Awards
- Commended for IndieFab awards (History) 2012
Overview
Ellen Cassedy's longing to recover the Yiddish she'd lost with her mother's death eventually led her to Lithuania, once the ""Jerusalem of the North."" As she prepared for her journey, her uncle, sixty years after he'd left Lithuania in a boxcar, made a shocking disclosure about his wartime experience, and an elderly man from her ancestral town made an unsettling request. Gradually, what had begun as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future. How does a nation-how do successor generations, moral beings-overcome a bloody past? How do we judge the bystanders, collaborators, perpetrators, rescuers, and ourselves? These are the questions Cassedy confronts in We Are Here, one woman's exploration of Lithuania's Jewish history combined with a personal exploration of her own family's place in it. Digging through archives with the help of a local whose motives are puzzling to her; interviewing natives, including an old man who wants to ""speak to a Jew"" before he dies; discovering the complications encountered by a country that endured both Nazi and Soviet occupation-Cassedy finds that it's not just the facts of history that matter, but what we choose to do with them.
Full Product Details
Author: Ellen Cassedy
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Imprint: University of Nebraska Press
Dimensions:
Width: 14.00cm
, Height: 1.10cm
, Length: 21.60cm
Weight: 0.340kg
ISBN: 9780803230125
ISBN 10: 0803230125
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 01 March 2012
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
Pioneering. . . . [ We Are Here ] will reach out to . . . all those who care about not replaying in this new century the disasters of the century that has just ended. --Michael Steinlauf, author of Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust --Michael Steinlauf (09/26/2011)
Pioneering... [We Are Here] will reach out to ... all those who care about not replaying in this new century the disasters of the century that has just ended. Michael Steinlauf, author of Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust. This eloquent book can help us to reach out, open our hearts, and rediscover one another in a spirit of mutual understanding. Hon. Valdas Adamkus, former president of Lithuania. A most captivating read. Cassedy offers an extraordinary perspective, human and moving, to concerns that often are hidden by tired sentimentality, or anger. A rare document. Samuel Bak, survivor of the Vilna ghetto and author of Painted in Words. Those spiritually and intellectually brave enough to accompany Ms. Cassedy will be rewarded by sharing in her revelations and insight. So take heart and read this book. The journey can be transformative. Ina Navazelskis, writer and journalist specializing in Central European and Baltic affairs. Deeply moving... [Cassedy's] book offers a unique perspective ... [and] complex human texture, rooted in an oft-forgotten Yiddish cultural context, a tapestry of events that elsewhere too often appear as one-dimensional. Readers will doubtless be immensely enriched by her experience. Saulius Suziedelis, author of Historical Dictionary of Lithuania.
Author Information
Ellen Cassedy has explored the world of the Lithuanian Holocaust for ten years. Her translations and articles have appeared in Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, Forward, and Hadassah.
