Letters from OMI: my father's reluctant holocaust memoir as told to my grandchildren.

I've found Carol's blog already in the early days that I was blogging here  (2006-2007 or so??) and when blogging was much into community forming before social media took over.  

I've read about Carol's family, the children growing up and graduating,  job changes and house moves, retirement but also the loss of parents and the related grief and recently the birth of grandchildren.   We are also connected on Facebook, and although we never met and we are not close, I have the feeling I know Carol's family a little. 

So I know she lost her father a few years ago, who had migrated from post-War Germany to the USA. He had left her his own book manuscripts and a library full of information on his childhood in Nazi Germany as a half-Jewish child and the daunting task to spread their story to the world.  
I know her grandfather was an art collector since she could travel a few years ago as VIP guests to Chemnitz to open an exposition that was showing part of her grandfather's collection. 

Carol started a new blog Letters from OMI and I promised to read it but given the seriousness of the subject I didn't want to do it in between other things, like I tend to read other blog posts.  And in the end I never did. But at the end of last year she published the blog in a book and I profited to buy it on Amazon and spent the start of the year reading it.  And I gave it ample time to watch and digest, since it is heavy. 

It felt quite strange to start reading the book where the protagonists feel familiar and of whome I've seen many pictures before. 

But there was also much new to read...I learned a lot about the fate of the Jewish families in nazi Germany before Europe was at war and during the war, while most of my knowledge about that period has a bigger focus on what happened in the occupied countries like Belgium, France and the Netherlands.  I've never read or seen much from the "inside view".  Although the build up of Nazism isn't either explicit as her grandparents had managed to shield off their children, so her father quite well from the outside world.   So it's mainly her father excruciatingly listing up a suffocating list of ever new Nazi laws screwing down the life of Jewish and semi-Jewish families in Germany.  Every so many days, there is a new restriction. 

I found the extracts from her father's 2nd book where he writes in first person of his life during the war, where at the end he finds his dead father and needs to bury him while still being a teenager.  It is easier to live into the story in this style.

Once again the "inside viewpoint" from the end of the war - that to my experience is one of relief, happiness and joy (and repression of collaboration and treason) - was new to see it from a conquered and occupied country in ruins with foreign troops and rulers taking over. 

I can understand better the concept of intergenerational trauma, which Carol describes and which she has realized late how it has impacted her childhood. 

Sometimes I noticed cultural differences which she attributes to her parents but also to their personal view points (eg her father's elite view on school education) where I had to think as a European myself "Nope, I'd agree with your dad".  

As for the style of the book, it is confusing as Carol chose to take extracts from her father's books (talking about his (grand)parents) while Carol adds her own comments to her grandchildren. So there is a gap of 6 generations and the jumping back and forth from narrator can be quite confusing and a bit chaotic. 
While understanding a little better her family, her generational trauma, the expectations and pressure, and the overwhelming amount of data left behind, I understand her choice for this way of publishing.  Frankly, in her shoes I might have done the same.  Yet as an outsider, I wonder if she couldn't tell their story and reach far more audience if it all had been rewritten in one chronological novel (maybe by a ghostwriter). I understand that nuances would be gone, her father's own words would get paraphrased etc, ...but it would be more accessible to read for more people. 

I am glad I read the book and took the time. I am glad I know her story better and that her father has given permission (or even ordered it) to get shared. Family stories like this are important to get logged and history on such important matters like the life of Jewish and mischling in Germany need to be known and shared more. First level witnesses cannot get lost.   So I am glad I now know, and for that reason I recommend reading her book. 

And for the future, I am curious to learn more about the future of her grandfather's collection in European musea, and how her super cute grandchildren become aware of the stories behind the art in her house and where their roots are.