Memories In Saul Friedlander's When Memory Comes

Memories can be a blessing and a curse for those whose life have had traumatic experiences. Anyone who would have grown up Jewish during world war two in Europe and would have survived the terror of the Holocaust would have some terrifying stories to share. In Saul Friedlander’s novel When Memory Comes, his memory is the centre core of all his stories. Some are harder to remember than others and a journey emerges with him trying to find his religious identity, whether in the Catholic religion or the Jewish religion.

The book starts out like any other memoire, with an introduction by Saul Friedlander to his life as a child and a background story of his family 's beginnings. He was born at the wrong possible time, as he mentions in his book, four months before Hitler came to power. …show more content…
The information was given to him and the chapters ends right there with no more information, no reactions or emotions. He does not add any more information about the findings of this event throughout the book. A journalist named Anna Altman from the New York Times does a book review on another one of Saul’s book called Where Memories Lead. My life. She has the same opinion as myself when she adds that, “It 's true that Friedlander is not the most introspective memoirist...but he expresses little grief over his parents’ absence and recounts few family memories” It is interesting that such a poignant part of his young life is his parents and his query as to where his parents were and if they were coming back and as soon as he finds out what happens to them, he does not let us in on how he felt in that moment and how it affects the rest of his life. Maybe he helps explain it a little it when he says “We Jews erect walls around our most harrowing memories, and our most anxious thoughts of the future.” (p.