Blog #2

“My Father Always Said”

Schwartz uses 6 sections to deliver her story:

In Segment #1: She speaks about the New York environment that she lives in and her life as a teen in America. She wants to do everything an average teenage girl would want to do like hang out with her friends and wear make up. Just as similar, she has a father who doesn’t agree with some of the things she does.

Segment #2: This part is where she sees her father’s past and is surprised by what she was brought to see. First, she comes to the realization, through the environment around her, that her father was hick. Also, she finds out about how her father had a commitment to a synagogue every Friday and couldn’t imagine not being able to hang out with her friends. This is when she begins to understand her father a little more and the importance of going to the temple.

Segment #3: This part is where she is finding more of an interest level in her father’s life. She is told the story about how the Germans burnt down the synagogues and understands why her father is so weary to let her hang out with strangers and people that are not family. Later, on her trip to Rindheim she is surprised to see that the building that was once a synagogue is a now a Protestant church and comes to the realization that as time goes on; elements of life are constantly changing.

Segment #4: This part is where she is introduced to her father’s school. Her interest level grows when she is taught about the school system her father once had to go through, where children were separated because of their religion. She starts to understand how unjust his childhood was

Segment #5: They visit the cemetery to see the graves of some of her family members. Here, Mimi participates in honoring her relatives by placing a stone on one of her family member’s grave. She is not only maturing, at this point, but is appreciating the heritage more

Segment #6: In this segment she is at the cemetery and listens to her father tell a story about Tante Rosa, who stayed in Germany and was eventually sent to a concentration camp. He is distraught by this memory and she begins to really understand the hard times her parents had to face. While at the cemetery, she also visits the graves of her grandparents and tries to envision what they would have been like. She realizes the choice her father made in coming to America was to not only escape danger but give his children a better life to live, which gives her a better understanding of why family is so important to him.

In today’s society, its hard to truly be on the same page as your parents since we are completely different generations but by finding out aspects of their past is a way to not only better understand them but a way to see all of the obstacles they had to face when they were our age. I enjoyed this story and hope to gain an insight into the lives of my parents as Mimi did.