Different Drummer


"If a man does not keep pace with his companions,perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." ~Henry David Thoreau


Thursday, May 15, 2014

The Lost, The Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn.

"Often it is the small things, rather than the big picture, that the mind can comfortably grasp; that, for instance, it is naturally more appealing to readers to absorb the meaning of a vast historical event through the story of a single family." The Lost, The Search for Six of Six Million  by Daniel Mendelsohn. ~ p 18


On April  24th we met at Patti's home to discuss The Lost, The Search for Six of Six Million  by Daniel Mendelsohn.  This is an amazing story of how one young Jewish boy's interest was piqued toward his family's history because of the stories that his grandfather told and also because he was told that he looked so much like a great Uncle that was lost in the Holocaust with his family. As an adult he starts a world wide quest to speak with people who knew this family in their hometown in Ukraine.  It is a remarkable, touching, horrifying tale of loss, and the bonds of family that stretch beyond generations. 


Patti, Sandy, Brittany
Most everyone really enjoyed this book. It is not a page turner that you cannot put down, but the piecing together of this family's story is  remarkable and inspiring., however it is difficult to read of the terrible and inhumane things that happened.   The ties that link us to our ancestors are strong and a book like this hopefully inspires others to seek out their family history and learn to know their family better.

Carolyn, Suzanne, Paula and Ann
"At night, I think about these things.  I'm pleased with what I know, but now I think much more about everything I could have known, which was so much more than anything I can learn now and which now is gone forever.  What I do know now is this: there's so much you don't really see, preoccupied as you are with the business of living; so much you never notice, until suddenly , for whatever reason - you happen to look like someone long dead; you decide, suddenly, that it's important to let your children know where they came from - you need the information that people  you once knew always had to give you, if only  you'd asked.  But by the time you think to ask, it's too late." The Lost, The Search for Six of Six Million  by Daniel Mendelsohn. ,  p 73
“The Holocaust is so big, the scale of it is so gigantic, so enormous, that it becomes easy to think of it as something mechanical. Anonymous. But everything that happened, happened because someone made a decision. To pull a trigger, to flip a switch, to close a cattle car door, to hide, to betray.” 
The Lost, The Search for Six of Six Million  by Daniel Mendelsohn.