#SundaySentence

Every weekend I participate in David Abrams’s “#SundaySentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

The first generation thinks about survival; the ones that follow tell the stories.

Source: Hua Hsu, “My Dad and Kurt Cobain” (The New Yorker)

Against a plain background, the hashtag #SundaySentence appears.

3 thoughts on “#SundaySentence

  1. In my Jewish-Polish immigrant family, the first generation thought about survival, the second, my parents’ generation thought about becoming real Americans, the third, mine, tell the stories or want to hear them…

  2. JULIA HIRSCH says:

    Thank you for this. Who will tell the story of actual Holocaust experiences as the generation of those who actually lived it is passing away. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and hear the stories of at least ten survivors,. I DO I want to honor their memory as well as that of those who didn’t live to tell their stories. I myself came to the US as a refugee and went back to Europe for quite a few years. So thank you for the sentence. Very apt. Am also revolted by the proliferation of Holocaust kitch which, it seems to me, can happen when one generation is telling the story of another only heard second hand.

  3. Erika Dreifus says:

    I appreciate these comments; the sentence resonated with me, too, based on my own Jewish family history, but that’s not the author’s background. As for the question of survivor testimony–fortunately we now have many recordings and texts. This isn’t the same as meeting survivors directly, but it’s valuable.

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