Just One Thing with Brooke Randel

Brooke Randel’s essay “The History of the Holocaust Survivor” grapples with the complexity of chronicling a life, of holding a person on the page. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

“I spent four years tinkering with this essay, writing a little, letting it be, returning again. In some ways, it's a companion to my just-released memoir, Also Here: Love, Literacy, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. In the book, I tell a fuller, deeper version of how my grandma Goldie survived the Holocaust and the years that followed. But in this essay, I wanted to investigate something beyond the scope of the book, something that emerged from my reading and research: the image of a Holocaust survivor and society’s ever-changing perception of them. The more I read, the more I realized we create shorthands for certain types of people and experiences. We simplify. We label. We move on. Through much experimentation, I defamiliarized a narrative I knew well to find a new one underneath, full of identity loss, trial, transformation and grief.”