Ben Hecht and I

Ben Hecht and I go way back, like forty odd years or so. I recall waking up one morning and discovering I'd turned overnight into a young man with a foreign sounding name in my head. I had no idea who the man was, but the sound of his name was nice and soft, like foam or fog in a tired head after a night of restless dreams. For months and even years, I'd brood out of the blue and in public places over the source of that commendably succinct name, wondering how the heck it found its way into my poor head. It became a sort of dormant obsession that would occasionally come to life by contact with certain stimuli or irritants. A first such contact was made on the way to Kefar Shemaryahu, on the outskirts of belle Hertzliya, Israel. I was then embarking on a new albeit short lived career as a gardening assistant. The gardener was a friend, who may actually be proof reading over my shoulder as we speak, so I will refrain from disclosing incriminating details. Suffice it to say, he never payed me for my three days of labour as a gardening assistant and that I have no axe to grind with him at this point in time. We were sitting in his car listening to the radio, when we passed a big street sign saying Butcher Hecht, Home Deliveries. I believe butcher Hecht was back then mostly renowned for selling so called "White Meat", i.e.,  pork meat, a rare commodity at the time. Pork or no pork, now I felt that I'd uncovered an important piece of the puzzle and that Ben Hecht could plausibly have Butcher Hecht as a source or at least as a partial source. Many years elapsed, I had other things to think about, and also things I tried not to think too elaborately about. Ben Hecht was not one of those things. I was sitting in the TV-room in one of the dormitories in Aarhus, Denmark, watching a Hitchcock flick. When the credits came rolling down, I saw Ben Hecht's name, and understood at long last, that I'd unknowingly picked his name from the screen many years previously. Mystery solved, obsession gone! Or so I thought. My latest and most memorable encounter with Uncle Ben, happened no more than a few days ago. I was watching a documentary about the american-polish sculpturer Szukalski. It happens to be the case that Ben Hecht was a close friend of Szukalski and wrote glowing articles in praise of his work. At some point, the two parted  ways radically. Szukalski became a right wing nationalist and anti-semite in Poland, while Hecht became a right wing zionist promoting in words and deeds the creation of the state of Israel. In honor of his efforts, a ship was named after him, the S.S. Hecht, transporting jewish holocaust survivors to Palestine in the forties. The ship was boarded by the english, the crew (a mixed group including among others a black american and two men from Norway) was jailed in Acre while the refugees were sent to a camp in Cyprus. Later on, the S.S. Hecht changed hands and names several times and was put to other purposes. I can neither confirm nor deny, that I was a passenger on that ship when wee, and that the captain showed me how to steer the wheel and use the gyroscope.