We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust

We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust

Winner of the 2013 National Book Prize fromÂ Grub Street, the Towson Prize for Literature, and the 2013 Prakhin International Literary Foundation Award.

Ellen Cassedy's longing to recover the Yiddish she'd lost with her mother's death eventually led her to Lithuania, once the "Jerusalem of the North." As she prepared for her journey, her uncle, sixty years after he'd left Lithuania in a boxcar, made a shocking disclosure about his wartime experience, and an elderly man from her ancestral town made an unsettling request. Gradually, what had begun as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future. How does a nation--how do successor generations, moral beings--overcome a bloody past? How do we judge the bystanders, collaborators, perpetrators, rescuers, and ourselves? These are the questions Cassedy confronts in We Are Here, one woman's exploration of Lithuania's Jewish history combined with a personal exploration of her own family's place in it.

Digging through archives with the help of a local whose motives are puzzling to her; interviewing natives, including an old man who wants to "speak to a Jew" before he dies; discovering the complications encountered by a country that endured both Nazi and Soviet occupation--Cassedy finds that it's not just the facts of history that matter, but what we choose to do with them.

Country USA
Brand University of Nebraska Press
Manufacturer University of Nebraska Press
Binding Paperback
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780803230125
ReleaseDate 0000-00-00

Country	USA
Brand	University of Nebraska Press
Manufacturer	University of Nebraska Press
Binding	Paperback
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780803230125
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

We Are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust

You might also like...