Testimony: Contmporary Writres Make the Holocaust Personal

TESTIMONY CONTEMPORARY WRITERS MAKE THE HOLOCAUST PERSONAL To make personal is a form of testimony. In this landmark volume, a group of America’s finest novelists, essayists, and poets weave their own stories of the Holocaust’s impact on their lives. By looking closely at their lives – and our own – we see where the shadow continues to fall. The book brings together some of the most distinguished writers of our day: Max Apple, E. M. Broner, Jane DeLynn, Leslie Epstein, Leslie Fiedler, Herb Gold, Geoffrey Hartman, Alfred Kazin, David Lehman, Alan Lelchuk, Julius Lester, Gordon Lish, Phillip Lopate, Daphne Merkin, Leonard Michaels, Mark Mirsky, Marge Piercy, Robert Pinsky, Francine Prose, Barbara Rogan, Anne Roiphe, Norma Rosen, David Rosenberg, Susanne Schlotelberg, Grace Schulman, Lore Segal, and David Shapiro. Most of the writers were born during and after the war, in the United States, sheltered from the Holocaust. Although they were distant from the catastrophe, they are now, as writers, called on as witnesses, transmitters for a new generation. Many write of their own childhoods – how they gained knowledge of the Holocaust and how they came to terms with it. One author asks: “Can an event that hardly touched me so have altered me?” The experiences are varied, including a converted Jew who looks back to an unusual past in Georgia and one who recalls Judenrein towns in West Germany. Some embraced Israel, some Hollywood, others academia or politics, some an inner escape. These are tales of family ties and families that are no more, rich religious traditions lost as well as lives where the absence of Jewish culture is now deeply felt.