Chris' Fish Place

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley.

                If one is of a certain age, there is a sense of things always being known.  Those of my generation and younger generations have always known about the Holocaust, whether this is because of teachers or television or museum depends on the age and other factors of the individual.  It’s hard to remember that such openness or wide acknowledgment was not common after World War II.  It is hard for us to acknowledge that maybe survivors don’t want to be treated as something special, that the sharing of stories via any Holocaust Museum or the Shoah Foundation. 

                And that is what make Stein’s book so thought provoking.

                On one level, the book is about the children of survivors trying to discover and come terms with what happened to their parents.  On another level, it is about the power and conflicting aspects of storytelling.

                It is also about how people can be affected differently by the same thing.

                Stein uses interviews as well her personal story – her parents -  to illustrate not only the immediate reaction to the Holocaust, right after the war, but also the far reaching inter-generational effects.  In some ways, though not directly, it changes and challenges how such personal stories are presented not only in mass media but also in the classroom.

                It is also touches on the personal experience versus the historical experience. 

                The book is largely a psychological story and not so much a historical one.  It is not a history of the Second World War, though you could say it is a history of the effects of the Second World War.  Starting with the treatment of survivors as they immigrant outside of Europe (the focus is largely on the American experience.  This is a weak point of the book) and ending with the publishing of memoirs and memory programs that continues today, Stein examines not only story telling but how the need to speak or the demand to speak can affect the person.

                She also traces the media and how the media can but forward or push something.  For instance, she likens the Holocaust mini-series to the Roots, just for a different audience.  The “discovery” or acceptable of storytelling by Hollywood, she in part argues, seemed to make it safer if not easier to speak out.  And this Hollywood shifts comes because of the second-generation survivors – the children of those who survived or who got out.  Children such as Stein.  Or my middle school history teacher.

                The ability of the second generation, she suggest, come from many of the counter-culture movements of the 60s, even if those of the second generation did not fully connect to all those counter culture movements.  A large part of her thesis seems to be the idea that feminism allowed for the ability of emotional dissection and recovery.  She likens it to the therapy that abuse victims go though – most telling when discussing Oprah and Elie Wiesel’s trip.

                This does not mean that she ignores the historical questions.  Is it a cult of victimhood as some argue?  A way to control people?  Though description and analysis of various media forms, Stein debates these points, not only with their supporters, but also, seemingly with herself.  This conflict is one that evens a reader who lacks a familial connection to the Holocaust.  Is our reading and even promoting of personal experience stories justified? 

                Even if you are not a psychology or sociology major this book will make you think.