My Germany: A Jewish Writer Returns to the World His Parents Escaped [Hardcover]

Lev Raphael (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 28, 2009

Lev Raphael grew up loathing everything German. A son of Holocaust survivors, haunted by his parents' suffering and traumatic losses under Nazi rule, he was certain that Germany was one place in the world he would never visit. Those feelings shaped his Jewish and gay identity, his life, and his career.
    Then the barriers of a lifetime began to come down, as revealed in this moving memoir. After his mother's death, while researching her war years, Raphael found a distant relative living in the very city where she had been a slave laborer.
    What would he learn if he actually traveled to the place where his mother had found freedom and met his father? Not long after that epochal trip, a German publisher bought several of his books for translation. Raphael was launched on book tours in Germany, discovering not so much a new Germany, but a new self: someone unafraid to face the past and transcend it.

 

 

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Germany was, Raphael says, “a country I had sworn never to visit . . . anywhere I turned in that country, I might face something that had belonged to a murdered relative.” But a book tour for his Holocaust-survivor novel The German Money (2003) took him there. Haunted by his mother’s experiences in a slave labor camp, he wondered whether forgiveness is possible. In this book, that leads to flashbacks personalizing the horrors of the Holocaust. A photo of relatives in pre-war Vilna, “as much at ease as a Jew could be in Poland,” prompted musings about the Poles’ anti-Semitism, which eventuates in recollections of his mother’s desperate retreat in 1941 from the Polish-Soviet border to Vilna, where Germans were rounding up Jewish men for mass execution. Encompassing recollections of childhood with parents grimly silent on the defining experience of their lives as well as accounts of historic atrocities, Raphael’s chronicle of growth and self-discovery isn’t easy reading, but his hard-earned healing and freedom from a tortured past make it remarkably satisfying. --Whitney Scott

Review

It is impossible to read Raphael's story without feeling a sense of awe at what he was able to accomplish.
--Nicki Leone
Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance --Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance

"Once again, Lev Raphael has broken ground with new literary matter.  His memoir reads like a mystery novel." --Studies in American Jewish Literature

“Part travelogue and part detective story, My Germany is a wholly enthralling, beautifully written story of healing and forgiveness.”—Lynne Olson, author of Troublesome Young Men

“Lev Raphael writes with the precision of a neurosurgeon, the warmth of an ancient storyteller, and the soul of a people that has known the extremes of joy and sorrow, hope and despair, love and hate more than almost any other.”—The Jewish Bulletin, San Francisco

“Stunning and powerful. . . . Lev Raphael’s memoir is a superb work combining intellectual rigor with emotional honesty in exploring his three-fold identity as a son of Holocaust survivors, a Jew, and a gay man.”—Alan L. Berger, Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair of Holocaust Studies, Florida Atlantic University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (January 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 029923150X
• ISBN-13: 978-0299231507
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,053,665 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #36 in Books > Travel > United States > States > Wisconsin
  • #80 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Travel

More About the Author

Lev Raphael has wanted to be an author since he was in second grade, and he's not only achieved his dream, he's published 19 books in genres from memoir to mystery; had his books translated into nearly a dozen languages; appeared in two documentaries; won various prizes; done hundreds of invited talks and readings on three different continents; recently sold his literary papers (92 boxes!) to the Michigan State University Libraries (MSUL); been the subject of scholarly articles, papers and book chapters; and seen his work taught at colleges and universities around the country. Which means he's become homework. Who knew?

Born and raised in New York, he got over it and has spent half his life in Michigan. He's a pioneer in writing about children of Holocaust survivors, which he's been doing since 1978, longer than almost any other American author. He frequently tours with his books (check http://www.levraphael.com for his current schedule) and is currently touring with My Germany, a memoir/travelogue exploring the role Germany has played in his family, his life, and his career. After he escaped academe to write full-time, he reviewed extensively for over a decade for the Detroit Free Press, Michigan Radio, The Washington Post, Jerusalem Report, The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Forward, Boston Review, and Lambda Book Report. He now reviews for Bibliobuffet.com and WKAR 90.5 FM/East Lansing Public Radio, and when he's not busy, he sometimes imagines some graduate student years from now in the MSUL archives puzzling over his handwriting.

A seasoned reader of his own work, with a background in theater and teaching, he loves the performance aspect of touring, as well as meeting people he'd never meet back home. And the sightseeing. And the foreign foods. German fans in Berlin, Frankfurt, Hannover, Magdeburg, Dessau and Halle will get to hear him next fall. Stay tuned to this page or check his web site for details of his next German book tour. For photos and description of previous sones, go to http://www.levraphael.com/europe_photos.html.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A multifaceted tour de force, March 11, 2009

By 

Heidi (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: My Germany: A Jewish Writer Returns to the World His Parents Escaped (Hardcover)

Lev Raphael's latest book, My Germany, is a multifaceted tour de force that is at once shocking, compelling, informative and deeply moving. Raphael recounts his parents' horrific experiences as victims of the Holocaust. He delves into their unspeakable suffering as well as their triumphant survival. But Raphael goes beyond the atrocities of WWII. He explores the monumental impact of his parents' survivorship not only upon the victims themselves, but also upon their children. He paints a poignant, very personal portrait of what it is like to grow up in a house where ghosts of the past lurk in every corner. As he moves on in life, shadows of his parents' tragedies follow. In time, Raphael comes to cherish his Jewish heritage. He also finds love and embraces his gay identity. But it is not until he embarks upon a book tour throughout Germany that he truly faces, and conquers, his parents' demons.

Once in a great while, a book comes a long that imparts knowledge not only about the world around us, but also about the world within us. This is one such book. It is a rare treasure and a must-read for everyone.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating..., March 4, 2009

By 

Jill Meyer (United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Germany: A Jewish Writer Returns to the World His Parents Escaped (Hardcover)

I've read everything Lev Raphael has written over the years. I am Jewish, but my family has been in the US for three, four, and five generations, on both sides. Other than hearing from my mother, a teenager in Chicago during the late 30's/early 40's, about her family's attempts to help relatives flee Germany and Czechoslovakia, we were largely untouched by Hitler's Holocaust. However, I am a voracious reader of Holocaust literature,both fiction and non-fiction.

Raphael grew up with two survivors as parents. Nearly everything in daily life was touched on by his parents' experiences. And, as with most survivors' families, they firmly boycotted anything produced in Germany. Lev did not meet a German til he was in college. He had no interest in ever visiting Germany, and in fact didn't do so til he was invited to give a speech there about ten years ago.

But wanting to investigate his mother's experience as a slave laborer during the war, he hesitantly visited Germany a few times, and eventually found his mother's story. He also found friends in Germany among the "new generation" of Germans, born largely after the war and brought up with full knowledge, and acknowledgment, of their parents' and grandparents' misdeeds.

He began to feel at ease during his trips to Germany, often doing speaking engagements when his books were published in German.

Raphael writes a great story of how his old taboos were recognised, acknowledged, and then discarded. I don't think he would have been able to "discard", without an exhaustive "recognition" and "acknowledgment" of both his feelings and the facts of post-war Germany.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars My Germany by Lev Raphael, April 27, 2009

By 

F. Zieff - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Germany: A Jewish Writer Returns to the World His Parents Escaped (Hardcover)

I could not put this book down. My background is similar to the author's. My parents are Jewish Holocaust Survivors. I experienced many of the same things in my traumatic childhood as he did. I grew up hating Germany and the German people for murdering my parents families in Poland and Czechoslovakia. In recent years, however, I have been re-examining my attitude toward Germany and, finally, emotionally and cognitively accepting that anyone born in Germany during and after the war are not to blame and don't deserve to be hated. In fact, as the author writes, this generation has also suffered greatly from the terrible guilt of their country's recent history.

I highly recommend Mr. Raphael's book. He's a wonderful writer.

Felicia P. Zieff
President
Association of Descendants of the Shoah (Holocaust) - Illinois
Chicago, IL, USA