My City of Dreams

Lisa Gruenberg

Description

In this carefully researched and hauntingly written memoir, Lisa Gruenberg not only records her own life, but also that of relatives long lost to darkness, terror, and murder. In dreamlike sequences she weaves known facts of the lives of those lost into tableaus of imagined family dinners, conversations and leisure activities set in the Vienna landscape. She especially brings back to life some of the girls and women whose fates remain largely unknown. Indeed, she embodies her aunt Mia as she walks in her shoes, sees with her eyes, and speaks with her voice. These flights into the past are presented within the framework of Gruenberg's own family, her husband and daughters, and her father. He escaped from Vienna in 1939 and shared few of his memories with her, and that only late in life when disease had beaten down his defenses against remembering.
The trauma and feeling of guilt often described in Holocaust survivors is reflected in this memoir, also the burden shared by so many of their children and grandchildren. At the same time, this tale is one of lightness and finding balance in all these difficulties and trials. There is an endless network of cousins and friends of cousins, one more colorful than the next. They are spread all over the world and Gruenberg seeks many of them out in her search for the past.
At the center stands author's ability to look at the truth unflinchingly, including truths apparent in herself. She shares her insights in all their nakedness, starkness and, yes, hilarity. This, together with the author's luminous prose, make My City of Dreams an important landmark in 21st century testimony of the Holocaust.

Sujets

• Vie de famille
• Relations familiales
• Historical
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 19 novembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780997848250
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 161 Mo

Extrait



The last photograph taken of the Grünberg family together, Vienna, 1938. (Left to right) my father’s mother Elka; my father Harry; his sister Mia; his father Leo; and brother Uri.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright © 2019 by Lisa Gruenberg
Published in the United States in 2019 by TidePool Press
 
ISBN: 978-0-9978-4825-0
 
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission.
 
 
TidePool Press
6 Maple Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 www.tidepoolpress.com
 
 
Printed in the United States
 
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gruenberg, Lisa 1955–
My City of Dreams p.cm. Gruenberg, Lisa 2. Gruenberg—United States—Memoir
3. Holocaust—Vienna, Austria 4. Second Generation—Holocaust
5. World War II (1939-1945)—atrocities 6. Children of Holocaust Survivors—Vienna, Austria—Biography
I. Title.
 
2019939209
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
F o r M a r ti n , H e a t h e r , an d L y d i a
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story.
 
Isak Dinesen

 
One of my father’s early family trees.
 
Contents
Introduction
PART I: UNRAVELING
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
PART II: ILLUMINATION
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
PART III: JOURNEY
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-Three
Forty-Four
Forty-Five
Forty-Six
Forty-Seven
Forty-Eight
Journey’s End
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
I n my late forties, the voice of my father’s lost sister woke me from deep and dreamless sleep. I was compelled to write down her words. Mia is real to me, but she can only tell us what might have happened. I constructed her story from this nocturnal voice, as well as from family letters, careful historical research, my father’s writing, and the wonderful tales he told me long ago.
A bit about Vienna: The center of the city is the First District, also known as the “inner city”—the Innere Stadt. It was once surrounded by walls, but in my father’s time, the walls had been replaced by a broad avenue with a trolley line, called the Ringstrasse. The Second District, just northeast of the Innere Stadt and separated by the Danube Canal, was also called Leopoldstadt. This was traditionally the Jewish district. My father’s maternal grandmother and most of the aunts and uncles on his mother’s side lived there. My father grew up in the Ninth District, also known as Alsergrund. The Second through Ninth districts run clockwise around the Innere Stadt, so that the Ninth, First and Second, the tight circle of my father’s childhood, all touched. My father’s favorite cousin lived in the Thirteenth; the Vienna Woods spread farther west. The Prater amusement park with its giant Ferris wheel, the Riesenrad, was north and east. The Danube, “Donau” in German, flowed just beyond.
German nouns are capitalized. I maintain that where appropriate. Names are often spelled differently in different family letters or even within my father’s writing. I have chosen one spelling. For the most part, I quote my father’s writing verbatim. The German quotes and translations are his own.
I have changed the chronology and the locations of some of my father’s outbursts. I changed the names of most of my neighbors in Syracuse, and merged several of Niki’s girlfriends into one, Andrea.
My own story is set down as I remember it.