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Memories #2
Where Memory Leads: My Life
In this sequel to the classic work of Holocaust literature When Memory Comes , a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian returns to memoir to recount this tale of intellectual coming-of-age on three continents.
Forty years after his acclaimed, poignant first memoir, Friedländer returns with Where Memory My Life , bridging the gap between the ordeals of his childhood and his present-day towering reputation in the field of Holocaust studies. After abandoning his youthful conversion to Catholicism, he rediscovers his Jewish roots as a teenager and builds a new life in Israeli politics.
Friedländer’s initial loyalty to Israel turns into a lifelong fascination with Jewish life and history. He struggles to process the ubiquitous effects of European anti-Semitism while searching for a more measured approach to the Zionism that surrounds him. Friedländer goes on to spend his adulthood shuttling between Israel, Europe, and the United States, armed with his talent for language and an expansive intellect. His prestige inevitably throws him up against other intellectual heavyweights. In his early years in Israel, he rubs shoulders with the architects of the fledgling state and brilliant minds such as Gershom Sholem and Carlo Ginzburg, among others.
Most important, this memoir led Friedländer to reflect on the wrenching events that lead him to devote sixteen years of his life to writing his Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece, The Years of Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945 .
Forty years after his acclaimed, poignant first memoir, Friedländer returns with Where Memory My Life , bridging the gap between the ordeals of his childhood and his present-day towering reputation in the field of Holocaust studies. After abandoning his youthful conversion to Catholicism, he rediscovers his Jewish roots as a teenager and builds a new life in Israeli politics.
Friedländer’s initial loyalty to Israel turns into a lifelong fascination with Jewish life and history. He struggles to process the ubiquitous effects of European anti-Semitism while searching for a more measured approach to the Zionism that surrounds him. Friedländer goes on to spend his adulthood shuttling between Israel, Europe, and the United States, armed with his talent for language and an expansive intellect. His prestige inevitably throws him up against other intellectual heavyweights. In his early years in Israel, he rubs shoulders with the architects of the fledgling state and brilliant minds such as Gershom Sholem and Carlo Ginzburg, among others.
Most important, this memoir led Friedländer to reflect on the wrenching events that lead him to devote sixteen years of his life to writing his Pulitzer Prize–winning masterpiece, The Years of Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945 .
304 pages, Hardcover
Published November 8, 2016
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About the author
Saul Friedländer
59 books82 followersSaul Friedländer (Hebrew: שאול פרידלנדר) is an Israeli/French historian and a professor emeritus of history at UCLA.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 21, 2016
Saul Friedländer is mostly known for his acribic search for the historical truth into the Vatican Archives, particularly in connection with the WWII, but it is always interesting to explore the life history of the historian. Where Memory Leads is the second installment of his life historical account, exploring his identity post-Shoah as well as its relatively less known relationship with Israel, Germany, France - his cultural identity remains French - and his country of adoption, US.
'I am a Jew, albeit one without any religion or tradition-related attachments, yet indelibly marked by the Shoah. Ultimately, I am nothing else'. He, like the founding fathers of the State of Israel, he belongs to a generation of action, secular and aimed to create an identity shaped by the Shoah. An heritage that still needs to be explored and analysed although meanwhile, a new generation of Jews and Israeli made the choice for a dramatically different identity. '(...) the only lesson one could draw from the Shoah was precisely the imperative: stand against injustice, against wanton persecution, against the refusal to recognize the humanity and the rights of 'the others''. As many of his generation, he is for the 'two state solutions' and refuse to understand the new religious fervor who sees as an alienation from the founding meaning of the state. Interestingly, he just doesn't want to understand the new process, either historically or sociologically, it just rejects it as alien.
But the book is more than an essay about Israel, and this saves it when the reader might have a different political opinion. It is a book about growing up and coping with the lost of parents, about the lost childhood memories and a life broken into too small little pieces that can hardly come back together. It is equally a testimony of old times, of a different era that the less survivors are the more difficult to understand it.
Friedländer also writes about life fragility and fears, about personal life decisions and growing out of love. A book worth to read, regardless one's opinions about the current situation in Israel, because it is written with passion and love, although the ideals and visions may differ dramatically.
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
'I am a Jew, albeit one without any religion or tradition-related attachments, yet indelibly marked by the Shoah. Ultimately, I am nothing else'. He, like the founding fathers of the State of Israel, he belongs to a generation of action, secular and aimed to create an identity shaped by the Shoah. An heritage that still needs to be explored and analysed although meanwhile, a new generation of Jews and Israeli made the choice for a dramatically different identity. '(...) the only lesson one could draw from the Shoah was precisely the imperative: stand against injustice, against wanton persecution, against the refusal to recognize the humanity and the rights of 'the others''. As many of his generation, he is for the 'two state solutions' and refuse to understand the new religious fervor who sees as an alienation from the founding meaning of the state. Interestingly, he just doesn't want to understand the new process, either historically or sociologically, it just rejects it as alien.
But the book is more than an essay about Israel, and this saves it when the reader might have a different political opinion. It is a book about growing up and coping with the lost of parents, about the lost childhood memories and a life broken into too small little pieces that can hardly come back together. It is equally a testimony of old times, of a different era that the less survivors are the more difficult to understand it.
Friedländer also writes about life fragility and fears, about personal life decisions and growing out of love. A book worth to read, regardless one's opinions about the current situation in Israel, because it is written with passion and love, although the ideals and visions may differ dramatically.
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
March 5, 2017
Friedlander and later life
This second volume of memoirs by one of the great historians of the Shoah deals with his life and work from his late 30s to early 80s, as death begins to extend its shadow. Often movingly recounted as when he talks about his shyness, his academic life always divided between at least two countries and universities, and his profound ambivalence about the turn to the right in Israeli politics, Friedlander offers a sympathetic portrait of the search for belonging of the first generation of Shoah survivors. Highly recommended as a complement to his historical work.
This second volume of memoirs by one of the great historians of the Shoah deals with his life and work from his late 30s to early 80s, as death begins to extend its shadow. Often movingly recounted as when he talks about his shyness, his academic life always divided between at least two countries and universities, and his profound ambivalence about the turn to the right in Israeli politics, Friedlander offers a sympathetic portrait of the search for belonging of the first generation of Shoah survivors. Highly recommended as a complement to his historical work.
September 21, 2017
I have known and greatly appreciated several major historical works of SF well before reading his new book on his life. I did not quite grasp how fascinating his postwar life has been and did not quite expect either how sensitive an interpreter he could be also of his own experience. This is a special and rather mysterious book that sheds much light on the sensibilities of a Holocaust survivor and major scholar. It is a book that will linger in your memory.
August 26, 2017
I consider myself so lucky to have been a student of Saul Friedlander's. This was a wonderful read - so insightful and truly thoughtful.
October 19, 2019
Friedlander writes clearly, with great honesty, well-deserved self-esteem and also self-critique, opening a window to his inner self, strengths and vulnerabilities.
September 13, 2020
desultory
March 12, 2017
At its best brilliant
Read
December 1, 2016"In many ways, Where Memory Leads is a reshaping of the contours of the first memoir, written from the perspective of old age; it is possibly a less artful book but also a richer and more candid one, providing glimpses of the turmoil and conflicts that afflict Friedlander under his public persona and 'the construction of a normal life.'
Friedlander's memoir, in its rigorous attention to the major and minor devastations that his life has wrought, will set you thinking about your own responses to the collective damage of history. And yet, for all the gravity of his reflections, Friedlander is never self-important, nor does his prose swell. Indeed, it's a tribute to his consuming honesty and taste for understatement that the reader comes away with a sense of the complexity and hesitancy that marks a life that, in other hands, might have been presented as one long triumphal march."
-Daphne Merkin on Saul Friedlander's Where Memory Leads: My Life in the Dec/Jan 2017 issue of Bookforum
To read the rest of this review, go to Bookforum:
http://bookforum.com/inprint/023_04/1...
Friedlander's memoir, in its rigorous attention to the major and minor devastations that his life has wrought, will set you thinking about your own responses to the collective damage of history. And yet, for all the gravity of his reflections, Friedlander is never self-important, nor does his prose swell. Indeed, it's a tribute to his consuming honesty and taste for understatement that the reader comes away with a sense of the complexity and hesitancy that marks a life that, in other hands, might have been presented as one long triumphal march."
-Daphne Merkin on Saul Friedlander's Where Memory Leads: My Life in the Dec/Jan 2017 issue of Bookforum
To read the rest of this review, go to Bookforum:
http://bookforum.com/inprint/023_04/1...
Read
December 14, 2016"At the end of World War II, Friedlander approached a high-ranking priest about his continuing his education and finding his parents. 'Paul,' the priest answered, addressing Friedlander by his Catholic name, 'your parents are dead.' It was the first time Friedlander ever heard about the Holocaust." Review by Jane Wallerstein for the Jewish Book Council.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews