Sunday Sentence

Paper LoveIn which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

Sometime in the lonely summer of 1942, Valy—bereft of even the rare letters my grandfather had provided, bereft of credible options to get out—sometime in those miserable months when it seemed the rest of the world had forgotten her and her mother, sometime in that period when it seemed nothing could ever shake the torpor that had settled over them, the endless waiting, the dreary sameness of their days, caring for the elderly and worrying they would lose even the small semblance of normalcy their lives still retained, by being sent, like their neighbors, east, whatever that meant, sometime in those months, Valy met Hans Fabisch.

Source: Sarah Wildman, Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind

5 thoughts on “Sunday Sentence

  1. Mindy Portnoy says:

    Loved the book; loved the sentence. Sarah Wildman will be speaking at the Sisterhood Authors’ Roundtable next Shabbat at Temple Sinai in Washington, D.C. (her aunt and I went to Camp Ramah in Palmer together many years ago).

    1. Erika Dreifus says:

      Oh, my–such a small world! Is this the Wildman-side aunt? Did you know the Wildman grandparents?

      I’ve actually been re-reading the book in preparation to teach it in a seminar on “third-generation” accounts: http://www.nysoclib.org/events/erika-dreifus-telling-their-grandparents-stories-writings-grandchildren-holocaust-refugees

      I haven’t yet met Sarah in person, but I’m planning to attend one of her events here in New York next March.

      Thanks so much for stopping by again!

      1. Mindy Portnoy says:

        I read all your columns!

        Yes, Judy Wildman is Sarah’s aunt; but I don’t remember every meeting her family. I knew she was from Pittsfield, MA., and she was in the “bunk” next door at Ramah.

  2. Wow, I love writing that makes conveys not only information, but the actual feel of the moments described.

    1. Erika Dreifus says:

      Yes, this is a great one.

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