Page 16 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • October 24, 2012 “Thank you for the compliment. Who am I speaking to?” I spent the next 15 minutes interviewing Perlin, and parts of the next day verifying what the brilliant man told me. His facts all checked. Perlin, born in 1918 in Virginia, later moved to New York City and studied at the Art Students League. He was of Jewish ancestry and admired Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he was manifestly not a Stalinist or communist and felt an artistic and moral horror for all forms of violence. His other propaganda art focused on the themes of traditional American liberty. There were no racist attacks on the enemy. Perlin did the mural for the South Orange Post Office, which shows robust white settlers and friendly muscular Indians working together to bring in the bountiful harvest of the new country. During and after World War II, Perlin worked for Time, Life, and Fortune. He was a loyal American. Where did Egelhofer come from? “I was exempt from the draft, so I was working for the OWI (Office of War Information),” he told me. “I was brought in after the work was already started. It was sort of like ‘Forty-Second Street’ where the star of the show breaks her ankle and they find a girl in the chorus line to go on for her. “I didn’t have a model for the sailor in the painting. I wanted something spooky, so I painted him from my imagination with a black background, as if he were a ghost.” Then I told him about Egelhofer. A Bavarian and a lapsed Catholic, Egelhofer had grown up in poverty and served in the German navy during World War I. When the government decided to send the badly fed sailors of the battleship fleet on a last-ditch challenge to the British Royal Navy backed by the U.S. Navy, the angry sailors launched a mutiny that traveled from ship to ship. Eventually, they started to take over entire cities. A counter-revolution followed as the loyal navy officers from the U-boat and destroyer flotillas, augmented by upper class army officers and cadets, formed their own unofficial military units. The Nationalists beat the Reds in virtually every encounter. Both sides began to shoot prisoners, and in the final showdown in Munich in May of 1919, Egelhofer, then commander of the Red Army of Munich, was handed custody of about 100 upper-class or right-wing hostages when the Russian-born Bolshevik leaders tried to hide out. When the Nationalists closed in, Egelhofer batched off the hostages and had them shot. The first round included five aristocrats, a popular Jewish professor, and two Guards officers. The firing squads began to get queasy, so the other executions were postponed. The Nationalists then captured Munich in some street fighting that the communists described as heroic and the Nationalists found rather diffuse. They said later that the Poles in Silesia put up a much better fight than the Marxists did in Munich. Egelhofer declared he would not make a “rat run” like the other Red leaders. The he made a “rat run.” He was hauled out of an automobile while fleeing town and was beaten, kicked, and shot. When the Nationalists found the dead aristocrats, one of them a countess, the Jewish professor, and their two brother officers, the captured Reds were mowed down in batches. The Nationalists lost about 200 people, including 23 hostages an overwrought Nationalist sergeant executed by mistake, and the Reds lost about 800. “Nice people on both sides,” Perlin said with sarcasm. “Egelhofer sounds like he would have been a good model for what I had in mind, because he was full of anger and I wanted an angry figure demanding revenge. I might have used him if I knew who he was -- but I never heard of him. Maybe I’ll be meeting him soon and can get a look at him.” The story, as they say, checks. The two photographs of Egelhofer that are available on the Web would not have been available when Perlin was a young artist in New York City. Perlin was a New Deal supporter, but not a Marxist, and Marxist propaganda circa 1941 would have focused on a rogue German Aryan who was a traitor to a legitimate government and a senseless executioner of upper class women and popular Jewish academics. Neither Egelhofer photo would have been a direct model. The West German photo shows Egelhofer as a bit of a monster with angry, popping eyes. The East German photo shows a stalwart, handsome young man. Both are clearly the same person in different aspects, and both bear a striking resemblance to the angry sailor in the Pearl Harbor poster. “Subconscious memories can go nine layers deep, and you can’t get away from them. At my age, I’m grateful for them,” Perlin said recently, pondering as to whether he might have seen one of the photos and repressed the image. He said he had just heard about a nurse whose story he had illustrated during the war. The woman had struggled to save the life of a wounded soldier, with whom she fell in love. The nurse and the soldier later married, and the nurse recently died. “I remember those stories, but I never heard of Egelhofer and I have no idea how he got in the painting,” Perlin said. How did Egelhofer show up in a spooky painting by an artist who had never heard of him or seen his photographs? That could be the spookiest story of all. Sometimes you just have to make that last telephone call because it can make a great story into a spooky story. Watch the falling leaves blow past the window under a waning moon seen through wispy clouds while you read this. A couple of months ago, my wife and I were visiting our daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter in Palo Alto. On the one day the archives were open, we stopped off at the Hoover Institute to do some research for an upcoming book. The Hoover Institute is conducting a show called “The Battle for Hearts and Minds: World War II Propaganda.” The poster for the show depicts an angry sailor with a clenched fist looming like a vengeful ghost over the exploding wreck of the U.S.S. Arizona. That battleship was the single largest site for casualties on Dec. 7, 1941. Of the estimated 2,400 service personnel killed at the attack on Pearl Harbor, more than 1,000 were killed aboard the U.S.S. Arizona. The drama of the dark full-color poster appealed to me and I took a number of them. Contemplating the image on the poster, I felt that there was something strange about the ghostly sailor. “This man does not look like an American,” my wife said. She was right. The sailor in the poster had the bull neck of a sailor who had trained in windjammers, not much done in the United States Navy of the 1930s except perhaps for future officers. The angry sailor’s uniform, visible despite the dark surroundings, was a blue jumper. Sailors at Pearl Harbor who were in dress uniform wore white summer uniforms. Then the clenched first metaphorically hit me. The sailor was Rudolf Egelhofer, a “Red Sailor” from Kaiser Wilhelm’s Navy of World War I who helped touch off the revolution that took Germany out of that war. He was later executed by German Nationalists in Munich in 1919. My overwhelming, but tentative, theory was that some communist had decided to put an autograph on the Pearl Harbor attack -- actively promoted by a Soviet mole in the U.S. Treasury Department -- by slapping Egelhofer’s image, with his characteristic clenched fist, on a U.S. propaganda poster. But the first thing you learn in investigative reporting is to get your facts as straight as you can before you take them public. I called the Hoover Institute and asked who was responsible for the poster. The researcher on duty said she would look into it, and when I called back later -- the second thing you learn in the news business is that most people do not return phone calls -- she had a name for me: Bernard Perlin. The artist who painted the poster, originally called “Avenge Pearl Harbor,” was alive and in his nineties, she said. Now the ball was back in my court. Did I take a chance that the artist might still be alive? Did I go to print with a somewhat dubious theory? Did I make the final phone call? I decided to make the final phone call. The “final” phone call turned out to be the penultimate one because it turned up a busy signal. I waited 10 minutes and called back. “Bernard Perlin, the famous artist?” I asked when an older man picked up the phone. Halloween mystery is one spooky story Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: This year, we have a candidate for Wyckoff Township Committee who is a clear choice! Eileen Avia has worked tirelessly in Wyckoff for all of the people in our town. She is a veteran of more than 24 years teaching in the Wyckoff schools. As the recipient of the Pat Schuber Bergen County Environmental Award, she has embraced the ecological needs of all our citizens. She has also organized local food drives and fundraisers for the Emmanuel Cancer Foundation, and volunteered on the Wyckoff Ambulance Corps. Eileen’s altruistic pursuits extend to the beautification of our town with her Partners in Pride involvement, and her dedication to animals and animal shelters. According to Pat Schuber, “This Earth Day child is, perhaps, the most deserving individual for humanitarian and environmental activism.” So, fellow citizens of Wyckoff, don’t be in a quandary: Vote for Eileen Avia, a woman who cares about your needs and concerns. On Nov. 6, check Column 2 and let your voice be heard with a vote for Eileen Avia. Angela Riehl Wyckoff Dear Editor: Thirty years ago, 81-year-old Clara Peller captivated America with a simple question: “Where’s the Beef?” The phrase became ubiquitous as a way of questioning the substance of any item or idea. It is also strangely applicable in this year’s Franklin Lakes Board of Education election. While I have seen lawn signs aplenty, I have not seen any reasonable (or accurate) complaints about the incumbents, nor have I seen a proactive agenda as to what the opposition would do going forward. This leaves me to wonder: “Where is the Beef?” Avia: The clear choice ‘Where’s the Beef?’ Superficially, the challengers appear to be agents of change but actually project a steadfast resistance to change. They don’t like the new superintendent, they don’t like the change in the election schedule, and they really don’t like the Princeton system. Irony aside, the opposition seems to be merely seizing on discrete issues that were unpopular in small parts of the community and attempting to cultivate a vague sense of dissatisfaction: All without providing any answers or solutions. It is easy to criticize, particularly in a vacuum, but our schools and our children are far more important than the personal preferences of a vaguely dissatisfied minority. Moreover, criticism should have a constructive purpose, unlike here, where it is simply a vehicle to manufacture discontent. The superintendent is here. He is a professional. He is forward-thinking. He also has two years left on his contract. Like 85 to 90 percent of all New Jersey municipalities, our election cycle has changed, saving election costs, increasing voter participation, and capping school budget increases at two percent per year (less than the final budget increase in 2008 -- the last time the school budget was defeated). Finally, the Princeton system deserves another look. If we don’t continually explore options to improve our educational experiences, we stagnate. Sixteen of 20 people on the appointed Efficiency Committee favored further exploration of the concept, but were ultimately shouted down by a very small, albeit very loud, contingent who derailed the process, effectively substituting their judgment and personal preferences for the entire town. Even more outrageous, the opposition has taken to politicizing the recent change in principals at the Woodside School, as if a confidential personnel matter represented a discretionary spending decision, and as if they had even a (continued on page 24)