Q4 What about the book do you have most trouble imagining?

[[deleted user]]

What about the book do you have most trouble imagining? Are there things you cant get your head around?

[[deleted user]]

I cannot imagine why the British would let the Jews be murdered without helping them especially so close to events of the holocaust.

I also cant get my head around the idea that partitioning people due to race or religion would ever be a solution to find peace

[Kristel]

I don't know, I think it was all believable. I do think it is harsh to see how countries can act certain ways but nevertheless, they do, and I don't think it is that unusual either.

I was just thinking about the fact that this family had a little bit or a lot of mental illness. The one relative with the OCD about germs and the mother with depression, and suicide is not all that unusual in the Jewish populations that survived the holocaust even though they maybe hadn't actually experienced the holocaust their lives were still impacted.

[Jen]

I found it all believable but stories of war are always hard for me to imagine. I don't think anyone can truly imagine what it is like to live in the midst of war unless you have lived that experience.

[Pip]

That brother David actually applied to emigrate to Germany because he thought the efficient Germans would have treated Jews better than Poles/Russians/Ukrainians, and then elected to stay in Vilnius.

I also thought the attempts to build a garden in the courtyard so pathetic. I find it hard to imagine a family without experience of using a spade, even if they don't own one now. It just emphasised the differences in up-bringing from one place to another. I remember taking Hong Kong students to Williamsburg and realising that they couldn't identify a single vegetable growing in the ground.

[Diane]

Since the book was a memoir I didn't think to question the facts. Although the British response was troubling for me too.

[Lynn]

The part that I had the most trouble imagining was when many people were hunkered down in their apartment during the war. I do not doubt that this occurred. But for me that many people in such a small place would send me crazy.

The fact his father spoke so many languages and was so knowledgeable about languages intrigues me. He must have been such a knowledgeable man.

[John]

I couldn't get the image of him whirling an iron ball at the top of a tree to work right in my head. It seemed like if it would have been heavy enough to cause the damage it supposedly did he wouldn't have been big enough to spin it, the branches would have gotten in the way and it wouldn't have had a free flight to the ground. I wondered if he added that as a kind of allegory for Jewish-Arab relations.