Reflections: Auschwitz, Memory, and a Life Recreated

 

“Survivors,” Agi tells us, “are jugglers. Life goes on, death goes on, and survivors themselves go on—somewhere in between.”

What is it like to live within such contradictions?  While most survivor memoirs end at liberation, Reflections follows the fate of Holocaust memories over the course of an entire life. Agi describes in detail her initial awakening and the journey home, being a young survivor in the giddy limbo of postwar Europe, recreating lives and families in the United States, responding to the unanticipated surge of interest in the Holocaust in recent years. Throughout, the inner dialogue with memory deepens.  “New experiences reflect old ones,” says Agi. “They put them in a different light, or a different darkness.”  These reflections are the story this book tells about Auschwitz, memory, and a life recreated. 

Agi Rubin is a survivor of Auschwitz and other camps. She is also a wife, mother, and grandmother.

Henry Greenspan is a psychologist and playwright at the University of Michigan. Agi and Hank have been close friends for more than twenty-five years.