Henry Hank Greenspan, REMNANTS and What Remains: Moments from Life Among Holocaust Survivors, Wayne State University Press, Made in Michigan Writers Series.
Renowned Holocaust scholar, clinical psychologist, and playwright Hank Greenspan has written an extraordinary work offering insights based on decades of sustained conversations (not single "testimonies") with individual survivors over a period of 50 years.The book begins with the playscript of REMNANTS, first produced for NPR and since presented on over 300 stages worldwide. REMNANTS recreates moments when survivors strike on an image or simply a cadence of voice that conveys the essence of what they endured--both during and after the destruction. It also portrays survivors' perceptions of our perceptions of them!
It is clear that the survivors knew how much Greenspan cared for them as individuals. They shared their deepest memories and reflections, both about the war and living after. What emerges is a work that scholars conducting oral interviews can greatly benefit from and teachers utilize in their high school and college classrooms. All readers will become fully immersed in these life stories and can become better listeners in general.
In the second section. What Remains, Greenspan offers his personal reflections as he shares key moments from his cherished relationships with survivors. He focuses on the choices they make of what to retell, when, how, and with whom. He writes about their loss of a world and, in recent years, his loss of them. The reader comes away with new perspectives on what it means to be a "survivor". Greenspan concludes the work with words from one of the few survivors of the death camp, Treblinka. Victor reflects:
"You study me and I study you. You study me with sharp eyes. I study you with dull eyes, through eyeglasses.... You look at me with eyes that want to find out what is behind my own eyes. I try to answer with what is in my heart. And you store it. You remember it The connection between one individual and the other. It is good."
And Greenspan's last words in the book are:
"Making 'the connection between one individual and the other' is perhaps the closest we come to remnants, awakenings, returns."
John Roth has written that the work "stands with the legendary testimony of Primo Levi and Jean Amery."
The book is profound and taught me how to be truly present with others and how to listen. An essential work for libraries, classrooms, and scholars.
I as a reviewer feel deeply grateful.
Books with a past, looking for a future
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