Saving What Remains, by Livia Bitton-Jackson is a remarkable memoir and a compelling one.  It relays a story that is gripping, and one infused with all of the aspects of intrigue, drama, suspense, and emotions.  Logic does reign within the pages also, but the emotional story line grasped this reader immediately.  Saving What Remains almost reads like a mystery novel, although it is a suspenseful and factual story.

Livia Bitton-Jackson and her family were deported to Auschwitz from their home in Samorin, Czechoslovakia.  That she and her mother managed to survive is incredible in itself.  Almost four decades later, Bitton-Jackson,  returned to her childhood home town, then called Somorja, Hungary.  Her husband accompanied her.  She did this at great risk to herself, fearing she might be detained or arrested.

The reason for Bitton-Jackson’s return was due to the fact that the Jewish cemetery in Somorja was going to be flooded over by a new dam that was going to be built.  Her mother had asked her to have the remains of her own parents (Bitton-Jackson’s grandparents) unearthed, disinterred and brought back to Israel for reburial there.

Herein begins the story of her quest, and all that went with it.  The odds were against her, but she endeavored through every piece of red tape, fought the officials, ran in a frenzy to every town, city and every government office in order to obtain the permissions necessary to fulfill her requests for exhuming the bodies.  She oversaw everything, as best she could under the duress and what seemed like insurmountable odds, in a country no longer recognizable to her own eyes and other senses.

Bitton-Jackson and her husband literally reached down into the graves and held the face of death in their hands.  They physically touched their ancestors, felt the impressions of them that were left in the earth.  Their feat was remarkable on so many levels, and is unbelievable and incomprehensible to the mind, although it was factual.  I will leave you with these imprints, hoping to spur you on to read the memoir, yourself.

It is quite the thought-provoking memoir, leaving one to wonder what they would do.  To what extremes would you go to bury your ancestors near you?  Would any of us have the strength and courage to undertake what Bitton-Jackson did?  This book is as much a tribute to her strength, fortitude and determination, as it is to her ancestors.

Saving What remains, by Bitton-Jackson is more than a memoir, more than a story of journeying back to one’s homeland.  It is a story of a courageous sojourn to what once was, what no longer is.  It is a story of memories that were in specific settings of time and place, and memories that no longer match the current scenes.  Love and loss illuminate throughout the pages.  Jewish life and death are ever present within the story line.  The scent of homeland and culture are strong in this beautifully and vividly written account of Livia Bitton-Jackson’s journey.   But, primarily, it is a story of the necessity for remembrance and honoring of our ancestors.

If we don’t remember, pay tribute and honor them, who will?!

I highly recommend Saving What Remains to everyone, and feel it belongs in every private and public library.  It is an important historical memoir, reflecting on not only Jewish life and loss, ancestral remembrance, but social change and upheaval as well.  It is a story, that once you begin, is difficult to put down.  The odds were against success, and the story is incredible.  It is one that is not readily let go of, after the reader finishes the last page.

Shabbat Shalom, everyone!

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Friday August 7, 2009 – 17th of Av, 5769