{"id":35,"date":"2004-10-01T14:58:14","date_gmt":"2004-10-01T18:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/2004\/10\/01\/the-sum-of-books-unwritten\/"},"modified":"2004-10-01T14:58:14","modified_gmt":"2004-10-01T18:58:14","slug":"the-sum-of-books-unwritten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/2004\/10\/01\/the-sum-of-books-unwritten\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sum of Books Unwritten"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

NOTE:  I wrote this on Thursday Sept. 30th, but couldn’t post it until now. <\/p>\n

Yesterday (Wed. 9\/29) Sara and I drove into Slovakia to go to a hot
\nsprings.  (It turned out to be an annoying “Aqua Park” and not a
\nhot springs, but that’s another story.)  On the way back, we
\nstopped in a little town very near the border with Poland.  We got
\nout of the car and wandered around for a bit.  About a block off
\nthe main square, we passed a pretty white building about three stories
\nhigh, with columns around the front door and other modest
\ndecoration.  A bit bigger than the others and certainly more
\nornate.  I thought, hmm, could this be the old synagogue? 
\nLooking up, I noticed two tablets inset into the front of the building
\ntowards the top.  Sure enough, a local woman passing by confirmed
\nthat this was the “synogoga zydowski.”  It’s a shoe store
\nnow.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Before I left for this trip, I told a
\ncolleague that I would be visiting Poland and going to the town where
\nmy grandfather was born.  “That sounds emotional,” he
\nreplied.  Yes, I said, but I thought that seeing Auschwitz and
\nother Holocaust-related sites would be much more emotional.  It
\nturns out that the two are inextricably intertwined.  Visiting
\nMogielnica was very saddening, because the only traces of my extended
\nfamily, and my people, were two huts in the middle of a forest where
\nthe cemetery used to be and an old birth register at City Hall.<\/p>\n

It was the same in this town and all across Europe.
\n<\/span>
\n
\nIt is not just the horribly brutal
\nand, later on, mechanized way that the Jews were killed.  It’s not
\njust the hurt and betrayal of the participation of local Poles (not all
\nof them, of course).  It’s the loss of a people and a culture,
\nhundreds of years’ worth.  Lives unlived.  Holidays not
\ncelebrated. Gefilte fish not prepared.  Jokes not told.  What
\nwould have happened if the Holocaust had not occurred?  Might a
\nsteady stream of Jews still be going back and forth between New York
\nand Europe and feeding the once-vibrant Yiddish culture there? 
\nFor that matter, might Yiddish still be widely spoken?  “The sum of books
\nunwritten,” as someone once said.  That’s the saddest part of all
\nto me:  lives unlived; a culture nearly erased. <\/span>
\n<\/font><\/span>
\n<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NOTE:  I wrote this on Thursday Sept. 30th, but couldn’t post it until now. Yesterday (Wed. 9\/29) Sara and I drove into Slovakia to go to a hot springs.  (It turned out to be an annoying “Aqua Park” and not a hot springs, but that’s another story.)  On the way back, we stopped in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1453],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jackstriptoeuropestories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jackstriptoeurope\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}