Lauren Grodstein Interview, plus links to author biography, book summaries, excerpts and reviews

An interview with Lauren Grodstein

A letter from Lauren Grodstein to readers about the genesis of her novel, We Must Not Think of Ourselves.

Dear Reader,

We Must Not Think of Ourselves is a novel I never expected to write. I had no ambition to tell a story about the Holocaust; people like Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi had already done the brutal job as perfectly as it could be done. I could not imagine attempting to put myself in their company.

But in July 2019, I discovered the stories of the people of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Or, more specifically, during a family trip to Warsaw, a tour guide brought us to the Jewish Historical Institute, a prosaic name for an extraordinary place. The institute houses the Emanuel Ringelblum Archive, the work of thirty-two secret diarists who, under the direction of historian Emanuel Ringelblum, secretly recorded everything about their imprisonment in the ghetto from 1940–1943. In comprehensive detail, their reports describe the ghetto's schools, synagogues, and prisons; its marriages and births; its struggles to feed its population; and its terror at the oncoming deportations to Treblinka. Their work constitutes the most significant written testimony of what was once Europe's largest Jewish community.

Of the thirty-two diarists, three survived; they were the ones who showed authorities where to dig up the buried archive after the war. Without this record, we would know nothing of the Warsaw Ghetto, save what the Nazis saw fit to record.

My family and I spent a transfixed afternoon reading translated diary entries and studying the ephemera the diarists collected. When we left, I said to my sister, "There are a thousand novels in that building."

She said, "So you should write one of them."

"Hah!" I said out loud. Then, for emphasis, I said it again.

"Why not?"

"Every reason," I said. "But first and foremost, who am I to even try?"

Yet the people of the archive kept tugging at me: Daniel Fligelman, who believed in the humane treatment of animals; Gela Sekstain, who drew beautiful portraits of her daughter. I spent almost a year trying to ignore them—and then the pandemic started. Suddenly I was trapped in my house, and I needed a project. I decided to write a page of the novel. We'd see how it went.

Much to my surprise, the first page begat another one, and then another, and during those long days when there was nothing to do but stay inside and worry, I found I could bury myself in the research and imagination I needed to write this book. I envisioned my characters trying to live their lives, finding food, finding meaning—even finding small moments of joy. Days outside were filled with fear of Covid; days inside were filled with the memory and testimony of the Warsaw Ghetto archivists and the characters I imagined who lived alongside them.

Now that I've spent years with the residents of the Warsaw Ghetto—both real and fictional—I've learned that the story of the archive is there for us whether or not we feel we're up to the challenge. Perhaps now more than ever, we must listen to what the Jews of Warsaw wanted us to know.

Sincerely,

Lauren Grodstein

Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.