Digging: Lifting the Memorable from Within the Unthinkable

by Susan Rostan

An aging uncle is the only surviving link to his family’s history -- the stories of tragic loss and heroic survival that he has refused to share. With an emerging feeling of responsibility to share his story with his family, for the sake of his sister’s namesake and future generations, he begins a painful journey into memories of his childhood in the Warsaw Ghetto and his subsequent survival in Nazi occupied Poland. As his experiences unfold, he haltingly recalls how he manages to escape the Ghetto and survive thanks to his father’s friend – a Polish patriot who risks his own life to help the uncle, the uncle’s sister, and countless friends hide outside the Ghetto. Out of his torturous excavation of a past long suppressed, the uncle reveals not only the story of a family devastated by the Holocaust, but also a family’s empowering responsibility to honor and renew his sister’s legacy of hope, caring, and laughter.

204 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2013

Reviews

[Jay Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title comes from the digging the author did into her husband’s family’s past, and the word is apt with regard to the meticulous research she did into the lives and deaths of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII. The author has been just as thorough where the story is personal but far gentler than ‘digging’ would suggest.

For her granddaughter, Ella, Susan Rostan wanted to know the stories behind the lives of her husband’s mother, Elzbieta, and his uncle, Marian. Her writing speaks clearly of her great understanding, patience and empathy when gradually drawing out the memories Marian had kept locked within himself for so long. As their relationship grew stronger he trusted more of himself and his story to her. There is horror and grief in the telling of life under the Nazis, of the family members and friends lost, but it is also life-affirming, full of love and indomitable spirit.

Susan Rostan has executed her task flawlessly. This is a gracefully told narrative that kept me spellbound. It is not so much a story of the Holocaust as the story of a survivor and his relationship with his family. It is about life and love and enduring humanity in the face of unimaginable evil and adversity.

[K.R. Slifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book in return for an honest review.

This book was amazing. I moved through the book slowly, not because it was a slow or boring read, but because it was such an emotional journey. It was well written, well done, and a joy to read despite the tragic content.

There are a few stories within this novel and all of them are moving. The novel begins with Susan Rostan's desire to create a family tree for her granddaughter. Her husband's family survived the German occupation in Poland, survived being forced into the Ghetto in Warsaw, and came out on top despite the loss of so many members of their family. What was so moving is how much emphasis was placed on how radiant her mother-in-law was despite all the hardship.

What I loved about this book is how well Rostan depicts the emotional journey Marian, her uncle-in-law, had to go on to tell her everything that he did about his life. I usually steer clear of books about the Holocaust because mostly I am left with the feeling of heartache and sadness and no understanding of how the information affected others. This novel literally depicts the journey of gathering the story of what the Rozenblums went through and then how the new revelations affected Rostan and her husband. Intermingled with these revelations where reenactments of different small scenes with Rostan's mother-in-law that were heartbreaking, deep, and read as though they were memories and not how Rostan envisioned life back then.

This book is a must-read. I loved it and I recommend it to anyone who loves history and the story of family.

[Sue Perry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Rostan family lost many to the Nazis in Poland, and for the survivors, any dredging of wartime memories brings so much stress and pain that some topics have been off limits ever since. The author, a Rostan by marriage, accepts the taboos until the birth of her granddaughter, and then, with gentle, loving persistence, she helps to draw out long-suppressed memories from the sole remaining survivor, an elderly uncle. This memoir stitches together the stories and also tracks the emotional journey of author and uncle as the memories unfold.

Certainly, this is a priceless family gift. For the rest of us, the book's love, compassion, and insight are as moving and powerful as the tales from the Warsaw Ghetto.

And now for some niggly details. This book has the potential to have broad appeal, with a bit of reworking. Current and past timelines got murky at times. And some stylistic conventions were inconsistent. (Why is there only one gray text box?) I loved the way the author sometimes put herself inside the heads of certain family members, re-living events from their perspectives; as the book progressed, these imaginings became more confident and significant - a nice indication of the author's growing understanding. However, when and why the author chose to take some perspectives but not others seemed arbitrary.

Finally, I would have benefitted from a map of the Warsaw locations.

[Michelle Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have heard the stories of the concentration camps but this is the first I have heard of the Warsaw Ghetto. It was hard to put down once you started it. The horrors about how they lived in fear. The wonderful people who were willing to help them. Those they lost. How the brother and sister lived through such a horrible ordeal. I highly recommend reading this.

[Marianne · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting but not riveting story that is poorly written to the point where one loses interest in the book. Strangely, the epilogue to the book is all that is needed to understand the gist of the story.

[ManOfLaBook.com · Rating 4 out of 5]

See review at:http://manoflabook.com/wp/?p=10366

Dig­ging: Lift­ing the Mem­o­rable from Within the Unthink­able by Susan Ros­tan is a non-fiction his­tory of the author’s fam­ily. Ms Rostan’s research into her husband’s fam­ily is the basis of this book.

An aging uncle is the only sur­viv­ing link to his family’s his­tory — the sto­ries of tragic loss and heroic sur­vival that he has refused to share. With an emerg­ing feel­ing of respon­si­bil­ity to share his story with his fam­ily, for the sake of his sister’s name­sake and future gen­er­a­tions, he begins a painful jour­ney into mem­o­ries of his child­hood in the War­saw Ghetto and his sub­se­quent sur­vival in Nazi occu­pied Poland. As his expe­ri­ences unfold, he halt­ingly recalls how he man­ages to escape the Ghetto and sur­vive thanks to his father’s friend – a Pol­ish patriot who risks his own life to help the uncle, the uncle’s sis­ter, and count­less friends hide out­side the Ghetto. Out of his tor­tur­ous exca­va­tion of a past long sup­pressed, the uncle reveals not only the story of a fam­ily dev­as­tated by the Holo­caust, but also a family’s empow­er­ing respon­si­bil­ity to honor and renew his sister’s legacy of hope, car­ing, and laughter.

Dig­ging: Lift­ing the Mem­o­rable from Within the Unthink­able by Susan Ros­tan is one of those books that, one day, I’d like to put together. The author did research into her husband’s fam­ily and found some astound­ing sto­ries of sur­vival and the human spirit.

I nor­mally dis­like to review such books.

These are very per­sonal works which are price­less to the authors and their fam­i­lies – but usu­ally aren’t very good unless you know the per­sons involved or have a per­sonal inter­est. How­ever, many of these books are not very well writ­ten or edited, mostly a col­lec­tion of sto­ries grandma told the kids at bed­time and didn’t want to get lost. This is all well and good and I wish my grand­par­ents have writ­ten some sort of fam­ily his­tory for my fam­ily and me.

But who am I to pass judg­ment on such works?

How­ever, Dig­ging was a fine book, inter­est­ing and with mul­ti­ple angles. Not only is it a fas­ci­nat­ing glimpse into Poland dur­ing World War II and an amaz­ing sur­vival story but also strug­gle the Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holo­caust memo­r­ial and museum, bureau­cracy to include her uncle’s sav­ior, Stanis­law Dra­bich, as a Right­eous Gentile.

The book is an easy read on a dif­fi­cult sub­ject, which the author does a won­der­ful job describ­ing. Ms. Ros­tan also touches on a very impor­tant sub­ject, the fact that Holo­caust sur­vivors are reluc­tant to share their hor­rific expe­ri­ences with future gen­er­a­tions to learn from and/or remem­ber. That is a trav­esty which their heirs of all ages (from Mrs. Ros­tan to Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foun­da­tion) are work­ing hard to rectify.

The one thing I didn’t care for was that the author tried to cap­ture her uncle’s style of talk­ing which, for me, didn’t work. How­ever, I do see how impor­tant it is from a famil­ial per­spec­tive and impor­tant to her book and its intended audience.

Ms. Ros­tan wrote a good book and a won­der­ful story tak­ing the reader along for the ride. I found the story of bat­tling the bureau­cracy very fas­ci­nat­ing and am glad she included it, giv­ing the book another dimen­sion along­side the fas­ci­nat­ing fam­ily history.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Susan Rostan's quest to discover her family's roots in the Holocaust is moving, to say the least. The crux of Digging is her Uncle-In-Law Marian's experiences in the Warsaw ghetto. His tales serve as a chilling reminder that, first-and-foremost, these things happened. Second of all, they happened to people, people just like anyone who might be reading this review. I stress this because, as the living history of this horrific event inevitably fades into the past, it becomes easier for nay-sayers to step in and downplay the chaos.

From a historian's perspective, Rostan does a fair job with her materials. She gathers primary sources, including photographs and first-hand accounts. At times she posits the thoughts of her mother-in-law Elzbieta, a risky proposition under even excellent circumstances, but she has direct second-hand knowledge to reinforce her presentation. Her depiction of her interviews with Marian are beyond reproach - his habit of saying, adding a "'kay" is an almost instantaneous hook, though one would be remiss if one failed to mention that this leans slightly on stereotyped speech-patterns. As a New Yorker, it's understood!

Aside from the dangers of portraying the thoughts of other people, Digging has one other stumbling block contained within its pages: It is hard to decipher, at first, just whose biography this is. From the cover, from the introduction, and from the first chapter, a reader is led to believe that Elzbieta is the one whose narrative is going to be told. It certainly is a facet of the book, but Marian's harrowing escape from the Gestapo and his long-suppressed sorrows about one of the Polish locals who helped saved him? That's what draws a reader in.

I would definitely recommend this for a college class or seminar oriented on the personal narrative, or oral history. Four stars.

[Sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book through a Goodreads giveway. I was interested in reading it as I have been reading memoirs this year of the Holocaust.

In this book, the author traces her husband's family's history of survival through WWII in the Warsaw Ghetto. The book was written in an approachable way so that the reader has an opportunity to get to know the family and keeping track of the family members is not difficult.

Rostan draws the reader along in a gentle way, so that you really do care for the people involved and the heartbreaking events they had to endure.

I found it very readable and I learned quite a bit about the history of the Warsaw Ghetto. The search for the details held my attention and I have to say, I felt like cheering and crying at the end of the book.

For such difficult subject matter, this book presented the human recollections in a factual way so that the horrors were weighty but not completely overwhelming to read. I am glad that I read it! It made me feel very humbled and inspired to see again how one person's kindness and conscience makes a difference in the world.

Highly recommended!!