The Lost

Starred review from July 24, 2006
As a boy in the 1960s, Mendelsohn could make elderly relatives cry just by entering the room, so much did he resemble his great-uncle Shmiel Jäger, who had been "killed by the Nazis." This short phrase was all Mendelsohn knew of his maternal grandfather Abraham's brother, who had remained with his wife and four daughters in the Ukrainian shtetl of Bolechow after Abraham left for America. Long obsessed with family history, Mendelsohn (The Elusive Embrace
) embarked in 2001 on a series of journeys to learn exactly what had happened to Shmiel and his family. The result is a rich, ruminative "mythic narrative... about closeness and distance, intimacy and violence, love and death." Mendelsohn uses these words to describe the biblical story of Cain and Abel, for one of the book's most striking elements is the author's recounting of the book of Genesis in parallel with his own story, highlighting eternal themes of origins and family, temptation and exile, brotherly betrayal, creation and annihilation. In Ukraine, Australia, Israel and Scandinavia, Mendelsohn locates a handful of extraordinary, aged Bolechow survivors. Especially poignant is his relationship with novelist Louis Begley's 90-year-old mother, from a town near the shtetl, an irascible, scene-stealing woman who eagerly follows Mendelsohn's remarkable effort to retrieve her lost world. B&w photos, maps.

Starred review from August 1, 2006
As a boy, Mendelsohn was not only entranced by the stories his grandfather told about growing up in the little Galician town of Bolechow but also attuned to the sorrow that shadowed every tale: his grandfather's oldest brother, Shmiel, his wife, and their four daughters had been killed by the Nazis. So affected was Mendelsohn by his legacy, he eventually embarked on a quest to find out exactly what happened to his six lost relatives. A classicist and formidable literary critic, Mendelsohn performs extraordinary feats of factual and emotional excavation in this finely wrought, many-faceted narrative, a work best described as Talmudic. Autobiography is entwined with revelatory commentary on the Torah, while his affecting chronicle of his journeys to Israel, Australia, Stockholm, Vienna, and, most movingly, Bolechow itself set the stage for Mendelsohn's sometimes perplexing, always intense conversations with his newly discovered cousins. Shmiel, Ester, Lorka, Frydka, Ruchele, and Bronia gradually come into focus, as does a shocking vision of the hell Bolechow became as neighbors tortured and murdered neighbors. Mendelsohn's tenacious yet artistic, penetrating, and empathic work of remembrance recalibrates our perception of the Holocaust and of human nature. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2006
Mendelsohn (humanities, Bard Coll.; "The Elusive Embrace") opens this new work by describing his relationship with his story-telling grandfather and the latter -s almost deafening silence about the fate of a brother, Shmiel, killed by the Nazis. While the book revolves around the author -s decades-long search to discover the fate of his great uncle -s family, this quest also leads to the compilation of a family genealogy and the discovery of various living relatives throughout the diaspora. Such stories of genealogical and historical investigations will often move into a meditation on inner discoveries, frequently embellished with epiphanies of religious or spiritual awakening or the rediscovery of an ethnic heritage. Mendelsohn does engage in some personal meditation on family relations and his Jewishness and intersperses his narrative with analysis from various" Parasha", the weekly Torah portions that analyze biblical texts relating to suffering and memory. More than just the discovery of lost relatives, however, his journey serves as an exposé of the memory of those who mourn the dead and of the dead who have no one left to mourn them. While occasionally burdened with excessive detail, the book illustrates the enduring legacy of the Holocaust in contemporary Jewish life. Recommended for public libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ "5/1/06.]" -Frederic Krome, Jacob Rader Marcus Ctr. of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.