The Imperative To Remember
Anyone who does not actively, constantly engage in remembering and in making others remember is an accomplice of the enemy. Conversely, whoever opposes the enemy must take the side of his victims and communicate…
Category: Khurbn
The Chasm between Them and Us
Kadya Molodovsky, A Jewish Refugee in New York: Rivke Zilberg’s Journal Translated by Anita Norich The accomplished Yiddish writer Molodovsky wrote this novel in serialized form in 1940-41, knowing obviously what was happening at the…
“Born Only Yesterday, and Already She Speaks Like a Perfect Mensch”
12.14.17 Dear Dianne, I think this is the 4th time I’m reading Meshugah. It was originally serialized in the Yiddish Daily Forward. Because I’m reading it with you, and because Hedy is on our minds,…
“If the Messiah Comes, He’ll Come to This Cafeteria in Miami”
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Shadows on the Hudson Translated by Joseph Sherman Like Meshugah, this is another novel translated from the Yiddish and published after Singer’s death. In Shadows I was gripped by the various characters…
Minutes & Plans & Moons
I first came to the work of Charles Reznikoff in 2008 when I read his terse “poems” in Holocaust. He had read thousands of pages of war crimes trials transcripts to produce condensed, jarring, essential…
Sara Roy speaks to Germans
Your sense of guilt, if that is the correct word, should not derive from criticizing Israel. It should reside in remaining silent in the face of injustice as so many of your forebears did before,…
The Political Economy of Memory
Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide I read this book for my treatment of Wiesel and it gave me plenty of perspectives, arguments and insights. The question of the…
Remembering Is Not Enough
Hilene Flanzbaum, The Americanization of the Holocaust The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999 The following note is from summer 1999 when I was reworking my dissertation to what would become my first book, Elie Wiesel…
In the News: Aung San Suu Kyi Not Worthy of Elie Wiesel Award
There is more than one irony in this New York Times article.
A Feat of Reading and Writing
1. [T]he sheer enormity of what took place between 1933 and 1945 beggars our powers of description and understanding. The more one studies this period and its excesses, the more one must conclude that for…