Redmond

Ben Redmond
The Ties that Bind
Impossible to Know: The Natures Memory and Remembrance
You arrive late to a movie, missing the first half. Your friend saw the movie in its
entirety and you ask him to fill you in on what you did not see. He recounts the half you
missed for you. But do you truly know what happened? Do you understand what you
missed? Based on your memory, you could now only perhaps give an even more vague
description than the one you received. Then, this person you are relating the story to will
have an even blurrier picture. The truth of the matter is that you were not there. You
missed it. You know a few thingsyou have some amount of background knowledge.
But you are void of some essentialsthe details, the specifics. You missed the way the
light glinted in the camera-lens, the way the main character spoke his first words. Your
eyes were opened mid-story, and so you cannot see the full picture. This, however, is
only a movie. You can easily return to the theater and watch it, start to finish, or you can
rent it, buy itthe possibilities are numerous.
But what about hearsay in real life? In Daniel Mendelsohns The Lost: A Search
for Six of Six Million, Mendelsohn tells us the story of his quest to learn about his
relatives whose lives in World War Two are shadowed over. He is led on an
intercontinental journey to find out what the lives of his grandfathers brother Shmiel
Jger and his family were like in their hometown of Bolechow, Poland in the time of the
Nazi occupation. As much as the book is about these six, it is equally about the search,
this genealogic detective work, and the people Mendelsohn speaks to in the
unprecedented steps taken and often retraced. Memory and the true concept of knowing
are pivotal to the function of this work and Mendelsohn makes it clear in his honest

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narration that he can only know what he is given, and these stories differ. The truth is that
one cannot know it alllet alone understand it all from this outside perspectiveeach
day, memories are lost with the deaths of those who truly remember the years of
oppression in World War Twothe survivors. Mendelsohn makes the significant nature
of preserving what can be salvaged and to know what can be known to the fullest extent,
for, in time, as Mendelsohn makes clear, all is lost.
It is important to realize what is meant by words such as understand and
knowwords that imply some form of knowledge, a higher awareness. To understand
is to be fully aware, to know the meaning of a subject. Understanding functions on levels,
which are influenced by the lucidity of the one who wishes to know. Mendelsohn knows,
for instance, that his mere appearance as a boy caused many of his older relatives to
break down into tears, for he resembled his lost relative, Shmiel Jger, who perished in
Bolechow. He knew of this effect he had on these people, but he never truly understood
it. Paralleling his journey toward understanding why his features were so moving was
another missionone taken in order to understand the lives and deaths of the six Jgers,
Shmiel, his wife Ester, and their daughters Frydka, Lorka, Ruchele and Bronia. By the
end of the journey, Mendelsohn realizes that the extent of empathy is finite. An ending
that showed how close wed gotten, but also how far wed always be, he writes,
explaining the reason to his return to Bolechow to his mother. (Mendelsohn, 450) In this
quote we can see that the author has come to terms with the limitations of how much he
can really know.
Some things, as Mendelsohn and many of the people he encounters on his trips
say, are impossible to know. This three-word phrase is a strong refrain throughout this

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vast work, and it helps to tie together many of the planes on which The Lost functions.
Mendelsohn hears a myriad of storiesmany of them are similar. In constants between
stories, it is easier to come close to an understanding. We see this in Mendelsohns
answering of the question, What had we learned after all that traveling? (434) He
replies:
He [Shmiel] was deaf, she [Ester] has pretty legs, she was friendly, he
was clever, one girl was aloof, or possibly easy, one likes the boys, or
perhaps played hard to get. She was a butterfly! He had two trucks, he
bought the first strawberriesshe was snooty, hoch Nase!...They called
him the king, she carried her books like thisIt was a nice family, a
fine family. It was a life, it was a life.
(434)
Mendelsohn makes it clear that he now knows an unexpectedly large amountmuch
more than he had known at the onset of this process. His interviews have made an
amalgam of common fact in Bolechow life of the late 1930s, through 1945. Yet also there
is so much he will never know. What Mendelsohn wants is to have a clear picture of the
lives of these six who were so shrouded from memory and conversationwho, as he
says, seemed not so much dead as lost, vanished from not only the world buteven
more terrible to mefrom my grandfathers storiesmaking them unmentionable and,
therefore, unknowable. (15) How is he to learn about these evaporated livesthese
individual stories and experiences and opinions, quirks and subtleties, hairstyles,
postures, smellsif those who know these details will not share? He asks the ones who
will.
Mendelsohn taps into a greater-than-expected, yet dwindling, resource of
survivorsof real rememberers. He points out, in the midst of hearing one of Klara
Freilichs stories from Bolechow, the following: From the Old Country, he [Daniels

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grandfather Abraham (or Aby)] had brought over more than just his accent, his stories.
Every person, in the end, is a person of a specific time, a specific place, and from that
there is no escaping, however far he may travel. (374) In this sense, every person is a
story. There are personal and histories to be known in individualitythese stories are
nearly infinite and many of them may weave together in relativity. Mendelsohn is given a
grand point of view as to what life was like in Bolechow and how it might have been for
his family.
He learns a great dealthere is no escaping this fact. A woman Mendelsohn
interviews at her home in CopenhagenAlena Kulbergsays, Its always the small
things. It makes it like life. The most interesting thing is always the details. (413) This is
true. Without details, we are left with bald fact. Details make the argument, make the
story believable. Details are often universal, as in how so many ex-Bolechowers recall
Ciszko SzymanskiFrydka Jgers star-crossed loverhad been a strong young man.
Mendelsohn also learns the stories behind the recurring quotes such as, Killed by the
Nazis, and, She was killed a week before her wedding, and even the most puzzling,
They hid in a kessle. In his investigation, Mendelsohn pieces together a framework of
the lives that make these quotes legitimate with regard to their specific events. He comes
as close as he possibly can to knowing, and it is greatly important that he eventually
stands in Shmiel and Frydkas hiding place and their place of death, that he has seen
where the family lived. Similarly, to know their story, it is important that he knows the
faces of those who knew (or at least knew of) the Bolechow Jgers., for, proximity,
Menelsohn writes, brings you closer to what happened, is responsible for the facts we
glean, the artifacts we possess, the verbatim quotations of what people said (437)

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But we must ask ourselves, as Mendelsohn does not forget to do, what is the
extent of the understanding? And, perhaps more importantly, how well do those who tell
these stories understand? Mendelsohn is told, You werent there, you didnt see. (455)
This statement is, in a sense, universal for all those who survivedthey saw what they
saw and heard the rest. They, having lived in place such as Bolechow, indeed may have
envisioned events such as the Aktions, but from a safe (as it turned out) vantage point.
We cannot know their fear of being discovered or denounced, or their discomfort in
squalid and otherwise unlivable quarters, just as they cannot know the fear or pain felt by
those dragged away, those who were shoved into cattle cars, made to trample their
neighbors, and ultimately killed in gas chambers or forced to walk planks naked over
mass-graves, waiting for the gunshots to come and kill them. There is undoubtedly a
realization for what happened, but a direct understanding is hard to place for those who
saw and did not live through, and moreover for those who heard.
This knowledge is not all hearsayMendelsohn uses sources from many archives
and libraries of accounts. He chooses a random account of one womanMatylda
Gelernterwho survived the Nazi occupation her testimony provides the reader with a
better understanding of the second Aktion in Bolechow on September 3rd, 4th, and 5th of
1942. Mendelsohn quotes the passage in its entirety, rather than paraphrasing account. He
knows that his understanding, along with that of the reader, would be hindered had this
statement been secondhand.
Men, women, and children were caught in their houses, attics, hiding places.
About 660 children were takenThey took children by their legs and bashed their
heads on the edge of the sidewalks, whilst they laughed and tried to kill them with
one blow.we returned home and hid ourselves in a niche in our house. The child
was crying and wanted to drink, but didnt cry out because it was accustomed to

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this from the previous actionsThe walls and pavements were literally splashed
in blood.

(227)
This is an example of a strong stab Mendelsohn takes in order to give his reader a greater
understandingto know these things on the same level he does. These are not even the
most macabre events we are given in this text. One simply cannot grasp the magnitude of
this tragic event and of those like it, had the description not come from one who, to
paraphrase one of Mendelsohns interviewees, was there, who saw. I cant be in 1942, I
dont know what it was like,they [Bolechowers] were under unimaginable stress,
(386) Mendelsohn honestly explains to survivor, Josef Feuer. Here, the word
unimaginable is perfectly accurate. Try as we might to piece together the scene, it will
always be incomplete, thus, we need as much detail as possible in order to create a
(debatably) close-second to real-life so many years agoa life in memory.
There is also the question of memories that remain locked. There is pain in
memorytime and again we hear of images that stain the minds of those who
experienced these actions. Rememberers may very well wish to keep these stories and
truths to themselves. They, like survivor Meg Grossbard, may convince themselves and
others that they, know nussink! It is as though there is a black hole in some portion
of their memory. (358, 388) Or perhaps the pain is too real to be forced away, such as is
the case with Michael Latyk, who was a child in the time of the Aktions. The memory of
seeing an injured, sickly and starving Jewish boy picking lice from his body and eating
them to stay alive, now, for Michael, coincides with the phrase Eat a Balanced Diet.
(472) Memory is a thing that is not set in stone. Rather, memories themselves can be
malleable given the willpower, can be lost, or can be inescapable. They can bring about

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smiles and tears with equal ease. And they vary, as well. Mendelsohns grandfather,
Abraham, is remembered for his signature storytellinghis looping narratives and his
enthusiasm. Yet, like the relatives who sobbed at the sight of young Daniel, there is
something mysterious about certain memories. Daniel asks Abraham to tell him about the
familys life in Bolechow, and Abraham often refuseswe are especially happy
because you have no questions about the MishpachaAbraham writes in a letter,
voicing his pleasure in not having to address inquiries about the family on one occasion.
(8) It is no secret that one needs to pry to uncover certain stories, and some cannot be
realized until they are too late to be told.
Each day, worlds disappear. Accounts and tales and knowledge vanish from the
face of the earthor, more accurately, into the face of the earth. They become lost
underground and in silent minds. The history of the Holocaust is filled with intricacies
more than most of us can readily cognize. This is known. But what must also be realized
is that there are always moremore than we can readily comprehend, and this number
changes. As the number of survivorspeople who sawdwindles, the number of stories
shrinks with it. One must accept this loss, as it is natural. Not only this, but loss is
universalit does not discriminate between ethos, creed, small fish is big ponds, big fish
in small ponds, Jews or Ukrainians. Loss is imminent.
What Mendelsohn wants and essentially needs is preservation of the lostto
gather whatever he canthe redundancies, the variations in stories, the smallest elements
that make this lost world as vivid and as close to life again as possible.
For a little while some of that can be rescued, if only, faced with the vastness of
all that there is and all that there ever was, somebody makes the decision to look

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back, to have one last look, to search for a while in the debris of the past and to
see not only what was lost but what there is still to be found.

(487)
There are things that, it seems, will never be rescuedor remembered, such as the
photograph of the nameless woman in the Yad Vashem archivesa woman who has
vanished from history, who cannot be recognized, a woman included in no living
memory. She has been lost. Mendelsohn takes on the role of the memory-rescuer in many
cases, bringing tales that might never have been known into the world, stories that he
knows will not only satisfy his thirst for a more complete picture of the Bolechow Jgers
life, but stories that enrich the entire historic perspective of life in Nazi occupation. He
rescues those like the unnamed woman from a kind of chaosa formless void, a tohu
vavohuof non-remembrance or simple and blameless ignorance. Mendelsohn brings the
past closer to his reader so that the images and accounts uncovered crystallize slowly and,
more importantly, naturally before our eyes.
From our third-person lens and with the memories learned in hearsay, we may
never truly understand what is impossible to know, but we can, for fleeting moments,
sympathizesmile at scenes from lives we will never live, we can break down when we
hear of unbearable (yet, in some cases, survivable) tragedy, as Mendelsohn melted
standing where Shmiel and his daughter perished. (477) This is as close as we may come
to these experiences, which makes the preservation and discovery of memory pivotal to
our own understanding of life in the war and the lives of the lost.