Fern Schumer Chapman > Quotes

“The past is a presence between us. In all my mother does and says, the past continually discloses itself in the smallest ways. She sees it directly; I see its shadow. Still, it pulses in my fingertips, feeds on my consciousness. It is a backdrop for each act, each drama of our lives. I have absorbed a sense of what she has suffered, what she has lost, even what her mother endured and handed down. It is my emotional gene map.”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past

“Smells, I think, may be the last thing on earth to die.”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past

“Memory for most is a kind of afterlife; for my mother, it is another form of life.”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past

“The living take a part of the dead with them, carrying them around in their minds, like a song that lingers after the music has been turned off.”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past

“Most German perpetrators were never punished or rewarded for their behavior, but they had learned something about themselves. They know what they did or didn't do in the most morally fraught moment of their lives. They have seen themselves in extreme circumstances and, in that, they have seen their own extremes.”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past

“I could not describe my loneliness. For the first time, I grasped that I was truly on my own. I could depend on no one. There was no one to share my struggles and hopes.”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Is It Night or Day?

“They died, but you must live. To honor their memory, you must live.”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Is It Night or Day?

“When you are living under the wolves, you have to howl.' ....'I will never howl with these wolves.”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Motherland: Beyond the Holocaust: A Mother-Daughter Journey to Reclaim the Past

“Surviving felt like its own punishment. What had I done to deserve this? How could I live if my parents weren't somewhere in this world?”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Is It Night or Day?

“Sometimes at home, my mother's voice irritated me, especially when she listed the chores she expected me to do each day. But now I would have given anything to hear that list. Already, I barely remembered the sound of her voice. Panic gripped me. How would I hold on to her if I couldn't even hear her voice anymore? I had promised myself that I would keep her close to me by playing in my mind the things she always said-like a recording-over and over again. She had last spoken to me only that morning, but I could feel her fading as each minute passed. Was I losing her?”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Is It Night or Day?

“Does anger empower me in a powerless situation? If so, can I find another source of strength?”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Brothers, Sisters, Strangers: Sibling Estrangement and the Road to Reconciliation

“I know that you will do your best," my father said, handing me my boarding pass. "I know that you will make me proud of you."
"I'll try," I said automatically, but I didn't know what to do to make him proud. I kissed and hugged him, whispering, "I promise I'll try.”
― Fern Schumer Chapman, Is It Night or Day?