The '50s were so culturally different than what -- anything that we have now. I mean, there was no bridge between that public school and that shule. … - Irena Klepfisz

Eastern and Western European Jews and struggling Jewish immigrants here in the States were neither completely passive nor pacifists in World War II or before that. Before that--? Jewish men served in various European armies, sometimes willingly, sometimes by force. Jewish workers-men and women-staged strikes, often violent. Various Jewish political groups organized self-defense organizations. Political enemies fought each other with weapons which were not limited to words. To claim otherwise is to erase the historically documented active Jewish participation in European life as well as the less picturesque Jewish underworld of gangsters, alcoholism, prostitution, violence, wife and child abuse.

When I write, I will say it out loud to myself over and over again. I want to hear it. I want to hear how it sounds. Not only -- I like to manipulate it on the page and how it looks, but I also want to be able to hear it.

Only by placing the Holocaust in a larger framework, by insisting on moving toward a Jewish future that is informed, but not defined, by the Holocaust, can we develop a productive way of relating to each other and the rest of the world. Such an approach guarantees memory, without sacrificing the present or future.