by Ramona Koval
I began my quest by asking: who am I? And I found the answer to a different question: what am I? I am made of stories.
We cherish our stories and, even if they have gaps, they continue to nourish us and to hold us secure as we make new ones, until we fade into the memories of others, mythic, dreamlike, forever silent. This is how it always is in the song-lines of our lives: in the ending of one song are the seeds of a new one, the chorus we sing together, our melodies, coalescing into the greater human symphony.
Mama & Ramona, 1955.
Sources
BOOKS & JOURNALS
Antelme, Robert. The Human Race, trans. Jeffrey Haight & Annie Mahler, Marlboro Press / Northwestern University Press, 1998. (Originally published as L’Espèce humaine, © Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1957.)
Casanova, Giacomo. The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, trans. Arthur Machen, 1894.
Goldstein, David B. Jacob’s Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History, Yale University Press, 2008.
Koestler, Arthur. The Thirteenth Tribe, Random House, 1976.
Krall, Hanna. The Subtenant & To Outwit God, trans. Jarosław Anders, Northwestern University Press, 1992.
Langbein, Hermann. People in Auschwitz, trans. Harry Zohn, University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal, Abacus, 1988.
Lichtenstein, Rachel, & Sinclair, Iain. Rodinsky’s Room, Granta, 1999.
Meed, Vladka. On Both Sides of the Wall: Memoirs from the Warsaw Ghetto, trans. Steven Meed, Knopf Doubleday, 1979.
Oeggl, Klaus, et al. ‘The reconstruction of the last itinerary of “Ötzi”, the Neolithic Iceman, by pollen analyses from sequentially sampled gut extracts’, Quaternary Science Reviews, 26: 7–8, 2007, pp. 853–61.
Ostrer, Harry. Legacy: A Genetic History of the Jewish People, Oxford University Press, 2012.
Paulsson, Gunnar S. Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940–1945, Yale University Press, 2002.
Richie, Alexandra. Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler, and the Warsaw Uprising, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.
Sykes, Bryan. The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science that Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry, W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.
Tec, Nechama. Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood, Oxford University Press, 1984.
Tec, Nechama. Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust, Yale University Press, 2004.
Turnbull, David. ‘Out of the glacier, into the freezer: Ötzi the “Iceman”—disruptive timings, spacings, and mobilities’, in Cryopolitics: Frozen Life in a Melting World, ed. Joanna Radin & Emma Kowal (forthcoming).
Wasserstrom, Dunia. ‘Testimony from the Auschwitz Trial, April 23, 1964’, quoted in Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics & Achievements, ed. David Bankier & Dan Michman, Berghahn Books, 2008.
WEBSITES
Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota: chgs.umn.edu
Genographic Project by National Geographic: genographic.nationalgeographic.com
Dovid Hofsteyn’s ‘We spring from rocks’: mendele.commons.yale.edu/author/vbers/page/378
Cypora Jablon Zonszajn’s Siedlce memoir: deathcamps.org/occupation/siedlcememo.html
Nathaniel Kahn’s My Architect: A Son’s Journey: vimeo.com/9418890
Jane Korman’s ‘…And now we dance: a celebration of life after Auschwitz’: youtube.com/watch?v=CuvgUZeUo8Y
Małgorzata Melchior’s ‘The Holocaust survivors who passed as non-Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland and France’: fondationshoah.org/fms/docpdf/coinchercheurs/melchior.pdf
Pinkas Hakehillot Polin’s Mława chapter, Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland: jewishgen.org/yizkor/pinkas_poland/pol4_00280.html
This American Life, ‘The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar’, 14 March 2008: thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/352/the-ghost-of-bobby-dunbar
University of Southern California Shoah Foundation: sfi.usc.edu Dr Izhak Ze’ev Yunis’s ‘The Old Hometown’: zchor.org/mlayunis.htm
Acknowledgments
My sincere thanks to Leszek Borkowski, Krystyna Duszniak, Monika Dzierba, Lena Fiszman and the Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre, Helen Garner, Kerrie Haines, Marcia Jacobs, Lloyd Jones, Walter Lederman, Faith Liddell, Miriam Mahemoff, Iola Mathews and the Writers Victoria Glenfern studios, Agnieszka Morawiñska, Yoni Prior, the late Jacob Rosenberg, David Sornig, Slowko Tomyn, David Turnbull, and Michał Wiśniewski, all of whom helped in their own ways with my research for this book over many years.
As always, thanks to Text Publishing—especially Michael Heyward, David Winter, Jane Novak, and W. H. Chong.
I am immensely grateful to Bernadette Waldron, whose phone call all those years ago pointed me in a new and compelling direction.
And for their help, which was a testament to the kindness of strangers, I am indebted to Robin Dunne, Helen Dunne, Ray Dunne, the late Joseph Dunne, and the late Alan Dunne.
Finally, loving thanks to my husband, my daughters, my sons-in-law, my brother-in-law, and especially to my sister.