- Summary
- "Your Eyes Will Be My Window reclaims the two erasures of Esta Plat. Murdered in Ukraine by Nazi troops in 1942, evidence of the life of Esta Plat was preserved in a bundle of her letters until the letters were tossed into a dumpster and destroyed. Haunted by the inheritance of survivors' guilt and shame in a family that kept no Old World keepsakes except her grandmother's one-sentence memory of Esta Plat, Jodi Varon sifts through records of Europe's genocidal past. Pitting grandiose Holocaust memorials against the act of bearing witness, Varon confronts the limitations of history, folklore, archival data, and survivor testimonies. Seeking solace in ritual, she challenges her upbringing as an outlier Jew in the Rocky Mountain West to provide a window to the meaning of cultural displacement in immigrant communities. When an ethnic German woman's corpse was discarded across from Varon's rented flat in Baden-Württemberg, the home-made memorial for Nadine E. prompts a meditation on violence against women and girls as a weapon of suppression and war. The record of unfiltered emotions among Kindertransport survivors in Europe, journalists in Ludwigsburg, and archivists and guides in Jerusalem, Your Eyes Will Be My Window is a defiant exercise in honoring the lost"-- Provided by publisher.
- Series
- Crux: the Georgia series in literary nonfiction
Crux (Athens, Ga.)
- Format
- Book
- Author/Creator
- Varon, Jodi, 1953- author.
- Published
- Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2023]
- Locale
- Ukraine
- Contents
-
War artists
Songs for a blue piano
Sad angel
Shoahtecture I : Prokhid Hills, near Ratne, Ukraine, 2014-2015
Feasts
Another set for Brundibár
Augury
History lesson : Kortelisy, Ukraine, September 23, 1942
Shoahtecture II : KZ Memorial, Vaihingen an der Enz, Germany
In the shadow of the Hotel Silver
Shoahtecture III : Synagogenplatz, Ludwigsburg, Germany
Heirlooms
Blue moon
The hours of exile
History lesson : burial practices
All men are brothers
My Aleph
History lesson : resistance and culture
Shoahtecture IV : Yad Vashem Memorial, Jerusalem
The pulse of your quietest word
Codices
Your eyes will be my window
Risk assessment
History lesson : Ratne, 1930s
Menus
Weronika.
- Notes
-
Includes bibliographical references (page 226) and index.
War artists -- Songs for a blue piano -- Sad angel -- Shoahtecture I : Prokhid Hills, near Ratne, Ukraine, 2014-2015 -- Feasts -- Another set for Brundibár -- Augury -- History lesson : Kortelisy, Ukraine, September 23, 1942 -- Shoahtecture II : KZ Memorial, Vaihingen an der Enz, Germany -- In the shadow of the Hotel Silver -- Shoahtecture III : Synagogenplatz, Ludwigsburg, Germany -- Heirlooms -- Blue moon -- The hours of exile -- History lesson : burial practices -- All men are brothers -- My Aleph -- History lesson : resistance and culture -- Shoahtecture IV : Yad Vashem Memorial, Jerusalem -- The pulse of your quietest word -- Codices -- Your eyes will be my window -- Risk assessment -- History lesson : Ratne, 1930s -- Menus -- Weronika.