught issue 22 years later, especially in the America of Donald Trump.

As set out in my review Schwermann was granted sanctuary. While there has been no legal right of sanctuary in England since 1675, the authorities of 2003 did not enter the monastery to arrest Schwermann.

Who should have the right to claim sanctuary? 

While Schwermann is at Lakewood a French man, Salomon Lachaise, comes to the Lakewood Priory and confronts Schewermann:

With one great savage movement, Salomon Lachaise, tore open his shirt from top to bottom, both hands ripping the fabric apart, exclaiming in a loud voice, “I am the son of the Sixth Lamentation.”

Lachaise is a medievalist, a professor of history at the University of Zurich. 

In 1942 Lachaise and his mother were taken from Paris to Switzerland by a smuggling ring of young people in their 20’s called The Round Table evoking Arthurian images. They were saved from the Holocaust. The other members of their family are taken to the death camps and killed.

In the Bible, Jeremiah has five lamentations “each mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, each placing absolute trust in its sworn Protector”.

The Fifth Lamentation ends:

20. Why have you utterly forgotten us, 

Forsaken us for so long?

21. Bring us back to you, LORD, that we may return:

Renew our days as of old.

22. For now you have indeed rejected us

and utterly turned your wrath against us.

The agony of those powerful words must have felt personal for many Jewish people caught up in the Holocaust. Calling the Holocaust the Sixth Lamentation is visceral and vivid.

Lachaise thinks of the lamentations of the Jewish people at the hands of the church over the centuries. He sees the irony in the mythical Knights of the Round Table being re-surrected to save Jewish children as a small effort of atonement for the persecution of Jews by the Church over the centuries but now “the person who broke it apart” is protected by the Church. The betrayal of the Round Table caused lifetime guilt in the betrayer.

Lachaise reflects to Anselm on how God in the Bible, “made covenant with Abram and he became Abraham …. The change of name obliterates the past, bestowing a blessed future.” Brodrick took my breath away when Lachaise, speaking of Schwermann added:

“So, who was it that dared to take the place of God and give that man across the lake a new name, a new life?” 

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The Discourtesy of Death and Can Death be Courteous? and Gilbertines in Fiction and Contemporary Life; (2025) The 6th Lamentation

The 6th Lamentation by William Brodrick

(30. - 1273.) The 6th Lamentation by William Brodrick - How does God call us? For Anselm it was a sense of unease in his barrister’s robes, a “restlessness” in which he began “to feel out of place”. The feelings were “vaguely religious”. They crystallized when he sat down one day in Westminister Cathedral and prayed. He was being called to the religious life of a monk. Anselm joins the Gilbertine Order at Larkwood Priory.

In the spring of 1995 Agnes Embleton, born Aubret, is diagnosed with a terminal neurological condition. She has been a cipher to her children and granddaughter. She refuses to talk about what happened to her in France during the Nazi occupation and her subsequent experiences in Auschwitz and Ravensbruck. She has abrupt impenetrable withdrawals from “ordinary life”. Only her husband, Arthur Embleton, can ease her back. Now Arthur is gone from a stroke and Agnes is facing her end.

At the same time Agnes contemplates dying there is a crisis at Larkwood Priory. A man, Eduard Walter Schwermann now known as Nightingale, has claimed sanctuary. He was a “low ranking SS officer based in Paris during the war. He’s incriminated in the deportation of thousands of Jews to the death camps”. He had come to England in 1945 with a French collaborator, Victor Brionne, known after the war as Berkeley. 

The monks gather in Chapter, community meeting, to decide if Schwermann will be allowed to stay. There are conflicting positions within and without the community. The British government and the Vatican want him to stay while the allegations are investigated. 

The Prior, Father Andrew, makes the decision. Schwermann can stay.

In his dozen years at the Priory Anselm has become a priest. He has found all the emotions of life are present in monastic life. It is a life of “evolving contentment”.

Agnes writes  her memories and gives the journal to her granddaughter, Lucy, to read.

The journal of Agnes is set out in the book. Agnes was involved in a student group, the Round Table, smuggling Jewish children to safety. She was arrested and sent to the concentration camps. Her story is devastating and wrenching. It is no surprise the trauma has affected her deeply.

Anselm is called to Rome to meet Beniamino Cardinal Vincenzi, the Vatican’s Secretary of State. Anselem is tasked with finding Victor Brione and finding out what happened near the end of the war when Schwermann and Brione came to a Gilbertine priory in France.

The time of Occupation still creates turmoil 50 years later in France.

What will be done by the political establishment in London and the religious establishment in Rome to avoid further embarrassment concerning Schwermann and where does Larkwood fit in this most awkward situation? Anselm is in deep waters of intrigue. 

Anselm is a rarity in fictional sleuths. He is a patient man. He does not feel a need to aggressively pursue information. He is willing to let others pursue threads he has identified.

Anselm is a subtle man, trained as a barrister to appear in court and as a priest to hear confessions. He is exceptional at listening. He lets men and women talk to him. He does not demand their stories.

The disparate parties start coming together. Brodrick is brilliant in connecting the streams of knowledge.

After a year at the Priory, Schwermann goes on trial for murder for his role in deporting Jews from Paris to Auschwitz. The Crown prosecutor, Oliver Penshaw,  recites the roundup of 12,884 Jews, including 4,051 children, in July of 1942 and their transportation to Auschwitz. Few survived.

Penshaw says that, though his rank was SS-Untescharführer, Schwermann was a leader in organizing the roundup of Jews and overseeing their shipment to Auschwitz.

The trial has the quiet intensity I have experienced in Canadian courts. Cross-examination is precise and devastating. There are none of the histronics of some American fictional trials.

Defence counsel, Mr. Bartlett, delves into the distinctions in France between refugee Jews and French born Jews, the latter often assimilated.

He examines the knowledge of French officials in 1942 on what was to happen to the refugee Jews when they were transported East to be “re-settled”.

The Holocaust is not doubted but there are challenging questions on when it was known. What can be proven as known by Schwermann in 1942?

Contemplating the trial, one of the monks, thinking of the real life Paul Touvier, reflected that it was only the collaborators who could bargain with the Nazis to save some lives.

I thought of Kastner's train. In 1944 Rudolph Kastner, a Jewish man, negotiated with Adolf Eichmann to allow 1,670 Hungarian Jews to travel from Hungary to Switzerland. Kastner, a lawyer and journalist, knew that the Hungarian Jews in the hundreds of thousands being deported to Auschwitz would be killed. His actions remain controversial today. Did he sell his soul to the devil?

Outside the trial, what happened in France during WW II is gradually revealed. Who betrayed the Round Table? Was it treachery in the Priory or in Paris? 

Among the many issues Anselm is pondering is what the Vatican knew in 1944.

The answers to Anselm’s questions and the resolution of the trial are confounding and thought provoking. The 6th Lamentation is an amazing book. To say all I want about the book will take another two posts.

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Brodrick, William - (2023) - The Discourtesy of Death and Can Death be Courteous? and Gilbertines in Fiction and Contemporary Life (2025) Reflecting on the 6th Lamentation in the 6th Lamentation

Thinking About Legal Assistants

While reading An Insignificant Case by Phillip Margolin I was struck by the character Elin Crane. In the book “average” lawyer Charlie Webb is defending the eccentric Lawrence Weiss who calls himself Guido Sabatani. Weiss is certain that he is the re-incarnation of a Renaissance painter.

Webb is feeling overwhelmed when Sabatani refuses to have anyone except Webb defend him on charges of murdering the restauranteur, Gretchen Hall, from whom he took back a painting he sold her because she did not display it publicly, and Yuri Makarov, the bodyguard of movie producer, Leon Golden.

Webb’s modest legal practice has not needed an assistant. He rents space in a suite of offices where there is a slot outside each office door for a lawyer’s card reflecting the constant turnover of lawyers in the building.

Now he is dealing with a case with a huge amount of information.

Webb is grateful when an attractive young woman, Crane, volunteers to help him.

It turns out Crane has personal reasons and motivations for becoming Webb’s assistant. She is far from the woman he thought she was when she joined him.

Webb does not do a background check upon her. He is happy to have an unpaid assistant.

Crane’s deceit prompted me to think about hiring assistants in the real world. At our law office in Melfort when hiring we rely on resumes, interviews and calls to past employers. We explain the need for confidentiality to prospective assistants.

Legal assistants, especially in small offices, must have access to confidential information to do their jobs. They are trusted to be responsible and not disclose office information.

Our experience has been that our assistants have been reliable and discreet.

In Escape Velocity by Susan Wolfe, a legal mystery set in Silicon Valley, the lead character is Georgia Griffin, a paralegal in the firm. When I asked Wolfe in an email exchange why Griffin was a paralegal rather than a lawyer she advised:

That was strictly dictated by my plot. I needed to have a main character whom other people would underestimate, even forget about, because that allowed her to be a fly on the wall for many very senior meetings she would otherwise not have access to. The executives treated her as invisible. I don’t believe they would have treated even the most junior lawyer in such a dismissive manner.

We work hard in our office not to treat staff as “invisble” but recognize they are usually in the background.

I would say virtually every law office is vulnerable should an assistant be unscrupulous.

The vulnerability of law offices was further illustrated in Proof by Jon Cowan. Grace Jamieson, a paralegal at the Los Angeles law firm of Thompson West, leaves the firm to join fired senior partner, Jake West, in his quest to solve murders that are connected to Thompson West. Her inside knowledge of the firm is used in ways that are definitely unethical and, probably legally wrong.

In An Insignificant Case, Webb is blind sided when Crane reveals she has been using her position for her own purposes.

Using office information for personal reasons would destroy an assistant’s career but to the dishonest that would be of no concern.

I will continue to be confident that our office can rely on the integrity of our assistants while recognizing as a blogger and a reader there are abundant fictional opportunities for authors to create unreliable assistants. 

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Margolin, Phillip - (2025) - An Insignificant Case