The Internet is for sharing.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s where we go to reveal our innermost thoughts.\u00c2\u00a0 The new Joni Mitchell is not a musician, but a blogger, detailing his or her own truth in the hope that someone, somewhere, will read the words and the writer will not feel so alone.<\/p>\n
I had a rough night.\u00c2\u00a0 One wherein you wake up every hour or two.\u00c2\u00a0 And then stay awake, for far too long, eyes shut, feigning sleep, until you’re swept away again.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I finally decided I would not try to drift off one more time, I turned on the light and reached over for my book, Daniel Mendelsohn’s "The Lost".<\/p>\n
Actually, it was an electronic book.\u00c2\u00a0 Downloaded to my Kindle.\u00c2\u00a0 Frustrated that too much of my recent reading was substandard, ultimately ungratifying, I decided to do research.\u00c2\u00a0 I looked for award-winning books.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how I found "The Lost".<\/p>\n
Oftentimes, awards are given for work that is good in concept, but bad in execution.\u00c2\u00a0 Just look at the Grammys.\u00c2\u00a0 How many of those records do you want to hear in the years thereafter?\u00c2\u00a0 And I can tell you that "The Lost" is not the easiest read.\u00c2\u00a0 The author, Mr. Mendelsohn, is a classicist, with a Ph.D. from Princeton.\u00c2\u00a0 He sprinkles his narrative with Bible interpretations, delineated in italics, page after page.\u00c2\u00a0 You understand the point he’s making (after coming to know his style, reading to the end of the paragraph before trying to divine the point), but it detracts from the story.\u00c2\u00a0 His search for his relatives.<\/p>\n
They’ve been lost.<\/p>\n
But they can’t exactly be found.<\/p>\n
You see they died in the Holocaust.<\/p>\n
That’s more than half a century ago now.\u00c2\u00a0 Some people deny it ever happened.\u00c2\u00a0 But reading this book, all you can say is NEVER AGAIN!<\/p>\n
I was hooked because of the informal style.\u00c2\u00a0 Wherein Mr. Mendelsohn speaks about his grandfather, about gatherings of old Jews, who pinched your cheeks and spoke in heavily-accented English and creeped you out more than excited you.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, now I’m injecting my own world.\u00c2\u00a0 Mr. Mendelsohn loved most of his old relatives.\u00c2\u00a0 But not Joe the Barber, not all of them.\u00c2\u00a0 But if only he’d known who they were in the family tree before they died!\u00c2\u00a0 He had so much to ask them, but now it’s too late!<\/p>\n
We grew up living to play baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 Believing the anti-semitism our parents spoke of had been eradicated.\u00c2\u00a0 We were assimilated.\u00c2\u00a0 But we knew six million had been killed.\u00c2\u00a0 There were those at the JCC with tattoos on their arms, it hadn’t even been twenty years, we could not forget, we were constantly reminded.<\/p>\n
I come from Russian and Polish stock.\u00c2\u00a0 My grandfather’s family is from Russia.\u00c2\u00a0 A big clan. A bunch went to Palestine.\u00c2\u00a0 Some went to Boston.\u00c2\u00a0 Others stayed behind and became Communists.\u00c2\u00a0 Uncle Saul fought in the Russian army and ended up in the Bay Area after the war.\u00c2\u00a0 He fell in love with a widow.\u00c2\u00a0 But the group broke it up, it was too soon.\u00c2\u00a0 Saul ultimately married Lily.\u00c2\u00a0 He was always smiling.\u00c2\u00a0 Was he happy?<\/p>\n
Families.\u00c2\u00a0 We know little of my dad’s background.\u00c2\u00a0 Only that his dad lost a hand in a railroad accident and left all his money to his first family in Pittsburgh when he passed away.\u00c2\u00a0 My father had to support his mother, he had to go to night school, the anger stayed in him almost until the day he died.\u00c2\u00a0 Rarely verbalized in terms of what had happened previously, but constantly evidenced in eruptions over seemingly tiny infractions.<\/p>\n
Daniel Mendelsohn’s father’s family history is one of darkness.\u00c2\u00a0 I understand how this can happen.\u00c2\u00a0 How the bad stories can be buried.\u00c2\u00a0 But I can’t understand how the brothers don’t speak.\u00c2\u00a0 My father insisted we all get along.\u00c2\u00a0 No matter how much we sometimes hated each other, the lines of communication had to remain open.\u00c2\u00a0 I follow that principle to this day.\u00c2\u00a0 Life is too short.\u00c2\u00a0 Some people cannot give up the grudge, cannot put forth the olive branch, you must swallow your pride and reach out.<\/p>\n
Daniel’s grandfather, a raconteur, like everyone in my mother’s family, including my mother herself, couldn’t get over the death of his brother’s family back in Poland.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, it kept changing, from Austria\/Hungary to Russia to Poland to Germany.\u00c2\u00a0 And upon his grandfather’s death, Daniel discovers letters from this deceased brother, Shmiel, begging his relatives in America to GET HIM OUT!<\/p>\n
If not the whole family, then just one daughter.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe he’ll write to Roosevelt, the President will understand.\u00c2\u00a0 All his brothers and sisters are in America, shouldn’t he be there too?<\/p>\n
But we turn a blind eye.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re too wrapped up in our own lives.\u00c2\u00a0 We have little compassion.<\/p>\n
But we’re not absent of human feeling, like the Germans and Ukrainians who eradicate Daniel Mendelsohn’s family.<\/p>\n
The depictions of the Holocaust will both horrify and rivet you.\u00c2\u00a0 Man’s inhumanity to man seems to know no limit.\u00c2\u00a0 If I repeated what happened, you wouldn’t believe it.\u00c2\u00a0 Or would say it’s too gross.\u00c2\u00a0 But it happened.\u00c2\u00a0 To regular people.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like you and me.\u00c2\u00a0 To Shmiel, who’d actually immigrated to America, but had returned to Bolechower, because he preferred to be a big fish in a small pond instead of starting over.<\/p>\n
Like I said, "The Lost" is not always an easy read.\u00c2\u00a0 So I’m not going to tell you to read it. I’m just going to say we’re insignificant.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re working to be remembered, forget it.\u00c2\u00a0 At best, your relatives will carry on your memory.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about living.\u00c2\u00a0 In the here and now.\u00c2\u00a0 If you have the privilege.<\/p>\n
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