I Want You to Know We’re Still Here

I found Esther Safran Foers five-star book very worthwhile when it first came out this Spring and we bought 6 additional copies for our family and friends. I have now just re-read the book with great satisfaction for even deeper historical understanding and spiritual renewal. Make no mistake, this book has a universal message and a happy and uplifting ending.
This is a personal memoir, a family- and locality-specific Holocaust history, and a well-researched tale of incredible sadness and indomitable resilience. The author has a wonderfully down-to-earth writing style and tastefully conveys a touch of humor when appropriate. Although narrowly focused on particular individuals, the book has universal significance for a broad audience, quite irrespective of whether your family has a Holocaust connection or you know the memoirist or any of her family.
If you love history, you know that true understanding comes with an appreciation of what very specific ordinary individuals, not just the Great Men and Women, did and felt and thought (as well as such matters can be ascertained from many years distance). This is especially true for the horrendous individual tragedies, the all-too-rare examples of personal moral courage, and the soul-searing feelings of loss and guilt experienced by survivors and later generations that typified World War II and its legacy.
If you have wondered about your own parents and grandparents secrets and largely concealed traumas and struggles, you will empathize with the author and learn something useful from her as to how to explore and live with such mysteries in your family. If you have lost a parent without ever learning that parents innermost thoughts and without receiving the explanations your soul craves, you will appreciate this authors challenge. If you have an interest in genealogy, you should profit from the authors methodology and admire how she used a few old photos, facial recognition science, vague recollections refreshed with persistent questioning, late night inspirations, and irrepressible networking to uncover the existence and names of individuals previously unknown but now dear to her.
The author also takes the reader on a travel adventure to strange places and cultures where you meet intriguing, sometimes funny, and occasionally shy and mysterious people. She paints revealing pictures of tiny villages and mid-sized cities then and now in Poland and Ukraine, US-run displaced person camps in post-war Germany, and immigrants lives in 1950s Washington, DC. You are introduced to a wide assortment of emigres from Eastern Europe now living in Israel, Brazil, and the USA.
You join the author on an emotional roller coaster with several waves of frustration, suspense, and discovery. To build the suspense, there are a fair number of flashbacks and temporal and locational digressions. A chronologically straightforward narrative as you find in many memoirs might have been easier to follow. But part of the enjoyment in reading this book is sorting out the various times, places, people, and relationships, as you must do when tackling a revered Russian novel.
I would have liked a second or more complete genealogical chart of the family branches, including original and married surnames. I would definitely include Anya on any overall family tree. (The frequency of name types and spellings not commonly seen poses a real challenge for the reader, particularly when multiple indirect familial relationships are being referenced.) A map showing the relative proximity of the various Eastern European villages, towns, and cities referenced throughout the book would be an improvement. Kudos for the placement of photographs in or close to the text where the people portrayed or the photos themselves are introduced.

I love the title I Want You to Know Were Still Here. Although the You could be the immoral monsters who sought to wipe out the family and all other Jews, presumably the You addressed here are those family members lost in the Holocaust or by subsequent death. These lives mattered. There should be considerable solace in the fact that the family has survived and prospered in numbers and accomplishments. Moreover, in this book those that died are remembered and better understood. Moreover a few persons (namely, the authors older half-sister Anya and courageous Gentile friends of her father) who were almost lost to memory have been found, their names discovered, and their memory enshrined as well.

I saw the author and her son Jonathan interviewed and that is what prompted me to read the book. I must say that I enjoyed the interview much more than the book. The book is very personal and does provide details that other Jews can be inspired by, shed tears and joy, and also understand the pure devastation that occurred. However in it the end it is really a family book. Difficult to follow for someone who is not part of the family and although there is some relationship because of just being Jewish, it doesn’t fit me and the bigger picture.

Esther Foers remarkable journey to Ukraine (and beyond) reminds me of Cafavys 1911 poetic telling of the journey to Ithaka.

…
Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But dont in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasnt anything else to give you.
…

From secrets and silences of immediate post-Holocaust childhood, to snippets and clues learned only well into adulthood, the author first attempted to unlock the past and reach her destination vicariously. Despite this effort producing literary success and fame for a son, it did not yield results for our author. So, comfortably into the grandparent years, she painstakingly researched and plotted her course so she could undertake the journey personally. As we join the author on her travels, we observe how she unlocks family history long hungered for. All the more amazing is the authors timing. Had she waited any longer to undertake her tasks, her story might have been largely lost forever. Had she begun too early, perhaps neither she nor those providing critical testimonies would have been prepared or inclined to do so.

An important addition to Holocaust histories and an inspiration to seekers of any age and ilk. A story woven from resilience, from memories old and newly uncovered, and from light emerging from darkness.

I was so moved by Esther Foers book, but prior to reading it, coming from a different background, I had assumed I would not feel that I was really part of her audience.

However, her compelling quest to fill in the story of her family, her illumination of story as universal and fundamental to human identity, and
her splendid sense of gratitude for all the steps she experienced in the process it left me feeling that I was entirely at the center of her audience.
In her life and in this memoir, she shows that we are not just passive receptacles of other peoples stories, but rather creators of our own

It is a marvelous book and I hope that at some point, it can be presented to a young audience in some form.

This book brought tears to my eyes many times. Its a story not to be missed. Esther Safran Foer shared her personal journey back to Ukraine to find the shtetl where a family saved her fathers life during the Holocaust and learned more about her family than she expected.

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