For the last five years, columnist Willy Gutman has taken The Signal’s readers to places few of us have or ever will visit. Mixing commentary with reporting, Gutman has brought the stories of drug-infested and corrupt Central American towns right to Santa Clarita’s doorstep. He’s challenged popular beliefs about the United States, religion, morals, and the nature of the world. He’s opined on the conflict between Israelis and Arabs, presidential elections, and other topics. He’s mixed in tales from his own life, which began in the frightening years just before World War II, and has spanned seven decades, multiple continents and scores of jobs.

Through it all, Gutman has brought a distinctly international, cultured and educated voice to the pages of our community newspaper. Along the way, he’s educated some and enraged others. His columns -stark, hard, even nightmarish yet at the same time rewarding- made people think.

“People read him. I can’t say the same for everyone who wrote opinion columns, including myself, but people read Willy,” Leon Worden, who edited much of Gutman’s work in the Signal, told me this weekend.

Worden says people may not have always liked what Gutman had to say but his style, skill and life experience made for compelling reading in the pages of The Signal.

“He is a tremendous writer. I don’t care if you don’t agree with so much as one word he writes — he knows how to put two words together. Which is more than I can say for many, even most, people. But beyond that, he’s a voice crying out in the wilderness, and it’s a voice that has a lot to say,” Worden said.

Gutman penned his last column for the Signal on Friday. The 70 year old journalist, author, and self-described “muckraker” said he’s “convinced that I did all the things that I set out to do” in his life and that he planned to “devote precious and fleeting time to personal creative writing projects.”

Willy Gutman resides in Tehachapi California and he agreed to answer a few questions about his life, writing for The Signal, and what his plans are next.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong> Tell us a little about yourself. Where did you grow up? What kind of an education do you have?

<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong> I was born in Paris in 1937. My father, a physician, was born in Sighet, Transylvania, Romania (the same town where his cousin, the Nobel (literature) Laureate, Elie Wiesel, was also born). My mother was born in Bucharest. I was three when I witnessed the Germans march into Paris. My father joined the French Resistance as a doctor. He was arrested by the Gestapo but managed to escape with two other men. We moved from Paris (where we lost everything) to an area near the Spanish border where my father resumed his activities with the Resistance. In 1944, following Romania’s break with the Axis — and in the mistaken belief that the war was coming to an end, we went to Bucharest. The war lasted another year. We spent several weeks in an air-raid shelter during U.S. and British “carpet bombing” raids that left Bucharest in ruins.

In 1945, the Russians established a puppet Communist government whose hallmark, in its inception, was a continuation of the former Fascist regimes pogroms against the Jews, intellectuals and people of means. My father left Romania in 1947, by foot, at night, crossing borders by bribing frontier guards along the way. It took him six months to reach Paris. In 1948, my mother and I were among the last few who left Romania legally (owing my French nationality, the French Consul arranged our departure) by plane, via Prague. We were allowed out or Romania after having been stripped of the few possessions we had by the very diligent “People’s Militia,” thugs recruited from the dregs of Romanian society. As you can imagine, my early education was spotty and frequently interrupted by inevitable twists, turns and detours compliments of WWII. (This is all detailed in my autobiography, THE ESTUARY — Long Journey To The Open Sea.)

In 1949, we immigrated to Israel, where we lived for about five years. I went to high school, first in Jerusalem, then in Jaffa. I barely graduated, having consistently flunked in everything but creative writing, literature and history. Despite an abysmal academic record, I was accepted at the prestigious Faculty of Journalism and International Studies in Paris in 1954 — I am told on the basis of some fiery anti-establishment, anti-religious, anti-royalist (and bawdy) tracts that my teachers, while appalled — but much to their credit — considered written well enough to warrant a career in muckraking.

I immigrated to the U.S. in 1956, alone, with fifty dollars in my pocket. With the exception of a couple of years spent in Central America and another two years bumming around between the Caribbean islands of Barbados and Grenada, I lived in New York for most of the past 50 years. I moved to California in 1999. I can say I lived the first 18 years of my life packing and unpacking.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong>In one of your columns, you mentioned that your parents had suffered during World War II. Can you elaborate on that?

<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong> After the Germans marched into Paris, we lost everything — a beautiful apartment of the Right Bank, my father’s medical practice and, living in the shadows for the better part of the war, the very freedoms that war, occupation, persecutions and indigence exact from its victims. Nine-tenths of my father’s family perished in Hitler’s extermination camps. His youngest sister, who had just been liberated from a concentration camp, was murdered by rampaging Russian soldiers. Many other episodes, too numerous to mention are also detailed in my memoirs.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong> Do you have any memories of World War II?
<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong> Yes, and they are vivid. These images are indelible. I remember seeing German troops march triumphantly on the Champs Elysees as men and women, stunned, humiliated, wept openly as the sound of Teutonic boots slamming against the cobble stones echoed in the air. I remember seeing my father arrested and beaten up by Luger-wielding Gestapo and being hauled to a concentration camp outside Paris. I remember seeing priests sprinkling “holy water” on instruments of death so that Christians of one nation could massacre Christians of another [nation] with “god’s” benediction…. I remember seeing ten veterans of the “Great War” (WWI) executed by a platoon of German soldiers in retaliation for the murder of a German officer found screwing the baker’s daughter.

I remember the smell of fear. I remember being taught how to deny being a Jew in half a dozen languages. I remember coming out of an air raid shelter after a week and seeing Bucharest in flames — horses eviscerated, people dismembered, a beautiful city shattered, bloodied, desolate, reduced to ashes. I remember more than I should.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong>When did your writing career begin? What news agencies or newspapers have you written for?

<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong> I can’t really speak of a “career.” Necessity being the mother of invention, I have re-invented myself throughout my life. I continue to do so as we speak. Anyway, my first significant brush with journalism occurred when I went to work as a copy boy at the late-great New York Herald Tribune — where I was entrusted with sharpening the pencils of such luminaries as legendary sports writer, Red Smith, science editor, Earl Ubell, drama critic, Walter Kerr, film critic, Judith Crist, and others of their ilk and stature. Once my loyalty was validated, I was also entrusted with emptying their trash baskets and refilling their carafes with fresh water.

All attempts to submit short articles and essays were soundly discouraged. A vitriolic pamphlet I wrote accusing the City Editor of impeding what I considered my rightful ascent to reporter, got me fired. I have had at least 80 jobs since I came to the U.S. Some lasted a day, some a week, some a month or two, a few lasted a year or more, with the longest stretching to a record eight years. I worked as a dishwasher, busboy, night cable operator, insurance agent, librarian, fish salesman, sailor, taxi driver, security guard (Pinkerton, then Burns), waiter, messenger. I wrote for plumbing magazines, environmental engineering magazines, travel magazines, etc., all the while attempting to assert myself in the more rarefied spheres of “mainstream” journalism.

I was in my forties when I finally landed the best job I ever had — international editor at the late futurist magazine, OMNI, where I rubbed elbows with the likes of Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, etc. I co-founded a magazine covering international nuclear, biological and chemical warfare activities worldwide. The magazine was published and marketed by OMNI. I was subsequently fitted with a third hat, that of U.S. editor of SCIENCE IN THE USSR, also funded by OMNI. I traveled regularly to Moscow and St. Petersburg, both before and after the”fall.” OMNI eventually folded, taking with it the other two ventures down as it sank.

Shortly after the fall of OMNI I went to work as a press officer at the Consulate General of Israel in New York. I quit after two years and moved to Costa Rica,
I have been published by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Connecticut Post, Newsday, New York Post, Jerusalem Post, Granma (Cuba), American Atheist, Penthouse, La Opinion and half a dozen English- and Spanish-language papers and periodicals in Central America.

I also worked for two years as a copy editor, staff writer and columnist at the Antelope Valley Press.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong> How did you come to write for the Signal?
<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong> By now technically retired, laden with a surfeit of things to say but no receptive place to say it, I contacted Leon Worden. Leon wrote back, “Let me see what you have.” The rest is history. That was about five years ago. I continued to write for other venues, mostly in Central America which I continued to cover freelance.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong>As you look back on your career spanning decades and several continents, what’s the most memorable event or story you’ve written about? Any stories you are particularly proud of?
<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong> I wrote scores of features, investigative reports, news analyses and editorials, many of which earned me the ire of readers, clerics, military officers and chiefs of state alike. I suppose it is these types of stories that gave me the most satisfaction. If I had to pick those that brought me closest to an ill-fated end, I’d pick: (1) my investigative report of the assassination of a charismatic Maya tribal chieftain, Candido Amador Recinos, in western Honduras about 10 years ago. Having identified the culprits, I turned their names over to two members of Honduras’ Congress — who promptly told me they hadn’t heard a word I said and very kindly showed me the door. Candido’s murder is as yet unsolved and unavenged.

I had to decamp Honduras in the middle of the night when my expose, which was embargoed for about two weeks, was mistakenly published while I was still in Honduras. (2) my expose of the routine execution of street children in Guatemala and Honduras by agents of the state. This earned me a death threat in the form of a funeral wreath propped against my hotel door in Guatemala City. (3) An article entitled, The Right, The Cross and the CIA, a searing indictment of the symbiotic relationship between conservative Christians and U.S. intelligence services — especially during the “dirty war” of the 80s. (4) a series of features on human trafficking and child prostitution — both funded by narcotrtaffickers — in Central America. (5) and an essay on Liberation Theology which, if were a Catholic, I would cheerfully embrace. There may be others that I’ve forgotten.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong> You have a distinct, some would say wordy, style. What writers, journalists and authors have inspired Willy Gutman?
<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong> Without a doubt, first and foremost the works of Marcus Aurelius, Maimonides and Spinoza, French revolutionary philosophers Voltaire and J.J. Rousseau, the deliciously scabrous but socially relevant works of the Marquis de Sade, French poet Baudelaire, the incomparable Mark Twain, Jean-Paul Sartre, Alexandre Dumas, Franz Kafka — a major influence on my optic and style — Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, the towering Tennessee Williams, John Steinbeck — frankly too many to mention.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong> For years, your columns have offered a stark, visceral look into a world not known at all by your many of your readers in The Signal. You have described child prostitutes in Central America, crazed old women roaming the streets, corrupt crony governments, and children using drugs. What did you hope to convey to your readers by writing these columns for a newspaper serving a conservative, insulated place like Santa Clarita?

<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong>A taste of the things I experienced in “the trenches,” and an almost irresistible compulsion to drag the smug, the content and the unknowing with me through the mud.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong> What kind of reaction have you received from The Signal’s readers over the years? Was it mostly negative or positive or something else?

<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong> It is safe to say that most of those who agreed with me graced me with their silence, whereas those who didn’t showered me with invectives. I prefer invectives.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong>Philosophers call the contradiction between the kind, loving God of the Judeo-Christian tradition and the reality of a world full of suffering the “Problem of Evil.” You have certainly seen and described suffering in places Americans seldom think about. Did this play a part in you becoming an atheist, or were there other reasons?

<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong> As I said somewhere, the notion of an “all-knowing” supernatural creator/arbiter/destroyer seemed ludicrous to me even as a child. But I went along, gathering further evidence of nature’s excruciating indifference in the face of millennia of human suffering. The Holocaust, which nearly swallowed me as well, and a thousand examples of abject “divine” indifference toward his alleged “creation” reinforced my conviction that man created god, not the other way around. (I once asked a Curthusian monk, who lives with fellow monks in solitude and silent prayer for the “redemption of man” whether their prayers had made any difference over time. The Carthusian Order was founded more than 900 years ago…. He admitted he couldn’t answer my question but would continue to pray…). I kept my agnosticism to myself for most of my life. Atheism was the next and ultimate step toward complete emancipation. I cannot put into words how liberated I feel since I’ve come out of the proverbial “closet.”

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong> One theme running through many of your columns is that of the rich and powerful taking advantage of the poor and weak. When you write a column, is it your hope to effect a change or to challenge America’s “sacred cows” or both?

<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong> In the beginning and for a long time, I was filled with idealism and exuberance and the sustaining notion that what I say and reveal and unearth might make a difference somewhere. Exuberance and idealism have long since turned to nausea. Nothing will ever change. I got tired of yelling at the deaf but I maintained the momentum, now stripped of my former sanguinity, by succumbing to reflex, including the urge to challenge sacred cows, to keep naked emperors bare-assed for all to see.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong> You have visited the Santa Clarita Valley on occasion. What is your opinion of the SCV, its people and our community?

<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong> I know you will laugh. Santa Clarita is beautiful and inviting but the city is so spread out and so labyrinthine in design and girth that I invariably get lost every time I visit. Never fails. You can parachute me, blindfolded, in the middle of Manhattan, at night, and I will know exactly where I am. I become hopelessly disoriented, with no concept of the major cardinal points or of the urban geography. I suppose if I lived there, I’d learn soon enough how to navigate its seemingly interminable thoroughfares.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong> What’s next for Willy Gutman? You have published two books, one fiction and one non-fiction, do you plan another?

<strong>W.E. Gutman:</strong> I have published three books. The first, JOURNEY TO XIBALBA — The Subversion of Human Rights in Central America (now out of print) is an anthology of some 34 articles published in various media. It tells what I do. The second is my autobiography (referred to above). It tells who I am with shameless honesty. The third, my only work of fiction, is NOCTURNES — Tales from the Dreamtime, published in late 2006. An indictment of the tyranny of forced ideas, it sums up everything I ever wanted to say about life and death, justice and injustice, human bestiality, war and peace, religiosity and the oxygenated air of skepticism and intellectual inquiry. I think, therefore I am; I am, therefore I doubt.

I am now working on a screenplay adaptation of NOCTURNES. I will soon be in search of a producer and director. A fourth book is a possibility. For the rest, que sera, sera.

<strong>SCVTalk:</strong> Thank you Willy, and best of luck.

<strong>Note:</strong> Leon Worden will interview Gutman at length for a special Newsmaker interview. The interview should be broadcast on SCVTV Channel 20 and/or posted online. I’ll post a link when it is available.