Overview

In Mamaleh: A Legacy of Loss and Love, Elaine Culbertson has created a new kind of Holocaust survivor story. It is a memoir that combines both her mother, Dora Freilich's, personal recollections of her life as a survivor as well as her own reflections on growing up in a family that had experienced the trauma of the Holocaust. Dora's survival of two full years in Auschwitz was indeed a miracle, but her beautifully expressed memories of that time as well as the life that she and her husband built in America are miracles as well. In this sometimes startling, sometimes funny, but always poignant memoir, the reader will be immersed in a family that experienced the challenges of survival, immigration, and assimilation as told in the words of a mother and daughter who came from two different worlds but who forged a relationship based on love and respect.

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9781957057224

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Reviews

Few people have so consistently and accurately tended to the teaching and understanding of the Holocaust as Elaine Culbertson, daughter of two remarkable Holocaust survivors. In Mamaleh, Culbertson wisely reflects upon the many stories her parents related about their experiences and upon her mother's personal writings. With compassion, insight, and tenderness, she also makes astute observations upon what it was like to grow up in a household filled with the trauma and determination of two concentration camp survivors... Stephen Feinberg Former educator, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers Program of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors ... (In) Mamaleh...Culbertson succeeds in blending a child's hidden vantage with an adult's fierce clarity, rendering scenes of Holocaust aftermath not only from survivor perspectives inside the camps, but from a little girl's perspective beneath a Brooklyn dinner table...(T)he memoir's dual authorship, woven from Elaine's narrative and the haunting, eloquent writings of her mother, Dora Freilich, imbues the book with a rare combination of emotional resonance and historical authenticity, where the voices of survivor and daughter echo and deepen each other. Third, Culbertson's prose is at once intimate and unflinching, building a portrait of memory, humor, affection, and a longing for connection over the generations... Mamaleh... catapults readers into the immediacy of a past that refuses to go away. Highly recommended. Joshua M. Greene author, Unstoppable ...This book is not just for Jewish readers or those who are interested in the Holocaust. It's for anyone who has grappled with family legacies and how the past shapes the present... Alexandra Zapruder Author of Salvaged Pages

Author Information

For many years Elaine Culbertson served as program director of the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers' Program founded by Vladka Meed that provided professional development to more than 1100 teachers in its 36-year existence. At present, she works with teachers and students to connect the events of the past with the present day. Elaine has written chapters in five different books on Holocaust teaching methods and lectured across the United States, using the story of her own parents' survival as the basis for her presentations on developmentally appropriate and morally responsible pedagogy.

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