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A review by jacquie62
Shmuel's Bridge: Following the Tracks to Auschwitz with My Survivor Father by Jason Sommer
3.0
Shmuel's Bridge: Following the Tracks to Auschwitz with My Survivor Father
Jason Sommer
Release date: 15 Mar 2022
Description:
"A moving memoir of a son’s relationship with his survivor father and of their Eastern European journey through a family history of incalculable loss.
Jason Sommer’s father, Jay, is ninety-eight years old and losing his memory. More than seventy years after arriving in New York from WWII-torn Europe, he is forgetting the stories that defined his life, the life of his family, and the lives of millions of Jews who were affected by Nazi terror. Observing this loss, Jason vividly recalls the trip to Eastern Europe the two took together in 2001.
As father and son travel from the town of Jay’s birth to the labor camp from which he escaped, and to Auschwitz, where many in his family were lost, the stories Jason’s father has told all his life come alive. So too do Jason’s own memories of the way his father’s past complicated and impacted Jason's own inner life.
Shmuel's Bridge shows history through a double lens: the memories of a growing son’s complex relationship with his father and the meditations of that son who, now grown, finds himself caring for a man losing all connection to a past that must not be forgotten."
Review:
True story of a father and son (also the author) who journey to Eastern Europe in 2001 to revisit the atrocities of the Second World War. Jason, a poet, seems to have had a complicated life growing up with his father but other than a few occasional quips, I don't think this angle was thoroughly explored, however. As with most books dealing with the Holocaust, it was an unbelievably horrendous time to be alive. And, if you were Jewish, life only got worse. The Sommers went on the trip with the purpose of finding where exactly Uncle Shmuel died, but in the process, they discovered so much more. I enjoyed their trip through Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland. Trips like this need to be taken by everyone so that we never, ever, forget what happened when Nazi Germany was in power.
I was gifted this advance copy by NetGalley and was under no obligation to provide a review.
Jason Sommer
Release date: 15 Mar 2022
Description:
"A moving memoir of a son’s relationship with his survivor father and of their Eastern European journey through a family history of incalculable loss.
Jason Sommer’s father, Jay, is ninety-eight years old and losing his memory. More than seventy years after arriving in New York from WWII-torn Europe, he is forgetting the stories that defined his life, the life of his family, and the lives of millions of Jews who were affected by Nazi terror. Observing this loss, Jason vividly recalls the trip to Eastern Europe the two took together in 2001.
As father and son travel from the town of Jay’s birth to the labor camp from which he escaped, and to Auschwitz, where many in his family were lost, the stories Jason’s father has told all his life come alive. So too do Jason’s own memories of the way his father’s past complicated and impacted Jason's own inner life.
Shmuel's Bridge shows history through a double lens: the memories of a growing son’s complex relationship with his father and the meditations of that son who, now grown, finds himself caring for a man losing all connection to a past that must not be forgotten."
Review:
True story of a father and son (also the author) who journey to Eastern Europe in 2001 to revisit the atrocities of the Second World War. Jason, a poet, seems to have had a complicated life growing up with his father but other than a few occasional quips, I don't think this angle was thoroughly explored, however. As with most books dealing with the Holocaust, it was an unbelievably horrendous time to be alive. And, if you were Jewish, life only got worse. The Sommers went on the trip with the purpose of finding where exactly Uncle Shmuel died, but in the process, they discovered so much more. I enjoyed their trip through Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland. Trips like this need to be taken by everyone so that we never, ever, forget what happened when Nazi Germany was in power.
I was gifted this advance copy by NetGalley and was under no obligation to provide a review.