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From Auschwitz to Ithaca: The Transnational Journey of Jake Geldwert

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Considering the sheer volume of Holocaust accounts, it has become incumbent upon the author of each new title to justify its existence. Diane Wolf does this by claiming "a substantially different spin from conventional Holocaust testimonials." By this she means that most oral history interviews of Holocaust survivors give short shrift to their lives after the war and give little attention to how they might have gone on to create meaning and a new life out of the chaos and horror that they once endured. For example, the Shoah Foundation video interviews cover their subjects' post-war lives only briefly and conclude with a view of the survivors surrounded by children and grandchildren. With a seemingly happy ending thus affixed, any continuing bitter memories, regrets, and unresolved trauma on the part of the survivors are downplayed, or not explored at all. Wanting to avoid such an oversimplified portrayal, Wold takes a life review approach to reveal how her subject's personal identity was "reconfigured in a post-Holocaust world."

Following an introduction that blends the theoretical (editing methodology) with the personal (her long-term friendship with her subject), Wolf presents her interviews with Holocaust survivor Jake Geldwert. Mr. Geldwert recalls his life growing up in the predominantly Jewish town of Auschwitz prior to World War II, the rise of Nazism and outbreak of World War II that results in his imprisonment at the Auschwitz concentration camp, a recounting of that imprisonment, and an account of his eventual liberation, marriage to his wife Jeannette (who was also in Auschwitz), and their post-war adjustment period. He goes on to describe their emigration to America, and new life in Ithaca, New York, where for many years he worked at the grocery story of his wife's relatives. The book ends with Mr. Geldwert's expressed hope that younger generations will "remember what happened to the generation before, to watch out to do the best they can to have a peaceful world."

Whereas books based on oral history vary from the raw (such as certain Texas Folklore Society Publications) to the well-cooked (Studs Terkel), this one may be considered lightly steamed. The five chapters that comprise the main body of the text consist almost entirely of Geldwert's words. Though the lack of explanatory material may leave some general readers adrift, many of the stories speak for themselves. My favorite anecdote of Jake Geldwert dates from a time many years after the war when he was taking his oral examination to receive United States citizenship. The interrogator sprang a question on him at the end that was not in his study book: "How come they have a Senate and a Congress? Isn't one of them enough?" Mr. Geldwert's winning reply: "In our home town at home when we served the tea, they gave you a glass of tea and they gave you an empty glass right with it. Why did they give you the empty glass? Because if the tea was too hot for you, you poured it into the other one to cool it off. And the same thing here. You put a law into one house, so if it's too hot they cool it off in the other one."