Daniel Mendelsohn

The author's very personal journey to find the stories of 6 members of his family who were killed in Poland during the Holocaust has much to offer about the bigger picture as well. He tells the story much like his grandfather told stories, looping forward and back, away from what you thought was the main action and then back again. We learn about life in a small Polish town before the war and the hell that visited there during the war. But we also learn about the first section of the Torah show more and interpretations of it through the ages. It might seem irrelevant, but the cycles of destruction and rebirth of human society are very relevant to discussions of the Holocaust.

At times, the book meanders or repeats itself in ways that are less charming, but overall it keeps things moving even with a tough premise - it's hard to find specific answers when so many people who could tell the stories are dead (if not in the war, than in the 60 years between then and when Mendelsohn started seriously researching). For me, that was probably the most poignant part - that we often don't pursue asking questions until the people who could answer them are no longer with us. show less

Daniel Mendelsohn is a name that whenever and wherever it appears, I will read what he has written. I know I will get a thoughtful, educated, serious examination of whatever topic, book, film, TV show, whatever it is. I will learn something new, be shown something in a new light, and will seek out new things to read or to look at. This collection comprises primarily essays previously published in the NY Review of Books or the New Yorker; so the material may not be new to subscribers, but show more many were new to me. And there is not a clinker in the bunch.

A classicist by training, Mendelsohn often manages to tie his ostensible subject (the Boston Marathon bombers, Game of Thrones, robots...) to issues and dramas plumbed back in ancient Greece or Rome, in ways that enlighten both and serve to underscore the universalities and humanity across the millennia. He is a master (and staunch defender, god love him) of the art of the negative review: even when he is critical, it is expressed with patience, serious attention, concrete examples, and careful reasoning. There is a lovely, poignant piece on his long epistolary relationship with the novelist Mary Renault, whose stories set in the ancient world lit up his attraction to the classics and his sexuality as a teenager. (Sad to say, not ONE of her books is owned by my local affluent, educated, suburban public library, so I must search farther afield.) His lengthy (necessarily...) piece on Karl Ove Knausgaard's six-volume "autofiction" oeuvre is an insightful consideration of that monument of weirdly compelling (at least some of the time) self-absorption. He concludes, pithily and brilliantly, that Knausgaard (as does Hitler in his own "Struggle") tends to focus entirely on the "I" and the "they" of his writing, leaving no room for "you"... the reader. The final piece, "A Critic's Manifesto," made me want to stand up and cheer: everything I had intuited, sought, and admired in Mendelsohn's work turns out to be exactly what he aims and strives for. Well done, sir. Please hurry up and write more. My brain is waiting for a blast of oxygen. show less

A few years ago, my read-aloud group read through Fagle's Odyssey, and it made me curious about this title. Mendelsohn is teaching a seminar on The Odyssey, and his elderly father asks to sit in, to refresh his memory from his high school days. For the reader, this becomes a dual text: fascinating notes about the Odyssey itself, and a wonderful meditation on fathers and sons, particularly this father and son, so different from each other. As the ancient story moves forward, the son reflects show more on his father's reactions as well as his own, and his students' responses, and the search for the father parallels in many ways Odysseus's journey home. Bronson Pinchot read the audiobook I listened to, and I loved every minute of it. show less

My interest in family history came from listening to my paternal grandmother's stories, which were often sparked by one of the objects that belonged to one of the relatives – a plate, a piece of jewelry, a photo album, a scrapbook, a diary. Daniel Mendelsohn's interest in his family's history seems to have developed in much the same way. His maternal grandfather told stories of the Jäger relatives who had emigrated from Bolechow, at the time a Polish town, to the U.S. His grandfather show more treasured the pictures and letters that were the only reminders left of his oldest brother, Shmiel, and Shmiel's wife and four daughters. While the rest of the family made new lives in the U.S., Shmiel decided to stay in Bolechow, where he was a “big fish in a little pond”. Shmiel and his family perished in the Holocaust along with almost all of Bolechow's Jewish residents.

Years of research allowed Mendelsohn to fill in many details on his family tree. As he filled in more and more details about other family members, Mendelsohn began to feel that he needed to learn more about his great-uncle Shmiel to complete the family tree. In order to find what could still be known about Shmiel's family and their fate, Mendelsohn needed to talk with the surviving remnant of Bolechow's Jews who were old enough to remember the Jäger family from before the war. Accompanied most of the way by his photographer brother Matt, Mendelsohn traveled to Australia, Israel, Sweden, Denmark, and Ukraine to meet people who had been there and to find out what they knew and what stories they had heard.

I was particularly struck by this passage:
It's different to write the story of people who survived, because there's someone to interview, and they can tell you these amazing stories. As I said these words, I thought of Mrs. Begley, who had once looked coldly at me and said, 'If you didn't have an amazing story, you didn't survive.'

My problem, I went on..., is that I want to write the story of people who didn't survive. People who had no story, anymore.

That passage sums up how this book differs from other books I've read about the Holocaust. It's not a survival account. It's about six individuals who didn't survive.

This is an inspirational book despite the grim subject matter. Mendelsohn frames his journey with meditation and commentary on weekly Torah readings (parashat) from Genesis. Along the way, he develops a stronger bond with his brother, forms new friendships, and discovers long-lost relatives. The journey is as meaningful as the destination. Highly recommended for readers with an interest in family history, Jewish genealogy, the Holocaust, and the history of Ukraine (formerly eastern Poland), particularly the town of Bolechow/Bolekhiv. show less