I began this blog as a communication for my writings on the Holocaust. I am a Catastrophe Jew, and my work on Holocaust themes, from FDR and his reaction to the Holocaust in real time, to Auschwitz survivor Elie Wiesel and the odd celebrity platform he created for himself, to Majdanek survivor Eli Pfefferkorn and Pfeffer-fact and Pfeffer-fiction, has helped me to better understand my own psychology.
For many years now, I have tried not to write about the Holocaust. I have tried to delete this blog. Eli Pfefferkorn once called me a vicarious survivor, and I felt graced by his comment. In fact, there’s an underlying and overpowering curse there. There’s no such thing as a vicarious survivor. There’s only anguish. There’s only emptiness.
This blog seems dormant, I know. I keep it alive, just in case I need to return to my Catastrophe Jew identity. I am thinking about a long book on antisemitism, but that’s a story for another time. Here, I want to point my readers to another site. I am on a World Tour. It’s not a travelogue. I don’t care about food, or hotels, or airport reviews. I care about histories, large and small, and maps, and emerging geographies. I care about memory, and wars, and laughter.
I want to document figments and fragments, so my goal is to blog as I travel. If interested in following along, please visit the sister site: TravelsinCivilWarLand.blog. As I write there, all wars are civil wars. Thank you.
